Hey @Ben, @James_Hester, @Freelab I looked around the site to see what I could dig up regarding old-school resilience content. There is a pretty active community over at Green Wizards (with John Michael Greer, the Archdruid) behind it. It would probably be particularly interesting for unMonasterians, I think. Many of the people there seem pretty aligned (but different) with this community, although they focus much less on the digital (rough consensus being that the internet is a fad), and perhaps have a different age structure. I’d like to know if we already have a somewhat active connection to them, and if yes - through whom. Also, I’d like to see if some of you who haven’t posted for quite a while still react to mentions. A one-liner will be more than enough. 
QSP? -p2p
Well played!
I also would love to hear from old friends! I heard recently from @Freelab in a Twitter exchange; @Ben has of recently been active in discussions on licensing and governance. I follow @James_Hester on Twitter, he seems to be settled down in the U.S. of A. – if he has any plans to come back to Europe I am not aware of them.
By the way, @trythis: it is really interesting to watch you move on Edgeryders. It seems you are tying together some interesting people… to see what I mean, try this:
- go here: http://edgeryders.edgesense.spazidigitali.com/
- click on the magnifying glass icon
- type your Edgeryders user name in the text field (case sensitive)
- watch your ego network appear on the background of the broader (but ghosted out) Edgeryders interaction network.
- click on the lock icon to zoom, pan, and enable clicking on nodes to show their user name and metrick networks
Video demo here.
1 Like
Sweet - another day gone 
I had seen a similar video I believe - but I did not figure out one could interact with the interface like that.
When I work at a place for a couple of months (esp. in research) I like to get to the point that I can make two cups of coffee, grab two people from opposing corners of the campus, put them in one room, say a couple of key words and stand back. But that needs some time, and a lot of “low level info hum” to work effectively in real life. Also, it generally does not pay (especially if people cannot think in networks). On a similar note @Nadia mentioned something regarding “homophilic tendencies”. I think that is a very important term. I couldn’t say anything smart then, and just now I didn’t find the thread again. I did remember eventually, having heard of silobreaker a while back. They probably have something of the sort on their mind as well. But of course making heterophile groups is a bit of a conundrum in the longer term. It makes me think of Orlov’s Communities that Abide somehow. If @James_Hester moved to the USA he would be in an even better position to link up. He’d probably have a lot of fun as well as reenactment get a lot of play in those circles I think.
Lastly, I’d be interested if you or @Ben could explain to me a little the Benedictine rule thing. But that is perhaps better done via skype some day in detail. Perhaps I can do a short call with @Ben in the near future to get his take. I’d posit my “Rules of the Hand” (working title).
It goes like this: 5 fingers don’t make a hand. It is good if some are similar, but you need the odd opposable thumb, and you need something that holds them together and allows them to support each other. If you accept that man is so successful, not because he has a bunch of fingers, but (among other things) because of the finger’s teamwork as a HAND - then it would seem prudent to focus more on the hand, and less on the finger. One way to do that would be to split income nominally generated by one person into 5 parts of which the person only keeps 1/5th and distributes the rest to a minimum of 4 other people. They each do the same thing until you get under some threshold. You’d still have some “long range tax” that supports the rest of the “body” but it would be significantly lower than now. Permanent collaboration with one or two people would be okay from a tax perspective, but if you don’t change most of your collaboration partners relatively often you’d be paying a slightly higher tax. All this would hopefully be relatively easy to police, as the people you share with can act as witnesses for your claims. The intended result is that resources would be “smeared out”, and there would be a large incentive to help each other, and connect people effectively. If you can think of ways to “game the system” please feel free to tear it apart.
With pleasure!
I will be happy to discuss the Rule.
In the context of the unMonastery, people have been discussing an equivalent of the Rule. I call it Protocol, and at lest some others seem to be using the name (there is an in-joke here: many Stephenson fans in this space, so you have the Benedictine Rule, the Carthasian Discipline, and the unMonasterian Protocol). Protocol is a set of rules governing interaction between people who live together in an unMonastery. It replaces purpose: unMonasteries have no purpose, they have Protocol.
I have been working on a Protocol stub. I have one; it consists of only three rules, tied together by an architectural principle. Maybe it’s a little too meta, but you have to start somewhere. Anyway, as soon as I have a quiet afternoon I will commit to electrons a post I have in my head.
Forgot to mention…
@Darren and @Kathleen , I think.
JMG
Hello trythis,
Been meaning to reply/comment on one of your earlier posts, will go do that now.
I have read some of JMGs blog posts and always found them to be well worth the time. Not what you would necessarily expect to read when thinking about Druids.
I don’t think I’ve seen the green wizards before looks interesting - although, unless I’m missing something, not hugely active.
Nice of you to pop in
And yes, the green wizards forum does not seem too active, but they usually have a couple of people online most of the time, and there’s some 300 “hello-posts” (none of mine though I admit). I think they are interesting from an ethnographic perspective because about half of them seem to be Luddites that are sharpening their quills already for the day the light goes out (locally). They recently started preparing the transition from blog to mail. Many of them are pretty old, and even though they have this “complicated relationship with technology” there are quite a few active bloggers in the crowd. So in short, (online) active is always relative.
Regarding the biochar and the pictures: I have to say all of them were pretty heart warming! And by your description your oven is a pretty thing as well. I wanted to look a little closer at the ceramic rocket stove as well, I think there was a project on that here. I made some drawings at some point but in my current situation there is no point in going beyond that unfortunately. I do have a little background in pyrolysis and carbon, but not on the low tech side (yet). I’d also be interested in looking a little deeper into pitch based carbon fibers, and if it is at all possible to break that down into at least a semi-cottage industry. Lastly, perhaps you’d have some input for a friend who operates a little mobile mill and is slowly but surely drowning in sawdust (I think) - there must be some way to turn that into char without too much hassle…
Greenwizards made me think of PowerSwitch - Index page and http://dark-mountain.net/ (neither of which I’ve been involved with- although I know people that are) I guess druids made me think UK.
Pitch based carbon fibers look interesting.
Not sure about charing sawdust. Its a good/useful size for finished char. A friend tried it in his stove (which mine is based upon) and said it didnt let the air through so didnt char very well - although I’m sure there must be a way of doing it.
Yeah, I actually found the dark mountain project through the ADR. I hadn’t seen PowerSwitch yet, looks a little the German selbstvers.org (self-support) though the latter focuses more on “you & the soil, with less oil” but they are similar in size and activity it seems.
Re Carbon Fiber: I don’t know how many engineering acronyms you’re happy with but this is a nice place to start on the topic and branch out in the directions you find most interesting. Traditionally the UK was pretty strong on the carbon fiber subject. Germany always was so-so but is slowly picking up speed I’d say (SGL Carbon). SGL seems to be somewhat non-BAU-future oriented as well, that is why I mentioned it to @chrono. Japan was and is leader, now perhaps on a similar level as US. I should have some old patents flying around on the subject. Some of them can be pretty useful due to the detail required for various aspects (e.g. pyrolysis process) - but they are almost invariably a horrible read.
Carbon fibers are pretty useful, especially in combination with carbon black (char) as an extremely versatile local electrical heating element + of course their mechanical properties. If you want very, very high lifetimes (wind turbine components) metals are usually problematic due to corrosion and problems with fatigue. Also composites scale very nicely from bike shed to very large factory. The resin system is another story, but perhaps it is possible to produce something close enough to amber without too much hassle or toxic waste.
This has recently popped into my mailbox, so it reminds me that it’s a good time to let you all know that I’m back in the UK. I’ve been back in London since Autumn of 2015 doing a PhD, so I’m in the final year as we speak. My long-term goal is to be sticking around once all is finished, so you may consider me back on the game board, so to speak.