I went out to dinner with some friends this week, and during the conversation the phrase ‘Installing Freedom’ was spoken. A combination of words that tickled Wassim Alsindi greatly.

I wrote about installing freedom back in July, and wrote an update on using it recently. It’s interesting to me that 3/4 people at the dinner table use Freedom.to to lock down/manage our Internet access.

We are, I’m sure they won’t me saying, all people who would at some point or another have described ourselves as ‘extremely online‘. And (I think) would still identify with the phrase ‘plugged in‘. One of the people at the table has social media blocked for 23 hours a day. They log in, check their messages, reply and thats that. “almost like what I imagine ‘checking the post’ was like”. Another had it blocked 24hs a day for nearly a year.

We use RSS readers and subscribe to newsletters etc. None of us feel like we are missing anything at all by having social media blocked for some or all of the day. We all still know whats going on in the news etc, at least in broad strokes. And are up-to-date on all the things happening in the overlapping niches of the scene we all are in/connected to.

Three out four people at the table using an app to block parts of the internet sees like some sort of signal. Of course I’m friends with a bunch of weirdos, but when the very online weirdos are blocking vast swaths of the Internet .. thats probably some kind of signal worth paying attention to?

I have been on the long slow pivot away from the social web for a long time. Since the first issue of my zine really. But the social madness of the pandemic was the end of it all for me. The Internet is great, but parts of the web are increasingly unusable. I switched over to Ecosia search engine during the pandemic, and more recently I’ve been using Brave search. I also find my self using perplexity.ai and ChatGPT-4 with bing search enabled more and more. Google search on the other hand is basically useless. The other day I was trying to find articles from 2008 and loads of 2023 stuff was showing up in the filter. Mad.

Anyways, back to blocking stuff. I just feel like this is going to become increasingly more and more common. The internet isn’t real life, and social media most definitely isn’t. If you want to get back to real life, and be effective in it, you may need to take extreme steps to exclude the worst of the virtual.

Permanently Moved

Why Don Quixote is So Great

“Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes, is hailed as the first modern novel. A unique blend of humor, tragedy, and critique nestled within a meta-narrative on chivalry and storytelling. Jay reflects on the enduring relevance of Don Quixote’s adventures through the lens of modern fan fiction and intellectual property debates.

Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/11/04/301-2336-why-don-quixote-is-so-great/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Working on my Autonomous worlds talk
• Expert interview on worlds in the workplace
• Dinner with Friends
• Invoicing
• Made a start on my Taxes 🙁
• NANOWRIMO BEGAN AGAIN FFS

Terminal Access

Dougald has started a new series over on his newsletter writing home about what it might mean to ‘make good ruins‘. Well worth a follow, and Dougald writing is always worth your time.

After months of talking about ‘making good ruins’, in the language that I learned from Federico Campagna, I’ve caught sight of a new set of possibilities for how we turn this into something that could be called strategy. So that’s the other side of what I plan to write about in this series, to open up what I think I’m seeing and explore where that might lead.

At the heart of it all, there’s an approach to agency that is different to the one that has governed the projects of modernity. It’s an approach that is centred on affecting the conditions of possibility, the things that are likely to happen in a situation, without seeking to control the situation or make it wholly predictable.

Dipping the Stacks

Dungeons & Dragons’ latest playtest wants to sell you the dream of being a fantasy landlord

If Wizards of the Coast wants to sell me another power fantasy, don’t give me rules for roleplaying a neoliberal suburbanite, landlord or landed gentry.

Input choice is easily taken for granted

The Tech Industry Has a New Plan to Stop Right to Repair Laws

Now that right to repair is the law of the land in California, are companies going to make it the norm across the country? According to a tech industry lobbyist, right to repair experts, and the industry’s response to previous right to repair laws, probably not.

The Man Who Invented Fantasy

Lester del Rey was a strange Minnesota farm kid with a wild imagination and a knack for business. He intuited that what millions wanted from a publishing industry urgently optimizing to keep up with capitalism was to escape the modern age into a world where capitalism and industry had never happened

siderea | How to Compete with Patreon [New Media, Tech, Patreon]

The audience of my writing is not my patrons, and it is not just the people who pay me for it. It’s the whole world.

Reading

I’m still reading reading Mary Harrington’s Feminism Against Progress. I’ve been really busy this week so usually, haven’t finished a book. I’ve read 52 books this year already so I’m ahead of my target.

Sonicwonderland by Hiromi

I am absolutely over the moon about discovering this album from jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara.

I suppose to use apply the stuffy language of genre to Sonicwonderland you’d call it fusion. I think its just full of fun.

The NPR tiny desk performance of the Sonicwonder track above is bursting with energy.

Seeing it performed live in the video above changed my perception of the album. Musicians in a room, rocking out together. Quick tempos, funk grooves and catchy synth lines. Love it.

Remember Kids: