David Sterry @weex@c4.social

Been writing a lot more recently and it's just good. One trick to try is stream-of-consciousness, not stopping or going back to edit. I found myself still using backspace and stopping so made this single pager to help turn it into an exercise.

Write Without Stopping:
https://codeberg.org/weex/write-without-stopping

If you maintain open source software and don't use C4, I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on this talk by the late Pieter Hintjens. The talk doesn't depend on video much so it works as a podcast. https://peertube.co.uk/w/2cw9QGY51ey6SiF3zPPtvW

A new version of Acropolis was just released for YunoHost. Version 2022.01.29~ynh1 adds email confirmation for new accounts and creates the initial admin account during installation making it the smoothest installation method of any diaspora* fork.

#Acropolis is Magic Stone's fork of #diaspora, one of the first federated apps ever made which is built around "aspects" or circles of people that you want to share with. Sign up at https://dogieda.org to try it.

⚠️ Please report issues at https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/acropolis

At the office, there's a Wellness Room and it's wonderful. I can go inside, turn off the light and relax. It's not 100% quiet though...

I can hear music outside and doors and voices of people walking by which was... annoying at first. I had hoped the room would be soundproof so that I could experience Peace and Quiet (tm).

What I realized though is that the noise was ok once I accepted it. Then the wellness room became even better.

I realized that dealing with the imperfection of this room could extend to the rest of the world.

I can be on a park bench and make peace with everything going on around. Dogs barking or heat or loud cars driving by.

The wellness room is special not because it has no windows and a door that locks but because it gave me the opportunity to experience a version of solitude that I could build on.

At this point, I can make almost any space a Wellness Space. My car is a Wellness Car and the park a Wellness Park.

Hmmm, I wonder if this works at the DMV.

Don't doubt your own originality. Your heroes had influences too!

https://davidsterry.com/blog/2022/09/originality-own-your-influences/

Announcing a new Fediverse Enhancement Proposal for your review:

"FEP-e232 is a proposal for representing text-based links to ActivityPub objects using tags"

Learn more and discuss at
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/issues/14 and https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-e232-object-links/2536.

Reached out to a bunch of people today which got me thinking about how best to keep in touch.

https://davidsterry.com/blog/2022/07/use-better-social-media-platforms/

It's not going to be easy but it's time, isn't it?

https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

My how I've overlooked poetry as entertaining and essential. Discovered Ted Hughes and listened to him read many poems during yesterday's run. I'd expected them to work like prose which is mostly one-and-done but I see poems now more like music. Easier to appreciate after 5-10 impressions. Had fun copy-pasting the ones he read into a doc to make this process easier over time.

Another attempt to do the fediverse unfortunately decorated with buzzwords. I'm all for initiative, but no mention of ActivityPub or Mastodon? Why go it alone when there's this community that seems to have a common interest in decentralized social networking?

"What's on your mind?" is the Mastodon prompt. To me, that feels a bit support-sessiony.

Gosh, I'm having a hard time getting out of my own way. Lots of ideas but a strong filter that doesn't let much see the light of day.

What would be a better prompt? Maybe, "What do your followers need to know?"

Created an intro page and a few issues for the social network moderation backend. https://github.com/weex/wot-server/wiki

The idea is to leverage emergent social structure to shun bad actors without needing to explicitly ban anyone or create collateral shunning of folks who seem to have joined the wrong server.

My favorite book about writing is Writing Down The Bones. https://nataliegoldberg.com/books/writing-down-the-bones/

It motivated me to write a lot more and with less purpose. Very freeing.

If you're interested in learning how writers write, check out The Paris Review Interviews series. For decades they've been talking with some of the best: https://store.theparisreview.org/products/the-paris-review-interviews-i

For someone like me who's can get a bit obsessed with process, these interviews read themselves.

Social media companies now are deciding if board members have enough skin in the game.

What's more interesting is who all governs how these systems operate.

For Twitter, that's the corporation and increasingly governments.

On the fediverse, it's the users and admins.

Thank you @PaulaToThePeople for including me in your #followrecommendations. I just reached 100 followers which doesn't sound like a lot but feels like 10-50k bird site equivalent. One of my motivations for coming to the fedi was to have an impact and it's been heartwarming to see the response from so many real people from the work I care about.