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<strong>glyph:</strong> OK, nice.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> But yeah, we're kind of gorilla occupying this big blue button instance at the moment. Because I haven't talked to the people at <a href="http://domainepublic.net">domainepublic.net</a>. We just noticed that they had an open instance that you could sign up for. So we wanted to email them and confirm that they were OK with us using their instance for our class, which seemed like good etiquette. Rather than just arriving. Like if someone just noticed you had a yard where some stuff was happening, and all of a sudden started teaching a 30 person class on it...<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> But yeah, we're kind of gorilla occupying this big blue button instance at the moment. Because I haven't talked to the people at <a href="http://domainepublic.net">domainepublic.net</a>. Alice just noticed that they had an open instance that you could sign up for. So we wanted to email them and confirm that they were OK with us using their instance for our class, which seemed like good etiquette. Rather than just arriving. Like if someone just noticed you had a yard where some stuff was happening, and all of a sudden started teaching a 30 person class on it...<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, might be a breach of etiquette.<br/>
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@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Like "Okay, we realize that this is an inherently difficult thing. You have node
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, I have. Some of the zines I've taken a look at.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those ones. And I was learning a lot about networking and the internet from reading that stuff, but sometimes it would kind of end up veering into like big-tech scale level networking. And I was realizing there's a little bit of an interesting issue that like trying to figure out how much of our current tech stack works the way it does because it's something inherent about networking or does it work this way because this is how you need it to work when you have this centralized model where you have to serve millions of users from particular nodes. And then the degree to which I was wondering how much these networking primitives and tools were going to have to be reinvented or have new people working on them for the context of self-hosted software and peer-to-peer software. And that kind of sounds like that's a little bit what the work you're doing is with the libp2p stuff and even I guess p2panda could also be understood that way too kind of.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those ones. And I was learning a lot about networking and the internet from reading that stuff, but sometimes it would kind of end up veering into like big-tech scale level networking. And I was realizing there's a little bit of an interesting issue trying to figure out how much of our current tech stack works the way it does because it's something inherent about networking or does it work this way because this is how you need it to work when you have this centralized model where you have to serve millions of users from particular nodes. And then the degree to which I was wondering how much these networking primitives and tools were going to have to be reinvented or have new people working on them for the context of self-hosted software and peer-to-peer software. And that kind of sounds like that's a little bit what the work you're doing is with the libp2p stuff and even I guess p2panda could also be understood that way too kind of.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah just trying to make it a bit easier. I mean I think because of the way the network is we have to add in all these things. If the internet were like one big local area network then we could just pull a whole lot of this stuff out, like we just wouldn't need it. So one of the big issues that I mentioned earlier is NAT traversal; when you're behind a home router or firewall and you're not able to make these direct peer-to-peer connections through the internet. So then we have to come up with all these fancy techniques for getting around that, and that often involves a sort of third peer with a clear accessible IP address that can either act as a tunnel or a relay or it can help with some synchronization to create a direct connection.<br/>
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@ -139,29 +139,30 @@ Like "Okay, we realize that this is an inherently difficult thing. You have node
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, totally. It's like the standardization of time. I guess maybe it's a Cartesian thing of wanting to measure and divide everything neatly and then an hour is sort of standardized. An hour is an hour. So then nine to five, Monday to Fridays; it's kind of easy to impose. And yeah, so that's what I think like: gardening, long bike rides, anything where you're sort of outside of that form of time and you can observe, like I say, non-human processes and beings and just see what they're doing. And then you can learn from that. I know in Taoist philosophy, timing is a big... is quite an important point. Sometimes timing is of primary importance and action is a secondary thing. Then it's a case of cultivating some kind of intuition for timing and when is the appropriate time. Because then the activation energy is that much lower. I kind of think of it like, I don't know, if you're a surfer trying to catch a wave. If the swell is 100 meters away and you start frantically paddling, you're going to run out of energy by the time it actually reaches you. And so by initiating your paddle at just the right time you can catch the wave with the smallest amount of energy, and then from a third party perspective it looks effortless. And that can be applied throughout life.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> This is making me think about... My initial reaction to how to cultivate timing is just to sensitize the perception and to be in a place where we can notice things. Yeah, like your tips of gardening or getting out, but then for my own journey I was thinking about sobriety and other ways to just try to become more aware of what's happening. So that when you do have to do some swimming, hopefully you can do it at the right moment.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> This is making me think about how my initial reaction to how to cultivate timing is just to sensitize the perception and to be in a place where we can notice things. Like your tips of gardening or getting out, but then for my own journey I was thinking about sobriety and other ways to just try to become more aware of what's happening. So that when you do have to do some swimming, hopefully you can do it at the right moment.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yup, totally. And I guess part of that is guilt as well. Because this was something that I was thinking about a lot in years gone by. Like after my travels in South America and then when I was basically working for myself and I didn't have any external time constraints, then it's like: "Gee, how do I organize my time?" And there was this part of my mind that was highly critical and I would feel guilty about like: "Ah, it's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday and I'm not working, like I should be working, you know, I should be doing XYZ". And then again, observing the creatures around me, I was like: "Well, when the cheetah is taking a nap under the tree, I don't think it's berating itself for not hunting". You know, it's not like: "Gee, I'm a terrible cheetah. I'm just laying around. I should be trying to catch some dinner, but I'm not. I'm the worst". I don't think that happens, somehow.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> That also makes me think of a chipmunk I was watching the other day that was just like going up and down some tree. This was kind of a reverse issue, but I was just like: "What are you doing? (laughing) Like you just keep, like what are you looking for? You're so active". I assume he or she had some good reason for going up and down this tree, so frequently. Maybe not.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> That also makes me think of a chipmunk I was watching the other day that was just like going up and down some tree. This was kind of a reverse issue, but I was just like, what are you doing? (laughing) Like you just keep, like what are you looking for? You're so active. I assume he or she had some good reason for going up and down this tree, so frequently. Maybe not.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Maybe it just felt good.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Yeah, yeah, he just needed to move around a bit. Well, that's a cool topic. I'm looking back at the notes now to see. It's good that we took a winding journey through it so that we could get to some good stuff even if we don't get to everything. Timing is interesting with planning software projects too. I was thinking about this with our work on <a href="https://opencollective.com/peachcloud">PeachCloud</a>, but like figuring out when is the right time to build on top of something, or the timing of all the different Scuttlebutt components working together or not working together.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Absolutely. Yeah, that's an interesting lens to look at it with and again this kind of activation energy thing of like, okay, well if all the components are available then you can build something quite quickly and without having to put too much energy in. But if you're trying to build something when those other pieces are not ready then yeah, you can end up expending a lot of that extra energy. It's difficuly, I think especially if you are creative in some capacity, or have something visionary in you, then sometimes you might enjoy that thrill of being on the edge, being like a front runner or something. And you're trying to sort of explore this possibility space that maybe is relatively... it's just not mapped out. You've got to go and check it out for yourself. And sometimes you can bring something back for the group from your adventures and say, "Okay, we learned something, we have something to share." Sometimes you're able to build something that really works and other times it might be relatively fruitful in terms of fulfilling your mission, but you gain other things in the process.<br/>
<strong>glyph:</strong> Absolutely. Yeah, that's an interesting lens to look at it with and again this kind of activation energy thing of like, okay, well if all the components are available then you can build something quite quickly and without having to put too much energy in. But if you're trying to build something when those other pieces are not ready then yeah, you can end up expending a lot of that extra energy. It's difficult, I think especially if you are creative in some capacity, or have something visionary in you, then sometimes you might enjoy that thrill of being on the edge, being like a front runner or something. And you're trying to sort of explore this possibility space that maybe is relatively... it's just not mapped out. You've got to go and check it out for yourself. And sometimes you can bring something back for the group from your adventures and say, "Okay, we learned something, we have something to share." Sometimes you're able to build something that really works and other times it might be relatively fruitful in terms of fulfilling your mission, but you gain other things in the process.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Totally. And like you said about this, even getting into other protocols, I feel like when you're exploring that unknown territory and you're meeting the others who are also exploring that unknown territory there's like something that's happening that goes beyond any fruits of one particular project or mission<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> That's it, totally. Yeah, so if you're able to take that holistic perspective, which I mean for me it's not not always easy, but then there really are no failures in sense. If you are prioritizing community and sharing and fun and just the joy of discovery and creation, then if the product you were trying to build fails, it's just one more learning experience. I think if I were approaching software as a kind of venture capital funded startup and we were like: "We just need to build this product and grow this thing as as quick as possible so we can be acquired and then we'll put our feet up". If that failed, it would be crushing, right? Because it would be like: "Oh, geez, we didn't get our goal and we didn't have much fun. We didn't meet these other basic nice things about existing on this planet.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> Yeah, if you throw all those nice things out at the start and you're only waiting for your payout that's a pretty rough starting point.<br/>
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<a id="part3">III: Mycofiltration, Urban & Rural Exchange</a><br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Do you still have a little energy? I was thinking it would be cool to talk about myco-filtration because I'd love to hear about that and I also thought maybe, yeah, it was a cool prompt to mention other solidarity infrastructure projects too &mdash; those were two ones I was thinking about.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> Do you still have a little energy? I was thinking it would be cool to talk about mycofiltration because I'd love to hear about that and I also thought maybe, yeah, it was a cool prompt to mention other solidarity infrastructure projects too &mdash; those were two ones I was thinking about.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, that's good. I've got energy. It's the morning for me so I'm feeling good.<br/>
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@ -189,7 +190,7 @@ Like "Okay, we realize that this is an inherently difficult thing. You have node
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, exactly. And I think that's kind of a place where... a lot of the people who've moved here have moved from Cape Town and some of like the outlying areas of Cape Town. So they've sort of undergone this journey from the center of a busy city or suburban life to more of the quieter suburbs and then they make the big jump out here which is more of a semi-rural place. There's some cool stuff like communal buying groups, for example. Okay, someone says: "I'm going to do a big food order. Is anyone else interested?" And I think those kind of slightly low-stakes communal efforts are a nice stepping stone to build trust and practice working together. And that could lead to &mdash; I hope it would lead to bigger communal projects where there is more cultivation and emphasis on the commons. Trying to break out of this kind of privatized model of being.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> So this is my random thought from my travels and spending time in rural areas: I guess, before I was imagining rural and urban ways of life as more separate. And for some reason I've been having this perception recently that they're not really separate. They're like so entangled because mostly the rural areas are providing food to the cities. But also urban industry is often providing phones and other forms of knowledge that go back to rural areas and they feel more connected to me than they did in the past. So it's cool hearing about this pathway of a group of people from the city going to the suburbs and then to somewhere rural. I guess also this sharing comes from meeting some folks in more conservative rural areas where among young people there's some really genuine desire go to the city and learn about the world or even like people where they aren't allowed to have independence or like certainly not queer people and there could be some kind of cycle and return of a movement of people wanting to go to the cities to meet other people and learn new things but also maybe not wanting to stay there.<br/>
<strong>max:</strong> So this is my random thought from my travels and spending time in rural areas: I guess, before I was imagining rural and urban ways of life as more separate. And for some reason I've been having this perception recently that they're not really separate. They're like so entangled because mostly the rural areas are providing food to the cities. But also urban industry is often providing phones and other forms of knowledge that go back to rural areas and they feel more connected to me than they did in the past. So it's cool hearing about this pathway of a group of people from the city going to the suburbs and then to somewhere rural. I guess also this sharing comes from meeting some folks in more conservative rural areas where among young people there's some really genuine desire to go to the city and learn about the world or even like people where they aren't allowed to have independence or like certainly not queer people and there could be some kind of cycle and return of a movement of people wanting to go to the cities to meet other people and learn new things but also maybe not wanting to stay there.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, yeah, I think people, I think humans have always moved and certainly there are these flows of goods and people that link these areas. I think in the South African context there's a massive draw. Like, the city holds a powerful draw and it's often around employment opportunities, education opportunities, which is, I think, quite common in a lot of parts of the world. But the city tends to have this kind of magnetism and if you are coming from a background of limited means, especially limited financial resources, you can get stuck in the city. And yeah, I've met some people and heard some heartbreaking stories of people just really wanting to go back to their home village and be with their mom and their friends and family, but they're kind of stuck in this.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Yeah, I was thinking about this a little bit. Strangely, I don't have a really long list. I think there is <a href="https://coopcloud.tech/">Co-op cloud</a>, involving decentral1se and KawaiiPunk and aadil. That's cool to see a cooperative, you know, doing good work and trying to build things on a different model &mdash; still run a business but with a different model where it's non-hierarchical and there's solidarity amongst the workers.<br/>
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Inspiring projects: I mean, it's a lot of the community-networking projects and community mesh-networking projects. So, some of the work that Luandro's involved in in Brazil. Some of the wider efforts that <a href="https://www.digital-democracy.org/">Digital Democracy</a> are involved in; like the <a href="https://www.earthdefenderstoolkit.com/">Earth Defenders Toolkit</a>, the <a href="https://www.digital-democracy.org/mapeo">Mapeo</a> project.
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I know @cblgh, who you just interviewed the other day, came up with a nice idea for a mutual aid experiment amongst members of <a href="https://merveilles.town">Merveilles</a>, the Merveilles Mastodon instance or Fediverse instance. So that hasn't quite gotten off the ground yet but I'm interested to see how that works out.<br/>
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The idea there was like: Okay, we already have an Open Collective for the instance, what if we received contributions to that Open Collective? And during the court, we run the experiment for three months and any member of Merveilles can say, "I would like to participate as a recipient." And then at the end of the month, the total amount of donations would be divided equally between all those who said they'd like to participate as recipients and they receive that money. So it was just really straightforward. And I think it came out of the observation that many of the members of Merveilles, because they're creative people &mdash; maybe they have a music project or an art project, and they might have a Patreon account or a Kofi account or something like that where they are trying to receive support for their work. And @cblgh was like: Well, maybe we could utilize our kind of community reach to receive contributions for the collective. So I'm quite interested in simple experiments like that, just to almost create a safe-space to practice shared earning and different models of income. I know some years ago, I don't know if it's still active and I guess I won't name them, but there were some friends of mine that I met through Scuttlebutt who had a kind of shared income system where I think there were maybe four or five of them where every month they would put their income into a pile, into a joint account, and then draw a salary off that. So especially for freelancers, if you have a variable income, you're going to have some good months and some bad months. And this was an attempt to try to flatten that out and add a bit more security and knowledge of what will be coming in.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Are you personally interested in participating in some of these shared schemes? You're kind of also in this open source freelancer route right now it seems like, just developing a network and finding different projects. Or do you have any dreams of changing how you work?<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> I'm really happy. I'd love to keep doing this. I've been very, very fortunate to be funded to work on open source peer-to-peer stuff for the last few years. So I guess part of my personal strategy and approach is to continue building relationships and friendships amongst those who are working in this kind of direction. And I'm really happy that this year I'm contributing to p2panda. I'm going to be be contributing to <html="https://cabal.chat/">Cabal</a> and then I'm doing some Scuttlebutt stuff. So that feels really good in terms of just having a little bit more resilience. But I would like to take that next step and do some kind of collective finance management. I think in some sense, the relationships that I've been developing over these years and the work that I've been doing is building towards that because I think it is something that requires a lot of trust. But certainly it's also something that human people have been doing for a long, long time. There's all kinds of places around the world where there are collective savings pools and different kinds of community finance structures. So I think that would help because that is the tricky thing with freelancing, is having that security. Or I've also heard it spoken about in terms of &mdash; especially if you're getting a lot of your income from grants &mdash; maybe halfway through a grant project and you're already having to think about grant applications for the future.<br/>
<strong>glyph:</strong> I'm really happy. I'd love to keep doing this. I've been very, very fortunate to be funded to work on open source peer-to-peer stuff for the last few years. So I guess part of my personal strategy and approach is to continue building relationships and friendships amongst those who are working in this kind of direction. And I'm really happy that this year I'm contributing to p2panda. I'm going to be contributing to <html="https://cabal.chat/">Cabal</a> and then I'm doing some Scuttlebutt stuff. So that feels really good in terms of just having a little bit more resilience. But I would like to take that next step and do some kind of collective finance management. I think in some sense, the relationships that I've been developing over these years and the work that I've been doing is building towards that because I think it is something that requires a lot of trust. But certainly it's also something that human people have been doing for a long, long time. There's all kinds of places around the world where there are collective savings pools and different kinds of community finance structures. So I think that would help because that is the tricky thing with freelancing, is having that security. Or I've also heard it spoken about in terms of &mdash; especially if you're getting a lot of your income from grants &mdash; maybe halfway through a grant project and you're already having to think about grant applications for the future.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> This was a topic on Alex's mind as well.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Thanks a lot for taking the time, I will end the recording, but that seems like a good note to end on.<br/>
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<strong>glyph:</strong> Cool, cool. Thank you very much.<br/>
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<strong>max:</strong> Thanks.<br/>
Cool, cool. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks.
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