Stuff that isn’t blog-post-worthy, but may be helpful to think out loud.

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Smari McCarthy on freedom

From a great resource on P2P infrastructure, linked by @sleslie: @brlamb I thought you'd like that one. cf bit.ly/L0x7hO for a list of emerging p2p architected projects — Scott Leslie (@sleslie) July 4, 2012 Freedom requires infrastructure. A man who has no tools to acquire his necessities of life is a slave to his necessities. Given those tools, he becomes a slave to the labour required to fruitfully use them. Only by transcending each difficulty as it comes, in a process not dissimilar to metasystem transitions, can the individual achieve freedom. Read More
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Not Crazy Just Resentful: On Being Car Free by Choice in Cleveland

Instead, here's a plea to car-having readers who do not wish to live as I do: understand that your car is a luxury. Understand that when you get in your car to run a ten-minute errand, the same errand might take someone without a car two hours on the bus. When you turn your key in the ignition, please feel the same sense of wonder and good fortune that I feel every time I take my dirty clothes down to the basement instead of hauling them to the laundromat: what a lucky person I am to not only live in a world where someone was smart enough to invent this thing that makes my life easier, but that I, by some additional happenstance of good fortune, can have one. Read More
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so much for avoiding spammers...

got this awesome spam comment overnight, in response to my brief post describing why I'm trying comments again.


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comments redux, redux. (redux?)

flip flopping like a politician. I just posted about an idea I had for visualizing discussion data, and realized that having comments disabled would be harmful. discussion would likely still occur, via twitter or email or whatever, but the thinking-out-loud collaboration would be lost. so... flip-flop, the 5th? 6th? comments are now enabled for posts, but they close automatically after 14 days. that gives lots of time for shared thinking-out-loud, while still providing mitigation against trolls and spammers and those who use blog comments as places to vent their spleens. Read More
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Dave Winer on hamsters and sharecropping

On why he won't be posting stuff to the new Branch semi-private conversation thingy (the one I linked to earlier ) Anyway, I can't just use it, because then I would be breaking a rule, one that keeps me from using services like Quora and Google-Plus. I'm not going to willfully put my writing in spaces that I have no control over. I'm tired of playing the hamster. The business models of these companies, if they become successful, keep them from being part of the web. Read More
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picked up the dslr again

the sensor is still covered with schmutz, but I started lugging it around again. feels good...





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second nuking

I was asked to turn in the iPhone last month. Due to the contract setup, it couldn't be cancelled right away, so I was able to borrow it for an additional month. That month is up, so now I just finished nuking the iPhone again so I can turn it in. I've likely saved the University hundreds of thousands of dollars by advocating and using free and open source software for nearly a decade. Read More

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indifference

>"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
>
>-Plato

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java

The Big Dog passed away yesterday. Her health was kind of shitty for the last year or so, but she seemed to be getting stronger. Yesterday afternoon, she didn't seem herself. She seemed weak, lethargic. She refused food. In her 11 years with us, I had never seen her say no to food. She knew something was up. She went quietly, just after going to bed. Apparently, without pain, probably as a result of internal bleeding due to massive organ failure. Read More

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mountaineer snowdog stuffed java
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