Hello 2021, greetings from the cave I’ve been under for the past 9 months or so. I have been quite busy lately working on several music and art related projects, including my new custom built drum machine!
On early 2019 I got into playing the piano. I bought an old upright out of impulse from a friend of a friend. It was on great conditions, never used - It just stayed there without use looking pretty. The original owner got it brand new about 15 years ago, played for about a month, payed for lessons and everything. Got bored and eventually stopped completely. Fast forward 15 years and its still under surprisingly good condition for never being taken care of. They decided to sell it at a bargain price and I ended up getting it on a whim.
I always enjoyed listening to music, but making music has been a hobby of mine since my early teens. Never really played any instruments to any degree of confidence. I studied guitar at school as a kid, learned ode to joy for a school presentation and pretty much stopped right after. Never knew my way through the fret-board or developed any fluidity of any kind. But playing music always remained as a frustrated dream I always dreamt of pursuing.
Guitar was always out of the question due to my old frustration I developed as a kid. So on my first chance to make music without traditional instruments I gave it a go. Nothing fancy, just making tunes entirely on a computer with virtual instruments I got from the net and singing and mixing into audacity.
Spiking several years ahead I got into ableton on my freshman year of collage. I was studying digital arts and animation at the time, so I felt comfortable with complex software like blender, so a crowded GUI with music stuff did not really intimidate me. At the same time I was really getting into radiohead, so I tried recreating some beats from their records, then tried doing the whole music from a laptop thom yorke style. Tried at least, my musical projects got nowhere pretty soon after messing about for an hour. But I did get familiar with the software and dealing with basic troubleshooting like drivers and so on.
So there I am trying to make music without any idea about notes or scales or anything really, just messing with beats. I wanted to go beyond beats and start making songs, I realized I had to return to playing an instrument. While I was having this internal dialogue I looked behind my shoulder and there it was, a piano just sitting there unused.
Now that I know my way around the keyboard, around 2 years after getting to know the basics of the piano, I came to crave for gatherings with my more musically minded friends because often I am encouraged to play in a group setting. More casual music lovers love just singing along to their favorite songs, and for a while now I am at a level where I can basically read any chord sheet for any song and play a simple arrangement for people to sing over, adding a simple melody in key or a fill here and there. What I am trying to say is that I have become the go-to karaoke machine for my group of friends. On top of that whit my musician friends playing gets to be even more fun. Someone just happened to bring their guitar and someone else does vocal harmonies and I lay the chords on the piano - those kind of jams are one of the best experiences I have had with music.
The problem is that my whole unplugged karaoke shtick can get pretty stale after a few songs. Mainly because playing only the piano for an entire night is just screaming for sonic variety. I might end up just piking up a guitar some day, I know, I know. But for the meantime I have tried playing other key-ed instruments like a digital synthesizer, organ, Rhodes and sampled strings. But for a while I have been trying to have a drum beat looped in the background.
I have an ableton set with midi drum loops set up for the songs I usually play, but I have found that bringing a laptop and keeping it on top of my upright to be very clunky, especially If i need a groove from a song not on my set - programming midi drums on the spot for a song you have never heard but your friend wants you to play it and only know the chords is quite challenge. Especially drunk, and at parties or small gatherings when I am kinda tipsy. Meaning most of them, okay okay next topic!
But it really hit me on a road trip I had on late 2019. On it a couple of friends of mine brought their acoustic guitars on the road, we stayed up all night singing besides burnt marshmallows and the campfire. Because I came in unprepared for playing music I just sang along. Jokingly, a friend of mine asked “so why didn’t you brought your piano? it would have sounded great”.
After coming back home from the road trip I think he really had a point. Adding some variety, some other instrument with a different timbre, would have taken our campfire wonderwall nights into proper live unplugged MTV territory. I looked for pocket sized keyboards or synthesizers I could take with me or just keep on my bag all the time. But if I’m really honest, I was really captivated by pocket sized drum machines. I especially envied those one or two live versions from radiohead’s a moon shaped pool, they did simple bear-bones versions of a few songs with just a voice, two guitars and a CR-78 vintage drum machine.
I settled for a melodica as my secondary instrument. Mainly because they are dirt cheap and have a very distinct sound that can easily “cut through” a song with multiple acoustic guitars. As my fiends usually bringing 2 or 3 guitars and end up strumming the same chords I wanted an instrument that would sound best when not doing the same thing as the other million guitars playing the exact same thing. For reference a melodica sounds very similar to an accordion or a harmonica. My idea with the melodica is to stay away from harmony (unlike I usually do when doing a one-man-karaoke-piano-man-show) and repeat simple melodic phrases or do countermelodies. With the melodica I play more of an accompaniment roll than a lead, and honestly I quite enjoy that.
But playing the melodica keeps me from one of my favorite things: singing with my buddies! Because in case you don’t know, a melodica is one of those instruments kids learn at school where you blow into a tube and press the notes on a keyboard. So you can’t sing and play at the same time! This is why I secretly wish I would have gone with a portable electronic instrument like an OP-1 or an organelle, but man those things are expensive! Especially here in Mexico where audio equipment prices are almost always double MSRP! And you have to pay for shipping on top of that!
But most bag-size electronic instruments plug directly to the wall, so if case I ever find myself singing wonderwall into the night because someone pulled up their guitar out of the blue I will most likely not have the time switch AA batteries around or the guts to stop the song because I need everyone to come 5 meters closer to the nearest wall because I have to plug in my power chord. And keeping USB power banks charged for a just in case moment is a no-go for me. This whole electro-acoustic dream of mine would also fall apart if I ever find myself unprepared for playing music like I did on the road trip. I don’t always know if the friends of a friend at a party I am attending play music or even bought their instruments. On some occasions I might not have access to electricity at all like on the road trip! And to non-work or non-school situations I tend not to bring my bag where I keep my gadgets anyways.
My solution was, well just get a drum loops app! You keep your phone with you at all times and if you’re on another road trip chances are you keep your phone off, so you will most likely have tons of battery life and chances are that someone brought a Bluetooth speaker. So an app seemed like a great fit, but that turned not to be as simple as I thought. Mainly because drum apps tend to be designed to play drums live by tapping the on screen kick, snare and hi-hats like you would hit them with drumsticks on real drums, or designed to work more like a DAW; where you have full blown sequencers and virtual instruments on a timeline view or an MPC like environment where you are encouraged to build full tracks. But both approaches stray away from what I want, a simple enough design where I can play a groove very quickly to accompany a guitar player and free myself up to sing along.
I needed a simple thing you can just pull up and turn a guitar solo karaoke night into a more full and rich experience. Add a bit of rhythm to a live performance, nothing else, nothing more. But apps where you tap a drum kit are clunky enough to be a turn off, and MPC like or DAW like environments are too complex for a quickly and easily augmenting a performance that’s already there.
I really wanted something like a simplified TR-808 or 909 were you have 16 steps, you fill them up and hit play and it loops over and over. But apps that emulate 808’s literally also have the same problem as only playing one integument for the entire night, that they get old if you don’t switch up the sounds.
So there I was, looking for an extremely specific approach to drum loops. So I decided to make a simple solution of my own. I was inspired by a post from a music technology forum built around a musical programming environment called sonic pi. On this sonic pi forum, that I regularly visit, users will post their creations made with sonic pi, the occasional question and every once in a while users will change each other to make music with sonic pi withing some limitations. One time I saw an open challenge to use sonic pi to make an acoustic cover. I took this prompt as an opportunity to make a simple 808 style loop and have my brother play guitar on top. At the time me and my brother did several acoustic covers, myself on piano and him on guitar. Technically that would count as an acoustic cover, so I worked on a general step sequencer program for sonic pi. Unfortunately my bothers strings broke and we were not able to record the cover version.
This sonic pi mock-up slowly evolved into a pure data patch. I re-implemented the basics of the sonic pi drum sequencer onto pd and I choose to specifically work on re-implementing something I already figured out because I was just beginning to grapple with programming in pure data. I wanted to keep making up a design out of the equation and make life simple for me.
I started my pure data drum machine a few months into the 2020 cornonavirus quarantine, so I had plenty of time to get the basics right. After the basics were laid out I begun to add more and more features because thanks to COVID I had all the time in the world to keep at it.
An early version of the step sequencer prototype
6 months later we arrive at the present day. My drum sequencer project on pure data has most of the features I wished for on my ideal simple-quickly-set-up-an-accompanying-groove-n’-go drum machine app. Thanks to a pure data wrapper for phones and tablets called MobMuPlat I can even run my drum machine on my phone. To do so you simply open up the MobMuPlat app and it brings up a list of currently installed pd patches, I simply select my drum machine patch and get going! I also made a custom interface for it with the tools provided by MobMuPlat with a nice dark theme.
Inspired by that awesome night besides the campfire on the road trip I decided to call my drum machine “BONFIRE”.
pictures of the soon to be fully released version
As of me writing this, BONFIRE is ready for it’s first release since it has the bare minimum for accomplishing my initial goal of providing with a backing beat for an acoustic live performance with an easy to use and “quick-to-get-results” interface. BONFIRE has a 16 steps mode and a 32 steps mode; allows you to set a BPM, control the volume of the kick, snare and hi hats separately; four different drum synthesized sounds, one simple 808 like style sound, a more modern and deep punch that resembles an 80’s sound, a complex and realistic acoustic kit sound, and a blend mode that uses a combination of the 3 other sounds; and a preset selector, that allows you to browse 18 included rhythms from rock to disco to bossa nova and quickly apply them to the 32 step grid, this way you can quickly set up a grove and hit play.
You can download BONIFRE from my github page or wait for the project to be officially released once I have a working website and video commercial and tutorial.
BONFIRE will be fully released soon, but it’s fully working currently and just needs a bit more prep for marketing and the like. I plan to continue updating BONIFRE and add sampled drums, a live looper, an audio effects engine, an eulciedian sequencer inspired jam mode and more in the future!
You can follow the github repo for updates, follow this blog or every once in a while check the downloads page. Eventually I also plan in re opening my some of my social media accounts so you can follow me there for BONIFRE updates.
So that’s why I have been missing for almost a year. I was over at my cave programming my own drum machine.
If you’re interested on a more technical description of how BONIFRE works and the history of its development I wrote this just for you. This post tends to focus more on the usability and musicality of the story.
A few days ago Thom Yorke went on Jimmy fallon to play a new song, but before the actual performance he tweeted a picture of his chord chart. So I made a cover, enjoy!
A few days ago I posted about my discontent with librem’s mastodon instance. Here I elaborate on my decision.
Around the beginning of 2020 my computer broke down, my battery stopped working and a bios message on startup prevented me from continuing to boot. My laptop was stuck in a boot-loop. And my posting has mainly focused on my mastodon account, formerly on librem’s instance.
If you’re not already aware, librem is a product line from Purism - A software and hardware company basted on the U.S. focused on software freedom in the gnu scene of the word. That in and of itself is a good thing, free and open source is something I advocate for. However, support for free software is only a means to an end. I don’t really care for the GPL license, I care for protecting users - especially from vulnerable groups due to some other means of oppression. A world I would love to live in is a world of justice and access to the basic necessities for all, without exception. In an incisively digitized world, the means of communications, socialization, citizenship, education and creation are technological means. Those digital means I advocate should be universal, and even if I come off as extremist, an extension of Human Rights. If a legal document, such as the GPL license is one pathway to achieving digital justice and universal computing programs, then yes, all software ought to be free software! But if free and open source becomes a goal rather than merely a method, then we will get stuck under nonsensical knots.
For instance, what happens if free software is used to take away the freedoms of other users? Well, if free software is an absolute, then so be it, oppress away those unlucky users. But I claim it should not be an absolute goal, it should be a means to a goal, to the goal of social and economic justice and dignity in virtual grounds. If free software is used, in the worst case scenario, by Nazis - then it should become fairly obvious that “freedom” on it’s own its not sufficient. Freedom over what? Free to do what? Who benefits from this freedom or de-regulation?
Sadly, free software is been used by Nazis, today! A social media popular amongst the far right, Gab, has been looking for methods to avoid censorship, therefore a decentralized mode of organization will do wonders for defending the alt-right’s turf. Last year Gab migrated to Mastodon, Adi Robertson wrote for the Verge:
Many Mastodon instances hold users to a higher standard than bigger social networks. On Gab, meanwhile, users post a striking amount of hate content and have protested even very limited moderation. As of this writing, the Gab timeline’s first page features a warning about “International Jewry,” a string of posts with the hashtags “#eugenism” and “#ethnostate,” and a political cartoon of four lynched bodies (marked with an LGBT Pride rainbow, a Star of David, a Black Power fist, and a feminist symbol) above the caption “SOON.”
Some Gab content has crossed the line into criminal activity. The UK jailed two teenage neo-Nazis in June for posting terrorist propaganda. Florida police also arrested a user last month for posting racist threats and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. And in 2018, *a man posted an anti-Semitic Gab message just before killing 11 members of a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Gab denies that it condones hatred — CEO Andrew Torba says it simply allows any speech that’s “legal in the United States” with a few exceptions. It correctly notes that Facebook and Twitter also contain hate speech and violent threats. Gab is far smaller than these sites, however, and its bad posts are particularly concentrated.*
Freedom - Foss kind of freedom - is not worth it. And in Linuxy circles this critique of freedom is often ignored. When it comes to freedom, gnu fanatics claim a solution for user exploitation is a fully free software computer environment. Users are not “set free” by oppressive platforms’ methods being regulated away, but by users all individually using only GPL licensed software. Or an especially neoliberal take, and a popular one might I add, is for all computer and internet users concerned with their rights to go out and purchase 1,399 plus dollar computers and 749 dollar phones…. from Purism. The goal of the company is to pull of an apple style ecosystem with FSF approved software only. That means gnu freedom ain’t so free after all.
By choosing librem’s mastodon instance I was essentially tagging myself as a free software advocate, and again, a FOSS advocate I am not! I don’t have an interest in FOSS on its own, since like I said previously what I advocate is social and economic justice in digital spaces. Yes, some part of the goal means software should be freely accessible for more creations to flourish, but creativity and access is only one bullet point in the agenda. Similarly I don’t agree with free speech absolutists, who claim all speech is scared and anything below not boosting everyone’s speech to everyone else’s consciousness is censorship. Like free software, free speech has a purpose, a goal beyond free speech by itself.
I don’t support librem’s goal as a company, I don’t fully agree with their values, I don’t endorse a method as a goal in itself. I don’t think free speech or free software is an absolutely good, or a noble goal by itself. And so I say goodbye to librem’s platform.
We can’t ignore the writing on the wall, the direction we’re going as a society is beginning to contradict itself in our everyday lives: Technology and humanity are at a battle for focus and outcome.
Douglas Rushkoff is a public speaker, college profesor and author most known for his work on media analysis and for coming up with the term viral media. Doug spoke at TED in New York on September 2018 and spoke about his new book team human, this book is written as blog posts, short entries that speak about a particular issue about the current state of being of technology and culture. The book reads almost like an episodic un-serialized show, the team human as a project is made up of a community of supporters, the book, and a similarly un-serialized internet radio show. To take in team human as a whole is to tune in weakly to listen to Rushkoff and guests for a while, then when you’re ready to take it all in read the book to synthesize the message.
This project is a very special, interesting - and sometimes worrisome - reading experience. My introduction were the talks, where Doug paints a picture of the problem. We think we are on the most evolved paradigm there is, especially with digital technology, we see the world around us and see opportunity and growth. But Doug tells a very telling story that puts this narrative into question: He was invited by tech billionaires to give a private talk about the future of tech, and the billionaires asked him what to do when people turn against them.
On the talk, Rushkoff said:
These are the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, yet they see themselves as utterly powerless to influence the future. The best they can do is hang on for the inevitable catastrophe and then use their technology and money to get away from the rest of us. And these are the winners of the digital economy!
The main takeaway from the talk is that this digital future is not going as planned. The heroes of the digital age like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are not trying to build a tech-utopia anymore, they have given up on altruistic dreams and focus on going to mars, leaving the problems behind, leaving the earth behind. Douglas claims that this fear goes way deeper. We want to run away from ourselves, this means we don’t like humanity anymore. We don’t like other people in form of immigrants, we don’t like ourselves or own own bodies in form of upgrading our bodies to transhumanist robots, we don’t like our planet since we don’t want to stop climate change. But regardless of our disgust for what makes us “us” - other people, our bodies and our place in the universe - regardless we seem to hate ourselves, we still fear those very characteristics that makes us human. We’re double fucked.
We want it both ways: We love creativity, but since artificial intelligence is about to become a reality we have “accepted” that we can’t be more creative than the machines. We want growth and opportunity but we economically oppress each other since automation always wins. This dissonance between human and machine is the dichotomy that Doug focuses on. The podcast and the book focuses on defending and arguing for humanity. He said “Fine! I’m on team human!”
The book plays off perfectly from this message. In it you will find a detailed analysis of all of te ramifications of what he calles an anti-human agenda. From current technologies like social media and its culture to trans humanism and economic injustice. This is a slow burn, Doug knows how to introduce a topic without any previous knowledge. Like on his previous book he tends to dance around a topic to avoid buzzwords and an outright ideological rejection of his message. He very rarely calls an idea by it’s name. I theorize that his main audience are young people who have fallen for the tech fantasy. They tend to be political and social liberals, but reject ideas or radical change or revolution. Even if those radical ideas can be summed up as don’t step on others just because of hate or prejudice. To call an idea by it’s name would mean to bring up Marx, Feminism, social justice and imperialism. But the kids on silicon valley, and most 20 year old’s who have a say in building the future, see those moments as a cancer. Communism is dictatorship, feminism is unequal, the world is already just, and we should not repair the mistakes of our elders. The book walks in the minefield of neoliberal ideology without ever compromising.
The points as expressed on the book are, in my experience, almost universally accepted. You can’t bring up the injustices of the economy and capitalism with a moderate conservative, but you can say that inside tech platforms the desire for likes in a zero-sum game creates or develops bad habits on users, and can even lead to depression or anxiety. Then your conservative friend will eventually join the dots: It’s not that social media is bad by itself, but that the way that it threats people is oppressive and unfair. And any thing that threats people in the same way, AKA capitalism, is necessarily also unfair.
I think of Rushkoff as that uncle that always know what to say and how to say it. He fabulously speaks about technology going nice and slow, and ends up showing the world as it really is, no matter how cruel it can sometimes seem.
Team Human, as a book and a holistic project, is an eye-opener. I came in disagreeing with all the specifics about social issues and the economy, but exited the manifesto as a new man with a love for politics and action with a technological framework. If you are interested in technology and you care for a better future give Rushkoff a try. Start with his TED talk, if it gets to you listen to a few random episodes of his podcasts, and if you’re ready for you’re mind to be blown get the book.
If you can’t buy the book, you can read the whole thing for free on medium. It’s being uploaded on medium one section per week. The book is comprised of 100 short parts, as of time of publishing this you can find from part 1 to 24 on medium.
This semester I changed mayor to psychology, not knowing it it would fit me I atended my first class without expectations. This class is on observation and how to become more discerning about people and behavior. The class is supposed to do with scientific observation, but it truly has more to do with ideology.
To experience the world you need only open your eyes, right? Well, it’s not that simple, because some bias is always present in some form. The world, or the real, is something we can’t just take in. You can’t experience all your life at once, you live moment to moment. We can’t see the entire world as it is, but we get to see a small chuck of it, our perspective. When we see an image we don’t even look at the entirety of it, our minds compress the image and makes educated guesses based on patterns, that’s why optical illusions exists, because we can’t absorb the 100% of an image, so we only see about 50% and we guess the rest.
The same thing happens with all or senses, we never get the full picture, taste, smell, etc. We always get some, but not all of reality. If we never experienced the entirety of what’s out there, then we can’t know for sure that the real is like a hallucination, a fabric of the mind. If we can’t see reality, how do we know what it means? Well, some say it’s possible to know the truth of reality, but we just need better tools to measure it. However this is not a satisfactory explanation, truth is as it is, as we can study it, but not right now would imply that analysis and science is useless until we can truly understand the real.
A more useful notion of reality, is a reality that needs not exists as a complete and objective whole, but as an unfinished but never-ending puzzle. We don’t “study” reality, we construct it. We build social norms that dictate how to behave, we constructed institutions, business, industries, governments, and on and on, we build.
A constructive framework seems strange at first, because it throws out the window of objectivity. But there most be something that just is! We might look at numbers and the laws of math, but soon you’ll realize we made numbers up and we discovered the laws of math, therefore we have constructed them. No matter the example, we can always point to the creation of something or the idea of it.
We create our reality so much, that we forgot we´re living inside an artificial dome. Our mode of thought, our ideology or paradigm, is un-natural, manufactured, created, designed. The real is not out there, we make what’s out there, but with so much nose we can make out were we are.
Whenever you do something, anything, ask yourself is this my idea or am I playing a role in someone’s game? We can’t honestly say we choose anything without any bias at all, but where do this biases come from? You might be convinced those biases are individual. But as beings whose development never stops we can’t help but learn, imitate, and be swayed by external factors. This is where a paradigm comes in, or as I prefer calling it: ideology.
When you think you’re doing something by your own will and that you can’t be brainwashed is when you know you don’t really know. To act without question is to be a slave, we must always think twice and thrice about ourselves. Most of your life’s decisions can be traced back to a common reason. Why go to school? To get a job, Why get a job? To have enough money for a good life, What is a good like like? one with material and non material possessions, why can’t we posses those objects that improve our lives? Because somebody else owns them or because we area all competing for them, Why are those object in such high demand? because of such low supply, Why are they in low supply? Because if they weren’t people would not strive for them……wait, isn’t that just circular logic? Why would a claim be so self evident to not merit an explanation other than just because that’s how things are? because those things who can’t be explained are ideological statements. They are imposed, they are someone else’s judgments we play out.
To get outside of ideology you must be curious and brave enough to question. those facts we hold to be self evident are the most artificial in nature. We can’t simply draw a line in the sand and claim the origin of all ideology, but it has to do with power, ownership, fear, prejudice, discrimination and violence. Some people want to take advantage over others, to keep their status at the top a board game was built by their rules. The rules may seem consistent, but only insofar consistent as the creators of the game can win and nobody else can. The idea of working hard to build a livelihood, the american dream, seems only fair because it’s narrative is consistent, and it is, because it consistently produces the dream by the expense of the ones dreaming it. Ideology works only for some, not all benefit from it’s promises. We are sleeping until we begin to doubt the mechanics of our society.
Not to long ago, on my way to university I was casually chatting with my dad while the radio was on. I broke all of the rules. You’re not supposed to bring up politics, not now or later. But the radio host’s voice was so infuriating to me. He was ranting about how Juan Guaidó; a politician who claims to be Venezuela’s president despite the fact he never won any popular vote; is the legitimate ruler of the oil enriched country. The radio host boosted Guaidó’s speech and message, saying that he is living proof that honesty, transparency and genuineness will always lead to a good government or social outcome.
This is hugely misleading and hypocritical. Guaidó Is not legitimate, he is an imposed pawn, fake, a pragmatic and economical tool for the powers that be. I said this out loud and my father agreed on Juan’s Hypocrisy, but said that sometimes the people don’t know best and they are better of in the hands of experts.
This seems to be a popular sentiment, at least here on Mexico. It is somewhat accepted, although that mainly in ideological grounds, that maybe democracy is not so functional after all. A new president was voted into office here in Mexico, he goes by the acronym A.M.L.O. (Andrés Manuel López Obrador). Amlo is a left leaning, working class and people-first politician, formerly mayor of Mexico’s capital city. But the status quo remains center right here in Mexico, to many Amlo is our very own Donald Trump. Mexican reactionaries see Amlo as dumb, incompetent and an idiot - mainly for his belief and trust for the people and left leaning policies. If you remember the 2016 elections in the U.S. and the countless memes and snowflakes getting triggered, the madness in the air would resemble the reactionary’s response to Amlo’s current term.
I often hear on the radio how increasing health care budget via taxes is borderline socialism. The fact that we already have something resembling universal healthcare in Mexico and that it mostly works (and has personally saved many family members’ lives including my own brothers life in his infancy due to poison) and that is here functioning should re-calibrate the popular notion of what socialism means to our people. Regardless of our current popular health plans, somehow Amlo giving scholarships to kids who simply sigh up for it is like building gulags or whatever. I consider Amlo to be not left enough, he still would like to please the Bourgeoisie and middle class reactionaries instead on focusing on the working class majority.
So our country half approves half fears our president’s vision. The right-ists claim democracy failed this time. And even some of my liberal friends like the general feminist moment but still think Amlo is too dumb to reform our little piece of the world. Even the center left Mexican liberals despise him and mock him anti-SJW Carl Benjamin style.
On our car conversation, me and my dad stood for discourse, my father representing popular ideology. He argued that maybe the Venezuelan people don’t know what they need or want.
But they elected him, he should rule as president if he was democratically elected. I replied.
- Maybe a developed county can make things right.
What about their sovereignty as a nation? Can’t they make their own decisions without interference?
- But, son, maybe you have heard this new philosopher that said that democracy is not the best system, but the least worst system. Even the Greeks acknowledged the limits of democracy and they had a word for it and all, word I cant remember, but nonetheless they acknowledged its not a utopia.
Greek democracy wasn’t perfect, not because of the flaws of the people, but because people weren’t included, like salves and women. If democracy is fundamentally flawed, why add women and slaves to it?
- Well, adding women and slaves was a good thing…
If so, if an inclusive democracy is good, then why is democracy as a whole not? Can’t people choose, no mater their gender or status?
- But, son, that very same philosopher also said that democracy is not flawed, but the vote is flawed. Maybe each vote should not be equal. An informed person’s vote is “worth more” that an ignorant voter. Well, here is where I dropped you off.
I garbed my bags and opened the door and the conversation was cut short.
Is it true? Are some people’s vote worth less? Well for that to be the case, then each person should have a different level of experience. Maybe a blind person can’t speak of color, but that claim is loaded. It presupposes there are some people out there with a full understanding of the world. Non-blind people exist, but non-blind and non-biased people don’t exist.
Because each person has their own experience, their piece of the pie. I would even go as far as to say that the pie is not even real to begin with. In Constructivist terms what’s out there is not the real. But a social construction of reality. The world is not empirical, not made of matter. Because our senses always have a blind spot. we can never see the wold as it really is, so instead of trying and failing to see the world as it “is” we construct a wold for ourselves. Therefore a reality is not out there to grasp, therefore nobody can grasp what’s not there, meaning nobody really gets it, nobody would qualify as a full vote. Because nobody can grasp reality, we an only interpret and construct reality. Meaning that making different people’s votes worth more than others is fundamentally flawed. perfect voters don’t exist, because perfect people don’t exists. Ask any economist: information is asymmetrical, this pints to the fact that information is not “too hard” for some folks or that some people are inferior. But that if we treat information as equal we get an unequal graph. Fully informed voters don’t exist, not even the politicians themselves have all the facts.
To know all the facts points to a god, not to an informed voter. For an entity to know all the facts we would have to attribute divine characteristics to this subject, this so called informed voter would need omnipresence. But we know gods don’t, cant and should not exist. So we cant leave an election to divine inspiration.
Maybe when this unnamed name dropped philosopher said not all votes ought be equal he did not meant it as in equal in information’s worth - but unequal as in not tied to the 24/7 news media. Maybe he meant not equal as in electoral politics and not epistemology. If this is the case the picture also falls short. This notion of the media savvy voter as the good voter (and whose vote deserves more value) is solely dependent in the media’s ability to portray non-biased truth. But the papers don’t say the truth unlike Bono told you on new years’. In fact the media as a whole is not looking to provide fair grounds for people to make informed decisions, but to present a limited set of cards from which to draw our game; and the house always wins. The game the media presents is rigged, your enemy is not the inmigrantes or the communists, but the system that has you in chains. The new’s media don’t emanate unbiased information, but indoctrinate and control. you could say, as Chomsky did on his famous book, that they manufacture consent. If all you ever watch, read and see fits in the pro-corporate, neoliberal box, you will never even think of an alternative word were you are not exploited and used. The media reinforces the status quo and creates “capitalist realism” as Mark Fisher put it: A fake cense that there is no realist alternative to capitalism; don’t be anti-capitalist, be a realist!
A media savvy vote is not a vote grounded in facts, but a drone vote grounded on ideology. If we create a system were media savvy votes are worth more than non savvy votes the we would push the population towards acting out like automatons, incapable of original though and only able to regurgitate what they saw on the news. We would create a dystopia whilst trying to run away from another “disyopia” called democracy, boo!
Why is the will of the people scary? Why do we want for some people’s votes to be worth more than others? To me this suggestion is also based on pure ideology. It should be no surprise that a political and economic system based on winners and losers (capitalism) would like to produce a voting system where inherently some people are worth more than others. If our initial paradigm is hierarchical, we will eventually end up on an unequal, unjust, imposed hierarchy.
It is oh so sad that we feel so firm in our capitalists belief and ideology that we can´t even look each other in the eye without subconsciously thinking them are worth less than us. We must think that my life is worth more than yours, and that I would violently triumph in the Colosseum if I had a go at it. We can’t trust democracy if we don’t value each other’s lives, decisions and autonomy. hence we hate and separate, rince and repeat.
Recently I started university, again. This time I am pivoting from art to psychology. The course content seems very introductory. The teacher would mention authors, theories and techniques; It seems that the gold is hidden over the rainbow. One of my academic dreams has always been to CTRL + F my notes. So with some free time and my blog preset I built just that.
It’s still under construction, but the basic idea is that I create blog posts for my class notes and homework. Then I tag them and display them in their respective categories, meaning that buy the end of the semester I can read the whole content of a class and search for keywords.
My blog preset is pretty simple to build, especially here on github. Just fork the repo, go to the _config.yml file and tweak some variables like the title, site description. Then just write posts in markdown / Jekyll and make sure to tag them, done!
A cool addition was adding an edit button to each post, to do that I added the following to the post layout:
Note: I used two curly brakets arround site.editurl and page.path, here I’m only showing one because if I were to write two of them they would render as the value for those variables.
After some quick additions like new items on the top bar (again by modifying the default layout) and removing some unnecessary features like the privacy notice and the RSS feed I was done. In about 15 minutes I made a basic layout to publish my school notes and documents online. With my mayor being in psychology I can really benefit from writing down all my concepts and having them handy on my phone, plus I should get accustomed to writing more often.
For a glimpse into the ins and outs of psychology visit my notes and documents site (written in Spanish), keep looking out for more posts on here (in English), expect essays about psychology and technology, soon.
A look back into the year brought me to a strange place, a new place where experiences of dread and exhaustion seem both fresh and strange. This has been a brand new experience, both good and bad.
Starting 2019 I had hopes for change, although some change did take place, I did become a better, more wholesome and happy person, however change in the romantic sense, the pre-nostalgia phase, remains distant.
My time is running out. Slowly but surely my new job is eating and munching my time and energy away. My enthusiasm for writing remains, but my computer broke down and without it taping on my screen puts me to sleep, while punching and pressing down the keys on my keyboard made me satisfied. Writings and posts will stagnate for now. This is however temporary, I want to rail on and on about digital tech and online culture, but both time and material constraints stand in my way.
This is my new state of being, I eager to speak my mind, yet the new normal arrived at the door. This may feel like a new mode of boredom and desire, but with it’s new year’s eve packaging it suddenly feels like a whole new place, a double new year is just heading my way. It feels new, the feeling of newness is fresh again, a new new feeling.
Thoughts, book commentary, blog replies and the like will later come when I fix my computer. For now, I’ll casualty write from my phone. See you on the next entry, another alex.
In the face of the tech-lash we find ourselves pivoting from old design philosophies. No more infinitely scrolling feeds or forever buzzing notifications, don’t compete for human attention, use data transparently, and other noble causes under the banner of humane technology. But one thing we can’t ignore, get rid of, overcompensate for, or maneuver around is that computer software is guided by consent, in a different kind of manner. Decisions are made by software all the time; first the programmer must make the conscious decision to design flowcharts in a particular way to solve a problem or to achieve a goal, then the flowchart bare-bones program must be converted into machine readable code, the lines of code are interpreted by the computer as steps to follow, now the crucial moment occurs, a program runs and then it will inevitably hit a fork on the road, we find ourselves in a rhombus on the flowchart, a decision must be made either by the user or by external factors (often made out of abstractions of inputs of users of foreign systems or by sensors tuned to enforce a human bias), meaning that all computer programs are at some point binded by human consent.
At the beginning software was consciously designed, when the software runs it needs conscious input to continue to the next instruction, and at the end user level whoever is using the software inevitably gets interrupted to then make the a decision about the program, this end user decision can be what the program needs to continue running or an abstract decision brought by the sum total of the program: Facebook sends you a notification, you stop for a moment in your head, get your phone out and ponder if you ought to open the notification, if you do open it it creates more possibilities, and at all point decisions are required. Software is created by consent, it requires consent to function, and it creates more decisions for humans to ponder. With the importance of consent in software it then becomes ridiculous what the humane technology and it’s followers desire for new generation apps to behave like.
The humane tech moment is routinely critical of the status quo of digital platforms, and then imagines a wold without the perceived flaws. One of this flaws is the lack of consent, they see evil software as a conscious trickster, a maliciously designed app works in such a way that once you press I have read and accept the terms and conditions you are screwed. Now this charlatan app can do what it pleases with your data, surveil you by digital means, compromise your identity, manipulate you with selective content or advertisement material, et cetera. The tech humanists claim that the problem lies predominately in people signing a contract with the devil, and that an alternative must arise, an alternative graphical interface that makes it obvious to the end user what are they getting into. Imagine an appstore that after taping the download button it will prompt you a message saying that Facebook is filed with propaganda, its manipulative, breaks up families and friends, and exploits its workers; all with nice animations and a friendly mascot turning his head and saying don’t do it! But this fantasy GUI would not stop people from signing their humanity, data and dignity away. We already have similar pop-up alert messages on android saying hey, this app can use your camera and read your contacts whenever it wants, do you agree? And we do agree! We have no choice but to submit!
We can only give our consent in this type of situations, but not because consent in software only applies when accepting the terms of service, but because choice and consent are built into the most basic fundamental framework of software. Designing a program is an exercise of choice, feeding a program is an exercise of choice, and using a program is an exercise of choice too. Its not that we need more explicit choices or more transparent consent, we need more than consent. This situation echoes a topic that some technologists fail to understand: Women. The feminist movement has been pushing for a more fair world for women, to wash away the violence and oppression built up throughout generations. But the systemic oppression of women seems like the next boogie-man for the people performing the oppression, usually male. They look at acts of rape and sexual violence like consensual acts, since in a perverted way the victims did not reject or attempted to violently end the sexual act, because deep inside they wanted it. This horrible line of argument fails in many levels, but the most relevant to the software conversation is that most women do not simply “desire” sex with whomever is “strong enough” to take her, no, in most cases women are manipulated against their will to do said acts: Social pressure to give in, women are though from birth never to respond with aggression and always conform and repress, because women are so desired by desperate “alpha” men than they usually resort to drugs and or alcohol to numb their senses, and so on. No, women did not consent to this, they don’t secretly want this, they were manipulated into this mess; even if they do say yes, even if they do consent it’s simply not enough, because consent as the end-all-be-all of justice ignores the manipulation and oppressive gymnastics required to get some women to say yes, or at least to keep their no to themselves. Consent is not enough because there is an underlying dynamic, system, or unwritten rule to overwrite consent at all cost.
In software, the type of consent we experience is similarly rendered useless. Software users are not drugged into downloading the cash app, but our senses are numbed in different ways, one of them is the constant decisions needed to use technology: We are thought to click on “next” wile installing new programs, and we are prompted with micro decisions by our phones. We can’t go to work, function inside a modern high school or university, socialize online without clicking on I accept the terms and conditions. Our digital environment has been set up to render our consent meaningless. To battle this phenomenon with more explicit consent, more transparent menus and clear explanations of what happens with our data, is a lost game. To make consent meaningful we don’t need more of it, zero multiplied times a hundred is still zero, we need to undermine the social structure below technology. If our environment invites us to make actual choices we would live in a different digital frontier, but today the choices presented on the menu are limited and manipulative, not by themselves, the issue is not the button menu design, or the specific program, but the entire operating system.
Not to long ago I begun writing here, but for the longest time it felt more like sketching and idea than producing a coherent thread. Now that I have (somewhat) maturated, my thoughts have begun to settle. I now have a more concise idea or were I’m going with all of this. In as brief of a sentence as I can put it, I want to change the way that we organize cyberspace. This Blog has been an attempt to entertain the idea than an online society can be just as complex and as worthy of change and criticism as any other type of society.
People are critical of their surroundings, maybe for cynical reasons or self interests, but we remain critical nonetheless. However on online discourse we find ourselves heavily mediated by digital media itself. To have a complete thought on Twitter is synonymous with lunacy; look at that crazy guy with a thread of 8 tweets in a row! Is he insane or part of a conspiracy theory? The mechanisms of social media, and the internet as a whole, create a predetermined path, a default mode of discourse. Where users just ‘play out’ their assigned position. In this way, to call the creators of cyberspace “the programmers” is true in a more literal sense. On the other hand the people of the Net are not to be referred to the users, for they are not simply using tools but being used or acted upon by the tools and programs they pretend to use. In a more dialectical fashion, cyberspace is divided by two classes with opposing interests: The Programmers and the Programmed, the Users and the Used, the platform monarchs and the digital slaves, the creator and the creation. In no amount of words I can come close to paint a detailed enough picture of the cybernetic-landscape, but whatever method of analysis we apply on digital society we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: The dynamics of owners (in the form of intellectual or capital property) and the ones who build the spaces for the owners (For hire programmers and day to day users, whom with or without a salary create the products of the proprietor).
We must go beyond the chant of free software, free society, because societies are not built on property by itself but by the producers of said property. Free and open source code will not create a free and open society, instead it will create transparently cheep labor for closed source proprietors. To ignore the boss-worker relationship will feed into the boss’ agenda of profits and growth. However, if we build a movement conscious of the economic realities of our time, it will necessarily advocate for a free and open society by means of user-ownership. We can’t even begun to build a society if we don’t hold any power to change the source code, the antagonism between platform owners and platform builders is the line of code we ought to edit.
My writings from now own will focus on this relationship and other related phenomenons. The majority of my efforts will go into my book, witch I am slowly beginning to write (coherently). It has an unusual (non)structure for now, its made up of multiple mini-thesis or bite sized essays. This way I can jog down an idea and add it to the pile, and hopefully someday I can begin editing the madness and joining it all together. I choose this method since my previous attempts involved writing an index of sorts, and then transforming a chapter tile into an actual chapter. This method of skeleton writing seems to be popular amongst amateur non-fiction creators and writing gurus, but that method fails to grasp an idea you’re developing in real time - Like I am. To find the essays of my soon to become book can be found of my github repo, however this blog will take a stand of second priority. Hopefully I can public one essay here on my blog, but for now this place will be more explicitly personal and political, since the book aspires to be accessible from all political angles.
Before ending this post, I would like to address my readers. To my surprise I at least have one reader, since not to long ago I got an e-mail from one, if you’re reading this, hello. Feel free to contact me about my posts and my work, but for the love of god don’t start a para-social relationship with me. Anyways, here I go, off to write more about technology!
Most of the issues that happen on today’s digital landscape are rooted in good old fashion social inequality. The game is rigged, against us, our will and efforts. To the point that digital injustices are the norm: A site exploits users, an app abuses consumers & a coder programs society.
There is a fundamental power imbalance at play here, the systems being put forth by our Silicon Valley overlords run the same operating system as feudalism. But if our lords are already comfortable in their thrones and so are we, their digital slaves, so comfortable inside their social platforms and tools, how will the revolution begin to take place? How will we become free again?
Well, turns out that class struggle has been hiding in plain sight after all. In my digital rights blog I theorize that just like private ownership of the means of production in real life leads to unjust inequality, ownership of the means of digital production, AKA ownership of social platforms and spaces, leads to injustice on a virtual territory. This is most clear to me by analyzing the attention economy by contrasting our current social media landscape to the classic Adam Smith understanding of production:
My theory is that if we follow Smith’s ideas of production today we can see a system for social production, instead of products being made our media landscape produces social value in the form of likes, comments, posts, videos and ultimately: socially produced content. Content produced by social incentives, to gain social status or capital, to selfishly give to others (an action that presupposes a society given the others) and to unselfishly give to others. This is social production, the creation of value by people incentivized and mobilized by an organized society in one way or another. So in order to fabricate this social products Smith lists 3 main factors: The resources needed to make the product, currency to mobilize workers to do the producing in form of transforming resources into a product, work itself, and the labor needed to act out this transformative process.
The resources needed to produce social products on the Web are access to computer equipment, media and programming literacy, etc. And labor and capital (and social capital, meaning purely social driven reasons for creations) remain the same as in classic economics: Money remains money, social status remains social status and work remains work in a digital environment - the only thing that changes from an economic landscape to an Internet landscape are the types of resources needed for production. The technological means of production.
Creation, creativity - and therefore the expression of our Humanity - on the Web requires access or ownership to this previously mentioned technological means of production. An old man whose house I stayed due to a stormy night on the highway told me after looking at his bookshelf: “Who remains unread, will remain undead”. This phrase striked through my senses, an old pocket of wisdom stepping in the limelight. In a strange way, this phrase influenced the way I think of other values like creativity and freedom. The idea that in order to remain alive, a state usually thought of as passive an unconscious, you must do an active and conscious action holds some incredible power. To do you must enact! To live you must experience!
Sidenote: The phrase by the old man was translated from Spanish, originally: Quien no lee, muere. Adapted and appropriated from a poem titled: Muere lentamente or Dies slowly in English. This poem is mistakenly attributed to Pablo Neruda according to the Spanish newspaper “ABC”. The poem was originally written in Portuguese by Brazilian author Martha Medeiros, then wrongly attributed to Neruda after an online user translated the poem to Spanish. Read an English translation of the poem here, the Spanish version here, or the original Portuguese here.
When I apply this logic to values that the tech community holds oh so dearly like freedom, I can’t help but think the tech community has it all wrong. Freedom is not something you posses on a binary fashion, you don’t unlock it by being a hipster and using FSF endorsed products or software, freedom is not at the end of the tunnel of violent revolution against the owners of the digital platforms that rule our society. Same goes for autonomy, autonomy is not something they robed us. Values like freedom and autonomy are not monoliths, they are actions we must enact to possess.
If our freedom and autonomy is just merely a performative action away we must wait no more! To have access to the digital means of creating value gives the possessor the responsibility to act - insofar he creates for himself and for others. If you have a platform, a website, a Web group of some kind you must perform yourself into freedom and autonomy by creating value. But to fight the power imbalance you must also provide a helping hand for those unable to access the means of freedom and autonomy. This means to play out our freedoms, together, as a play that emanates expression and creativity.
If you own a piece of the Net, like I do, you are responsible for liberating the residents and the people passing by. To not do so, to stand in silence to the face of digital injustice is to be complicit in the technological enslavement of society. The little help I can provide towards the liberation of cyberspace and Humanity it to create a space were freedom and autonomy can flourish. This means rejecting or circumventing websites, products or services running a feudal operating system. Yes, this also means I will no longer link to Google services - Yes Including YouTube.
From now on I will link to more respectful video services, mainly invidious, which I discovered after HookTube stopped working on my journey towards privacy. This means that all links to videos hosted on youtube will be replaced with invidious links, the difference being the domain name, for example on YouTube a URL what looks like this youtube.com/video-about-cats can be replaced by an invidious link as follows: invidio.us/video-about-cats. Invidious supports YouTube channels, playlists, comments and videos by simply replacing the domain on the link.
Meaning if in the future invidious goes dark and the various links on my site break, you can simply fix the 404 error by replacing invidious domain with YouTube’s. This will link you back to YouTube, this will restrict your internet freedom and autonomy however, but if following a link is especially important to you, how you have the option to continue to immerse yourself on my site if invidious goes down.
These changes were made in the name of freedom, autonomy, creativity, Humanity, social progress; these changes may sound harsh to newcomers, but hopefully after this post you can further understand that this one goes out for me and you.
Well, it’s about time I let it all go out there for the entire word word to read: I think all types of “Internet wokeness” is terrible for society and those who are playing the game of black and white good versus evil are only in so deep in their non existing trenches because they are not aware of the underlying operating system that created whatever fake war they are fighting.
Let me explain myself, let’s use a hot button issue as an example: Trump.
Depending of what side of the debate you are on, you can bet your bottom dollar that at least someone, somewhere just jumped from their seat either in anger or excitement simply by reading those five letters that make up the current US president. You can hear the tribal drums beating in the distance as once side of the political debate shouts the latest trump catchphrase to the rhythm of a war chant followed by another distant tribe screaming in anger.
“So uncivilized” says one random Internet user on a comment thread, he accuses the opposition of the movement that is so close to his heart of being like a tribe or a cult, he smashes his enter key and the comment has been posted besides his “ironic meme” or anime profile picture. This back and forth of insults and “logical arguments” to “destroy” other people like you and me is the fuel of the fire that is the cycle of toxic memes.
This pattern goes beyond US politics, take for example the social justice warrior movement, the anti-social warrior movement, the redpill community, the anti-postmodernist movement, Men going their own way, incels, the flat earth community, the anti-vax movement, religious extremism, anti-theists extremists and on and on and on.
This Red-anti-sjw-pro-feminism-identity-politics-pill makes people angry, so much in fact that they go behold their way to oppose their identified out-group. They think they are changing the world by standing up to the repression of their values when in fact they are just involuntarily playing a part of the spread of a meme, they are just another cog in the cultural machine, a “useful idiot” of memetics.
Now let me back up a bit, I have no intentions of insulting anyone, I don’t literally think anyone who engages in culture (that is pretty much anyone) is a “useful idiot”, it’s not that people inside the movements I listed are the dumb and stupid kind of idiots, no , instead I refer to them as more of a clueless or ignorant of certain elements of culture kind of idiot and that is nothing to be ashamed of really - We are all ignorant about may things and that’s OK - The problem is when we become arrogant about what is a honestly trivial problem, I mean no harm to the “true believers” of ideology X with these words, my message is not one of hate for this community, I’m trying to downplay the issue enough for us to see the full picture.
How ideas spread
This will most likely sound familiar in multiple levels, I’ll put it like this: there’s a competition for the hearts and minds of society, it’s not a battle visible with the naked eye; it all happens inside our heads. Let’s take a pop song as an example, if you are an artist and you want as much people to buy tickets for your concerts as humanly possible then you need a good and effective pop song.
First you listen to the radio, keeping your ears open for the latest music trends, on the bilboard top 100 charts there’s a constant battle for the number one spot, how did they get there? well first a producer put a lot of effort into making his vision come true, then he published the song, if the song has the perfect hook, rhythm and enough time on the radio or on a movie it will eventually find a small audience, but to make it to the top you need a growing audience, you need a “share-able” song for the music virus to reproduce.
If you’re a smart enough producer you might not stop there, a catchy song is not enough, sometimes you need some kind of artist “feud”, a back and forth between musicians, a conversation or discussion born around the musical virus. Now when the song “infects” a small audience it will get double the hits, because your audience loves it and the song portrays another artists as negative or overall bad the fans of your song will “fight” against the fans of some other song or artists, hence both sides get more and more passionate about the song, now it’s personal.
Catchy songs are ear-worms who battle with one another for your attention, if a song involves “being against someone or something” it can grow even more because now there’s two sides engaged with this media, in this way catchy songs are almost like living organisms, they spread like a virus and not only that, theres also mutation.
Songs, Books, TV & Internet memes are more than mare mediums, they are cultural ideas. This is what I refer to as a “meme”, the word meme came before funny Internet pictures: It was coined by Richard Dakings on his book The Selfish Gene, on it he points out parallels between how biological genes want to selfishly spread no matter what and how ideas spread, to make his point more clear he coined the term meme to refer to cultural ideas, the word meme was chosen for it’s resemblance to the word gene, by this definition genes spread via genetic mutation and natural selection and memes spread via cultural means, or memetics - the study of cultural memes.
You’re being used as a tool
To be part of the Internet cultural landscape usually means taking sides, social media sides can only measure engagement via categorizing who you are, that’s what the like button does, it’s taking a side being confused for engagement. Once you have chosen your favorite band, added your best friends, stated your relationship status, date of birth, gender and religion you have been successfully put inside a box, a very narrow box which can only fit your interests, but a box nonetheless. Now that your humanity has been reduced to binary love-hate states you have been primed for manipulation.
When we look at other people we don’t tend to think of them like complex, long lasting individuals, but as characters whom just entered the play. Thanks to our digital surroundings and long ago racism, ageism and sexism, we have come to understand our neighbors as defined by their preferences: What kind of shoes they wear, the ikea on their liking room, their favorite movies, their preferred sport team, etc. With face to face conversation we can break free from this superficial judgments, we know our preferences are important, but the power of here and now makes us see the humanity behind consumer choices. The Internet robs of us this realization. When we are reduced to data points or likes we also loose some autonomy, there’s a world of possibilities out there but there’s only 3 options on the menu. The problem is that some buttons on the menu incite creating an enemy.
The power of memetics runs us over in many different scopes and contexts: We can get carried over by tribalism and memetics in sport fanaticism, politics, religion, you name it! These areas of extreme engagement in, let’s say for sake of example religion, are extremely engaging. This is by design. For an idea to be popular it must first speak to people, religion and spirituality genuinely heals our soul, after the initial spark it must then acquire a mechanism for crating a loop. Only never-ending ideas stick around for long, while simple ideas with a beginning middle and end might not.
If the goal of religion is to feed our spiritual needs, then why not stop there? If meditation, reflection, and yes even stories of some holy book work, then why is anything else a necessary part of religion? Why is hatred for other religions part of it? Well because this is an example of a loop being put forth. Same happens with sports merchandise: If the game is over, then why is it necessary to bring the team logo with you on your chest wherever you go? Because it extends the game’s engagement, because it transforms a simple game into a lifestyle. A never-ending discussion about players, past matches, speculation, athlete drama and so on.
Frantic fanatic groups don’t fulfill the needs of the people, like organized religion doesn’t fulfill the soul alone or sport doesn’t fulfill outdoor activity alone, they fulfill the needs of the system. The system prioritizes the system and noting else. Yes, you might feel personally invested in your local sport’s team, but ask yourself to what extension is it reasonable or healthy to take your passion. If you find soccer especially important, then it’s in your best interest to keep all soccer teams safe from vandalism, toxic culture, and unhealthy rivalry. If sport fanatics want a fair game, then to curb your passion from anger to empathy is the way to go. We don’t want to add external forces to the game, do we?
For a system to become self fulfilling, and therefore never-ending, it must create an out group, a them to cast as enemies. Systems do this without intentionality of course, they are systems that can only react to their environment. Memetic forces, just like in evolution, make A-B tests to find the most adapt specimen. This process of self selection is deplete of morality, the stardom of a popstar says nothing about the artistic worth of the rest of musicians, just as the popularity of an idea says nothing about it’s moral value, let alone the moral bankruptcy of the ideas in opposition. But this fact gets clouded by anger and idolization. Memetic systems drive towards idolizing, but not only in the good positive I want to be like you idol, but also in the negative this thing, idea, person or group is the enemy. The system does it both ways, it creates totems, one for the ideal good and one for the enemy.
But totems don’t reflect reality, they stand for something instead of meaning something. We can see the abstraction of totems without going into detail on Peirce though: We’ve all seen it, or at least thought about it, that when a group speaks about “the enemy” they tend to exaggerate their position. Pro abortion is baby murder, atheists are mad at god, he’s just jealous, etc. When the totem of the enemy is used, the enemy becomes a sort of cartoon of itself. From a complex set of arguments, reduced to tweet length, then reduced to an image macro meme with top and bottom text. When both groups, in favor and opposition to an idea have a cartoon totem of one another the discussion can further simplify itself. Only a simple bite sized idea can grow to be discussed forever, if the issue at hand were PHD complex the discussion would soon end on a footnote, but a digestible, us-versus-them, black-white and meme shareable idea can bloom every season.
Abstraction to no end
At some point, an endless discussion about any given topic will dilute infinitely to the point of challenging homeopathy. The topic is so abstract we’re not even taking about sports, now it’s the economics of athlete exchange, doping, expositions to game rules from matches from 1925 and body mass. The enemy is so cartooninshly evil to the point we’re not even talking about the same things. But what about the people? what about the ones who discuss? With the extreme levels of abstraction required for an idea to win the survival of the fittest everyday comes the necessity of an extremely flexible medium. A medium so capable of serving the system to the neglect of the other functions of the medium, the roads serve cars predominantly despite being made to serve pedestrians in the first place. In the case of memetics, we are the medium, for an idea to spread, evolve and survive it needs a human host to infect. Some topics, especially inside online spaces, have sticked so far in our minds that we, the medium, sometimes act as if our main function is to serve this idea, rather than to serve ourselves.
This is the sort of game at play I see in the anti-feminist movement and other neighbor manosphere topics. Some people seem so passionate about discussing exclusively their misogynist takes to the point of devoting themselves fully to the ideology. Sadly the alt-right and other similar groups have the high ground regarding popular internet culture & having at least some alt-light views is normalized. Their ideology is so predominant on the Net that users are shamed to even bring up fascism or to point out dog whistles due to Godwin’s law. When everybody is mad at postmodernists, social justice warriors, feminists and the like, it seems like these very same people don’t see the system beneath pulling the strings.
It’s angry discussion for it’s own sake. They might really care for their cause, but for what end? does it ever end? No! The only thing this will damage is their ability to view themselves as more than mediums for a memetic cause, cogs in the meme machine. What’s the point for being so angry? What’s the point at all! A real movement has goals and ends, but a selfish meme is only concerned with it’s survival. And if you cared for yourself instead of the agenda of a mindless system you would find it in your best interest to care for others, instead of casting them out. Because we’re all in the same boat, let’s begin to act like it.
Draft originally written on April 12, 2019. Published on August 27 ,2019.
Shortlinks are awesome, but to rely on a third party is to give up convenience, privacy and control. Back in the early 2010’s I discovered goo.gl, the now discontinued Google URL shortener, and used it everyday. To save characters on a tweet, reddit post and to track clicks to personal projects of mine.
My social presence on the Net has changed a lot within recent years, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica incident I became more privacy minded. This meant giving up tons of services, the Google URL shortener was one amongst them. On March 30, 2018 Google posted on their blog that goo.gl will be shut down, the shortener site was updated with the following message:
On March 30, 2018, we turned down support for goo.gl URL shortener. From April 13, 2018, only existing users were able to create short links on the goo.gl console. Analytics data was available for up to one year, until March 30, 2019, when goo.gl was discontinued. Previously created links will continue to redirect to their intended destination. Please see this blog post for more details.
On their explanatory post they argued for dynamic links and against URL’s, for some time now Google has been trying to monopolize cyberspace. First they came for search (once the old do no evil motto was dropped), then for email, social, cloud storage, typesetting software and now they want to disrupt URL’s as a whole. Their plan is to replace search result links with Google’s own version of the URL.
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and in 1999’s Weaving The Web, the Inventor of the Web himself Tim Berners-Lee explains his vision for the World Wide Web. Technically a URL is a type of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), the purpose of URI’s - and therefore the point of URL’s - is to serve as an address analogous to a street map. The first page to be up on Tim’s Web was info.cern.ch, this link perfectly captures Tim’s vision for Web addresses, you would have a base domain, a sub domain and if needed some kind of sub document separated by a slash. Berners-Lee developed the web at European Organization for Nuclear Research, or C.E.R.N. for short, and because the server was already available for internal use at cern.ch the URI would naturally become info.cern.ch. The beauty of URL’s was their ability to link together ideas and spaces. On Team Human (2019) author Douglas Rushkoff describes weblinks as a new tool for expression, just like on the Renaissance we got the the sonnet, today we got a new type of metaphor, we got hypertext: “[Hypertext] allows anything to become a metaphor for anything else” (Team Human, Chapter 80). The common word for URL is a link, this is the hidden elegance of weblinks, we intuitively understand the power of URL’s to connect and link together two objects, those being spaces or ideas. It’s so simple yet so elegant, one address as a door to an object.
Book reveiws for both Weaving the Web and Team Human are in the works. Check the post archive for the reviews when available, or subscribe to this blog to get notified when the reviews are published.
The whole point of links is to represent; that’s whats a web-page is, it’s present, it’s here, and it’s represented by an address. Dead links are not a reflection of a broken system, but a sign of the organic elements of digital, tech evolves, grows and even dies, just like organisms do. A 404 error reflects the livelihood of the Net just as much as a live site. On the other side of the ring, against the organic Web, we have the synthetic Internet. A gray place were pages are only present as long as someone is looking at them a laSchrödinger’s cat. This is the hell-world of dynamic websites, if you’ve ever tried to click on a link and an advertisement suddenly took it’s place forcing you to click on the ad, you can thank dynamic websites for that.
Dynamic links are the antithesis of the organic Web, always on, always rendering, never incrementally changing like organism going through evolution, but updating in quantized seconds, like a digital clock jumping from minute to minute against the organic adventure that is the minute hand slowly drifting and making it’s way around an analog clock. The organic Web is present, here while it last, while the dynamic Web is eternal, here to haunt you forever. Google’s plan to kill the URL is to push web developers and independent creators to forget their old style websites and port them to a Google approved mobile optimized webapp. On an April interview with Chrome’s engineering manager on WIRED magazine, the manager argued that URL’s are just too complex for users. Hackers could fish innocent people, get their banking info, steal their identities, install malware, yuck! The solution? To surrender our turf and let Google distribute, maintain, own and rule the URL by surrendering verification to your majesty.
Killing their URL shortener was a sign of their aggression towards our spaces, if the link was no more, what’s the use for shortlinks? You may as well give it all up and deliver to the all powerful tax-man. Some people - whom have already surrendered their opinions, thoughts and autonomy to various tech platforms - agreed with Google’s master plan for a dummies Internet. But we’re not dummies, we’re people, we should build the people’s Net, not a scaled corporate intra-net where a company owns and controls the means of digital creation, but a true democratic opening of the people and the products of our work and play.
The end of Google’s URL shortener not only cut off some websites, but their people too. Tech savvy people like me use shortlinks all the time, but the more privacy minded ones like myself have come to advise against them. They track users n’ clicks, sure they do provide with convenience for the author, but at the cost of the end user’s privacy.
This is why I decided to make my own URL shortener, my site would not track users, be completely transparent and easy for every person tangled between both ends of the link. My little experience blogging has taught me jekyll, a software to create static websites like this one. Though simple HTML tricks and some tags and listings of jekyll posts I was able to hack together a simple interface to create shortlinks of my own. The first step I took to create my own URL abbreviator was to make a base website with the basic functionalities for a regular website. I made this baseline website by copying my blog post site and adding some users for quick configuration. I called this website base post-clone, since it’s a clone of my post site. The idea behind it is to provide with some easily configurable basic features for a website, basic stuff like adding a website name, author, feed, description, contact links, about the author section, archive section, comment / feedback section and content license; you can configure all this features from one single file.
This would simplify setting up any future projects of mine, instead of starting from scratch every time I can just make a copy of post-clone and fill in the content and make some small changes. And so I did, I cloned it, configured it and added permalink functionality to enable the short links. Now if I want to create a short link I can just make a new post on my url site, where I host my shortlinks, and title the post, add the fill link and a short version. The end result would be a link like this alex-esc.github.io/url/aboutme. Remember that the last part of the url can be any combination of numbers and characters in true short link fashion.
In addition to creating shorter URL’s, my site can also store links in a box of some kind. The idea is that I often find interesting pages, articles, comments or posts on the Net, and want to share them or save them for later. With my link box functionality I can do exactly that. This is especially exciting fro me because on a previous post I had narrated my excitement of discovering an obscure website and getting trapped on a hypertext wormhole, so by storing all the cool stuff I found online my site would be able to recreate this feeling to a future reader.
And that’s why I created my own URL shortener, what I think of URL’s as a whole and what’s this new linkbox about. With my own tools I come a step closer to digital autonomy. Also cuz it’s fun to make websites and write long posts like this one.
It’s all true, all of it, they really got you were they want you. The antenna on your phone does phone to the moder ship your every move, the pictures on your feed are engineered to cause anxiety, the search results are an echo chamber, the HR bot is sexist and you don’t own your stuff anymore. Look around other communities, other countries, look to the history books - you know this is not normal. Something caused it, we all know it, it’s right here in front of us. What is it that you hate? The phone company? The platform? The inventor? The government? Or all of the above? Who’s responsible here? What’s at play here?
If you answered all of the above, or some of the above, then answer me this: Is it fair to punish one self for the wrong doings of the enemy? Because that’s what some people do by quitting the Internet. To quit the Net seems revolutionary, it’s the I’m not gonna take it anymore approach, yet if one were to analyze the outcomes of quitting, he or she would realize that quitting is not an act of rebellion but an act of suppression. Instead of fixing the medium, you give up on it.
The solution to break free from digital media’s grip is not to ignore the medium, but to grow immunity to it by getting to know it better.
If we choose media illiteracy over media literacy then the algorithm already won. If Google, Facebook & Amazon are as disruptive as they claim, if they can control us to the extent they wish to do so, then we would accept domination by unplugging from the matrix. But we’re smarter than unconscious software, we can fix this mess. This bug will never be patched if we don’t code the solution. You might not code, but to submit to the internet means to be programmed, only with digital media literacy we can upgrade ourselves from programmed to programmers.
If you want to solve any issue regarding the Internet, issues like addiction, distraction, digital stress, marketing & manipulation, whatever problem you see online, that problem can only be solved with engaging with the medium. To save the town we must confront the dragon.
To be digitally literate means to create, modify, remix, share, distribute, organize, participate and contribute to online spaces.
In Richard Stallman’s own terms, to be free as in freedom you must first posses the four basic freedoms (to contribute, to distribute & to benefit from the communities contributions), but to actually enjoy the four freedoms you need freedom number zero: The freedom to run, execute, to enact; in other words, for freedom to become a possibility first we have to posses the capacity for creation, but for actually enjoying freedom we must create. If you want freedom then create, if you want slavery then consume.
By disconnecting you will give away your zero-th freedom, thus never achieving digital liberation - freedom is not a noun, freedom is a verb, to be free we must make it so - To do nothing is to be digital slaves to the material conditions of tech. To voluntarily give up your possibility to create & contribute online you’ll be left with one option, to consume. You’ll become passive, scrolling down the feeds, waiting for the next ping, buzz or notification from the algorithm. To be a consumer one must necessarily give up their freedoms, this is called programming, influencing some object with instructions to achieve the programmer’s goal. But to disconnect completely to never be seen again goes further, to quit the Internet for good docent make you a rebel, it won’t solve anything - If by ejecting the freedom to create you become programmed, by rejecting the Web you’d become discontinued.
Previously to follow the blog on the fediverse you’d have to follow @alexesc@write.as, but this added an extra step for publishing, so I’ll make some some changes to simplify my workflow wile remaining end user functionality.
Thanks to Darius Kazemi’s RSS to AtivityPub converter I was able to publish this blog feed straight to the fediverse. Click on subscribe at the top of the page and select via Mastodon.
Previously on my publishing to Mastodon journey…
Initially I came across write.as, a minimlasit blogging platform, and it caught my eye back in November 2018 when GitHub username PrestonN, who develops and maintains freetube, used it as a method for publishing patch notes.
I began uploading my work to my website on January 2018, back then you’d only knew about my works if I specifically told you I have a website; meaning I did no real publishing at all. By late March I embraced a more privacy oriented lifestyle. By then I have discovered ways to circumvent giving data to YouTube when watching content on the site, I achieved this by using a now discontinued site hooktube, since the site stopped protecting user’s privacy on July 16th (source) I moved to exclusively watching videos with Newpipe on mobile and VLC + YT-DL on desktop, this was a pain on desktop. Thankfully a month later I discovered FreeTube, which by necessity migrated off hooktube, by the next few updates they moved their patch notes to write.as, thus introducing me to it. I made an account and all but I end up putting off writing on it. At the time I didn’t think about my writings as blog posts, but as documents and articles, thus virtually inflating the effort that went into them & their frequency - I would never dare to blog if each post takes me close to a month to write.
Forward to new year’s day 2019 & I finally decided to post frequently; small & quick posts, write small & quick posts I told myself firmly, my first post took a weak to publish regardless. But still this wasn’t publishing because my site was not public. It wasn’t public not in the sense that it was private or unavailable, but in the sense that it didn’t have a public, an audience. To be recognized or famous was never the goal in mind, but rather to be “out there“. I have always obsessed over internet click-holes, prepubescent me would find a blog or a fan wiki with a link to a really interesting project, then the project page would link to the author, then the author’s site would host his life’s work, each page filled with citations & callbacks to their inspirations and heroes - this is the sort of creator-audience relationship I strive for with my online presence.
But today’s social media cannon is perfect for discovering small, obscure and niche creators. On the old Net your favorite internet citizen would have some of his work on one site, his oldest stuff on a dead link, his still forming ideas on his old high school profile and his reading list on some other dead forum. This web of information about old fashioned people is what’s the world wide web’s all about, but back then the links were up, today the chains are broken and the magic was lost. Modern decentralized social media emulates this early Internet pre-search engines days, Mastodon being the leader amongst the new cool kid’s Web. The combination of old n’ rusty modem ancient web-like Internet and today’s centralization and ease of use of modern social media makes up a perfect storm, this new wave style web has the potential to connect more small communities, bring to light old profiles and upgrade them to classics and to re-invent the Net and our lives as a whole.
I want to be part of this new web, I want to give others the feeling of getting trapped on a click-hole vortex on a user friendly way, but I also want to benefit from the ease of use myself. This utopic slice of the Net is new to me & I’m learning along as I go, so when I found out write.as can push your posts to the fediverse I jumped in without second thought. Now after actually suing the platform I see lots of bumps on the road ahead, firstly the posts must be re-written without front matter, then copy pasted into the site (that’s right I can’t publish from this very blog, I have to manually copy paste the content on my write.as account) and finally there’s the spam detector bot.
Upon re-publishing all my past blogs, with the goal of mirroring my GitHub Pages blog on write.as, my account got flagged as spam. This is where I should have given up on write.as, but there I was desperate for a Mastodon account for the blog, I emailed back and forth with the write.as team and got my account re-activated. But now envision a future were every time I want to write something down I must make two separate versions, one with front matter and one without, then use two septate software to push the blog up on two septate platforms, and add to that the possibility of being flagged as spam again and also, what if I want to update an old post? I would need to update on my blog, on write.as and delete the old toots on mastodon to get rid of the dead links - yikes, what a nightmare!
Again, I’m learning as I go along. For some time now I’ve been a fan of Darius Kazemi’s work, he’s websites are responsible for my latest I got sucked into a hyper-link wormhole-itus. And just by pure chance he made an RSS to Mastodon converter, so from this point onwards people on Mastodon can follow me via Kazemi’s RSS bot.
I haven’t really looked at the reddit since I set it up, it look’s like it’s not working properly. Now it should work.
The problem was my RSS feed, oh my precious feed, Since I messed around with the Jekyll site’s path ,url & baseurl It changed the output of the feed.
The feed was set up something like this:
<link>https://alex-esc.github.io</link>
Meaning it would link to a website made out of the variable site.url followed by the variable post.url vervatium. Problem was that site.url is set to alex-esc.github.io and post url is the name of the post file with a slash, meaning it would create a link like this: alex-esc.github.io//title. Instead of like this: alex-esc.github.io/posts/title
My superb fix was simply adding /posts to the code, take that compsci degree!
<link>https://alex-esc.github.io/posts</link>
Now that the RSS feed is valid and creates the proper links, it should post correctly to the reddit, mastodon, twitter & email thanks to IFTTT.
(this post itself servers as a test for my fix, maybe it works, maybe it docent)
I have added a new page to this blog, in it you can see my upcoming writing projects, essays & posts.
Peek into the crystal ball and see what’s up next. For a more personal stance of what happens behind the curtains follow me on mastodon, were I post more frequently what’s on my mind.
Thanks to write.as you can now follow this blog on the fediverse.
Important: the account @alexesc@write.as will not be used any longer, read the reasons behind this change. To stay up to date with my posts via Mastodon there’s a new updated link on the subscribe button at the top of the page.
The post will remained as it was before the changes noted above.
TL;DR
Blog posts only
My personal account
Click subscribe at the top
@alexesc@librem.one
You can follow this blog on @alexesc@write.as inside a Mastodon app or click here to see my Mastodon profile on a browser.
Their platform is brilliantly simple, just write and publish to the fediverse without having to worry about any technicalities. I have nothing but praise for them, in my experience they seem to value user experience as much as users do.
At the beginning I had problems with the service, just like Twitter had done to me, Write.as flagged me as a bot. Unlike Twitter, Write.as has actual humans doing actual support - actually.
I reached out by e-mail and Daniel quickly responded:
Hey Alex,
Sorry about that – our systems are a bit rudimentary and sometimes catch legitimate posts. Just let me know what your username is and we’ll disable the spam filter for your account.
After I provided him with my username he then replayed:
Of course, happy to help!
I’ve just disabled the spam filter, so you should be able to publish freely now. Please let us know if you ever encounter other issues, though.
How nice of them!
If you want to follow me beyond what I write on this blog you can absolutely give me a follow on my personal Mastodon account.
On my Mastodon account expect micro-content, updates about blog posts; video, movies and book recommendations and so on. Oh and don’t forget hot takes, there’s always some hot take around the corner.
It seems there has been a paradigm shift in privacy activism; we went from protesting digital injustices in the name of privacy, autonomy and freedom of speech to reacting without autonomy, freedom of speech, or even privacy, to the same injustices we used to protest.
This reversal of values has been floating around my head for some time now, I wrote this blog post about it, originally it was a thread on the humane technology community forum. It was written as a response to another forum thread titled I Have to Get Facebook for College; in it the original poster commented how Facebook has a big grip on student’s life and work-flow, she also asked for tips to avoid Facebook’s undesirable “features” such as advertising and surveillance. I wrote your typical tech-head response: You need to install this, run this browser extension, setup this, configure that - But then I realized how complicit this type of advice I’m giving, this was a reactionary response.
My post on the humane tech forum sparked some controversy, commenter’s immune systems seemed to be resisting some sort of disease. Their almost automatic response cached my eye, not because it shows some kind of fatal flaw in their character, it doesn’t, it shows they are human; but we’re all human. The particular human mindset on the humane tech forum being in full display here is a strange mindset to be juxtaposed with humanity. Tristan Harris, head of the center of humane technology which brought to life the very same forum I posted my thoughts in, has a very sincere heart, listen to his podcast or some of his interviews and you’ll see it for yourself.
If the people behind the tech-lash, like Tristan Harris or internet users on Reddit’s privacy community, seem so genuine then what’s the problem? Don’t we need some sort of counter-cultural balance against big corporations doing injustices on a digital media landscape? Isn’t this what some tech enthusiast like myself would want out of a movement?
Well, yes, this sort of movement is exactly the kind someone inside my demographic would desire - this is exactly the problem at hand: the boxes we’re being drawn inside of.
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
Trump never fails to deliver reactionary talking points, on this tweet he endlessly goes after other countries, nations and territories as if they were facts of nature, as if they have always been there and always will. As if they were just more than lines drawn on a map; there has been a reversal, the map has become the territory.
Go back to “shithole” countries? I thought Trump wanted America to be a nation of winners! Trump marketed himself as someone capable of turning a country around, he said that’s what the USA needed, make America great again right? If the United States needs people like that, like Trump claims to be, then why is trump condemning people like that? Wouldn’t it be better if more people capable of change stay in your country? How are they gonna’ win once all the winners are gone for good?
Yet again, go back to where exactly? other lines drawn withing a map! We made them up, there not real. If you actually go to the border to sympathize with “dirty immigrants” you’d see the wall separates nothing; the barb-wire fence might be present, but so are the people and culture regardless of arbitrary lines on a map, the cultural bond stays.
Why would someone come to such backwards conclusions? If Trump supporters really cared for economic strength then why wouldn’t they embrace more people in the workforce providing with cheap labor? And why is going back to the good old days the ultimate contusion of this logic?
Because the initial premise isn’t true, either because it’s a false belief or wrong statement or the true intentions lie somewhere else; make america great again serves as a symbol, it’s not Trump’s true motto but it functions like it is to hide blatant racism behind economic intentions. The needs to outcast, classify, quantify and analyze as data points on an Excel spreadsheet are being canonized by our digital technologies. Our desire to abstract away the people we presuppose as “the others” has always been with us, for as long as humankind has been around some of us have demonized one another to justify injustices, but today our racism and misogyny have already been systematized: First in the form of racial segregation and an unequal workplace, but now with algorithmic bias, scientific racism and the systematically cold on/off-us/them ideology ingrained into our digital devices.
My observations in the privacy community lead me to believe that our group has fallen into this very same trap. Privacy minded folks tend to mock “the others”, fetishize a pre-Internet society and - in a very Trump-ian way - undermine the goals and values they claim to champion.
Here are some real examples that cached my eye. On Reddit’s sub-section of privacy enthusiasts r/privacy I found a user asking how could he remove himself from the Web completely, here’s the most up-voted answer:
1. Die.
2. Submit proof of death to all sites where you had accounts.
The joke-like subversion of expectations aside, this comment shines a light into the deep rooted tech pessimism within the community. On that very same post some other user simply replayed with:
Unplug your internet
Oh, the Irony! Turns out the command-line-loving-Linux-only-FOSS-super-tech-savvy people don’t like their technologies! They would rather quit the Net than to write the code necessary to fix it.
It also seems like we don’t really care for capital P Privacy, when it comes to avoiding digital surveillance the privacy community acts with ego. Rather than fighting for everyone’s right for (capital P) Privacy, each one of us fights for their own right to isolate themselves from the world; we seem to care for privacy with an uncapitalized p, meaning we care for privacy only in the terms of superficial aesthetics.
Our individual and atheistic understanding of privacy has, in some extreme cases, lead “privacy-woke people” to spy on others to protect themselves. With great irony, some people violate other’s right to privacy in the name of their own. The following is a real conversation on a privacy focused Telegram group:
User A:
What can I do when my family keeps posting pictures of me on facebook ?
I've told them numerous times I don't want to appear there regardless
of context but they are morons when it comes to that
User B:
Put a key logger on their phone and delete the pictures once uploaded
User B:
Did that with my family
User B:
Have all their social media
User A:
Well pointless
User B:
Ok
User A:
Facebook gets the data if it gets uploaded
User A:
But I like the ideea
User A:
😈
User B:
I bet Mark Zuckerberg is masturbating to your images
User A:
I'm sure of it dude
Me:
I hope you're kidding
On another Reddit post a user asked for tips for migrating from Google Chrome to Firefox, this was the top most response:
Honestly if you cared about privacy you should've left Chrome a long
time ago.
Then the original poster replied to that comment with shame, this OP reply is now deleted, but if I remember correctly he said something amongst the lines of how Google Chrome has bad ad practices and that he’s ashamed he ever used it.
The same commenter that shamed him for not using Firefox “soon enough” then said to him:
I agree about the adds, I'm simply pointing out that if anyone cares
about privacy using anything google is the anthesis of that.
Then I responded:
I just don't see a reason to say it like that. This approach is
common in the sub, this whole if you don't use X you don't care about
privacy thing gives privacy advocacy a bad rep.
At least we are not installing linux on our families and
friends computers...yet.
But his smugness remained, the privacy shame-er then replied to my criticism with:
It may not have been the best way to phrase it, but the meaning is sound.
This, almost asshole-atheist, way to respond to a genuine criticism of the pro-privacy unwritten rulebook shows the sort of reversal of values I talked about on the Humane tech forum:
We claim to care for free speech, yet we shame one each other into silence for not using the right software; we claim to champion technology, yet we glorify disconnecting from the Internet; we claim to care for privacy, yet at least some of us spy on their parents to protect their own privacy. Our value claims being proved false is not a sign of our community being “broken” - there’s no anomaly here, no problem to be fixed - this community functions just like it’s been setup to work: Privacy, freedom of speech and digital autonomy are not our goals, just like make america great again isn’t Donald Trump’s ultimate goal. It’s a distraction, blatant misdirection and deception.
Like all reactionary movements fear drives our privacy community forward. In a purely outcome based perspective I see no difference between Trump fear-mongering about immigrants and the privacy community’s fear of the government or big tech - they both serve as the mechanism to keep the moment afloat, mobilized paranoia.
On a different thread another reddit user wrote:
how can you sleep knowing what intel has on your system?
I'm scared as shit now and I consider going offline for good
I knew recently about the intel me and I'm completely paranoid
about it, I want it off of my PC, like this is my personal space
I'm not exaggerating
how can they make such a thing and govs don't give a single shit?
why the fuck does some one wants to collect this amount of data? and
don't dare and tell me to customize my experience and ads this
shit is big, like really big
all the conspiracy theories I didn't believe in are now being
more ... shall we say believable, for something like this to exist
in every single computer, server and firewall on the planet must
raise some question of why is this a thing?
this isn't for security I'm sure as hell
although I'm a computer nerd (not so good but I know my way around)
since I was 13 and I'm 21 I only got to low level stuff recently
like about 8 months or so but I really consider going offline for
good until a better online word comes to life
now I know for a fact that these tech corp. have some shitty background
I'm sure as shit that these companies have some data sharing contract
or some shit, like if MS doesn't get you by windows, intel gets you
by intel me
By looking at how “privacy extremists” act and react we can see the systematic meme-tics at work. Without a doubt there’s an embedded agenda in the privacy community, and it’s neither about privacy nor freedom.
To say it bluntly, the privacy community sometimes behaves like an Internet cult. All the signs are present. Steven Hassan is a mental health expert and author of several books regarding mind control and cult deprogramming, on his 2015 book Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs he proposes a simple model to identify cult behavior on social groups, he calls it the B.I.T.E. model.
This model aims to reflect the early signs of a cult taking a bite out of someone’s life. B.I.T.E. stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control & Emotional Control.
Behavior Control
Promote dependence and obedience
Modify behavior with rewards and punishments
Dictate where and with whom you live
Restrict or control sexuality
Control clothing and hairstyle
Regulate what and how much you eat and drink
Deprive you of seven to nine hours of sleep
Exploit you financially
Restrict leisure time and activities
Require you to seek permission for major decisions
Information Control
Deliberately withhold and distort information
Forbid you from speaking with ex-members and critics
Discourage access to non-cult sources of information
Divide information into Insider vs. Outsider doctrine
Generate and use propaganda extensively
Use information gained in confession sessions against you
Gaslight to make you doubt your own memory
Require you to report thoughts, feelings, & activities to superiors
Encourage you to spy and report on others’ “misconduct”
Thought Control
Instill Black vs. White, Us vs. Them, & Good vs. Evil thinking
Change your identity, possibly even your name
Use loaded language and cliches to stop complex thought
Induce hypnotic or trance states to indoctrinate
Teach thought-stopping techniques to prevent critical thoughts
Allow only positive thoughts
Use excessive meditation, singing, prayer, & chanting to block thoughts
Those bluet points are not definitive proof that X group acts like a cult, rather than a one size fits all solution think of it like a set of guidelines for identifying manipulative and problematic groups. Meaning cults may have some, but not all, listed characteristics in the chart.
On a later post I will analyze the privacy community point by point with the BITE model, for now let it serve as food for thought about this or other online communities, for example: The meme community, incels, red-pill-ers, MGTOW’s, etc…
If something is clear, it’s that the privacy community only protects privacy, freedom & liberty on a superficial level, they accomplish this by creating a narrative of us versus them fueled by tech paranoia and that one common outcome of this mentality is to isolate yourself from the Net.
“Get off our territory, the Web is ours! Big corporations are trying to censor us because they know we are right! They’re out to get you like it’s 1984! & we must destroy our enemy” not only applies with the privacy community, as you may guess, this logic is also popular amongst one important person:
The White House will be hosting a very big and very important Social Media Summit today. Would I have become President without Social Media? Yes (probably)! At its conclusion, we will all go to the beautiful Rose Garden for a News Conference on the Census and Citizenship.
The deeper hidden agenda of anti-tech, anti-progress and anti-empathy inside the privacy community may have more to do with classical right wing politics than with neo-liberal silicon valley.
Writing about tech had often involved watching YouTube tutorials and condensing their content into this blog, or at least it used to. Now that I try to tackle more nuanced ideas like digital rights, Internet culture and to an extent politics online, I can no longer find my kick in ten minute videos.
I wear my inspiration with pride, but my idols weren’t always the same. Four years ago I got into podcasts, long and polished discussions about tech drew me in but in the beginning I only listened to Relay FM’s Cortex podcast. For years I was starving for long form content so I decided to listen to talks about whatever topic on a regular basis. Until I discovered Google’s talk YouTube page I found my go to thinker: Douglas Rushkoff.
Rushkoff is a media theorist who coined the term viral media, and by extension viral video, this is why he tends to be misinterpreted as a marketing guru when in fact he is as anti-marketing as you can get. Douglas’s work focuses on digital media environments, and how they affect society and the economy; On his 2017 talk at Google he spoke about his most recent book at the time: Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. The talk spoke to me, it seems like every little tangent and sentence unveiled some hidden truth behind the tech curtain, from his casual chit-chat with the audience at the beginning to his profound economical analysis of the digital environment he had me hooked. Only a day later, by pure change, he went on TED to lecture about his new book Team Human.
I was blown away, it seemed Doug could do no wrong. Shocked by his presentation I searched for his YouTube channel, there I found an interview with Bo Burnham, one of my favorite comedians, the video description pointed to his podcast, so I rushed to add the RSS feed into my phone’s podcast app. I listened to Doug’s podcast for months, I burned through his hole catalog. On one of his latest episodes he said he’s going on a small break and that the break should work as reflection time for both himself and his listeners. As any author would do, he winked to the idea that now’s the perfect time to read his newest book; He got me hook, line, and sinker.
The book is eye opening, it condenses so much vital information to interpret today’s media landscape, from evolutionary biology to media bias to agriculture and then back to digital technologies. There truly is no other book or media work like Team Human, but after reading it I still craved for more! By listening to Rushkoff and reading online discussions about technology the names Tristan Harris and Jaron Lanier always came about, so I decided to gave them a try.
This had lead me to my first official book phase! Looking into those new authors has lead me to more cool people and ideas, but a problem quickly arrived: How am I going to download, format, organize and read those books?
My e-book setup
To end on a high note, and to please the tech-heads like myself, here’s how my setup looks like:
Get the book, preferably on EPUB format, then add it to my digital library on my computer, use a software called Calibre to edit the book’s meta-data and add a nice cover, send it to my Android phone - my reading device of choice - via Syncthing and read it with KOReader. If the file doesn’t play well with my reader of choice, then I can always count with MuPDF as a last resort, since it’s a simple universal document viewer.
Now a more in depth tour of my setup:
e-book format
book manager
sync them with my phone or e-reader
read them on my phone or e-reader
PDF, EPUB or OPF
Calibre on desktop
Syncthing or the cloud for desktop-mobile, usb sync for e-reader
KOReader on Android or Kindle, MuPDF on Android
Calibre
This is my e-book manager of choice, there’s truly northing as good like it on desktop. Think of it as iTunes but for e-books, you have a library of books that you can organize, tag, read and modify. Some useful features include editing meta-data, meaning if a PDF is missing it’s cover Calibre can look it up for you and modify the file so it has the correct cover.
Calibre allows me to rename all my book files in just the way I like, add the best looking covers, transform from one book format to another, organize my books inside the app and on the file system and to export all books into one drive, in this case into my phone.
Calibre is free of charge and licensed under the GNU General Public License, created and maintained by Kovid Goyal. You can support Calibre’s development and other projects from it’s creator by becoming his Patreon.
Syncthing is like your own cloud storage, instead of using iCloud or Google Drive to send your e-books from one device to another (or any file for that matter) you can use this nifty program to sync one folder on, let’s say, your Desktop to your Android device.
To sync your e-books with your Android phone, first create a folder on your desktop with all your e-books, note that this can be accomplished with calibre, then point syncthing to it and set up the syncthing app on your Android. It will create a new folder on your phone that perfectly mirrors the folder you told it to, your e-book’s folder. Now whenever you download a new book on your desktop or mobile device syncthing will make sure both devices stay updated with the same books and files.
KOReader is a super nice piece of software, its a document viewer for e-readers and android. KOReader can browse local files, open e-books, keep track of your progress, highlight text, add notes, lookup words on the dictionary or Wikipedia, translate words, it has both light and dark mode and it’s beautifully minimalistic.
It’s free, zero, nada. It’s libre, open, GNU (Affero GPL v3.0). It runs on Android (The dark theme on a OLED screen looks gorgeous) and e-reader devices such as kindle. KOReader is maintained by e-book-loving volunteers, there’s no donation information available on their website, so to show them your support join their forum or thank the top contributors directly.
MuPDF is an extremely minimalist, bloat free, PDF & e-book reader. It lacks many features that KOReader has like a robust file browser and dark mode, but it’s beauty it’s in it’s simplicity: It opens PDF’s quickly and plainly. If a particular book’s format doesn’t play well with KOReader, this hasn’t happened to me, or if you just want to open a book or article quickly without adding it to your book collection or dealing with a robust system, then MuPDF works best.
This project is economically maintained by Artifex Software, originally published by Tor Andersson in 2005. This PDF reader is free software licensed for personal use under the GNU Affero General Public License. You can modify MuPDf by forking the original repository.
Right now I’m almost done with Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human and I have a lot to say about it; You can expect a review in the near future. Doug is not my only source for wisdom, many other authors and books are on my list, I think a book club of sorts will unfurl on this blog.
Once the Team Human review is done, I will continue to dive deeper into digital technologies, if you want my individual take on tech you can check out my other posts or my tech medium page.
Something I see often overlooked in privacy discussions is if our techniques for achieving privacy are actually contributing to the liberation of cyberspace and building a healthy internet society or are we just making our situation worst.
The common techniques for achieving privacy tend to be more about avoiding surveillance rather than fixing what caused it in the first place. Now let’s take Facebook for example, let’s say a privacy newbie stumbles upon a privacy forum, he learns about the wrong doings of Facebook and he decides he wants to make a change. Now, what is the typical response he would get?
Well from experience I can say that is mostly in line with the #deletefacebook mentality. And trust me, I tend to be around online privacy advocates a lot, online forums, subreddits and telegram chats, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that’s not 100% on board with this whole #deletefacebook mentality.
Who I call privacy extremists tend to have one opinion regarding Facebook: To hell with it. Facebook and other social media sites spy on us, manipulate us and restrict our free speech with their black-box proprietary algorithms. For tech-extremists there’s only one way to “break free” from Mark’s dirty hands and achieve freedom and liberation, the only way is out.
On reddit you’ll often see people asking how to become fully anonymous to arrive at this free speech utopia, they want to be lone wolfs, nobody should have the right to even look them in the eye. But anonymity comes with great irony of outcome.
If you get off Facebook and other repressive and so called evil digital platforms with the hope of gaining back your agency, free speech and privacy then you will ironically lose the values and freedoms you treasured most. To achieve full anonymity one must never say his or her name, never make any accounts, never comment, never express yourself, always delete all cookies and other metadata and leave no trace.
Privacy “woke” people think they are free now that they isolate themselves and repress their own speech to avoid algorithmic classification as part of one specific market demographic. But giving up their free speech is not the only value they used to treasure but actually self-repress.
Privacy is the human right to protect the few things and people you value most, but if you embrace anonymity then you value everything equally to the extend you must delete all data, in other words with anonymity nothing is of value.
To never say what you want to say, to never participate in discourse, to understand privacy in nihilistic terms, to #deletefacebook is not a sing of digital liberation, it’s self inflicted repression.
Reading Snowden’s findings tends to be analogous with the Incel’s community “Black pill”, to take the snowden pill is to recognize that all is lost, that the surveillance dystopia is already here and the only solution is to lay down and rot. The only way is out.
People who read Snowden and Richard Stallman come to a point of tech defeatism. All proprietary software robs you of your rights, therefore the government and all private companies disrespect your rights, the entire world is against you.
Because the only way is out the only logical solution is to quit proprietary software altogether: Install linux, live in the command line, regular software and websites can’t be trusted, you might as well go offline.
This privacy rabbit hole is not uncommon, look at the people on the forums and subreddits: They all want to quit service X and adopt a more isolated version. Quitting one thing after another and another not only creates difficulty in everyday life - Sorry I can’t use whatsapp, it’s proprietary software - it also creates unhealthy isolation.
Privacy extremists in this way tend to move away from public discourse into small and niche private communities. This density of extremists has social repercussions: It creates eco chambers.
A privacy newbie might then be redirected to an isolated platform were he can become radicalized by the eco chamber. It’s a cycle of digital self harm: A user has genuine concerns about social media privacy and he is incentiveized to isolate himself, making him vulnerable to believing the group’s dogma and then becoming part of the endless discussion about how the only solution is to isolate oneself, justifying the actions of the community, now that a new member joins this community the cycle can continue.
From interested to preacher of dogma, privacy purists push people away from the rights and freedoms they claim to champion like agency, free speech and privacy and towards an unhealthy state of mind, they push privacy advocates towards isolation and self repression.
The problem stems from the initial supposition, that to delate Facebook is synonymous to fixing surveillance. We should not #deletefacebook, we should #fixfacebook.
To quit social media is to run away from the problem. That’s not activism, that’s being a coward. Confronting the problem doesn’t mean choosing alternative platforms or software, market solutions are not the solution, they are the root cause.
Joining mastodon instead of facebook is doing as much to fix surveillance capitalism as buying metal straws is doing to stop companies from emitting 71% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions: Zero.
Real change, however it might look, will not come about from isolation and self repression. To fix tech we must put away the quitting everything mentality, because it’s tearing us apart.
Real change will not come from lonely individuals on a blockchain-powered-libre-source social media platform, real change will come from collective effort. Only together we can even begin to fix this.
Originally published on the humane tech community forum, to read the original post and read the comments click here.
After months of writing for nobody but myself, I finally decided to take my ideas to a public place. Medium is normally a website were pretentious rejected TED speakers vomit buzzwords onto your screen, now I’ll be joining the party!
My ideas and thoughts - although rarely not heavily inspired by Douglas Rushkoff, Lawrence Lessig, Tristan Harris & Jaron Lanier - have gained some traction amongst my friends and family. After opening up my ideas to my friends I expected the social equivalent of being tomato’d off stage but to my surprise I was encouraged!
They tell me to write my ideas down, that I might be up to something. Funny you say that, I’ve actually been writing way before talking you you guys was my honest and shy response. Now people whom I’ve talk to about tech and media seem to want to talk some more about it on a later date.
I have also taken my Ideas to reddit, and because reddit is reddit, I’ve received my fare share of downvotes for challenging privacy dogma. But at least 2 people seem to be super on board with me and what I say, so probably I’m not too of the rails.
As the time I write this I’m in the middle of a writing course, I’ll be taking this class for the summer and on it the content of an entire semester gets squished into 4 weeks, so I’ll be busy on attending that.
The bright side is I can choose whatever topic I’d like and digital tech it is. The last article “How Digital Technologies Reflect Who We Are” was written as the first assignment.
The work that I’m especially proud of will be going up on my medium page, all my “big ideas” regarding digital rights will go up on medium as well.
Make sure to follow me on medium, the new home for my extra pretentious work.
As I mentioned long ago, I am starting a new project to promote human rights online. I call it digital rights and on it’s website me and the community will be posting articles, writing blogs, creating videos and podcasts about technology and how we can make it more humane.
The project had been slowing down since it’s inception, but recently I’ve picked up the steam and I managed to publish the first article titled How Digital Technologies Reflect Who We Are.
This is an introduction to digital rights, its purpose is to allow ourselves to ask questions about tech like what kind of impact does it have on society?
If you’d like to find out head over to the article and subscribe to the site’s blog or it’s social media accounts for getting notifications when new content gets published.
Up until now if you wanted to keep up with my work you ether had to visit my site every so often to manually check if new content had been added or if you’re a computer nerd you could add my RSS feed to your news aggregator of choice.
This changes now!
Now You can click the subscribe button at the top of the page & select from 4 different methods to get notified when I post something new, and unlike the old RSS method - it’s brain-dead-easy.
If you’re old school - or simply don’t fiddle with social media - you’d now be able to get my content directly e-mailed into your email inbox.
Internet power users like myself will also be happy to get content from long form content platforms and that’s why I set up a subreddit.
You can subscribe to r/alex_esc_reddit to get my latest work in your front page, provide feedback, make contributions, find other like-minded people and similar blogs.
Obscure RSS feeds and alternative platforms are nice and all, but if you’re not crazy about all of that you can still follow me on twitter.
My twitter account @alex_esc_tweets automatically posts when I write a new blog or publish a new project, so make sure to follow me in there if you’re interested.
Before you subscribe, a privacy heads up.
Most of my work involves privacy in some way or another, and because I usually advocate for strict privacy practices I have to warn you before you subscribe to my blog.
Subscribe via e-mail is handled by Google, so if they didn’t know your email behavior before, they will do now if you decide to subscribe via e-mail.
Not to say that everything Google touches rots with bad intentions, but some people think Google is kind of creepy and wish not to welcome the wolf at the door.
A similar argument can be made about twitter or reddit, but with those services it’s obvious what information is being collected.
Unlike with Google’s FeedBurner. This service that powers the e-mail notifications is very sneaky to admit they are runned by google systems, so that’s the heads up.
Of course if you want to get notifications without anyone breaking your personal privacy boundaries you can always use RSS.
If you don’t know what RSS is or how to use it, start our by reading my explanation: here.
Everyone has their own personal boundaries, it should be up to each one of us to draw the line of what counts as a privacy violation and what’s OK, that’s why I built the subscribe function with options.
On your phone you’ve got notifications, on your computer you have a different type of notifications and inside social media apps you have other independent notifications, right?
So what is RSS and why are notifications relevant?
Well on different services or devices you have separate notifications, on some occasions independent from each other. And that’s kind of a mess.
If you follow a number of blogs and some podcast on top of that it can get very stressful really quickly. To check if this guy has uploaded a new picture you have to check his Instagram, and then you have to switch apps to check if some other creator uploaded a YouTube video, switch again to see if your favorite podcaster has a new episode, switch to your email app to see if there’s a new blog from some other creator and now you have successfully opened 4 different apps just to keep up with the stuff you care about.
On top of that we must remind ourselves that each time you enter one social media app you are incentivized to stay on that app, but since you want to keep up with all platforms we don’t want to get sucked into this one app.
This method of keeping up bad for your attention, it reduces your focus, requires multiple actions and more space eon your phone or computer.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a really simple method for combining all feeds into one?
Well, that’s RSS: It stands for Really Simple Syndication.
How will it look like?
Instead of checking four or five news feeds, RSS is an app r program that reads all those feeds, copy pastes the content of all of them and presents them in one feed.
RSS is like a list of items, just like every news feed, but this one is the one to rule them all.
Inside the RSS news feed you can see text, images, videos and links.
But no comments, since RSS just copies what it finds on other apps instead of working with the other apps it just copy pastes what you tell it to and shows you what it found.
That sounds cool, how do I use it then?
There are two key parts: The App you download to combine the news feeds for you and RSS news feeds.
RSS apps are called news aggregators, they combine RSS news feeds. Your job is to tell your aggregator what news feeds to combine.
So go to your app store and find an RSS aggregator you like, I recommend you to read this Wikipedia article that lists popular aggregators.
Now to tell it what news feeds to combine you have to give it an RSS internet address.
Just like in e-mail you have your address (like my.name@gmail.com), RSS have a URL address, for example myblog.com/rss.
In e-mail you tell your computer who to email, in RSS you copy paste the RSS news feed address.
Each news aggregator app has different ways to add a new news feed link, but generally there’s a big plus sign that does the job.
once you are adding a news feed, copy paste the news feed address of the blog, podcast, website or internet creator you want to keep up with.
How do I find out the news feed address of my favorite website or creator?
Websites often have an RSS button, if you click it it will take you to the news feed address you need to copy paste to add it to your aggregator.
The RSS button looks like this, you may have seen it before not knowing what it was, well now you know :)
A creator I want to keep up with has no RSS icon on their website, what can I do?
Social media sites like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram don’t publicly display their RSS tools.
But that docent mean they don’t use RSS in the background to work out their news feeds without telling you.
I wont go into detail on how to get the RSS address from every platform, but here I have linked you to some useful tutorials and services that find out the RSS address for you:
Follow an Instagram account with RSS with this tool.
Follow a twitter user with RSS with one of this 2 options (option 1, option 2).
In a nutshell.
Now you should understand how to combine your news feeds with RSS, you understand the 2 main parts of an RSS setup: your aggregator or app you need to download & that RSS news feed address look like website addresses and you just need to copy paste them into your aggregator.
Keep your feeds organized and enjoy a more calm and stress free news feed with the added benefit of having everything in one place.
As of lately I have been feeling very Zen about my internet comment habits. In the past my commenting diet was comprised of YouTube, Facebook & Reddit and after leaving behind the wormhole that is Facebook and adopting a new work-flow for watching YouTube videos my comment anxiety has dropped massively.
But the elephant in the room remained: Reddit, and boy oh boy how much as our relationship changed. First in our honeymoon I subscribed to all the subreddits, scrolled down the comments and replied with memes and joy. Now that the dust has settled I see through the toxicity.
On a good reddit day I would find a good post, comment my opinion briefly, then get down-voted to hell, socially pressured to explain my opinion more thoroughly to show that the commenters have completely misunderstood my point, write a wall of text and finally get ignored.
This cycle was stressing me out, so after I created my new account and left all my comment history behind I found time to breath in and out on the interwebz. ah! can you smell the silicon from here?
Before my internet power user days the reply text box was weirdly special: It was a place to think out loud and analyze my point of view. It was almost like speaking to God through prayer: You would have a very special idea in your head and through the ritual of typing gigantic paragraphs on the keyboard only to re-write your whole comment you would communicate with this behemoth that is the internet.
You would type your reply not knowing if someone would listen or if your prayers would come true. In this way the process of internet comments felt grandiose and unlike anything else online.
After writing comment after comment the magic begun to fade, and the text box below each website sparked anxiety instead of the prayer-like powerless wonder that it used to.
Because of my comment detox I feel no urge to respond to every word in a bullet-point manner, and by turning off all comment related notifications I have found time to think in the real world, after my detox I would think out loud by talking to friends about the comments that stuck around in my head instead of thinking out loud in the comment text box.
Suddenly my responses begun to flow. No longer would I think my argument through isolated inside my commuter but in the middle of a walk or bus ride. Now I can feel the quality of my ideas begin to flourish, I feel intellectually and emotionally satisfied with my walls of text, I even seem to come off as smarter than before.
Comments used to make me feel powerless but wonderful like in prayer, after the color faded they felt powerless and anxious.
Now I feel Zen, like I’m one with myself and my keyboard.
After playing around with RSS I came across FeedBurner, it allowed me to do a podcast for free, I explained my setup on my previous post and it’s all possible thanks to FeedBurner.
With this newly discovered tool I created an email mailing list for this blog, now you can click the subscribe button at the top and click on the email subscription link.
Now you should take in mind that FeedBurner is owned by Google, if you’re serious about your digital privacy you should consider subscribing via RSS, the link is also on the subscribe page up top.
After some toying around with RSS I think I’ve got it kind of figured out, so yeah expect a full tutorial in the future, for now here is a brief explanation of my setup.
What do I want from my podcast?
The podcast basics: title, author, description, etc.
A free way to host the audio without time limits or file size limits.
An itunes ready podcast feed.
Easily upload new episodes.
Automatically generating feed, no manual XML coding necessary.
The option to create, edit and host the XML feed at your terms.
How to get there.
Youtube playlist + podsync + Feedburner
These tools will help you get your podcast up and ruining for free, here we go:
Step one, upload to a YouTube playlist.
Uploading new episodes and editing previous ones is super simple, you need to create a YouTube playlist, you can add your videos to it and use the YouTube tools to add a thumbnail, edit name and description and so on.
Because YouTube is free you can pretty much use it as a file hosting service.
Step two, transform the playlist into a podcast feed.
The next step is to create an RSS feed for the YouTube playlist and make it itunes podcast compatible, so here you have two options, you can make your podcast feed automatic or manual.
Manual or automatic?
Automatic: An automatic feed is the easiest option, if you go automatic you only need to upload your videos into YouTube, add them to your podcast playlist and your podcast will be automatically distributed to itunes or spotify once you set it up. There are a few downsides, if podsync or Feedburner go out of business or stop working your podcast will not get into itunes or spotify, downside two: Because we’re using YouTube to host the podcast all your podcast episodes will be video only, not such a big deal because you can make the video a still image but your audience will use more data listening to your podcast, you could still use a YouTube playlist to upload your podcast and get an audio only podcast feed but for that you need to use the manual method.
Manual: Not as difficult as it sounds, but by writing your own XML you have full control over your podcast feed, you can use certain tools to do the heavy lifting for you, and you can still use YouTube playlists to host your files and even transform your video playlist into an audio only podcast feed (those methods will be covered in the next tutorial, subscribe to this blog for future updates).
Step tree, setting up your automatic podcast feed.
Copy the URL link of your YouTube playlist, for example:
Now go to https://podsync.net/ and paste your link inside the box that says ‘paste your link here’
You will get a new URL, copy that one and go to http://feedburner.google.com/.
Follow the instructions in there, add the link you just copied from podsync in the blox below ‘Burn a feed right this instant. Type your blog or feed address here’
And there you go, your feed should now be done and ready for itunes or spotify podcasts, to view your feed click on the little grey RSS icon besides the name of your feed, it will look something like this:
Done! You can use your newly created feedburner link to submit your podcast feed to your favorite podcast app.
Advanced features:
More features like transforming this video podcast YouTube Feed into an audio only podcast feed and transferring your feed to other host services or even hosting it on your own will be covered on the full in depth tutorial.
The full tutorial will be out sometime soon, so subscribe to this blog and keep an eye on more tips, blog and general goofyness.
This blog now features comments! If you’d like to ask me anything about any given blog post you can now write it as a comment on their own reddit post.
Blog posts that invite or incentive comments will get their own reddit, since I try to avoid clutter on the site not all blog posts will get a comment section, only the ones I consider “comment friendly” will get official comments since day one.
If you want to comment and there is no reddit available you can always post it yourself on a related subreddit and tag my username so I can add the comments to the blog interface.
Let’s say that there are no comments available on a post and you’d like to avoid a certain reddit community, in that case you can request official comments.
To request official comments means that the blog post will get it’s own little space on reddit via my official reddit profile, to request official comments send me a reddit PM or click here.
Update from the Twitter suspension, the ban hammer has been lifted! I got this response from Twitter via email:
Hello,
Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.
Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.
Thanks,
Twitter Support
So lets take at the rules provided via the link, I’ll show you the rules that I interpret as relevant to my account’s case:
Spam and Security
Access or search, or attempt to access or search, Twitter by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter. Note that crawling Twitter is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file; however, scraping Twitter without our prior consent is expressly prohibited.
Spam: You may not use Twitter’s services for the purpose of spamming anyone. Spam is generally defined on Twitter as bulk or aggressive activity that attempts to manipulate or disrupt Twitter or the experience of users on Twitter to drive traffic or attention to unrelated accounts, products, services, or initiatives. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming include:
if you post duplicative or substantially similar content, replies, or mentions over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account, or create duplicate or substantially similar accounts;
if you send large numbers of unsolicited replies or mentions;
What rules did I break?
Ok so lets go through them one by one, first off we have this rule:
Under the Twitter rules an account is considered spam if it uses Twitter services via an unapproved program, app or client.
Access […] Twitter by any means […] other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter.
Meaning you may only use Twitter using the Twitter app or web page, interestingly I exclusively use the Twitter web client, if you see my posts you’ll find the majority were posted via “Twitter Web App”.
More precisely I use Twitter with ‘SlimSocial for Twitter’, Slim social its just a wrapper around Twitter’s mobile website and APIs. I use this app because it protects the users privacy because it acts as a middle man between the twitter website and my phone, preventing the Twitter web client from gathering data from my phone.
I suspect SlimSocial’s shielding is being perceived by Twitter’s algorithm as some kind of web scraping or as a unintended Twitter client, when in fact its just the official web client + tracker blocking.
The rules also stipulate that spam accounts also talk about the same topics and reply with multiple posts:
[Spaming consists of … ] if you post duplicative or substantially similar content [and] if you send large numbers of unsolicited replies or mentions.
Similar content and large replies seem like the epidemy of spam, but we musn’t forget that a key point of spam is consent, what makes spam annoying isn’t that you get tons of replies about one particular topic, spam is annoying when you get tons of replies about an irrelevant topic, un-wanted content is almost exclusively off topic: It’s the context that matters.
The naturally emerging rewards and punishments.
Building an algorithm that understands context is a task not up to social media to solve - at least not primarily - The main task of social media is accelerating and facilitating user interaction, in my view an utopic social media site facilitates back and forth discussion and communication, we need easy, secure and private communication for our everyday lives, a chat with your friend, groupchat with coworkers - that kind of peer to peer meetings or value exchanges are important for keeping our day to day moving - But for society to advance, for the next Renaissance to occur we need long term discussions, we need the modern day equivalent to the 17th century coffeehouses, a place for thoughtful debate and expression.
Just like a Burger King would look out of place besides The Museum of Modern Art, there’s a sort of clash between long term intellectual intercourse and sending memes to your pals. Given the nature of some topics you may appreciate a long paragraph or two, using repetition to make a concept click in and even - God forbid - more than 280 characters! I know it sounds crazy to try to express yourself outside of quips and hot takes, but hey I might be completely out of my mind on that one.
In my particular case, I created the _digitalrights account to share a message and engage in discussions and to achieve this type of communication I have successfully filled in the requirements for spam: I redact my replies on multiple posts that contain similar content, precisely because they are continuations of the same topic at hand.
Some people may argue that the Twitter rules although vague in principle, don’t target long form conversation, it was just a mistake, a perfect alignment of the stars interpreted incorrectly, the Twitter spam rules share the same concept of spam as I do, they just phrase it differently - And that’s why the rules never mention a spam account or post as being ‘off topic’ or even attempt to define or share their internal definition of spam - Well that counter argument is something I can not refute, since it claims to know the original intentions of Twitter as some kind of perfect divine book interpretation, this argument seems to me like a variation of the not true Scotsman fallacy so I will pay attention to it no more unless proven I vastly misunderstand the link they provided on their email response.
What does concern me is this: If I am flagged as spam for publicly stating my opinions and viewpoints in a repetitive enough fashion, then why are politicians allowed on Twitter? No seriously if beating around the bush with multiple posts and promoting the same ideas over and over again is indistinguishable from spam to an algorithm then politicians should have a peaty hard time on the site don’t you think?
Now enter the slippery slope for all kinds of public figures, companies, advertisers & activists - Or in other words long form communication - Think of the many speeches and documents that changed the world in the past, Luther King JR’s ‘I have a dream’ speech , The Communist Manifesto and the Ninety-five Theses come to mind, just think of the impact on society: Civil Rights, the cold war & the Protestant Reformation! These long term documents sparked our world with all it’s imperfections and quirks mind you, but this documents are transcendental and huge tidal waves still ripple today.
We went from long term documents to practically all nation’s leaders feuding on Twitter. The platforms we surround ourselves everyday tend to favor the fast foods of discussions, this is a legitimate problem and limitation of the current implementation for social media, platforms may intent to push long term connection but their selling features - their gimmicks - run contrary to these ideas and values. I’m not saying every page on the net should be it’s own medium post or that short term content is inherently harmful to society, no what I’m trying to say is that we need a balance of both & heavily normalizing one over the other leads to big time problems.
Coffeehouses and social media sites try to seek something from of us, they are designed to incentivize some behaviors over others, let’s look back at ourselves and wonder if the rewards we encourage create a more desirable world, the decision to create the future should be a conscious one, let’s stand up from the audience chair, stop being passive consequences from the world and put on our designer’s hat, build new platforms and well I’m running out of characters, I’m at minus 8108 characters right now so …… I’ll see you around …. as long as I’m allowed on Twitter, bye!
Update: My account has been restored, thanks for your support :)
If you follow my blog posts you might know about my project Digital Rights , it’s my attempt to become part of a wide discussion about social change and the future of technology.
Unlike other public figures, I don’t frame the technology story in terms of black and white, some privacy advocates speak of Google or Facebook as the clear enemy, they may raise interesting points about Internet addiction and monopoly like behavior but they forget about the wider ethical, social and economical picture.
With Digital Rights my goal is to simply re-frame a typical privacy issue into an ethical issue, to hopefully remind ourselves that social media was a creation of people and human problems require human solutions.
So to promote my project I had to break my own rules and use twitter, I gave myself a pass because it’s not my personal account, I wouldn’t post what’s on my mind unlike on this very blog, it would be only about the project.
So I created an account with a protonmail email to go with it and just as I logged in it suspended my account.
It asked for SMS verification and I went with it, provided my info and basically sacrificing all my privacy for promoting a more privacy minded world, I thought I was for the better good so I continued despite my moral inclination.
The SMS didn’t arrive, I complained with an old account, send countless emails, restarted my phone very so often for the entire day until it send me the SMS verification code.
After that minor inconvenience I supposed it would be it but today I was commenting on a techcrunch post, the tweet linked an article titled “Why no one really quits Google or Facebook”.
I begun to write my response, I said that an overlooked part of why is nobody leaving Google or Facebook it’s because they are a kind of social contract mixed with low digital literacy rates, you give me a service and I give you my data seems like a fair deal if you don’t know how to be social on the Internet without Facebook or Twitter.
And as soon as I clicked reply on my last tweet I got this screen:
Once again I’m not getting the SMS verification code, so I’m stuck. To follow up my issue I opened a ticket with their support system and here’s how I described my problem:
Hello, my account was suspended without warning, this happened while I was tweeting at techcrucnh about why people don’t quit services like google or facebook (yeah even twitter) despite the massive privacy issues.
Banning me for being critical of the platform seems far fetched, I suspect my account was flagged as a spam account is because of my usage, I created this account to promote privacy in the digital age and as you can imagine I am a very privacy minded person: I use protonmail as my email provider and I use twitter via a mobile android app that blocks cookies and other kinds of trackers.
I theorize this is why my account looks suspicions to an algorithm, it runs on a not so common client, it has intermittent activity and it uses a very unpopular email provider, this characteristics describe me perfectly, but for an algorithm it rings the alarms.
The strange twitter setup extends to he rest of the tech in my life, now more relevant to my account suspension: My phone is configured in a very unusual way to avoid tracking of many types.
When I created this account I was also flagged as a bot & had to ‘prove that I’m a human’ and needed SMS verification, I had problems with SMS verification then and I still have problems.
I did not receive the latest SMS verification code, I only have one from November 2018.
I can’t tell if the problem is on twitters end or my phone setup and therefore I appear to be locked out for good.
Hopefully a human is reading this so we can work out this issue, can you prove you’re human? - OK but jokes aside - Please get back to me via my email.
-Thanks, Alex.
I give Twitter the benefit of the doubt, its probably an algorithm picking me up by accident rather than Twitter engaging in censorship, again I think to have a healthy discussion we don’t need privacy advocates calling company ‘X’ the next skynet.
It’s really ironic how it is us humans that need to prove ourselves on the platforms we built, hopefully this account suspension is just another minor hurtle in my journey for tech better fit for people.
I acknowledge the world ‘Ban’ in the title is misleading, but I just want to call more attention to my project and it’s ideas.
Update: My account has been restored, thanks for your support :)
So I came across this video, here are my thoughts.
I honestly can’t stand this type of behavior, there are many “alt-tech” or “alt-news” online personalities that although sometimes bring up legitimate concerns regarding free speech and privacy they only are concerned for political or religious reasons, in other words personal opinions or viewpoints.
I find it really sad that platforms that champion free speech like bit chute are filled with political content, to an outsider personalities like Mark Dice or Computing Forever look as toxic as the anti-sjw movement looks to the general public.
Because these type of videos address legitimate problems with a political or social bias the entire “privacy, security and online freedom movement” looks like a bunch of conspiracy theorists by association.
I think the “privacy, security and online freedom movement” desperately needs re-branding if we want our concerns addressed. Instead of crying big brother or angrily calling companies the next sky net we should be more clean cut. Instead of being perceived as angry bias activists we should use our knowledge and platform as an advantage to build a community of discussion and progress.
Instead of framing the problem in the manner of political correctness this and censorship that we should frame the digital problems as a manner of human rights, ethics and ecology.
We need to be the voice of reason, maybe if we stopped screaming they would listen.
Originally posted on reddit.
https://redd.it/asbxnb
Hi I’m Alex Escalante, but I go by many user-names, mainly Alex Esc. as a wired abbreviation of my real name, the “esc” has a really computer-y & Internet-y feel to it so I went with it.
Recently I decided to change all my user-names to alex-esc if possible, if the name was already in use I will choose one with an underscore or a point instead of a dash, but regardless of my Internet identity was all over the place.
How can you be sure that notascam@gmail.com is really a Nigerian prince? can you trust anyone online? even random bulletin board members, Facebook profiles or journalists? Your friends and family are easy to trust online because we know them face to face. Your buddy gave you his phone number, so you know you are talking with him and him only. But on the Internet you don’t know if a random user is who he claims to be without some kind of verification, this is what some platforms like keybase atempt to solve.
Keybase is a platform that verifies Internet users via access to physical devices and social media accounts, for example if you head over my keybase profile you will see that whoever alexesc is he has access to Alex Escalante’s website, GitHub account, Reddit account, Twitter handle and two physical devices, now the case for my identity is very compelling since I have that keybase profile to prove it. I could easily fool you that some twitter handle is the real me, but it gets harder and harder to prove that I am the owner of a twitter account, and a website, and a reddit, and an email address, and that the owner of all those accounts is the same person. That’s what keybase is for.
Other Internet accounts
I hereby declare the end of my flesh and the beginning of my bits, I will not conform to my earthly identity as the whole in itself but as a means to the goal of achieving the actual me.
Hello again Internet, if you haven’t heard from me in a while that’s because I’ve been kinds busy lately.
And my OH MY GOD IS NEVER ENDING list of stuff has gotten more OH MY GOD IS NEVER ENDING lately, to reflect this I present you my new mini project: a public to-do list!
For know I have on my list:
[ ] Personalize subreddit
[ ] on redesign
[ ] add colors to all flairs
[ ] Fix placeholder links on the subreddit
[ ] most recent post
[ ] submit your own
[ ] On blog tab
[ ] On projects tab
[ ] be a part of our team
[ ] On about us tab
[ ] On community tab
[ ] on old reddit
[ ] create flairs
[ ] post flairs
[ ] user flairs
[ ] redo sidebar, add links from redesign top bar
[ ] fill wiki
[ ] implement new light theme on website
[ ] test / adapt post-clone theme
[ ] add a redesign is up to date checker
[ ] push changes
[ ] write a blog announcing the new feature
[ ] write a blog post about infinite feeds
[ ] draft
[ ] revise
[ ] publish
[ ] post on subreddit and related subreddits
[ ] signal blog corrections
[ ] add author corrections
[ ] redo formating
[ ] publish
[ ] inform author
[ ] why should you care interactive guide
[ ] landing page
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] broad topics
[ ] Movies, music & other media
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Smartphones, electric carts & other tech
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Creativity, art & innovation
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Education and easy access to information
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Social media & free speech
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Our impact on the environment
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Morality, ethics and Human rights
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Privacy & security
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Saving money
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] deep dive / specific topics
[ ] advertisements
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] artificial-intelligence
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] censorship
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] consumer-products
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] creative-commons
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] digital-footprint
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] DRM
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] ed-snowden
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] free-culture
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] free-software
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] GPL
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] human-rights
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] net-neutrality
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] pollution
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] right-to-repair
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] surveillance
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] tor
[ ] redact
[ ] style
[ ] adapt to light theme
[ ] Publish
[ ] Notify community contributors / post subreddit
[ ] make announcement blog
[ ] re write book first chapter
[ ] draft
[ ] publish
and that only covers one of my projects from many more to come, expect new to-do list-awesomeness in the future and if you’re curious about the title it’s also the title of this song from one of my favorite artists - Tom Rosenthal - So when you are not as busy as I am go check out the rest of his work.
So it’s 12 PM and I just rushed to get this post out after a long day, for now I have to go count some sheep or whatever, I’ll see you soon Internet.
I will begin to publish new posts about Digital Rights , these posts will be published separately from this blog. If you head over to digital-rights.github.io/archive you can find these new posts, here on this very blog you will find links to articles I feel particularly proud about.
For now you can check out our first community contribution: A post about why you should switch over to Signal instead of WhatsApp.
If we’ve met in life you probably know me as the guy with a weird laptop. My computer was a complete mess, not because it was missing a key or the screen was cracked, my computer’s hardware was doing just fine, the problem was my setup. I love tinkering with my computer, trying out new programs, changing the icon-pack, alternative shells; I tried it all at one point or another. Why? because I find it fun, I usually get some confused looks on my screen but I was doing no harm, or at least I thought at the time.
Entering university made it clear, the victim of my endless tweaks was my time and productivity, so from then onwards I set in place a new philosophy for my computer setup: the computer is a tool and the user should have the power to use it effectively to achieve his or her goals with as little input as possible.
That meant creating a streamlined experience with my setup. So I evolved one of my old scrips into ‘setupesc’, this is a robust autohotkey script that launches programs, folders and workspaces with keyboard shortcuts, I find setupesc so useful that my computer desktop has gone full time minimalist, no icons or menus needed.
The future goal of the project is that it will automatically install all my favorite programs and utilities in addition to serving it’s regular keyboard shortcut functionality, in other words it will reproduce a somewhat similar configuration for my setup in the user’s computer, that’s why I called it setup-esc, well and also because my user name is alex-esc.
Setupesc it’s under active development and you can find it on it’s website: getsetupesc
On January 18th 2018 I started my personal website to publish my work, Ideally I would publish new original content as well as rebroadcasting my previous works, but back then I had a very slim catalog of personal projects.
One of my projects was an attempt to convey my viewpoints and ideas about technology and the digital age as a whole, but who months into the research process I hit a wall. My enthusiastic view of social media came in conflict with the Cambridge Analytica controversy in May 2018 and the project spun off into an article titled “Why Online Privacy Matters”.
The project’s research ended and the writing begun on March 16th and it quickly spiraled out of control, the thesis was too broad, the minimum amount of information to keep the flow going was too much for a short article but nonetheless I did my best to synthesize the project into a script for a short video on the topic.
This video was a 10 to 15 minute narration explaining the Cambridge Analytica controversy and tyeing it back to the importance of online privacy, the video was aimed at a non-tech savvy audience, so I had to include technical explanations for cookies, javascript, pixels, algorithms and as you might guess the structure got messy again. A new draft was created, it treated each topic as it’s own little video explanation, those 3 to 5 videos would build up to the Cambridge kerfuffle and finish on a broad invitation to fight outlandish behavior like the one performed by Facebook.
It doesn’t sound like a bad Idea, but the scope was too big for a personal project that didn’t made me any money and if I someday finished the message would probably gotten to no one but people that all ready agree with the conclusion. So the project hit a wall once again.
Since I was very advanced in the writing process I foresaw that once I got over writers block the project would quickly flourish, so on April 4th I published the list of documents and projects soon to be published in the not so distant future, of course including the article Why Online Privacy Matters.
The project went in a hiatus again, although little to no progress was done I went in and out of research for months. On my research I begun to go deeper into privacy as a right, the idea of rights became as critical as privacy itself.
I decided to go back to the drawing board just in time the work of Tristan Harris, Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig and Veronica Belmont’s work at Mozilla came into my attention, the focus would not longer be online technicalities like cookie tracking or algorithmic bias, the focus begun to morph into questioning the ethics of tech, trying to pinpoint those rights being violated and developing another perspective for online culture.
By pure chance and the power of my procrastination, it just happed to be that the re-writing process begun at the same time as my ethics class at university, the process of re evaluating simple moral and ethical concepts made it all click into place, rights are at the core of the issue, more specifically: Human Rights are at the center of it all.
New life was brought into the article on November 7th 2018 when it was re-purposed as a book titled Ethics & Human Rights Applied On The Web. It would be even bigger in scope than the original blog and the planned videos, so much so that it would serve as the foundation for an online activist group that aims to promote the ideas of the book, the project grew once again, but the progress was still very slow, the book is (as of publishing this) still under development and the same can be said about the activist group that accompanies it.
Finally if you wish to be part of this project you can become a member of Digital Rights at no cost, if you’re interested in becoming part of us please get in contact via our official email.
In this article you will find out how to manage your contact list using V-cards , how to make them, import your other contacts into your own list and export them into all your devices and why using them is more private and secure than a cloud based service.
This post is a re-broadcast of one of my old articles, originally published on 30th of April 2018.
Introduction to V-cards.
Keeping in touch with old fiends can be a major pain, your closest friends might be on facebook but your old coworker is on telegram, your grandparents don’t bother with technology non-scene and you can only contact them on the phone.
Every service or company like facebook, Gmail, Outlook and your smart-phone are competing for being the most convenient way of keeping in touch, this endless competitions only serves to fragment your contact list. All your work contacts are on some old email account, your old college friends are somewhere in a FB group. In other words no service is truly convenient.
If you could only go back to the old days of writing down phone numbers and emails on a reliable sheet of paper everything would be better! right? well… Old school address books are inconvenient if you have to keep them in a bag somewhere handy at all times, we can do better: V-cards are what you are looking for.
V-cards are simple, small files. Easy to store on a USB stick or backed up in the cloud and they can store each and every single one of your contacts in one safe and easy to read place. That means all your facebook contacts, your smarphone address book and old emails in one place.
Will V-cards work on my device?
Yes, they are a standard since the 90’s. They work on Windows computers, Apple computers, iPhones, Androids. The list goes on and on, even back to supporting dumb phones like Nokia’s and Blackberry’s
V-cards are as compatible and universal as it gets, services like facebook, gmail, android and iOS probably use them on the back end.
Can I trust them?
Of course you can! V-cards are safe in the sense that they are simple plain text files that you create yourself, they will not compromise you to any computer virus like downloading a random program on the Internet will because v-cards are made and manged by you, not a random person from the Internet.
They are private in the sense that they are stored in your device and nowhere else. Other methods like using Google contacts, Facebook in general, the contacts app on your phone are always looking any changes you make, they do this out of good will to provide cloud services but the problem is that they store your private information on their insecure servers. Remember the iCloud leaks? see, apple services are not to be trusted! Google, Yahoo and Facebook use similar security measures that could be compromised in the future. Likewise they are not to be trusted.
According to the New York Times:
Back in 2014 hackers stole private information of over 500 million users from yahoo servers, including contact information like their full names, addresses, telephone numbers and passwords.
What is a V-card and how to read and understand them?
So what are v-cards? well they are made in plain text for easy reading this files end in .vcf (short for v card file) and they read very much like and old school address book. For example: lets say I want to store the phone numbers of King Kong and Mario Bros, in that case I want something like this:
first contact begins here
king kong
cellphone number is 123...
first contact ends here
second contact begins here
mario bros
home phone is 321..
second contact ends here
.
.
.
.
etc
We are writing this because we actually mean what’s shown in the image below:
If you look at them side by side its very easy to see the correlation because people understand address books and the concept of phone numbers, but computers are really dumb, they are truly stupid.
So we have to hold their hand and explain them what we want them to do in the simplest way possible, meaning we have to write some code. Don’t worry, this code will be super simple, no fancy variables or programing, none of that just simple code that you can easily understand and read out loud to anyone without any confusion.
This is why instead of writing in the “first contact begins here” format we will write some very simple code, we will write:
At the beginning we write BEGIN:VCARD (then the enter key) VERSION:3.0 because that is the only way our dumb computer will understand first contact begins here and at the end we write END:VCARD because it means first contact ends here.
FN: is short for “Full Name”, TEL;TYPE=CELL: means This is a cellphone number and TEL;TYPE=HOME: means This is a home number.
Vcards support saving their email, were they work at, their position, their website, birth dates and much more.
For your continence I have created a simple template that explains each type of information you can store.
V-card template
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Lastname;Surname
FN:FULL NAME GOES HERE
ORG:ORGANIZATION GOES HERE
URL:WEBSITE GOES HERE
EMAIL:EMAIL GOES HERE
TEL;TYPE=CELL:CELLPHONE GOES HERE
TEL;TYPE=HOME:HOMEPHONE GOES HERE
B-DAY:YYYY-MM-DD
NOTE:Here you can write any notes, Using "N:" is not mandatory. Coppy paste this in a text file as much as you want. Remember to save as "NAME.vcf".Order doesn't matter. Begin and end with "BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 and END:VCARD" Keep this as a reminder to you in the future. More info on the website https://archive.li/tZGj4#selection-441.10-441.20 or https://alex-esc.github.io/blog/contacts.html or the wikipedia article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard
END:VCARD
How to make your own V-card.
General instructions.
just copy paste the preset or start from scratch if you want on a plain text file and fill in the desired information, you can have multiple vcards inside one file, just make sure to save the document as “NAME.vcf”, were you can write any title you want.
Specific instructions with pictures.
The process on a windows computer will look like this:
First create a new simple text document like this.
Go to your desired destination to save your vcard
right click
click on “New”
click on “ Text Document”
My computer is in Spanish so your process will be on your language.
Next you want to paste my preset and fill it in with your desired info, remember you can coppy paste it multiple times to store multiple contact on one single file, like shown below
then click on the save button and name your vcard, I named mine “my contact list”
then on the menu below the name box you will find a document type box, make sure to select “All documents (*.*)” and add “.vcf” at the end of the name of your document, remember that .cvf stands for v card file. If your document ends with anything but “.vcf” the v-card will not work.
Once saved, you will see the icon change and it will look like this:
Get your contacts and manage them yourself. - Import and export V-cards from other services.
Well now that you know how to make your own V-card from scratch you might want to get a head start by getting all your contacts in V-card form.
Because V-cards are used universally there are may tutorials out there to import and export your contacts from any given device, here I have created a simple table with links to tutorials for several commonly used devices and for Nokia and Blackberry just to prove my point that V-cards are as compatible as it gets.
I would advise you to bookmark this page if you are interested in importing and exporting V-cards in the future, anyways here you go!
This blog is a static website hosted on GitHub Pages, it’s built with Jekyll using the jekyll-minimal-theme to style the site, I write my blog posts using Markdown on a text editor and I push my new blog posts to the Internet using git.
What if I want my blog to look different?
Its more important that you begin writing your blog, you can change the look of it later down the line.
What do you get?
A blog with a (somewhat) custom url.
A mobile friendly blog.
The ability to preview changes on your blog before publishing to the web.
A Home page.
An about me page.
An RSS feed, meaning readers can “subscribe” to your blog and get notifications.
A menu for selecting what post to read.
An easy way for your readers to download all your posts.
At what cost?
About 10 to 15 minutes to set up the site, no money involved whatsoever.
To replicate this blog on your own you need a few things:
A computer with an Internet connection, Windows, Mac & Linux are sported, the setup process can only be done on a computer, although writing posts can be done on a mobile device, to add a new blog entry you need a computer too.
A GitHub account to set up your GitHub Pages Blog, your user name will be the url of your blog followed by the suffix .github.io, if your user name is a-polar-bear your blog url will be a-polar-bear.github.io, you can only make one blog with “custom” url per account, meaning if a-polar-bear wants to start a second blog called honey the blog will be created on a-polar-bear.github.io/honey.
[Optional] A Text editor your comfortable with, on it you will write all your posts, note that the text editor you choose must allow you to save your documents with any suffix you want, for example your text editor should be able to produce a document titled doc.abc, If your text editor forces you to use a specific format like .pdf, .docx or .pages you must search for another text editor that supports arbitrary suffixes.
[Optional] Installing a program on your computer called Jekyll, this program helps you to preview your blog before uploading it to the Internet, if you don’t need to preview your site you can ignore this step, Jekyll is the program that creates the blog but GitGub Pages already comes with it pre-installed.
[Optional] To upload your changes to the web you need a program that interacts with GitHub, there are two main options, you can install GitHub Desktop (easy to understand and work with for beginners) or you can install the git command line tool (it does essentially the same as the desktop version but it only works by using the command line, recommended for enthusiasts and programmers).
This seems very technical, why not use tool X to build a blog?
A few days ago I started my blog, so naturally I looked up videos on how to start a blog and I came across a video by The Minimalists, I consider myself a minimalist so I gave it a go and it was horrible. The video was beautifully produced but the content seemed anything but minimalist, Joshua Fields Millburn said strait up that you need to keep your credit card close by and then proceeded to buy a 125 dollar minimalist theme, that’s 125 dollars for a website with black text with white background, then he instructed the viewer to install wordpress and on top of that you need google analytics, the jetpack wordpress SEO plugin, consider mailchimp (an extra 10 dollars a month for sending emails), sort out comments from another third party service and consider buying stock photos for populating your site. That advice wont get you a minimalist site but a bloated and expensive one.
And as far as I can tell all site or blog building tools are bloat on top of bloat with horrible interfaces and unreasonable prices. The Minimalists video pitches the idea that making a blog used to be a web designer’s game or a programmer’s game but that changed because X platform makes it easy! and then they just happen to give you a discount. Making a blog manually is not hard like The Minimalists suggest on their video, because their video is an advertisement, not a tutorial. You won’t need to program anything, I set everything up for you, you just need to setup the preset I made and add your blog name.
Instructions - how to get your blog up and running (for dummies)
If you don’t feel like reading all the instructions below I have a shorter version of the instructions further down below.
I made things easy for you, first you need to decide on the url of your blog.
IMPORTANT: Once you create your user name you cannot change it.
Name your user name how you want your blog to be named, if you want your blog url to be coolblogs.github.io your user name must be coolblogs, if the user name is not available try again with another name.
Once you have your account you need to duplicate my blog, to do so go to this link.
Then click on the Fork button.
Wait a second…
Once it finished loading you should see your user name followed by /post-clone written in blue text.
in this example picture it shows octo-org/octo-repo, yours will say yourusername/post-clone.
Click on settings
in this example picture it shows html-proofer, yours will say post-clone.
Change post-clone for your user name, it must be written exactly as your user name.
After you wrote your user name add .github.io and click on rename, you can rename as many times as you need.
Example: if your user name iscoolblogs, you must rename your site to coolblogs.github.io.
You are almost done! now you need to configure the site to make it yours.
Scroll to the top of the page and click on <> code, its a few buttons to the left of the settings menu you just clicked.
There you will see a list of files that make up your website, the list consists of:
Click on _config.yml and then click the edit button (pencil).
Then you will see this text:
title: 'YOUR BLOG TITLE GOES HERE'
author:
name: 'YOUR BLOG TITLE GOES HERE'
description: A DESCRIPTION FOR YOUR BLOG GOES HERE
path: ''
url: 'https://YOUR USERNAME GOES HERE.github.io/'
Replace “YOUR ___ GOES HERE” with your information.
For example:
title: 'Cool Blogs'
author:
name: 'mr. blog man'
description: Only the coolest of blogs
path: ''
url: 'https://coolblogs.github.io/'
Then scroll down, write a name for your change and click the green button that says Commit chnages, if you do not write a description the button will be un-clickable.
The blog is now configured, next we will turn on the blog, to do so go back to the settings menu.
Scroll down the page and look for GitHub Pages, then click on the button that says none, then choose the option that says master branch and then hit save.
Now the site is ready, now you only need to write blogs on it!
To see your blog in action go to https://YourUsername.github.io/, if you get a 404 page you need to wait a few minutes for your site to build on the background.
The instructions are too long, cant you just get to the point!
Change the name of your site from post-clone to YOUR USERNAME GOES HERE.github.io.
Go to the code and open _config.yml.
Edit in your settings (name, description, etc), commit your changes.
Go to settings, on the GitHub Pages section select the master branch as source, save.
Done!
How to use your new blog
What does each file does?
File or folder
What it does
_layouts
In this folder you will find the default and post layout, meaning it tells the site what elements to place where and in what order, default tells the site to write the name of the blog and the rest of the content below and the post layout tells the site to write the name of the post, the date and the post itself.
_posts
Here you will place all your blog posts.
css
Contains the stylesheets, it’s what gives the site it’s look.
gitignore
This is a necessary file used by git.
LICENSE.md
Contains the license of the theme “jekyll-minimal-theme”.
_config.yml
Here you can change the main settings of the site, settings like name of the blog, author and description.
archive.md
This is the archive page, is the same on the top bar.
feed.xml
This file generates the RSS feed, learn more about RSS here.
index.md
This is the homepage of the site, meaning the first page you visit when opening your blog.
How to blog.
Make a new Markdown file inside the _posts folder.
Name the file YEAR-MONTH-DATE-TITLE.md.
Add the block of configuration at the top (also called YAML block).
Write your post using Markdown
Save and push to the live site.
How to write posts?
Blog post structure.
All Blog post entires belong inside the _posts folder.
On it you will see a file named with a date and a post title: by default you will see a file called 2019-01-07-test.md, 2019-01-07 is the date, test is the title and md is the format of the file.
IMPORTANT: all post files names must have “-“ for spaces, for example an incorrect file name is 2025-08-21 the best day of my life.md, and a correct version would be 2025-08-21-the-best-day-of-my-life.md.
Every blog post entry must be placed inside the _posts folder and must be named YEAR-MONTH-DATE-TITLE.md, no two files must share the same name.
All post entries must have a block of configuration at the top, this configures the post to share the look of the rest of the site, the configuration block looks like this:
---
layout: post
title: "How to make a blog like this one"
---
The block of configuration’s technical name is YAML block.
Copy paste this configuration (or YAML) block at the beginning of every post and replace How to make a blog like this one with your own title (keep the parenthesis).
After that you can begin typing your blog content, just type, then save.
By default the only blog post is 2019-01-07-test.md which you can delete and add your own entry.
Structure example:
File is named YEAR-MONTH-DATE-TITLE.md and its placed inside the _posts folder.
---
layout: post
title: "TITLE GOES HERE"
---
Text goes here.
How to format the text inside a post.
All text formating is done via a light markup language called Markdown, it’s super simple you can learn it in 10 extra minutes by playing this interactive tutorial game on your computer.
All files ending in .md means that file uses Markdown to format the text.
How to make and push the changes to the Internet.
Your bloging workflow will depend on the tools you use, you have 2 main options at your disposal, you can:
Work entirely inside the web browser, this is the easier workflow but by only using the website to make your changes you will miss out on the ability topreview your changes before you publish and every time you save your work it will be immediately published, meaning you must write all your post in one go (for more info read Push using the GutHub website).
or you can
Make your changes and write your blogs on your computer and use a program called git to publish them to the web, git works by downloading a copy of your blog to your computer, you will make all the changes you need and until you click publish git will upload your local changes to the Internet, meaning you can experiment as mush as you want with the site without messing with the actual blog, this is the method I use (for more info read Push using Git.).
Click on your website’s name, it’s placed inside your repositories.
Make your changes here, click on a file to view and click the pencil to edit or click the create a new file button.
After your changes are done scroll down and under the Commit changes section you should name your commit and click the green button to commit the changes.
Push using Git.
To use git you must install it first, but there are many ways to interact with git, you can use git via the command line or by using GitHub desktop.
Before you decide what program to use you must first understand the basics of git, here you can find a video tutorial aimed for non-programmers.
This program doesn’t use the mouse or has any buttons or menus, it has no interface at all, it works via the command line like computers used to work before the 1990’s, above is an example of how git looks like.
This desktop client has a graphical interface, it uses the mouse, in other words is just a normal program, downside is that it lacks most of git’s advanced features, but for this use it will do the job, it’s the method I use.
The answer to both have too do with using Jekyll: The program responsible for building the site, to learn more about Jekyll take a look at these resources:
If you need a reference, you can take a look at the source code of my blog here.
Conclusion.
Starting a blog is not hard, GitHub Pages provides free hosting, Jekyll is free of charge too. The only thing standing between you and your future blog is your determination for sitting down and writing your blog posts. Spend 10-15 minutes following my setup tutorial, do the Markdown tutorial and start your blog today!
2018 was a great year for me: I started university, got into playing music, making websites, scripting and I begun writing my first book. Entering university demands drastic changes, but I feel like I didn’t fully break out of some bad habits and I did not attempt to correct others, so much so that I can feel myself slowly sinking into a rut and I want to change that by changing myself.
New years day passed by so quickly and like every other year I didn’t set any resolutions, every year I tell myself that I should make a list of goals for the upcoming year and set them into place, but the cynical part of me always wins, I would tell myself that New years resolutions are meaningless or any other dumb excuse, eventually January first would arrive and I will swear to myself that I missed the deadline and that net year I will get it right and the cycle would continue for years and years.
Today I want to change this sort of mentality, I’m making the list here and now … Well not exactly, recently I have been listening to the Cortex Podcast by Relay media and I think CGP Grey hit it right on the nail with the concept of yearly themes, instead of drafting year resolutions and ending up forgetting them after a few weeks you would come up with non-specific themes to guide your decisions.
The problem with resolutions is that they replace everyday decision making, if your resolution is to go to the gym more often or to eat less junk food this resolution is an answer for your desire for a healthy lifestyle, but nobody will accomplish their dream just by dreaming itself, you need to set goals and then act, but your actions are guided by small desitions, yearly themes aim to provide guidance, instead of instant answers.
Themes should be holistic, for example one of the host of the podcast had a year of positivity, meaning that behind every mayor decision you must ask yourself Can I give this situation a positive spin?, on the podcast it is made clear on how themes should be non specific but at the same time remain big picture focused, you could have multiple themes per year. Listen to this episode for more information on yearly themes.
So my yearly themes for 2019 are: Responsibility , Wholesome & Change.
One obstacle that in my mind justifies avoiding responsibility is not having cut of points or deadlines, and the biggest manifestation of this is the internet, the web is home to endless streams of information, If for example I want to start a personal project I would then go to the web and get lost between countless browser tabs, the thing about the web is that’s harmful to me is that constant reminder that you could be learning more about any given topic, but reading into a topic turns into browsing youtube or reddit and now that I’m browsing it means I’m looking for nothing in particular and finding nothing of value.
Algorithms are too engaging and I could use one less burden to develop my responsibility faster, so in the spirit of the year of responsibility I will be opting out of algorithms and endless feeds altogether, this will be a slow process but in the end I want to quit addictive technology and embracing tech as a tool for productivity.
Instead of browsing reddit and reading a provocative comment and then writing a giant wall of text that nobody will read about a topic that nobody really cares about, instead of wasting my time like that I decided to start this blog in which I can fulfill my desire to write without engaging with addictive technologies.
So this one goes for a better year and a better me, a version of myself that can embrace change, abandon cynicism and live up to my responsibilities, this one goes for a better self, dear internet, happy 2019!
