Notices by Karl Schultheisz (kdsch@social.coop)

Mastodon isn't a website. It's software you use to connect to the fediverse.

Thinking of it as a website is kind of like thinking of your email client as an email address. "Are you on Gmail?" It doesn't matter; I can send email.

Fediverse. This is the important idea. I follow people who aren't Mastodon users, and I don't care.

@mayel Good call with Elixir. I use Go in my dayjob and appreciate both its concurrency and lack of robustness. Having a process not crash the whole system, and choosing Elixir over more popular languages, makes it clear that you're prioritizing robustness. That's a refreshing change of pace.

I think I'm ready to begin reading Murray Bookchin. Any suggestions?

We tend to view metaphor as just a way of speaking that is not literal. And there is some language that is nonmetaphorical. But most complex thoughts involve metaphors, to the degree that speaking literally would be less useful.

Most of us use metaphors unwittingly, per the conventions of society. But innovative metaphors have a role: they allow us to change our thinking for our benefit.

New metaphors allow us to experience things differently. They actually change our brains.

I'm reading George Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By.

Most of us think of argument as war; as something to be won or lost. We attack our opponent's positions. We shoot down their points.

What if we came upon a culture that viewed argument not as war, but something else; for instance, dance? They would experience argument differently than us.

Yet we would not recognize them as arguing. They'd be doing something else, for us.

Metaphor is cognitive and experiential, not just linguistic.

Good morning, friends.

I'm enjoying social.coop very much.

I've been wanting to get involved with a cooperative, and assumed I'd need to choose one in my area (the vast majority of which are in banking or agriculture, far outside of my expertise). But there seem to be opportunities for many of us right here.

I look forward to a future where our values can be embodied more fully in our work.

@spudboy I asked myself a similar question some time ago.

I learned that "profit" isn't a top concern in a cooperative. "Surplus" is used to refer to money left over after expenses. It is typical to focus on some social goals rather than an internal aspect like profit. Not to say that coops ignore internal stuff, but that it's not the top priority.

It's difficult to shift thinking from "profitable company" to "sustainable cooperative", but this is the core of cooperative thinking IMO.