šŸ—Ø Status Report II: What's Up With You?

I was recently interviewed for a podcast about online communitiesā€¦the photo is by @matteo_uguzzoni in Morocco.

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Very nice, John! I saw it online.

Iā€™ve enjoyed the Europarama podcasts about Witness a lot. Do you already know when the next episodes will be released? Will they be spaced again 2 weeks apart?

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Well done, @johncoate. Words of wisdom, as always.

Cool, I havenā€™t listened to them yet. @ivan should know?

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Yes, it is every second Friday. Here is the link and here the update on the project.
The next one is out this week.
I like them very much too, @porcarorama has done an amazing job and the guys are in top form.

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Ladies and gentlemen: mushrooms, beer, love, millenia and monastic production - the episode of Europarama on the Covenant is out.

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Hello people around the campfire! Iā€™ve been reading about Edgeryders developments on the forums for some time already, and also participating in some eventsā€¦ now working on a new Distrikt called Libro Werde in Witness (worldbuilding).

The Distrikt is polyglottal via a hybrid human-machine linguistic system. I saw some Edgeryders threads in other languages than Englishā€¦ so the question is, what are all the languages in use at Edgeryders, and are there plans to boost some particular ones? What languages would you like to see a polyglottal new Distrikt to start with (not necessarily the same ones as Edgeryders uses at the moment)?

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Hi! I donā€™t know if itā€™s going to help you in any way, but I I personally love the sound of Greek, Farsi, and ā€¦Hungarian (I knowā€¦ a weird one).

A note on Libro Werde, I loved the idea of a distrikt diaspora, quite interestingā€¦

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This seems very interesting!

As I"ve noticed, the languages in use here are English, German and Polish! Also, some Balkan languages (Serbian, maybe Croatian, Bosnian).

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And all three of them could be considered as one language :smile:.

But then definitely some Italian, French and Dutch

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:grin: Of course, and lets not forget - Montenegrin language :nerd_face:

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Quite an interesting talk. I visit monasteries often and I look at them as great models of self sustainability.

@alberto It totally makes sense that monasteries were ā€œbeacons of innovationā€ in middle ages. Very few people/organisations at that time had resources or time to dedicate to such pursuits.

Their model seems to be very much in line with mission economy discussion we had some time ago.

You reminded me of an interview I heard few years back. The guest was a scientist, an engineer who battled with depression and substance abuse/suicidal thoughts for years. He finally decided to become a monk and he spoke about the whole experience.
One interesting thing he said was contradictory to what great majority of people think when they hear about monasteries or religion in general. He said that it actually gives you the absolute freedom.

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I resonate with that. Freedom for me is the freedom to do good, beautiful, meaningful work, devoid of hustling or form-filling. Monks have that, though my work is not their work.

I assure you I am quite a cheerful man! :slight_smile:

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We hear the phrase ā€˜online communityā€™ all the time now, applied in just about any situation one can think up. But here is why The WELL is still the real thing:

Two nights ago an apartment building in Portland Oregon, USA caught fire and burned completely in a very short time. Two people died in the fire and others were injured. One who did not die, and who barely got out of there with his life and phone and nothing else, is, and has been for many years, the chief tech support person for The WELL. When the word got around that he had lost everything including his cat, a quick fundraising effort came together and in 24 hours the community raised and sent to him $20,000. Thatā€™s community.

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I have never heard anyone saying they like Hungarian - very interesting! Of course, my experience is colored by the Romanian-Hungarian relationship, which is never great.

@iouxo +1 to what Marijana is saying below, those are the ones used in Edgeryders.
Like Alessandro, I would love to see more Greek too!

On what basis do you choose the languages of the new Distrikt?

So inspiring, thanks for sharing. What a sign of solidarity, and also friendshipā€¦

This was also interesting to me. I had no clue whatsoever about it, until I found myself travelling through the Carpathians and trying to get a couchsurfing sorted out: all the hosts had Hungarian names, I had no idea about the whole Transylvania-situation, but I was lucky (?) to be able to experience it first hand.

Of course I didnā€™t get very deep into that, especially on the most conflictual aspects of it, which were still something you could feel in conversations, but I didnā€™t overly poke.

I think unconsciously I chose to focus on how the culture sort of switched by passing into an area with very different architecture, food, and street names, guessing -knowing- it was not just as simple as thatā€¦ :slight_smile:

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:rofl: that was in no way a comparison

I am yet to meet an Italian who is notā€¦I am sure they exist but I am maybe lucky :slight_smile:

Makes total sense, seems like they all reached the point of FU money :wink:

There is probably a different aspect to it as well: taking responsibility for their thoughts and actions and acceptance of the laws governing their existence maybe?
One could ask: ā€œAm I a free person if there is a set of universal laws defining exactly the consequences of my every thought and action?ā€
Could the feeling of freedom also come from the acceptance of even such belief? As in ā€œI understand and accept fully the consequences of my actions. Each of my actions could lead to specific reaction from the universe (or god in the monkā€™s example) which I might not like. So I will abstain from taking actions which might lead to certain unwanted ā€œreactionsā€, which limits my possibilities. I still do choose my actions so libre arbitre fully appliesā€.

Last year a monk in Croatia told me ā€œwe are all just humans and we are all sinners, we can just keep working on ourselves and pray for strengthā€ when I raised the similar question. I saw in his eyes a lot of humility and acceptance of that situation. His thought can be applied everywhere really, no matter what we believe in. We all have various values or principles constructed over time (often going against our nature) and life often has ways of putting them to test.