Today’s the kick off of the second round of our ‘urban gardening’ trial around pea plants and their symbiotic bacteria at Hackuarium! We will find out, hopefully, whether the inoculation with the bacteria leads to better harvests in someone’s ordinary kitchen garden, as participants take home two sets of plants, inoculated or ‘mock’ inoculated, and follow their growth and harvest!
I am also very happy about the last micronuclei workshop, held Saturday 18may, for which a ‘sister’ experiment was very exciting.
More info about both these can be found in the Hackuarium wiki!
For something to recommend, of course it has to be the site for my public association, AGiR! Action for Genomic integrity through Research! Still hoping to get more international involvement, and responses to our old ‘art call’! www.genomicintegrity.org
Not to beat my own drum, but this post on how the nice people of the indieweb are dealing with the Norwegian alt-right using their tech ties some threads together.
And a must-read twitter thread to read this week is this one, on how big tech companies have been able to circumvent GDPR, “legally” collect our data, and how they’ve basically been listening to big tech to make the rules: https://twitter.com/markscott82/status/1131151004299407361
Just a link to an interesting / relevant article re. the Internet discussions:
It’s about how people now retreat to private spaces on the Internet, and the danger this creates because it leaves the public arena to trolls, bots and other miscreants.
Also FB wants to cater to this trend which serves their business interests better since they can still spy on everyone while avoiding being so much of a censor.
I found the dark forest theory in the Cixin Liu books to be incredibly sad. It is also based on the assumption that development means an ever-increasing consumption and growth and the impossibility of the merging of cultures. If we turn away from the large public spaces of the internet into private and subculture spaces, even so this might be tempting especially for those who have done a lot of research and discussions or experienced attacks, we build and cement our own filter bubbles and like the different civilizations adhering to the dark forest theory in the three-body problem series do not allow for cultures to influence each other other than attacks and paranoia. The dark forest theory is an inherently pessimistic one and it leads to a very sad model of the universe in which an ultimately very sad story unfolds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it is important to try to intentionally develop optimistic models and concepts to inform our planning for the internet of the future. This does not mean to shut the eyes for the problems apparent but do not assume the worst and not, therefore, go into defensive shutout modes. Optimism does not mean to ignore the problems, but not to base the worldview and predictions on those problems and their possibly worst implications but also on examples of good solutions and the ongoing search and believe in the possibility of solutions.
On the topic of my favourite conversations and posts might be the conversation @JuliaV posted between her and Nadia under the Welcome to Retirement post Welcome to Retirement! I really liked the back and forth and the final decision to give the call a try. Thank you JuliaV for joining.
On the topic of worth checking out for some comunity members, esspecailly those in the UK might be this Art and Blockchain DAOWO Summit UK event combining discussions around blockchain,art and knowledge sharing.
It’s the story of a Polish woman working in the IT sector who has faced harrassment at work (by men colleagues and superiors). In the end she decided to leave but not without asking herself what was her fault in all of this… Like many victims of abuse, she is reflecting on shame and self-guilt, more than thinking this is a punishable act and or taking legal action.
It would be great if you all went in and welcomed her warmly, send encouragements and so on.
in the midst of Neal Stephenson’s latest, and hoping the early part won’t become too much part of reality - points with relevance to parts of the above discussions - and that the later part gets better… hola from Colombia!
What’s happening in my world this week, well I just found this (the 2. anything I recommend others to check out): Bad News - Play the fake news game!
And it looks amazeballs. " In Bad News, you take on the role of fake news-monger. Drop all pretense of ethics and choose a path that builds your persona as an unscrupulous media magnate. But keep an eye on your ‘followers’ and ‘credibility’ meters. Your task is to get as many followers as you can while slowly building up fake credibility as a news site. But watch out: you lose if you tell obvious lies or disappoint your supporters!"
My fav discussion on the platform this week is def Deep green internet of biases? and other terrible ways to open a conversation 0 even though I haven’t contributed to it (just lurked). But it links a lot of different fields in one, and I find the necessary overlap intruiging. I’m also excited to see what comes out of this discussion.
Yes that has been my favorite this week too. Reading, seeing, experiencing all that we collectively are doing to this planet puts sustainability at the top priority, along with privacy and individual rights. I say that because what I have been reading about with the China surveillance state shows that a totalitarian society can be sustainable and still be Orwellian.
