• Reading: Doughnut Economics
  • I like the emphasis on an economics that is distributive by design and regenerative by design.
  • Also like the occasional references to biomimicry. Not convinced yet how applicable to economics it is – but I just have a general interest in it from Evolutionary and adaptive systems days.
• Listened: Hotel Bar Sessions: Late Capitalism
• Today at work I:
  • Responded to a personal message from a community member.
    • We have a community and friends within it, and sometimes personal messages come via my work channels.
  • Scheduled in some things for when I’m away.
  • Did the daily inbox trawl.

• Perceptions of degrowth in the European Parliament
  • Looks good. Only skimmed it, but they mention ecosocialism as one of the positions held.
• Today at work I:
  • Did the daily inbox trawl.
    • A lot of the emails are automatic alerts that take up a lot of my time checking. I kind of need to see them though.
    • I wonder if there’s a way of flipping it so I only see them if something has gone wrong.
    • The trouble then, though, is you don’t realise if the alert itself has stopped sending.
  • Responded to questions from the team on Slack.
    • Schedule tasks/actions in as a result.
    • Either as ‘unplanned’ work for the day if it needed doing today.
    • Or for a future date if not urgent.
  • Quickly added a cache around a slow endpoint.
    • It was (a) meaning some automatic tests were very slow to run.
    • (b) possibly crashing the app when the tests were running.
    • I patched it quickly in on live (naughty, but needed) and now need to properly add it into the repo.
  • Tested app-to-app connection between app and WP site API as part of migration tests.
    • I always app-to-app connections and APIs. Prefer them to user interfaces 😀
  • Attended team meeting.
  • Did some layout/content tweaks to our main website.
    • Fiddling around with CSS and layout is not top on my list of fun things to do. Always takes longer than you expect.
    • Some yak shaving to be done based on npm install failing. Haven’t got the time to shave that yak right now.
  • Do some quick estimates of how long potential pieces of work should take.
  • Cross-posted a social post on Mastodon.
  • Kicked off a new sprint in Jira (late, as I was off on leave when it technically started).

• Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract | …
  • Absolutely gutted by this. Despite all the campaigning by Foxglove and Just Treatment, fucking Palantir still awarded the contract with the NHS.
  • Makes me sick. This is not the kind of organisation our health service should be in partnership with.

• Listened: Hotel Bar Sessions: Revolutionary Mathematics
  • So far, discussing frequentism and Bayesianism schools of thought in probability.

• When I’m working, I don’t log a lot in the journal, I noticed.
  • So experimenting with logging thoughts on work activities.
  • Not much detail on specifics, more reflections on activities and process.
  • I quite enjoy it so far. Useful to reflect.

Today at work I:

• Did the usual inbox trawls and day planning.
  • Day planning I do with org-mode, org-agenda and org-timeline.
• Prepped for the meetings for the day.
  • Mostly with mindmaps.
• Did some strategic planning for next year.
  • Mindmaps and freeform writing.
• Some rote work
  • processing incoming applications for things, updating website accordingly
  • always good to think with this stuff how processes could be streamlined
• Minor website content change.
  • Minor change, but thinking about the UX of it is always interesting.
  • And how it affects client agreements/expectations, too.
• Planning and assigning work for my team.
  • Bit of mindmapping combined with going through Jira.
• Reviewing new features.
  • Code and functionality. Code review is in Github.
  • Testing I tend to build the feature branch locally.
• Meetings.
  • Sometimes I jot things down on mindmap.
  • Somethings I record things straight into knowledge base.
  • Sometimes I log things straight into org as TODOs.
  • It’s a bit haphazard to he honest. Could be improved.
• Emailing external partners.
  • Always interesting the amount of work that goes into crafting an email to get across all the nuances of your position on something.
• Distracting myself with Slack threads not really related to what I’m doing.

• At work today I:
  • Trawled through inboxes after a week away.
  • Reviewed some code (Laravel/Vue).
  • Tested some functionality changes.
  • Made a little tweak to a WordPress component, with a lot of yak shaving to get my local environment up to speed.
  • Thought about UX of a couple of things.
  • Other general bits and bobs.

• We had another play of Space Cats Fight Fascism today.
  • Love these Tesa Collective games.
• We spend a not insignificant chunk of our lives just on the upkeep of our household.
  • If was a system, how would you describe it?
  • What are the stocks and flows? What are the processes? What system archetypes does it exhibit and what are the leverage points to make it function better?
  • I feel like it has a few many inputs and a blockage at the output which mean it gets easily cluttered.

• Been enjoying Superstore of late.
  • Often very funny. And also plenty of digs at corporate anti-worker practices and the tactics of worker exploitation. The staff attempt unionisation. ICE detains an undocumented worker. etc.
• We played the Rise Up board game tonight.
  • You work cooperatively as part of a movement to fight the system.
  • A lot of fun. I like the fact that they include a storytelling element to it – certain cards get you to think of an accompanying story to the system.

• Think I might play with annotating items in my garden in a more relational way.
  • So rather than objects with properties, more like things in relationship to each other.
  • e.g. rather than annotating a podcast with a ‘Series’ attribute, call it ‘Part of’. Let the entity at the other end of the link tell you what it is.
  • i.e. try a more relational ontology.
  • I don’t think this will have much practical technical benefit – it is more of a way of exploring a relational mindset. Ontology informs polity.

• Listened: WCV S2: Keir Milburn “Glorious Variation in the Global Working Class”
• Been enjoying the Working Class Voices series from GND Media.
  • Good reflections on how the environmental movement involves the working class (and also how alienates it). Main point being – it has to, one way or another, as the working class is the largest class.
  • A point that resonated with me is that community organising is a good intersection point, as it’s one way to clearly positively connect environment and cost of living.
  • Ecosocialism is another intersection.
• Digging Until Here for Years by Proem right now.
• Listened: WCV2 NY Communities for change “Let’s not replace Oil Barons’ with Solar Barons'”
  • Lots of thought provoking chat here, hanging off the recent End Fossil Fuels actions in New York.
  • Good chat on the topic of engagement of working class and how a lot of environmental activism can be off-putting.
• Listened: Hotel Bar Sessions: The Stories We Tell
  • Really fun discussion on documentary and narrative.
  • Makes me think a little about Evgeny Morozov’s comments on how he pivoted to strong narrative on The Santiago Boys

 

• Listened: WCV2: Duncan Exley “Working class campaigners want to change things”
• Listened: WCV2 NY Communities for change “Let’s not replace Oil Barons’ with Solar Barons'”

 

• Fun, busy Repair Cafe tonight.
  • I saw three things – didn’t actually fix anything, but did some good diagnosis on them.
  • CD player. Turns out the whole model had a problem that Sony offered to fix for free – until 2021.
  • Laptop. Asus Vivobook with red power light and blue processing light stuck on permanently, but no signs of life otherwise.
  • Android Phone (trying to pair to Windows laptop). Coming up with Couldn’t Connect message on the phone. But my phone could pair to the laptop. Their phone could pair to my laptop. Phone paired successfully on Linux booted from USB. So not a hardware problem – something wrong on Windows 10. Ran out of time, but they’ll try to upgrade to Windows 11 and see what happens.
• Listened: WCV S2: We’ve run with it like a dog with a burst ball
  • Great interview. Touches on how local community organising can be the way to get working class communities involved in climate related issues. Where the intersection is people, planet and pocket.