Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Love from New Zealand, Jon
I think having a place where there are active users of a smallish social group, where the rule is "be nice!" could go a long way.
I am already expecting I'll be in #IRC most of the time, and try to always actively reply to list questions and such, when appropriate.
From Northern CA
-Tim (https://tilde.club/~timotheus/)
On 9/16/19 12:45 PM, Jon Bell wrote:
Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Love from New Zealand, Jon
Creating a structure for regular planned activities can go a long way toward helping a transient burst of enthusiasm turn into a sustained social experience. It's good to set up spaces, but may also be important to e.g. set up weekly social THINGS even if it's literally nothing more than an e.g. Saturday chat thread or a show-and-tell newsletter or etc.
I like how much tilde folks have been excited and excitable about projects and stuff, but those projects can easily end up being solitary or fizzling out in isolation and the enthusiasm with them. Having actively supported non-project stuff to do together could make a difference.
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 12:58 PM Tim H tim@hithlonde.com wrote:
I think having a place where there are active users of a smallish social group, where the rule is "be nice!" could go a long way.
I am already expecting I'll be in #IRC most of the time, and try to always actively reply to list questions and such, when appropriate.
From Northern CA
-Tim (https://tilde.club/~timotheus/)
On 9/16/19 12:45 PM, Jon Bell wrote:
Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression
or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the
novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet.
So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Love from New Zealand, Jon
On Sep 16, 2019, at 2:45 PM, Jon Bell jb@lot23.com wrote:
Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
https://runyourown.social https://runyourown.social/
I sit in a few Slacks during the day that fit these principles roughly. I am on Mastodon, also, but I’m not on Mastodon.
This book is also great:
https://www.people-and.com/get-together-book https://www.people-and.com/get-together-book
I’m also on a half-dozen group texts, run a robotexter, have a few mailing lists. I don’t think that I’m alone on any of this. Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
Take care, -- nickd! https://nickd.org https://draft.nu
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.
I read Darius's post, and I realized that it was like "What if you wanted a little corner of the internet for all of your friends?"
In my case it's sadly more like "both of your friends".
But here's to cordiality and civility and maybe a little goofiness in cyberspace on tilde together. And maybe some new friendships?
-Travis
On 9/16/19 4:58 PM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.
I’ve been participating in and managing communities of various sizes and levels of public/private-ness since I was 16, and I’m 33 now. The common thread and all of the ones that were really great was a couple of people who put in time not just conversing with others, but knowing how to create context for conversations to happen.
The art of starting a conversation that your community can actually keep going seems to be a dwindling one on the web that is so heavily focused on people talking about what they are consuming, which there isn’t really that much to say about.
The web that I miss these days revolved around interests and things we made, not just the presence of a group of people but the context of why those people came together to begin with, even if they also talked about other things.
I don’t find the context that come up on Facebook or Twitter or most other places these days to be all that interesting or capable of very much depth. In a lot of ways those things punish depth and encourage us to move onto the next thing that keeps the wheels turning. The lack of depth and the lack of “quality context” is something I’ve really been feeling a lot lately. On Sep 17, 2019, 12:08 AM -0400, Travis Briggs audiodude@tilde.club, wrote:
I read Darius's post, and I realized that it was like "What if you wanted a little corner of the internet for all of your friends?"
In my case it's sadly more like "both of your friends".
But here's to cordiality and civility and maybe a little goofiness in cyberspace on tilde together. And maybe some new friendships?
-Travis
On 9/16/19 4:58 PM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.
Think of some group projects. small effort by people you reach out to will form bonds and friendships.
Stefan
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -Alan Kay
“The best way to prevent the future is to predict it.” -Arthur C Clarke
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:08 AM Travis Briggs audiodude@tilde.club wrote:
I read Darius's post, and I realized that it was like "What if you wanted a little corner of the internet for all of your friends?"
In my case it's sadly more like "both of your friends".
But here's to cordiality and civility and maybe a little goofiness in cyberspace on tilde together. And maybe some new friendships?
-Travis
On 9/16/19 4:58 PM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.
It’s funny, I started up a private Minecraft server again recently, for just some close friends and anyone else I invite, after not running one for several years. The last time I ran one was the public 5by5 server in 2013-2014. Having collaborative building projects on this server that I work on with my old friends and some new ones has been giving me the same feelings as the projects I used to do on the internet. On Sep 17, 2019, 12:15 AM -0400, Stefan Hayden alt255@gmail.com, wrote:
Think of some group projects. small effort by people you reach out to will form bonds and friendships.
Stefan
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -Alan Kay
“The best way to prevent the future is to predict it.” -Arthur C Clarke
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:08 AM Travis Briggs audiodude@tilde.club wrote:
I read Darius's post, and I realized that it was like "What if you wanted a little corner of the internet for all of your friends?"
In my case it's sadly more like "both of your friends".
But here's to cordiality and civility and maybe a little goofiness in cyberspace on tilde together. And maybe some new friendships?
-Travis
On 9/16/19 4:58 PM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
Have people read Darius’s thing about this?
Yes! It's a hugely inspiring read. It almost made me spin up my own Mastodon instance but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Darius' Mastodon posts about making his own fork of the code and running it are inspiring. I take it you're following those, too?
Tilde IRC could fit the bill for us…
This seems to be a popular choice. Not another Slack, please. An RSS aggregator of tilde activity (mentioned elsewhere, I believe) would/will also help a community feel.
Email lists are nice, though, because they move a little slower. I appreciate that when life/work/projects intrude.
On 9/17/19 12:18 AM, Joseph Rooks wrote:
It’s funny, I started up a private Minecraft server again recently, for just some close friends and anyone else I invite, after not running one for several years. The last time I ran one was the public 5by5 server in 2013-2014. Having collaborative building projects on this server that I work on with my old friends and some new ones has been giving me the same feelings as the projects I used to do on the internet.
Speaking of Minecraft, I mentioned it on #club but: Pickaxe.club, a Minecraft server qrush started for tildenizens (and their kids, in many cases), is still a going concern. Weekends only, vanilla, currently 1.13 (1.14 is in test, but the client seems a bit too high-demand for some of us with elderly hardware).
There's a big ol' map on the web server there, and a connection to the Slack channel (which ties to in-game chat when the server is up).
I read Darius's post, and I realized that it was like "What if you wanted a little corner of the internet for all of your friends?"
In my case it's sadly more like "both of your friends".
Yeah, this was, in fact, one of the major roadblocks I encountered.
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Anyway, I digress. Yes to weird, niche, social outposts!
And friendships!
On 9/17/19 12:21 AM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Not really surprising, alas. It *is* exhausting, and there's always the temptation to just give in and use the fancy easy stuff.
Yes to all of this. I recently gave up the php wrangling of Wordpress, and just built a new site using Squarespace. It was so fancy, so easy.
At the same time, though, I spun up a zine project that is neither fancy nor easy and it's been a series of wonderful sunrise moments to be crafting, writing, and sharing something that I care about with friends. And the content will never be online. (Sign up! crappyzineclub.com.)
Julie / @j / juliette.co
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:51 AM Karen Cravens silver@phoenyx.net wrote:
On 9/17/19 12:21 AM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Not really surprising, alas. It *is* exhausting, and there's always the temptation to just give in and use the fancy easy stuff.
i've gotten my magic moments from the new wave of peer-to-peer projects that are quietly building in the undergrowth
stuff like browsing dat https://dat.foundation/ sites and zines https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/ in beaker browser https://beakerbrowser.com/, chatting away an evening in the cosy forums of the secure scuttlebutt https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ community. i've even gone so far as to create a small group chat thing for friend circles and small tech coops called cabal https://cabal.chat/ because i was tired of the state of affairs, of giant vc-funded platforms shutting down themselves or others
this new peer to peer stuff ( *small interlude: and it's not blockchain stuff, we're all broke and mostly doing it in ourspare time lol*) is so cool and exciting cause you *don't* need to run a server or know anyone that can, it just like, runs on yr computer or laptop. soon this idealistic post-climate change tech will be able to properly bridge the gap to mobile devices, for scuttlebutt there already exists apps https://www.manyver.se/ that bridge that gap
so yeah, i'd wanna say that there's always going to be people building stuff. the best thing to do is find yr people, meet them in real life over dinners and stories. there's a really cute and cheesy saying going around in the current p2p wave of things and it's that *the real peer-to-peer network is the friends you made along the way*. which is so cheesy it almost hurts, and also so very true
i think one big thing is having the time to build *a new normal*, instead of this prescribed one that deprives us of the joy of our sunsets. not needing to work 40 hour weeks (which honestly is way too much, not to mention the weeks some folx put in that come in *way *above that) in order to just have somewhere to sleep. on this topic i can't recommend the book Walkaway https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604388-walkaway, by Cory Doctorow, enough. it's a great look at what could be possible, and what more than a handful of my close online friends are already doing
a better world is possible, and it's made possible by things like tilde.club that allows us to find friends without mediating commercial interests that try to gull us into believing things that aren't in order to fill mansions with luxury at the expense of everything and everyone else
woah sorry for the screed everyone, i have Feelings on this topic
post rant: ok sorry i also have to recommend The Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessedby Ursula Le Guin; once i've started recommending books i can't stop c
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 16:35, Juliette Melton juliemelton@gmail.com wrote:
Yes to all of this. I recently gave up the php wrangling of Wordpress, and just built a new site using Squarespace. It was so fancy, so easy.
At the same time, though, I spun up a zine project that is neither fancy nor easy and it's been a series of wonderful sunrise moments to be crafting, writing, and sharing something that I care about with friends. And the content will never be online. (Sign up! crappyzineclub.com.)
Julie / @j / juliette.co
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:51 AM Karen Cravens silver@phoenyx.net wrote:
On 9/17/19 12:21 AM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Not really surprising, alas. It *is* exhausting, and there's always the temptation to just give in and use the fancy easy stuff.
i agree with this message so much. i think the hardest part is finding your people. it is still possible to do, but there is so much less trust and good faith to be found online that it can be tricky if you don't have a friend of a friend, or a meetup in a populous area, or things like that. (i'm a lot more private now than i was a few years ago, and only just starting to do things like... reply to big mailing lists, or speak to anyone online outside of a small private circle.)
anyway, time to put a library hold on Walkaway.
On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 9:53 AM Alexander Cobleigh < alexander.cobleigh@gmail.com> wrote:
i've gotten my magic moments from the new wave of peer-to-peer projects that are quietly building in the undergrowth
stuff like browsing dat https://dat.foundation/ sites and zines https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/ in beaker browser https://beakerbrowser.com/, chatting away an evening in the cosy forums of the secure scuttlebutt https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ community. i've even gone so far as to create a small group chat thing for friend circles and small tech coops called cabal https://cabal.chat/ because i was tired of the state of affairs, of giant vc-funded platforms shutting down themselves or others
this new peer to peer stuff ( *small interlude: and it's not blockchain stuff, we're all broke and mostly doing it in ourspare time lol*) is so cool and exciting cause you *don't* need to run a server or know anyone that can, it just like, runs on yr computer or laptop. soon this idealistic post-climate change tech will be able to properly bridge the gap to mobile devices, for scuttlebutt there already exists apps https://www.manyver.se/ that bridge that gap
so yeah, i'd wanna say that there's always going to be people building stuff. the best thing to do is find yr people, meet them in real life over dinners and stories. there's a really cute and cheesy saying going around in the current p2p wave of things and it's that *the real peer-to-peer network is the friends you made along the way*. which is so cheesy it almost hurts, and also so very true
i think one big thing is having the time to build *a new normal*, instead of this prescribed one that deprives us of the joy of our sunsets. not needing to work 40 hour weeks (which honestly is way too much, not to mention the weeks some folx put in that come in *way *above that) in order to just have somewhere to sleep. on this topic i can't recommend the book Walkaway https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604388-walkaway, by Cory Doctorow, enough. it's a great look at what could be possible, and what more than a handful of my close online friends are already doing
a better world is possible, and it's made possible by things like tilde.club that allows us to find friends without mediating commercial interests that try to gull us into believing things that aren't in order to fill mansions with luxury at the expense of everything and everyone else
woah sorry for the screed everyone, i have Feelings on this topic
post rant: ok sorry i also have to recommend The Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessedby Ursula Le Guin; once i've started recommending books i can't stop c
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 16:35, Juliette Melton juliemelton@gmail.com wrote:
Yes to all of this. I recently gave up the php wrangling of Wordpress, and just built a new site using Squarespace. It was so fancy, so easy.
At the same time, though, I spun up a zine project that is neither fancy nor easy and it's been a series of wonderful sunrise moments to be crafting, writing, and sharing something that I care about with friends. And the content will never be online. (Sign up! crappyzineclub.com.)
Julie / @j / juliette.co
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:51 AM Karen Cravens silver@phoenyx.net wrote:
On 9/17/19 12:21 AM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Not really surprising, alas. It *is* exhausting, and there's always the temptation to just give in and use the fancy easy stuff.
yr always welcome around my neighbourhood of friends thrice ^_^ send me an email if you wanna get onto scuttlebutt or get into the dat side of things
when i have some time maybe i'll try to revamp my tilde page and write some stuff like tiny tutorials or a small link starter pack for the rest of tilde club :~
On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 at 19:17, thricedotted thricedotted@gmail.com wrote:
i agree with this message so much. i think the hardest part is finding your people. it is still possible to do, but there is so much less trust and good faith to be found online that it can be tricky if you don't have a friend of a friend, or a meetup in a populous area, or things like that. (i'm a lot more private now than i was a few years ago, and only just starting to do things like... reply to big mailing lists, or speak to anyone online outside of a small private circle.)
anyway, time to put a library hold on Walkaway.
On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 9:53 AM Alexander Cobleigh < alexander.cobleigh@gmail.com> wrote:
i've gotten my magic moments from the new wave of peer-to-peer projects that are quietly building in the undergrowth
stuff like browsing dat https://dat.foundation/ sites and zines https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/ in beaker browser https://beakerbrowser.com/, chatting away an evening in the cosy forums of the secure scuttlebutt https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ community. i've even gone so far as to create a small group chat thing for friend circles and small tech coops called cabal https://cabal.chat/ because i was tired of the state of affairs, of giant vc-funded platforms shutting down themselves or others
this new peer to peer stuff ( *small interlude: and it's not blockchain stuff, we're all broke and mostly doing it in ourspare time lol*) is so cool and exciting cause you *don't* need to run a server or know anyone that can, it just like, runs on yr computer or laptop. soon this idealistic post-climate change tech will be able to properly bridge the gap to mobile devices, for scuttlebutt there already exists apps https://www.manyver.se/ that bridge that gap
so yeah, i'd wanna say that there's always going to be people building stuff. the best thing to do is find yr people, meet them in real life over dinners and stories. there's a really cute and cheesy saying going around in the current p2p wave of things and it's that *the real peer-to-peer network is the friends you made along the way*. which is so cheesy it almost hurts, and also so very true
i think one big thing is having the time to build *a new normal*, instead of this prescribed one that deprives us of the joy of our sunsets. not needing to work 40 hour weeks (which honestly is way too much, not to mention the weeks some folx put in that come in *way *above that) in order to just have somewhere to sleep. on this topic i can't recommend the book Walkaway https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604388-walkaway, by Cory Doctorow, enough. it's a great look at what could be possible, and what more than a handful of my close online friends are already doing
a better world is possible, and it's made possible by things like tilde.club that allows us to find friends without mediating commercial interests that try to gull us into believing things that aren't in order to fill mansions with luxury at the expense of everything and everyone else
woah sorry for the screed everyone, i have Feelings on this topic
post rant: ok sorry i also have to recommend The Dispossessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessedby Ursula Le Guin; once i've started recommending books i can't stop c
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 16:35, Juliette Melton juliemelton@gmail.com wrote:
Yes to all of this. I recently gave up the php wrangling of Wordpress, and just built a new site using Squarespace. It was so fancy, so easy.
At the same time, though, I spun up a zine project that is neither fancy nor easy and it's been a series of wonderful sunrise moments to be crafting, writing, and sharing something that I care about with friends. And the content will never be online. (Sign up! crappyzineclub.com.)
Julie / @j / juliette.co
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:51 AM Karen Cravens silver@phoenyx.net wrote:
On 9/17/19 12:21 AM, Paul Kruczynski wrote:
But related, tangentially, I've also been somewhat surprised how a lot of the people I know who were early adopters seem uninterested in such things anymore. Not just in making new, weird, questionably sustainable communities for your friends, but also privacy, controlling their own data, all that fun stuff.
Not really surprising, alas. It *is* exhausting, and there's always the temptation to just give in and use the fancy easy stuff.
Based on some of the stuff I've read in this thread, I think there might be some interest in http://micro.blog . It's a sort of a social network mashed up with a blogging tool and network. I've only just started using it (although I kickstarted it way back), and my experience has been positive. Reminds me a bit of the early days of personal blogs.
I keep meaning to revisit it. I was backer #1 on the Kickstarter but once it launched I found it to participate as all the apps etc (at the time) were iOS.
September 27, 2019 10:50 AM, sincarne@tilde.club wrote:
Based on some of the stuff I've read in this thread, I think there might be some interest in http://micro.blog . It's a sort of a social network mashed up with a blogging tool and network. I've only just started using it (although I kickstarted it way back), and my experience has been positive. Reminds me a bit of the early days of personal blogs.
On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 09:50:21AM +0000, sincarne@tilde.club wrote:
Based on some of the stuff I've read in this thread, I think there might be some interest in http://micro.blog . It's a sort of a social network mashed up with a blogging tool and network. I've only just started using it (although I kickstarted it way back), and my experience has been positive. Reminds me a bit of the early days of personal blogs.
That actually looks pretty cool! The $5/month charge seems a little... optimistic? As a developer, I really like the API centric approach, and it looks like it has built-in integration with mastodon. I'll definitely keep an eye on this, thanks!
You can actually do almost everything on micro.blog for free: you can use the web interface to post/reply/comment and can syndicate from your RSS feed into the public timeline from your own site — no cost. It’s $5 per month to have a hosted micro blog, and I think there’s another tier for micro podcast hosting. I use my Hugo blog to post into the system and have been thinking of hooking up my hand rolled tilde club feed, too ... if I ever get around to it. I’d say that for free it’s worth checking out, as there’s a lot of common ethos between m.b and tildes.
Alan
On Sep 27, 2019, 6:07 AM -0700, ngp@tilde.club, wrote:
On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 09:50:21AM +0000, sincarne@tilde.club wrote:
Based on some of the stuff I've read in this thread, I think there might be some interest in http://micro.blog . It's a sort of a social network mashed up with a blogging tool and network. I've only just started using it (although I kickstarted it way back), and my experience has been positive. Reminds me a bit of the early days of personal blogs.
That actually looks pretty cool! The $5/month charge seems a little... optimistic? As a developer, I really like the API centric approach, and it looks like it has built-in integration with mastodon. I'll definitely keep an eye on this, thanks!
I believe it's still free to use if you host your blog yourself. I was doing that with WordPress, but just ended up throwing him the $5/month. I'm definitely not getting $5 value out of it, but a/ that's on me; I'm being lazy, and b/ fund the change you want to see in the world, right? :)
September 27, 2019 2:07 PM, ngp@tilde.club wrote:
On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 09:50:21AM +0000, sincarne@tilde.club wrote:
Based on some of the stuff I've read in this thread, I think there might be some interest in http://micro.blog . It's a sort of a social network mashed up with a blogging tool and network. I've only just started using it (although I kickstarted it way back), and my experience has been positive. Reminds me a bit of the early days of personal blogs.
That actually looks pretty cool! The $5/month charge seems a little... optimistic? As a developer, I really like the API centric approach, and it looks like it has built-in integration with mastodon. I'll definitely keep an eye on this, thanks!
Maybe it lasts because it becomes a collaboration not only for talking, but for making.
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 12:45 PM Jon Bell jb@lot23.com wrote:
Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Love from New Zealand, Jon
I also think it has lasts when it is not purely an extension of or commentary on the self.
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 4:40 PM Maria Bustillos maria@popula.com wrote:
Maybe it lasts because it becomes a collaboration not only for talking, but for making.
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 12:45 PM Jon Bell jb@lot23.com wrote:
Imagine a person struggling with something really heavy, like depression or addiction. Imagine that one morning their friends manage to get them to watch a sunrise. It’s amazing. Life changing.
But you can’t see sunrises all the time. And even if you could, the novelty would wear off. As the morning wears on, and the memory of the sunrise fades, this person goes back to their normal life. Where they’re struggling again.
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
Love from New Zealand, Jon
-- Popula http://www.popula.com is news and culture, ad-free and local to the world Come with us if you want to live https://www.popula.com/thank-you.
On 9/16/19 1:45 PM, Jon Bell wrote:
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
The original tilde.club moment came at a kind of crucial inflection point for me, when a job I'd been giving everything I had for a long time was falling apart because of the same tendencies and people who have turned the internet at largee into a torrent of shit. tilde.club was one of the things giving me some hope for an alternative to all that. I was really angry and strangely optimistic all at the same time. It seemed like there was so much to be done, so much that still *could* be done.
tilde.club itself turned out to be a momentary flash of nostalgia/art/networking/etc. for a collection of internet cool kids. A neat thing as far as it went but mostly a gesture at a shared longing for some things our culture has set aside and some roads not taken, and more than a little bit an outcropping of in-club privilege for an already well-connected elite. Still, it pointed at a bunch of interesting ideas: social unix servers as lasting institutions, the good stuff about the old web, federation of shared resources as an escape mechanism from the centralized near-monopolies, the utility of text, the importance of small silos and hidden byways for community...
In the last 5 years I've come to think of the network we have as mostly pathological, bound up in and accelerating the pathologies of our culture and economy. I've lost hope entirely for some things I once cared about fiercely, the web itself high on that list. Most of the work I've ever done appears to have been in service of ideas that are in a state of total defeat. (Well, that and accidentally making a handful of bad people permanently wealthy.)
In that same time, people have explored the tilde notion quite a bit on other servers than this one. It has its own discontents. There're tensions between nostalgia and experimentation, nerd fetishism and simple community, etc. But good stuff has still come out of it. Myself, I run a tiny IRC server for some friends, hang out on the fediverse a little, chat with some folks on tilde.town, and spend as much time as I can get away with camping at festivals the like, nowhere near the internet at all.
Those are the places I get my sunrises, literal or metaphorical: The small ones that exist where the bulk of the network isn't looking. The quiet gaps and the smalltime house parties and the side roads. I don't think any one thing is ever going to be the solution, but I think that when the world is burning, this is a lot of what you can do, and a lot of what you _have_ to do: Keep something humane alive at the margins. Hold some space where the general evil loses its power.
I guess I don't exactly know where I'm going with this except my answer to the original question is: Do that thing. Make some space out at the margins. And maybe try to share it with more people who aren't already the cool kids.
I never was one of the cool kids, and I found this space. Also hi, nice to meet you, I'd love to be cool. But mostly I'd love to get back to the kind of internet where cool didn't matter because OMG you can TALK to ANYONE ANYWHERE and they ALSO LOVE playing SLAPPERS in GOLDENEYE??!!
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 5:34 PM Brennen Bearnes bbearnes@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/16/19 1:45 PM, Jon Bell wrote:
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet.
So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
The original tilde.club moment came at a kind of crucial inflection point for me, when a job I'd been giving everything I had for a long time was falling apart because of the same tendencies and people who have turned the internet at largee into a torrent of shit. tilde.club was one of the things giving me some hope for an alternative to all that. I was really angry and strangely optimistic all at the same time. It seemed like there was so much to be done, so much that still *could* be done.
tilde.club itself turned out to be a momentary flash of nostalgia/art/networking/etc. for a collection of internet cool kids. A neat thing as far as it went but mostly a gesture at a shared longing for some things our culture has set aside and some roads not taken, and more than a little bit an outcropping of in-club privilege for an already well-connected elite. Still, it pointed at a bunch of interesting ideas: social unix servers as lasting institutions, the good stuff about the old web, federation of shared resources as an escape mechanism from the centralized near-monopolies, the utility of text, the importance of small silos and hidden byways for community...
In the last 5 years I've come to think of the network we have as mostly pathological, bound up in and accelerating the pathologies of our culture and economy. I've lost hope entirely for some things I once cared about fiercely, the web itself high on that list. Most of the work I've ever done appears to have been in service of ideas that are in a state of total defeat. (Well, that and accidentally making a handful of bad people permanently wealthy.)
In that same time, people have explored the tilde notion quite a bit on other servers than this one. It has its own discontents. There're tensions between nostalgia and experimentation, nerd fetishism and simple community, etc. But good stuff has still come out of it. Myself, I run a tiny IRC server for some friends, hang out on the fediverse a little, chat with some folks on tilde.town, and spend as much time as I can get away with camping at festivals the like, nowhere near the internet at all.
Those are the places I get my sunrises, literal or metaphorical: The small ones that exist where the bulk of the network isn't looking. The quiet gaps and the smalltime house parties and the side roads. I don't think any one thing is ever going to be the solution, but I think that when the world is burning, this is a lot of what you can do, and a lot of what you _have_ to do: Keep something humane alive at the margins. Hold some space where the general evil loses its power.
I guess I don't exactly know where I'm going with this except my answer to the original question is: Do that thing. Make some space out at the margins. And maybe try to share it with more people who aren't already the cool kids.
That was really honest Brennan, thank you for sharing. I think there is definitely a lot of tension between the keep-it-1985 aesthetic on tildes, and the feeling of "yes but when I use alpine I feel like I'm losing a text adventure game". Already, having IMAP access to my tilde.club mail account makes it 100% more useful (whereas on town I don't know if that exists, and I also don't know if I've checked my mail more than twice ever).
One thing I know is that every night, around this time, I feel a desperate urge to build, to make, to create. I feel a desperate longing for the things that I haven't built, made, created yet today. And I would love some people who have a similar desire to share it with.
-Travis
On 9/16/19 5:34 PM, Brennen Bearnes wrote:
On 9/16/19 1:45 PM, Jon Bell wrote:
Many (all?) of us are overwhelmed and disheartened by today’s internet. So here’s a question to the group, as a die hard tildee. How can we make something like this last longer than a sunrise?
The original tilde.club moment came at a kind of crucial inflection point for me, when a job I'd been giving everything I had for a long time was falling apart because of the same tendencies and people who have turned the internet at largee into a torrent of shit. tilde.club was one of the things giving me some hope for an alternative to all that. I was really angry and strangely optimistic all at the same time. It seemed like there was so much to be done, so much that still *could* be done.
tilde.club itself turned out to be a momentary flash of nostalgia/art/networking/etc. for a collection of internet cool kids. A neat thing as far as it went but mostly a gesture at a shared longing for some things our culture has set aside and some roads not taken, and more than a little bit an outcropping of in-club privilege for an already well-connected elite. Still, it pointed at a bunch of interesting ideas: social unix servers as lasting institutions, the good stuff about the old web, federation of shared resources as an escape mechanism from the centralized near-monopolies, the utility of text, the importance of small silos and hidden byways for community...
In the last 5 years I've come to think of the network we have as mostly pathological, bound up in and accelerating the pathologies of our culture and economy. I've lost hope entirely for some things I once cared about fiercely, the web itself high on that list. Most of the work I've ever done appears to have been in service of ideas that are in a state of total defeat. (Well, that and accidentally making a handful of bad people permanently wealthy.)
In that same time, people have explored the tilde notion quite a bit on other servers than this one. It has its own discontents. There're tensions between nostalgia and experimentation, nerd fetishism and simple community, etc. But good stuff has still come out of it. Myself, I run a tiny IRC server for some friends, hang out on the fediverse a little, chat with some folks on tilde.town, and spend as much time as I can get away with camping at festivals the like, nowhere near the internet at all.
Those are the places I get my sunrises, literal or metaphorical: The small ones that exist where the bulk of the network isn't looking. The quiet gaps and the smalltime house parties and the side roads. I don't think any one thing is ever going to be the solution, but I think that when the world is burning, this is a lot of what you can do, and a lot of what you _have_ to do: Keep something humane alive at the margins. Hold some space where the general evil loses its power.
I guess I don't exactly know where I'm going with this except my answer to the original question is: Do that thing. Make some space out at the margins. And maybe try to share it with more people who aren't already the cool kids.
September 16, 2019 5:34 PM, "Brennen Bearnes" bbearnes@gmail.com wrote:
In the last 5 years I've come to think of the network we have as mostly pathological, bound up in and accelerating the pathologies of our culture and economy. I've lost hope entirely for some things I once cared about fiercely, the web itself high on that list.
With similar motivations, I've been building a whole new computer from scratch. Right now all you can do with it is program in (a fairly ergonomic syntax for) machine code. It takes one command to package up a program into a bootable image that you can run on Qemu or upload to a cloud server on Linode or similar for a few bucks a month.
https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme
At first glance this seems to fall into the trap of trying to solve a social problem with code, which is what got us into this mess in the first place. I have two defenses:
1. Working on this preserves my sanity. Miniscule chance of reaching a worthwhile destination, but the journey seems to be motivating.
2. While you can't solve social problems purely with a technical solution, technological choices have a powerful influence on which social solutions get tried. In particular, I think a lot of the problems in our network stem from privileging whoever happened to show up first. Our computers are pervaded by bad decisions that we think we can't undo, just because we think we have to keep supporting old ideas for eternity. An innocent-sounding word like 'compatibility' is a key pillar supporting existing power structures.
The current codebase is nothing; the goal of Mu is to change the social contract.
Current contract: you build an interface, I start using it, you have to keep supporting it, you can keep adding to it, I get updates automatically, upgrades require no work, they never break anything I use (ha!)
Proposal: you build an interface, I start using it, you can change it however you want, I decide when to upgrade, upgrades may require some bounded work, and I can skip the upgrade if something doesn't work.
This seems more realistic, somehow. I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
One implication of this approach: lots of people won't upgrade. If a popular tool were to make an incompatible change, an eco-system will pop up to fork the old version. Branches will fork off of _that_.
We've been taught that this sort of 'fragmentation' is a bad thing. I don't know why that is. Most things in our world work this way, and they're better for it. If you find that a building has a structural defect, only that one building is affected. Why do we put up with a system where a one-line code change can break or compromise vast swathes of the internet? Having lots of forks is more robust to catastrophe.
The power of code stems from being easy to change. Today we gradually give up this power as new services mature. But the chains binding us to the past are largely in our own heads.
Anyway, that's my pitch. I want to build a new stack that supports a new social contract, and I think it'll lead to a more robust and resilient network. It requires lots of experimentation on tools to share code across incompatible forks. Who's with me? No programming experience required. I've taught people programming in the past, and if you're willing to persevere I'll do whatever it takes to support you.
I have no idea how the new world looks past machine code. What does a new internet and browser look like? I'm hoping we can figure that out together.
Sincerely, Kartik http://tilde.club/~akkartik
tildeclub@lists.tildeverse.org
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akkartik＠tilde.club -
alan＠schussman.com -
Alexander Cobleigh -
Brennen Bearnes -
Erin Simon -
Jon Bell -
Joseph Rooks -
Josh Millard -
Juliette Melton -
Karen Cravens -
Leah Reich -
Maria Bustillos -
Matt -
ngp＠tilde.club -
Nick Disabato -
Paul Kruczynski -
sincarne＠tilde.club -
Stefan Hayden -
thricedotted -
Tim H -
Travis Briggs