Solidarity for Freelancers in 2026
1. Collaboration over Competition
2. Networking over Not Working
3. Solidarity over Solitude
blog.weareopen.coop/solidarity-f...
Written by social.coop/@epilepticra...
Solidarity for Freelancers in 2026
1. Collaboration over Competition
2. Networking over Not Working
3. Solidarity over Solitude
blog.weareopen.coop/solidarity-f...
Written by social.coop/@epilepticra...
A line chart plots global capacity of solar power measured in gigawatts. From 2010 capacity starts to grow exponentially, way beyond a series of predictions drawn as lines in yellow. Actual installations have been more than 3x higher than their five year forecasts.
The worldβs solar capacity reached 1,419 gigawatts in 2023, way beyond any predictions. 1 gigawatt = power for a medium sized city.
From vis.social/@infobeautiful (Mastodon)
A computer monitor displaying the presentation slide titled: "what hype does". The centre of the slide is a statue of the Buddha, a hover car is photoshopped to be in the palm of his hand. Around him is the cycle of hype: 1. Uncertainty 2. Storytelling & Simplification 3. Legitimacy, Trust 4. Excitement & Fomo 5. Sense of Belonging 6. Attention, Investment 7. Acceleration, Commitment 8. Normalises Power 9. Disillusionment, Renewal 10. Uncertainty (we have returned to step 1) Each point on the cycle is connected by arrows, and each arrow has some more text which denotes some phenomena associated with each transition. 1. Uncertainty becomes simplification with exaggeration 2. Simplification becomes trust with the illusion of understanding 3. Trust becomes fomo with the myth of progress, and faith 4. Fomo becomes a sense of belonging with inclusion/exclusion and the silencing of alternatives 5. Sense of belonging becomes investment with media attention and urgency to act 6. Investment becomes commitment with the misallocation of resources and mainstream investment 7. Commitment normalises power with "unavoidable futures and desire" 8. Disillusionment and renewal is characteristed by an undermining of trust in science 9. And we return to the beginning of the cycle with "purge, loss and concentration"
"Hype studies", a conference in Barcelona which took place last year, organised by a group of researchers exploring hype as a force that acts in the world.
This slide depicts the cycle of hype.
hypestudies.org/conference
Yeah that would be nice! Send me a DM for when you're available :)
09.02.2026 08:54 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0The Godot 4.6 IDE is gorgeous :-)
08.02.2026 15:31 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
A screenshot from the music-map site. Text is allayed on the page canvas, Johnny Cash (the search term) is in the centre. Queens of the Stone Age appears close to Johnny Cash, representing a high score. Many other artists are nearby, including the Foo Fighters, Kyuss and Fu manchu. Elvis Presely is on the map, towards the periphery where some artists like Neil Young and Ray Charles are also featured.
The result is that Johnny Cash might send you to listen to Queens Of The Stone Age before Elvis Presley.
The image is from https://
music-map.com/, built on Gnoosic. It's a map of taste, I suppose.
Gnoosic (www.
gnoosic.com/) is a site which generates music recommendations. It's not an LLM, it's trained by people using it.
You enter three bands and it has a go, then you give it a thumb up, neutral or thumb down (which helps train it).
LLM chatbots pose a threat to the availability and quality of public "informations commons". They may represent a move to enclosure.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
The graph plots a rapid rise of Stack Overflow questions leading up to the 2010s, then a slight decline until just after 2020.
A concerning graph. Since 2020 the number of Stack Overflow questions asked has been declining rapidly, and in 2026 the count is near levels from the early 2000s.
data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflo...
I'm good thanks!
Taking the opportunity to share what I'm up to, I suppose I would highlight Games Commons (@gamescommons.bsky.social), gamescommons.com
How are things with you?
I discovered listmonk, free and open-source email newsletter software, self-hosted. Looks pretty nice! listmonk.app
30.01.2026 12:11 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Like so much else, this aspect of technology is alienated from us in a capitalist economy, and it is to our peril.
21.01.2026 11:06 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0This perspective on technology is encompassed by the term "social technics" (coined by Murray Bookchin), and has its origins in Aristotle's concept of "technique" (the root of English "technology", ΟΞΟΞ½Ξ·).
21.01.2026 11:06 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0The most important part of any technology is its deployment, how it is mobilised throughout society in conjunction with its social context and with organisational techniques.
21.01.2026 11:06 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Hello! :)
21.01.2026 11:02 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Hyphanet is a P2P alternative to the World Wide Web, and it's hilarious:
"In Hyphanet, no one knows who inserted the file, who requested the file, or where the file is stored. Therefore, it is very difficult to censor."
"The only way to delete something in Hyphanet is not to search for it"
The Algorithmic Anarchist (2023). Available for free: hughbarnard.org/the-algorith...
It's an informal book about social technics, it reads like an A-Z tour of brief thoughts on a range of topics, like lots of little opportunities to find inspiration. Also available in German and French.
If you have a private server, you can also configure it to dedicate a small piece of your bandwidth as a Tor Snowflake proxy. Doug Belshaw's blog includes some information on how to do that: blog.dougbelshaw.com/tor-snowflak...
05.01.2026 12:00 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0It uses WebRTC, the same protocol used by Google Meet or Jitsi. From the network perspective, it looks like the Snowflake user is having a routine phone call, when in fact you are tunneling them into the Tor network
05.01.2026 12:00 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
A pink snowflake icon transfixed over a square grid, with a large purple background
Tor Snowflake is a plugin which runs in your browser and helps people to circumvent censorship in countries where Tor is blocked (an increasingly common occurrence in our surveillance-obsessed world)
snowflake.torproject.org
"The Post-American Internet": Cory Doctorow speaking at Chaos Communications Congress in 2025
archive.org/details/doct...
In response to US aggression, governments could reverse IP laws which treat reading, modifying (and fixing) the code you use as criminal, for the benefit of US tech giants
β¨SUMMITBOUND EP 1 ALPHA IS OUT NOW!π
Download and play it now: team-rat-games.itch.io/summitbound
Join our Discord to give us feedback: discord.gg/z6aCdCqvbs
Support us for future updates and games: www.patreon.com/cw/RatMagicG...
#Summitbound #VN #Indiegame #Indiedev
Image is separated into two halves to emphasise the difference between: "DIY Web Revival!", which features bright colours and happy cartoon characters, contrasted with "professional moden internet" which is black-and-white and features a solitary, dejected doggo. The professional moden Internet lists our grievances with site design: 1. Approve these cookies so we can protect your data we stole 2. No gifs allowed! 3. constant autoplay sponsored ads 4. CSS used to reset elements back to flat and boring look 5. $500 million VC to make the Todo app from a tutorial 6. literally just a blank white site 7. Sorrky... your license expired 8. ISSUE #481: Docker Build UI Gem Install failed on Client NPM CI 9. Site has amazin uptime but only person to talk to is the verified M&Ms account 10. Customisation options: light, or dark DIY web revival lists: 1. Literally every inch is crammed with joy. "hi! hihi hi!!!" 2. Well defined borders help you navigate 3. Entire site is 940KB, can just be reuploaded somewhere else 4. Sparkly! 5. Guestbooks, status updates, forums 6. Thousands of friends 7. "I made this for no reason other than that it is beautiful" 8. Palatial maze for the eyes
If you're ever misled into thinking there is a lack of whimsy or variety on the web, just have a browse on Neocities: neocities.org/browse
28.12.2025 15:59 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
"Game AI designed to surprise"
calum.mackervoy.com/en/2025/07/0...
The Commons is property that opens itself up to use by anyone, and which is owned and managed by the people who use it⦠So what would that mean when talking about game development?
Written by @calummackervoy.bsky.social
Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out.
Someone published a how-to: tuta.com/blog/how-to-...
For anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend "The Evolution of Trust", a free educational game about (among other things) why soldier's truces became common early on in the trenches of the First World War:
ncase.me/trust/
I first played it years ago and it frequently comes back into my mind
Mann's method helps us to parse complex social relationships down from unitary βtotalsβ; destructive patterns in the happenings around us can absolutely be overcome and our reactions to circumstance are constantly reforming the social bonds that bind us
31.10.2025 10:58 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
At the Anti-university festival in London, one of the workshops I ran was about the Sources of Social Power, work of sociologist Michael Mann. This post walks you through it:
calum.mackervoy.com/en/2025/10/2...
Games Commons is a new way to conceive of game design. Games are driven by data published on the web, owned and managed in common (think Wikipedia).
Read more about our project here: gamescommons.com
Follow us here or join our Discord: discord.gg/sauZA3jCK7