Notices by neil 🍄 (neil@social.coop), page 57

@strypey @jgmac1106 @bhaugen @KevinMarks @cwebber I find indieweb and Hubzilla close in spirit. You have one identity, you can self-host yourself or you can exist on a hosted service. You can move around if you want. Your hosting choice does not determine who you follow or what groups you are most closely associated with. I've not really seen a way in indieweb yet to subscribe to an existing interest group. Hubzilla is v. cool but I like indieweb plurarity of implementations.

@strypey @jgmac1106 @bhaugen @KevinMarks @cwebber Yes I think Hubzilla has done it nicely. With both nomadic identity, and also simply the groups idea (not original to Hubzilla ofc). For me interest groups should be decoupled from infrastructure. I'm interested in both coops and solarpunk, but I shouldn't need an account on social.coop and sunbeam.city to get the goodness of both. I want to just exist as myself, but be part of both groups. Tags don't cut it.

"we decided to build a low-tech, self-hosted, and solar-powered version of Low-tech Magazine"

I respect a website that's prepared to go offline when it gets too cloudy.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech-website/

@vfrmedia I think you're quite right - there has been opposition and lobbying from manufacturers against it.

The EU may throw out 2+ years' work on creating better product standards for longer-lasting products, specifically appliances and electronics.

"A massive opportunity to transform our throw-away economy is about to be lost."

Don't let it happen - if you're in the UK or Germany (countries that are block), please sign and share one of these petitions!

#eu #rightorepair

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/give-us-the-longer-lasting-products-we-want

https://weact.campact.de/petitions/recht-auf-reparatur

The EU may throw out 2+ years' work on creating better product standards for longer-lasting products, specifically appliances and electronics.

"A massive opportunity to transform our throw-away economy is about to be lost."

Don't let it happen - if you're in the UK, please sign and share this petition!

#uk #rightorepair

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/give-us-the-longer-lasting-products-we-want

Talks about the problem with Amazon not only cornering markets, but actually *becoming* the marketplace. $1 of every $2 dollars spent online is through Amazon. It's anti-trust and should be broken up into retail and marketplace. Amazon also starting to move into local government procurement.

https://soundcloud.com/user-26002169/ep-24-the-antidote-to-the

Thoughts on pros of local vs national/global businesses. Not too fond of the argument that more small businesses means more competition means better services. Good argument that local business have a more nuanced take on local issues. Also that nationalising big businesses doesn't automatically make them better for society - it's the scale that is wrong.

Stacy Mitchell, co-director of Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

https://soundcloud.com/user-26002169/ep-24-the-antidote-to-the

@caribou Don't know a huge amount about either but I kind of feel they're in the middle somewhere. Taken at face value, I found what they put in their newsletter surprisingly progressive. Whether it's greenwashing or not, who knows. If they're profit-driven in structure, there's undoubtedly going to be a point where they sell out. Probably somewhere around the time when decentralisation gets far enough to challenge their existence as an organisation..

@caribou Oh I somehow managed to completely missed that, is it this what you're referring to? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-44589083 Are Good Energy involved?

@strypey @bhaugen @KevinMarks @cwebber Hmm, interesting. From what I've seen, I'd say that's not completely the case. Perhaps anti a monolithic standard, yeah, and pro a Unix philosophy for the web kind of approach, but not a desire to educate the general world about that and a need for everyone to understand the building blocks. The main proselytizing I see is about the perils of consolidation of your personal data on centralised silos.

Could just be reading my own values in though :)

@strypey @cwebber @bhaugen @KevinMarks I'd say it's definitely grasped, but not yet solved. e.g. https://indieweb.org/generations .

@strypey @bhaugen @KevinMarks @cwebber

IMO:

a) indieweb actively does *not* want to be by developers, for developers
b) it currently mostly is
c) this is recognised, and there are initiatives for it not to be, https://micro.blog fitting into that category.

An Italian friend told me that there is some bad blood from some towards the co-ops in Emilia Romagna, and that the sentiment in Trentino area is more sanguine.

Don't know about that. But this is a nice little video about Trentino and the pros and cons of the coop movement there:

http://stories.coop/stories/the-cooperative-movement-in-trentino/

CW: cheesy production values

"If the cost of gas from a West Siberian giant goes up, so too does the cost of electricity from a lone wind turbine on an independent West Yorkshire farm. It’s how the energy market works, or doesn’t work, depending on your point of view."

👎

@kdsch "university" as in coherent facilitator of higher education.

I was thinking distributed more as in geographically, not necessarily in knowledge of a subject. Also more from a technical infrastructure perspective - i.e. instances communicating with each other, not a centralised platform such as the existing MOOCs.

I am completely OK with subject-matter experts, mentoring others in a particular domain. Though with fluidity in that a professor in one area would be a student in another.

I'm impressed by latest newsletter from Good Energy (UK energy provider). A lot of talk about decentralisation of energy.

"We're enslaved to a centralised system that has a bias towards big. Big countries. Big governments. Big industries."

"we continue to lead the dramatic shift towards decentralised energy. Our role will evolve, moving from power supply to help customers [...] sell - or give - surplus energy to others."

Good stuff.