2025-04-03

• The [[Drake Equation]] is fun to think about.
  • Even if it’s contested as to whether the figures it produces have any real meaning.

2025-04-01

• Philip has put a great page together on your options at [[Windows 10 end-of-life]].

  • https://wiki.restarters.net/Windows_10_End_of_Life pull

• I occasionally have the deep misfortune of ending up on [[Amazon]]. Talk about [[enshittification]]. Endless random brand names, 50 random variations of the same crappy product. ‘Sponsored’ products. This is not a site that cares about its users.

2025-03-31

• [[Pathways that I’ve done on Kinnu]]

2025-03-30

• [[Doughnut Economics]] has a nice, simple definition of what a [[system]] is.

  • "So what is a system? Simply a set of things that are interconnected in ways that produce distinct patterns of behaviour – be they cells in an organism, protestors in a crowd, birds in a flock, members of a family, or banks in a financial network. And it is the relationships between the individual parts – shaped by their [[stocks and flows]], [[feedbacks]], and [[delay]] – that give rise to their emergent behaviour"

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Big Tech’s bid to rewrite the rules on net zero
    • tags: [[Big Tech]]. [[Net zero]].
  • In defense of digital commoning
    • tags: [[Digital commons]].
  • #2 – Symphonies of Imagination
    • In particular, the solarpunk-flavoured essay on Repair.
    • [[Solarpunk]]. [[Repair]].
  • Use Emacs in GUI mode on Android (using Termux and Termux X11)
    • tags: [[Emacs]]. [[Termux]].
  • Emacs + Termux on Android: Code, Org-mode and Agenda, Dired, Magit and more…
    • tags: [[Emacs]]. [[Termux]].

• [[Wasteland]] has a nice description of [[Oil]]:

  • "Most oil deposits are thought to have been laid down between 10 and 180 million years ago, when dead zooplankton and algae sank to the seafloor and were buried in layers of sediment, before being slowly transformed into hydrocarbons by heat and pressure and time"

• Via [[Chris Aldrich]] (| Chris Aldrich), this looks good: [[A System for Writing]].

2025-03-29

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • [[Apple]] started making the most money when they had the platform through which they sold apps made by others and took a percentage of all sales.
  • A form of [[Rent]].
  • [[Google]], [[Amazon]], others as well.
  • I guess this is where it’s quite similar to [[platform capitalism]].
    • I guess Varoufakis is saying it’s something qualitatively different, Srnicek is saying it’s a new evolution of capitalism.
    • Either way, seem to be in agreement that it’s big, new, and bad.

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Ecosocialism: A Post-Capitalist Alternative and the Challenges of Transition - Common Alternatives
    • tags: [[Ecosocialism]]. [[Bolivia]]. [[Ecuador]]. [[buen vivir]].
  • Dark energy: mysterious cosmic force appears to be weakening, say scientists | Astronomy | The Guardian
    • tags: [[Astronomy]]. [[Dark energy]].
  • Don’t fork the ecosystem - by Gordon Brander
    • tags: [[software ecosystems]].
  • Is a New Economic System Necessary to Address Climate Change? - Stuart - 2025 - WIREs Climate Change - Wiley Online Library
    • tags: [[Post-capitalism]]. [[Climate change]]. [[system change]].

• [[Life]] wants to be; life doesn’t always want to be much; life goes extinct; life goes on.

  • I noted that down when listening to [[A Short History of Nearly Everything]], which says something like that - need to go back and find the exact quote.

• I’m returning to a bunch of fleeting notes I’ve logged in orgzly over recent months, that haven’t made it to the garden yet.

2025-03-28

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • Google’s emissions climb nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demand
    • tags: [[Google]]. [[AI]]. [[AI resource use]].
  • How much electricity do AI generators consume? | The Verge
    • tags: [[AI]]. [[AI resource use]].
  • Report | AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat — Open Markets Institute
    • tags: [[AI]]
  • Chip Production’s Ecological Footprint: Mapping Climate and Environmental Impact
    • tags: [[Chip production]].
  • What is the Future of Work in the Generative AI Era? A Marxist and Ricardian Analysis
    • tags: [[AI]]. [[The future of work]].

2025-03-27

• Windows 10 end of life is becoming a hot topic both at work and locally.

• [[Bookmarked]]

  • A Political Ecology of the Repair Manual
    • tags: [[Repair]]. [[repair manuals]].
  • Geographies of Digital Wasting
    • tags: [[Waste]]. [[supply chains]].
  • Thinking about 12 aspects of personal information/knowledge management
    • tags: [[personal knowledge management]].

• [[Geology]]. Parts of the crust, parts of the atmosphere

  • Inner core, outer core, mantle, crust?
  • Troposphere, …?

• Fuck me, [[snap]] is still taking up so much drive space.

  • I don’t have a lot to spare!
  • I had to install slack via it the other day. Probably that.
  • Maybe, but kf6-core24 is taking up the most space - 10.7 GB.
    • What’s caused that to be installed?
    • Dunno. It’s something KDE-related. But according to checking snap connections on various installed snaps, nothing is currently using it.
    • Removing with extreme prejudice!
  • Also /var/lib/snapd/ is gigs big.
    • Cleared /var/lib/snapd/cache/.
  • Copying some of the above into [[Clearing up drive space used by snap]] for reference for next time…

• [[How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • [[Feudalism]]. [[Rent]].

2025-03-23

• [[Circular economy]].

2025-03-22

• [[Astronomy]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • I think his history and overview of how big tech firms got to where they are seems good. And like I said, very well written.
  • I take the technofeudalism stuff with a pinch of salt. Interesting, but, debatable, and probably doesn’t matter all that much whether it’s something other than capitalism or not. How do we stop it is the most important thing.
    • [[Blackrock]]. [[Vanguard]]. [[State Street]].

2025-03-21

• My script that pushes to the commonplace-agora repo has stopped pushing.

  • Turns out it’s because the SSH key has expired.
  • Since when did my SSH keys have expiry dates?
    • I guess it’s a gitlab setting.
  • I sshed to my server, created a new key, copied it to gitlab, all from my phone. God bless you [[Termux]] and [[fish]].

• Thinking about [[How to actively thwart enclosure and cooptation of the digital commons]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • Cloud serfs, cloud proles, cloud fiefs, cloudalists.

2025-03-20

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • [[Enclosure of the digital commons]].
  • [[Cloud capital]].
  • [[Modern Times]] and its similarity to working in an Amazon warehouse today.

2025-03-18

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • What led to [[2008 financial crisis]]. Financialisation. Derivatives. Stock options.

2025-03-16

• Read: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • I like the little detour into metallurgy and the [[Bronze Age]] and [[Iron Age]].
  • The history of capitalism and finance in the 20th century a bit more dry, though he does a good job at trying to make it more engaging.
  • [[Bretton Woods]]. [[US trade deficit]]. [[Nixon Shock]].

2025-03-15

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • ‘All the birds returned’: How China led the way in water and soil conservation | Conservation | The Guardian
    • tags: [[China]]. [[Conservation]].
  • China’s Eco‐Civilisation, Climate Leviathan, and Hobbesian Energy Transition - Chen - Antipode - Wiley Online Library
    • tags: [[China]]. [[ecological civilization]]. [[Climate Leviathan]].

• [[Read]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • Really enjoying the intro and opening chapter. The personal style is engaging and liking the down to earth way of discussing [[historical materialism]].

2025-03-14

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism w/ Yanis Varoufakis]]

2025-03-12

• Listened: [[China Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Jason Hickel]]

2025-03-08

• Listened: [[Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction]]

• God, [[snap]] is eating up a lot of space on my drive.

  • I think I’ll try to avoid using it in future.

• [[Bookmarked]]

  • The UN Is Working To Open Source Your Government: For Better Or Worse
  • A reading group for hopeful technologists — Careful Industries
  • Out of the Graveyard, into the Fire: A Review of Slow Down and Marx in the Anthropocene
  • Why has PKK leader called on group to dissolve – and why does it matter?

2025-02-15

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead - marcan.st
  • The free software commons
  • Eight Pro-Social Platforms that Didn’t Work
  • I’ve Stopped Using Box Plots. Should You? | Nightingale
  • From Data to Art: Making “Rat Revolution” | Nightingale
  • The populistisation of green politics and the greening of populism: an examination of environmental populism in Europe

2025-02-01

• Having an absolutely tedious time trying to figure out why the WiFi keeps on dropping out on some of the devices in our house.

2025-01-31

• [[The Word for World is Forest]]

• Lots of interesting people post interesting things on [[LinkedIn]]. If I want to read them, I have to use that platform. Accursed network effects.

2025-01-26

2025-01-24

• Listening to [[The Word for World is Forest]]
  • From [[libro.fm]].
  • Really enjoying it. The reader is great.
  • [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] mercurial as always.
  • Though, when I say enjoying it… it’s a bit grim. This Don Donaldson character is a nasty piece of work, pure American colonialist.

2025-01-13

• Reading [[Not the End of the World]]
  • Hmm, just plainly stated that [[Degrowth]] is wrong.
  • There was a mention of ‘effective’ optimism. Hope that’s not aligned with effective altruism.

2025-01-11

• Reading [[Not the End of the World]]
  • Got it on [[libro.fm]].
    • Intrigued to see how it pans out. Purports to be a data-backed, optimistic approach to tackling [[climate change]].

2025-01-07

• This year, I am celebrating having a 10 year old laptop.
  • My [[Lenovo Thinkpad T450s]].
  • The release date for the T450s was 2015.
  • Though I got it second-hand in 2019.

2025-01-06

• Read and finished [[Four Thousand Weeks]]
  • Thick time
  • Max Weber and Calvinism
  • I liked it in general. I’m on board with the general gist of the anti productivity sentiments.
    • Sometimes it came across a bit… wilfully contrary? Not sure.

2025-01-02

• Planning to update spacemacs to latest.
  • As noted recently, usually something breaks in this process.
  • So I’ll look at ways to do this with minimal disruption.
  • I think trying to do it using multiple config directories seems a good approach.
    • That’ll be useful for if I ever want to run spacemacs and Doom side-by-side, too, for example, or my own vanilla Emacs.
  • One issue to resolve first - you need Emacs 29 for the –init-directory flag. I’m still on 28.1.
    • OK, I’ll try and tackle that first.
• [[Updating to Emacs 29 on Linux Mint]]

2024-12-30

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Charity Digital - Topics - Digital inclusion: A year in review

2024-12-28

• Reading [[Four Thousand Weeks]]
  • The efficiency trap - the more efficient you get, the more things you will fit into to do list, ultimately not gaining any time.
  • Productivity techniques are a way of facilitating avoidance of making hard choices.
    • By claiming you can get more efficient and fit more in, you can avoid having to decide what not to do.
  • Pay yourself first.
  • Keep three things in progress.

2024-12-26

• [[My answers to Sophie’s questions about digital gardens]]

2024-12-19

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Starmer urged to change donation rules amid talk of Musk bankrolling Reform |…
    • [[Elon Musk]]. [[Reform UK]].
    • Oh hell.

2024-12-16

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Supernote’s new E Ink tablet is upgradeable and repairable - The Verge

2024-12-14

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • New UK data centres could have a devastating impact on our environment, and o…
    • [[data centre]]
  • Library of Things Toolkit - Shareable
    • [[Library of things]].

2024-12-11

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • against the dark forest
    • [[Dark forest]]. [[Cozyweb]].
  • Britain leads the world in cracking down on climate activism, study finds | E…
    • [[climate activism]].
  • New report: Exploring a transition to alternative social media platforms for …
    • [[Alternative social media]].

2024-12-09

• [[Listened]]: [[Novara Live: Assad Falls: What Next For Syria?]]

2024-12-08

• [[Read]]: [[Wasteland]]
  • In the epilogue, a bit of reflection on how we actually reduce waste.
  • Looks at [[ethical consumption]], [[zero waste]] and the [[circular economy]] with a critical eye. Them having been coopted by corporations.
  • Ultimately, his conclusion seems to be: [[degrowth]]. Consume less, produce less.
    • That doesn’t really address the problems of industrial waste though.

2024-12-07

• Blurters gonna blurt.

  • [[microblurting]].
  • Going to try popping them in daily files in a subfolder.

• Read: [[Wasteland]].

  • [[Nuclear waste]]. [[Sellafield]].
  • The book is great, well written and researched.
  • But I’m finding the subject matter ultimately quite depressing.
  • Particularly as it’s getting into [[industrial waste]]. It’s huge in scale.
  • [[Nuclear power]] and the corresponding waste is such a prime example of human hubris and folly.
  • This shit is going to be around for tens of thousands of years, yet we don’t seem to have a clue what we’re doing with it.

2024-12-06

• The bookmarks from yesterday look pretty messy.

  • Maybe better to indent them all under one heading.

• [[Read]] (well, skimmed): [[Beyond Waste: Essential Skills for a Greener Tomorrow]]

• Read: [[Wasteland]]

  • [[household waste]] vs [[industrial waste]]

2024-12-05

• [[Bookmark]]: Climate Vanguard

  • "Political Education for Collective Liberation"

• [[Bookmark]]: How I Use Org-Roam to Take Notes for CS - Michael

  • Site inspiration.
  • Very pleasing looking font / text rendering.
  • I see it’s making use of Hugo.

• [[Bookmark]]: The Eco-Socialist Party — Climate Vanguard

  • [[Ecosocialism]].

• Today I was writing a newsletter. In my ongoing push to do everything in [[Emacs]], I set up org-preview-html to get a nice HTML preview pane as I was writing it in [[org-mode]]. I then copied and pasted from that into Drip’s wysiwyg editor. Worked pretty well.

• [[Bookmark]]: Levelling up through circular economy jobs » Green Alliance

  • [[Green jobs]]

• [[Bookmark]]: Beyond Waste: Essential Skills for a Greener Tomorrow report

  • [[Green jobs]]

• [[Bookmark]]: Capitalism kills: The case for ecosocialism | Green Left

• [[Bookmark]]: Reclaiming digital sovereignty

• As one might have noticed, I’m logging bookmarks in the journal stream.

• [[Read]]: some [[Wasteland]].

  • [[mining]]. [[Tailings]].

2024-12-04

• [[Read]] some [[Wasteland]].
  • [[Agbogbloshie]]
  • [[Basel Convention]]

2024-12-03

• [[Wasteland]].
  • [[Toxic colonialism]].
  • Companies incinerating products to save money.
  • Little bit if a history of [[planned obsolescence]].
  • Types of obsolescence.
  • [[Batterygate]].
  • [[Right to repair]].

2024-12-02

• Read Where to draw the line? - by Gordon Brander

  • About [[complex systems]], modularity, compositionality, and boundaries.
  • Not a fan of [[Substack]], but always enjoy [[Gordon Brander]]‘s writing on [[systems]] and adjacent topics.
  • A shame that Gordon canned [[Subconscious]].

• Note that [[Substack]] has it’s short form posts now.

  • A decent move, a combining of elements of the garden and the stream in one service.
  • Essentially another walled garden version of what [[IndieWeb]] does.

• I love using [[spacemacs]] and [[Emacs]].

  • However, one big negative - I’m always scared to update spacemacs to latest, as well as packages from Melpa.
  • Pretty much at least one important thing breaks every time that I do, and as I need this for my work, I can’t often spare that time.
  • So I tend to put it off and lag behind.
  • I imagine there’s things I can do that would mitigate the risk and friction - I should look into those.
    • One simple idea is just to have two version running side-by-side. I might be able to do that actually, I think there’s a flag you can pass Emacs to say where to look for your conf folder.

2024-12-01

• Continuing from yesterday, yeah it seems like the touch input doesn’t work great on the native Android Emacs build, either.
  • So, Termux’s text input view is probably the best option for now.
  • orgzly is brilliant for task management, but you don’t get the whole range of Emacs’ powers.

2024-11-30

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Food waste]] and [[gleaning]].

• Writing prose in [[Emacs]] with [[Termux]] is a little weird.

  • It’s because you have to workaround the fact that terminal emulators don’t generally work well with touch keyboards.
  • Termux solves this cleverly with a text input view you can access by swiping left on the extra keys row.
  • It’s neat, but not optimal for longer-form writing.
  • Options:
    • Use orgzly for longer text input.
    • Try Emacs native Android build again.
    • Stick with it, it’s not that bad.

• Going all in on [[libre software]] and [[open hardware]] is a key part of [[digital ecosocialism]].

  • That said, use of proprietary alternatives may be necessary during transition.

• Provisioning the [[knowledge commons]] with info on what software is good, how to use it, how to switch to it, etc, also very important.

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Soil]], [[composting]], and a surprise mention of [[metabolic rift]].
  • It’s a well-written book - well paced, informative, humorous.
  • [[Biogas]].

• [[Waste]] and what you do with it is an important part of any [[system]].

  • This is part of why I’m finding [[Wasteland]] so interesting.
    • Here the system is society.
  • You can try and reuse it circulate it back into your system. Or you sink it somewhere in the environment.
    • It seems though, nothing is ever truly a sink - it always comes back one way or another…
  • Or you try and reduce how much of it there is in the first place.

2024-11-29

• Watched [[Why Spaced Repetition Doesn’t (Always) Work]]

  • Clickbaity title, but good points about [[spaced repetition]].

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Cholera]]. [[Sewers]].

2024-11-28

• Watched [[Agentic Product Development]]
  • Not sure I understand how the talk relates to the title.
  • But I like the concepts discussed a lot.
    • To me it felt like a description of [[IndieWeb]] without really mentioning IndieWeb.
      • Except in the talk subtitle? And one side mention of IndieAuth.

2024-11-27

• [[Wasteland]]

  • Now discussing [[reuse]]. Waste prevention.

• Learned of [[Weird]] and [[Leaf]] from Zicklag on Agora Discuss.

  • Very interesting!
  • Weird: "prosocial network based on the cornerstone of the internet:Personal websites."
    • This is music to my ears.

• [[Watched]] [[Why Ethical Consumerism Is a Trap]]

  • It’s a trap!
  • [[B Corps]] started off decent enough, but some problematic admissions recently (Nespresso?)