Tag: KISS

The #nastyfew, billionaires funders fear informed, educated public

The #nastyfew are now building bunkers, literally, escaping with their bodyguards when the shit hits the fan. That’s the plan. No fixing the mess, no community care – just winning and escape. It’s #deathcult logic all the way down from now on – with pushing #geekproblem tech fixes as a cross fingers wing and a prayer, to stop any grassroots drift to green sustainable alternatives.

This is simply the next stage of the #deathcult worship of endless growth, and infinite tech “solutions”. It’s now about rebooting capitalism, so the machine can keep grinding. #NothingNew in a very bad way. This is the normal empathy for corporations, and brutal Darwinism for actual people like you and me. The #dotcons of big tech are moving visible to the business of manufacturing distraction to avoid facing the collapse they pushed for the last 20 years. The mess of #AI and #Bitcoin are energy black holes, sucking resources while pretending to be futuristic.

It should now be “common sense” that colonialism never ended – it rebranded. That’s how the consumerist growth cult started: exploit, extract, repeat. Capitalist “progress” is cancerous, more #GDP doesn’t mean better life – growth isn’t about thriving, it’s about churn. #TechCurn. The current #mainstreaming solutions are always more tech, more control, more conferences, and less reality. The #GeekProblem, with the #techbros philosophical inspiration: Nietzsche, or rather, a cherry-picked remix by his fascist sister, stitched together without context. The wannabe’s quotes “Will to Power” as gospel to justify trying to control the rest of us.

To the #nastyfew, education doesn’t mean opportunity – it means instability. A literate person is someone who questions power, organizes, votes, and leave toxic relationships. A curious mind is unpredictable. A well-informed population is a threat.

They know that: A literate woman may not rely on a man for shelter. An educated Black or Brown voter may vote in their own self-interest, unlike the more easily manipulated MAGA base. A widely read immigrant may advocate for systems beyond the #deathcult of vulture capitalism – community care, cooperative ownership, real democracy.

Education creates the conditions for social mobility, leading to change and challenge, which the #nastyfew see as an existential risk to their self defined stratified order and elitist based statues. Keeping people in their “place” is essential to maintaining control. Stagnation is strategic.

This is why capital flows into campaigns to undermine grassroots media, activists, public schools, libraries, independent publishers, school boards, and non-corporate scientific research institutions. The #nastyfew goal isn’t only profit – it’s cultural hegemony. Anything that feeds critical thinking or encourages civic imagination becomes a target.

From a progressive mainstreaming point of view, this agenda includes:

It’s a war on #4opens, public knowledge, disguised as common sense “parental rights” and “free markets.” In truth, it’s about maintaining control by keeping people uninformed and isolated, a core part of #stupidindividualism we have all been #mainstreaming for the last 40 years.

When we defend grassroots projects, activism, schools, libraries, open-source platforms, small publishers, and public institutions, we are not just defending information, we are defending democracy itself. The battle for truth is inseparable from the battle for justice. We have to build our own compost piles, plant what matters, and ignore the bling. These #nastyfew and their billionaires funders aren’t saving us – they’re digging deeper bunkers and writing climate denial checks. It well pastime to stop playing the #mainstreaming game.

#KISS

Post inspired by @Npars

We need to compost lies with #4opens horizontal networks

The #4opens makes many people uncomfortable. Why? Because it cuts through the bullshit. Think about it: #FOSS already runs most of the world’s information flows. Servers, networks, phones, clouds — all built on open code, open standards, open processes. The world already depends on openness.

Yet, when we bring this into activism, NGOs, or “progressive” tech, people recoil. They prefer managed openness – consultations, workshops, endless talk – while the real decisions stay hidden, careers protected, power intact. That’s not open, that’s control.

The #4opens is dangerous because it removes the masks:

Open Data: no hoarding.

Open Code: no black boxes.

Open Standards: no silos.

Open Process: no backrooms.

It’s common sense, but it kills the comfort of #mainstreaming, the soft power of gatekeepers shrivels under sunlight. That’s why they hate it. We already live in a world powered by #FOSS. The only question is whether we keep pretending otherwise, or compost the mess and take openness seriously.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens

Why does this matter? On the wider picture, we are now past the point where the #mainstreaming paths and crew have effectively given up on mediating #climatechaos. What we’re seeing now is ONLY the performance of action – flashy, expensive, technocratic distraction designed to keep business-as-usual afloat a little longer. It’s now not about preventing catastrophe, or even mediating catastrophe, what we have now is managed #PR and keeping in place elitist continuity as this small #nastyfew and their sycophants visibly retreat from the growing mess.

For an alt #mainstreaming view

Solutions? Take this example: https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/climeworks-capture-fails-to-cover-its-own-emissions/ Climeworks, a flagship carbon-capture initiative, is so inefficient it fails to offsetting its own emissions. This is the #techshit path the #mainstreaming are backing to get us through the next few centuries? This is beyond a mess, it’s ideological collapse. These fake solutions are the logical outcome of continuing with #neoliberal ideology, where systemic change and thus challenge is avoided at all costs, and techno-fixes are sold to us by #PR as silver bullets, the #deathcult in action, profit-driven stalling wrapped in light green branding.

Let’s be clear on this: Carbon capture is currently not scalable, not ethical, and not even functional. It is not a climate solution – what it is, is a delay tactic, a hedge for polluting industries. It’s backed by the same #nastyfew class of institutions that told us markets would fix inequality, that endless growth was compatible with ecology, that privatization would bring prosperity. The truth is simple, they, the #nastyfew we keep putting into power, have no plan. They are playing at engineering the social and ecological collapse while, at this final stage, simply pretending to be managing it.

So what do we do? We #KISS hard stop trusting in any elitist-managed futures. We collectively refuse to be spectators in the mess of the #mainstreaming paths. Instead, we compost these lies and build #4opens, rooted, local, horizontal networks of resistance and renewal. Projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) don’t pretend to “solve” everything, but they create space for people to act together, share knowledge, mediate and hold power to account, and thus build trust for action outside the collapsing verticals.

This isn’t about hope in the abstract, it’s about practical solidarity in the spreading ruins. No one is coming to save us, but maybe we can still save each other. Let’s build the seeds of the next world, before this one burns everything down around us.

OMN, best not to get distracted, this isn’t about purity, it’s about direction
Composting the fiendlyenemy’s

In that mess lies compost…

The current state of tech and activist culture is messy, but in that mess lies compost. From arrogance, capitalism, individualism, and collapsing hierarchies, we have the material to grow something new. The #OMN is a seed for this.

Name the mess, Then root around It. Start by openly acknowledging the systemic failures that have plagued past movements. What we’re composting:

    • Arrogance & Ignorance: Build a culture of humility and learning, encourage peer mentoring and mutual aid over expertise gatekeeping.
    • Capitalism: Stay non-market by design, resist startup logic, focus on public goods, not monetization. Use #4opens to maintain transparency, participation, and trust.
    • #StupidIndividualism: Create interdependence to rebuild collective thinking with small working groups and visible shared goals.
    • Hierarchy Creep: Default to horizontal governance but defacto acknowledge and design for balance leadership, with clear boundaries that keep accountability rooted in community.
    • Emotional Disconnection: Lean into affective direct action by highlighting lived experiences and personal narratives in media and organizing.

      Compost isn’t trash – it’s transformation.

    Strengthen a clear, simple core: the #4opens. The #OMN should live and breathe the #4opens:

      Open Data – All published media and metadata is accessible.

Open Source – Tools and platforms are forkable and transparent.

Open Process – Governance and decision-making are documented and participatory.

Open Standards – Interoperability with the wider #openweb and Fediverse is core.

      This offers a solid, non-dogmatic foundation. It avoids reinventing the wheel, and builds trust – a scarce resource in today’s messy web.

      Start small, root deep. Avoid the trap of scaling before grounding by prototyping local hubs, for example with the #OMN projects, support a few active collectives already creating grassroots media. Use these as seeds: real people, telling real stories, using simple #KISS tools. Prioritize tools people already use, like Fediverse platforms.

        Create a “Trust Mesh,” not a monolith, the #OMN is not a centralized service. It’s a mesh of trusted nodes. Use reputation by proximity – if I trust a node, and they trust another, I can begin with soft trust. Encourage federated moderation – each node governs itself, but shares back its reasoning, bridging dialogue over policing. Use hashtags as protocols – this is the native language of grassroots media. Make this a cultural moment – not just a policy critique.

          In Summary, compost the rot, don’t hide it, build with: Trust not control – Cooperation not competition – Commons not commerce – Emotion not abstraction. And always – think globally, act locally. The #OMN can’t “win” the game. What it can do is change the rules by being rooted, open, and compost-powered. Let’s get planting.

          You don’t need to be a coder or activist to help grow this compost-powered future. Start by talking openly about the mess, with your friends, at work, online. Share radical but grounded ideas like the #4opens. Support or volunteer with grassroots media projects. Use ethical tech alternatives like the Fediverse instead of #dotcons. Practice mutual aid in your community – give and receive help with no strings attached. Turn down the volume on #stupidindividualism and listen to others. Most importantly, show up with humility, curiosity, and a willingness to build together. The world won’t change overnight, but let’s start planting.

          The Philosophers Talking About AI: Context, Flow, and the #geekproblem

          This is touching on the event as had to leave early.

          I was recently at a talk from the Oxford University series, “The Philosophers Talking About AI”. There were some underlying themes that are deeply relevant to how we think about privacy, information, and our current techno-social mess.

          Action vs. Paralysis, the talk opens with the tension between the strong and weak drives of human decision-making. This plays out in a constant oscillation between conversation and paralysis. Philosophically, we get stuck, debating endlessly, without acting. And in ethics, this inaction can be dangerous. If we don’t decide and act, we leave the field open for others to impose their decisions on us.

          Rethinking Privacy. One of the more nuanced ideas from the talk is a definition of privacy not as secrecy, but as appropriate information flow.

          "Privacy is not control, nor hiding – it’s about the right information flowing in the right way."

          This is a key shift. Secrecy is often anti-human – it disrupts the flow of information, which is essential to human life and community. Instead, privacy is about appropriateness, about understanding which flows are legitimate in which contexts.

          So what determines “appropriateness”? Social context. Contextual Integrity. Privacy, then, depends on social spheres, each defined by particular goals, values, and purposes. In each sphere, there are different expectations for how data should flow. These expectations aren’t always formal rules, but norms, often invisible until they’re violated.

          The speaker brings in the idea of the transmission principle – that information shouldn’t flow without the right kind of consent or context. While consent matters, it’s not the only thing that legitimizes a flow. There are many transmission predicates in society that allow information to move in meaningful, appropriate, and socially beneficial ways.

          But here’s the mess: our (post)modern systems, especially those built by geeks, often ignore or misunderstand this. This ties directly into what I often call the #geekproblem. The problem is that geeks, driven by abstract logic and rigid notions of control, block too many flows. They implement blanket rules and dogmatic blocks rather than engaging with messy human norms. Worse, they often start fighting among themselves about which blocks should exist, creating even more social dysfunction.

          They don’t see the richness of the social world. They try to “fix” it by hard-coding overly simplified versions of reality into software, creating systems that are brittle, alienating, and to often oppressive.

          This has real consequences for the #openweb and our attempts to build alternatives. If we don’t get privacy right – if we don’t understand the role of context and legitimacy in data flows – we’ll just reproduce the same broken #dotcons models we’re trying to replace.

          Beyond policy and control, most privacy policies today are useless. They reduce privacy to a box-ticking exercise, just “terms and conditions” of control. But this is a dead end. Real privacy is contextual. It involves relationships between: The subject – The sender – The recipient – The nature of the information.

          To build humane technology, we need to embed all these values into our tools and processes. That means ditching secrecy-as-default, dropping the obsession with control, and embracing appropriate social information flows.

          #KISS #Oxford #talk

          The current “debate” about AI is a distraction #KISS
          Metaphors matter, composting the current paths in #AI
          It’s a mess and building more #techshit is not helping, so back off with the #geekproblem path out of this mess, please.

          What we need is useful compost layer’s for growing native projects

          Compost, not illusions, is a first step – A radical look at “light green” tech – For a second step we need a useful compost layer for growing native projects, like the #OMN. What we currently have in most so-called “green technology” promoted through #mainstreaming and #fashernista narratives is not ecological in substance – it’s performative environmentalism, built on omission, distortion, and branding. To help make sense of this mess, let’s use the lenses of the #4opens, the #geekproblem, and the broader #openweb.

          The mess is “green” as branding, not substance. Most of today’s #mainstreaming “green” tech, like, electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines – is “green” in aesthetics, not in impact. These are products sold as solutions, but they’re too often rooted in the same extractive, centralized, and opaque paths and systems that caused the problems in the first place. This is the heart of the lie we need to compost, as the needed social change cannot grow from toxic soil, no matter how glossy and plastic the flower appears. If we ignore the roots, we get more illusions.

          Watch this critique: The True Cost of Green Tech (YouTube)

          The #OMN critique is to move past the false solutions and the broken paths. Yes, light green solutions pushed by institutions and NGOs aren’t inherently bad technologies – but their production, distribution, and governance models are deeply flawed. They violate every principle of the #4opens:

          • Open data: No honest accounting of full lifecycle impacts.
          • Open source: Dominated by proprietary, locked-in systems.
          • Open process: Controlled by corporations and states, with no meaningful public input.
          • Open standards: Sacrificed for monopolistic vertical integration (e.g., Tesla).

          The result is more #techshit – waste and violence hidden behind shiny #PR branding. Even our weak #NGOs point out the brutal costs: resource extraction (cobalt, lithium, rare earths), labour exploitation (child and Uyghur forced labour), and environmental dumping. These costs are buried beneath greenwashed PR aesthetics, making them palatable to consumers but invisible to our shared, and needed critique.

          The #geekproblem, the “problem” in much geek culture, is tech as saviour, this is the belief that technology itself is inherently progressive. This takes us down the paths where proposed “fixes” like nuclear follow the same flawed paths: centralized, capital-intensive, top-down systems cloaked in the language of innovation. It’s new wrapping, same old crap.

          This is not a path to climate justice. It’s a continuation of the #deathcult – digital colonialism powered by extraction, slavery, and silence. No genuine social or ecological transformation can grow from this poisoned foundation. Where the real cost of “green” tech is not just ignored, it’s deliberately silenced. This silence isn’t accidental; it’s structural. The narrative that we can “buy better things” and consume our way out of crisis is a pacifying lie. It sells comfort, not change.

          True ecological technology must be social first. It should grow from transformation, not transaction. We need to compost the lies to grow real alternatives. We must compost the #mainstreaming myths-this is the role of #hashtag stories.

          There are meany paths to take, the one I focus on is reclaiming small-scale, peer-produced infrastructure. Using the #4opens to demand transparency, accountability, and participation. Solar panels and EVs have a role, but only when embedded in a radically #degrowth paths: Open governance (#OGB), local, decentralized production (right to repair, community assembly), circular economy (reuse, repurpose, recycle), humanism as non-negotiable (no slavery, no offshoring of harm). It’s a simple, not to say old-fashioned idea of humanistic progress, maybe we can do this better this time, I hope.

          Conclusion, please #KISS the illusions goodbye, build the compost heap. Now also, please remember, we are not against technology – we’re against the lies that accompany it. As long as we keep lying about the nature of change, we cannot begin the real work. We need fertile ground – a compost layer for native projects like the #OMN – to push openness and cultivate the genuine ecological thinking we need to grow. It’s way past time for people to lift their heads from worshipping the #deathcult and stop being prats about this.

          Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path

          Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nastyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too wonder if we’ll survive this, but as you say we have a path, and it’s not new. It’s simple, it’s human, and it’s working.

          It’s called the #Fediverse and the next step we need to take is “native” applications on this path like the #OMN – the Open Media Network – and it’s built from the bones and dreams of the old web: #4opens, #KISS principles, and trust-based, #DIY infrastructure. It’s a messy, human soup of tagged data and federated flows where people and content are commons by default, not walled gardens and extractive silos.

          The magic? It’s not even in the tech (though that matters). It’s in the “common sense” at the core – Anything in, anything out – mediated by trust. Lossy? Yes. Redundant? Absolutely. But that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s what makes it resilient. The #geekproblem keeps trying to engineer this out, but we need to compost that #techshit into something useful, working tools for real people, growing radical networks of care and change.

          To those staring into the digital abyss and seeing only Ozymandias and decay, look sideways, the #Fediverse lives. The #openweb still works. And we’re building new foundations from the compost of the old. We do not need to be swept along with the gray goo of #AI, we can simply not go there, and instead stay here and focus to do the work that is needed.

          “I met a traveller from an antique land,
          Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
          Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
          Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
          And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
          Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
          Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
          The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
          And on the pedestal, these words appear:
          My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
          Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
          Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
          Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
          The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
          –Percy Bysshe Shelley

          And yes, I see it too, we’ve been holding back on our own power, hesitant. Maybe our despair is part of the mess we need to shake ourselves awake from. So I ask what positive path can we walk? What part of the #OMN can we all help compost, code, shape, or share?

          Let’s rebuild the net with hands in the soil and eyes on the stars. Because the answer isn’t new. It’s what we’ve always done when things fall apart, we grow.

          #KISS

          The mess we make – capitalism and climatechaos

          FUCK, what a mess https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/28/collapse-critical-atlantic-current-amoc-no-longer-low-likelihood-study Hope you can understand you to have to start calling this current path we are all on a # #deathcult, its #KISS

          The current extreme inequality between rich and poor isn’t a bug in the system – it’s a feature of capitalism. It’s not just inevitable, it’s desirable for those who benefit from it. The structure is built to concentrate wealth and power for the #nastyfew at the top, while extracting labour and resources from the grassroots at the bottom. A contemptible disregard for those less fortunate is the design, not some unfortunate side effect our #NGO’s tell us about.

          Take a walk through any city, and you’ll see it in the gleaming skyscrapers rising above sprawling slums. In places like Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, or Cape Town, the inequality is visible at a glance. But even in the Global North, it’s masked behind fences, zoning laws, and digital walls. Capitalism excels at keeping suffering hidden or aestheticized so the few who grow fat don’t have to think about it.

          With #climatechaos as the planet continues to heat up, these divisions are only becoming more grotesque. Climate change, driven by the lifestyles and consumption habits of the Global North, will over the next 20 years be felt much more in the Global South. Rich countries, like ourselves in the UK, will continue to talk about carbon neutrality and green energy transitions, while still pushing our use of pollution-heavy industries and extracting rare earth minerals into poor nations, leaving growing environmental and human devastation in their wake.

          Examples are everywhere:

          • Electronic waste, of our shiny new gadgets which we replaced every year or two, but where do the old ones go? Places like Agbogbloshie in Ghana, one of the world’s largest e-waste dumps, for children to pick through toxic waste for scraps of metal, breathing in fumes and dying young.
          • Fast fashion, cheap clothes from brands like H&M or Zara, are made in sweatshops in Bangladesh or Cambodia, where workers earn a few dollars a day, labouring in unsafe conditions that led to tragedies like the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013.
          • Climate displacement, sea levels, floods, droughts, and extreme weather events are forcing millions to migrate. Communities in the Pacific Islands are disappearing beneath the sea, while African farmers face collapsed food systems. Yet, it should be obvious that they’re the ones who contributed least to the crisis. And when they try to migrate for survival, they’re met with growing border walls and dehumanization.

          This isn’t an accident, it’s how this nasty unthinking path works – externalize the damage, push it as far away as possible, and then build walls, digital and physical, to keep the consequences out of sight. Whether it’s the child labour behind our smartphones, the communities poisoned by oil pipelines, or the forests razed for palm oil, these are the visible costs of our convenience. That is if we look at all. In this mess of a path, capitalism is a system of organized forgetting. It turns ecosystems into commodities, people into data points, and suffering into an acceptable byproduct. The #nastyfew, and in this context this is meany of us, get to live in curated bubbles of comfort, while the damage is made invisible – outsourced, decontextualized, and sanitized.

          Best not to keep being a prat about this.

          And let’s be clear, climate change isn’t a technical problem in need of genius innovation. We already know what causes it – our addiction to fossil fuels, deforestation, industrial agriculture – and we’ve had the solutions for decades: political change and challenge to reduce emissions, transition to renewables, protect ecosystems, and radically change consumption patterns. So when people talk about “putting our brightest minds on solving climate change,” they’re both deluded and deflecting. This isn’t about a lack of intelligence or ideas; it’s about wilful political paralysis and #nastyfew vested interests. Those in power cant think outside of private escape bunkers in New Zealand. It’s not a knowledge gap – it’s a power and values gap. And that’s the much harder issue that we need to compost.

          Digging over the rot and planting something more real

          Q: People are angry about #AI scrapers and that this is exploiting everything for “free” – our art, our words, our data. But let’s be honest, we’ve spent the last 40 years gorging on “free” content online, music, games, video, writing, without paying for a thing unless forced to with a paywall. Yes. We block the ads, we hate the tracking, and we very rarely donate. So… with the idea that everything has to be paid for, are we really that different from the AI scraping machine?

          A: The current “common sense” frames this as a moral issue, but it’s better seen as a systematic one. And that’s where people keep getting lost in talking about this.

          We live in a society rooted in greed and extraction. That’s the baseline. It’s called capitalism, and for the last 40 years it’s been accelerated by the neoliberal #deathcult, where today “ethics” is bought in plastic tubs of organic yogurt at our local supermarket.

          What grows out of this shit heap? #Stupidindividualism, people demanding everything for free while shouting about their personal rights to consume. They want to save the planet, but only with next-day delivery and zero commitment. Then you’ve got the #fashionistas – the “good people” who “perform” care while feeding the same destructive paths. It’s not irony, it’s the logic of the path we take.

          No, I don’t want tracking ads. No, I don’t want my ideas and writing turned into #AI sludge. But I’m also not pretending this is a matter of “personal choice”, when we need to shout loudly and continually that it’s a system built to turn “creators” into social shit and call it innovation, when better to speak truth and call it compost.

          We don’t fix this by feeling guilty, we fix it by building something else. That’s what #OMN is for, that’s why #4opens matter. Public media, open processes, radical trust, of native #openweb paths, not just another polished platform for exploitation with feel good #UX

          It’s not about blame. It’s about digging over the rot and planting something more real #KISS

          Without discomfort, we won’t challenge the system we’re still living inside

          A problem we’ve inherited from the last ten years of corporate social media, the #dotcons, is the toxic confusion of the personal and the public. Platforms like #Facebook and #Twitter blurred the lines between private conversation and public broadcasting, monetizing both as if they were the same. That mess wasn’t accidental; it was profitable.

          Unfortunately, we’ve reproduced this mess on the #Fediverse without properly composting it first. What does that mean? We’ve taken this tangled, unhealthy paths and rebuilt them with new tools, many of them open-source, but we haven’t separated the core issues or composted the conceptual issue. As a result, we still see confusion around what content belongs in the public commons and what should stay private. People are still posting as if they’re in a private chat while standing on a soapbox, or trying to gate keep public news through private group dynamics.

          The reality is: we already have a clear, simple solution.

          • The Fediverse is public. It is for public media, public conversation, news, projects, what we want to share with the world.
          • Encrypted chat apps (like Signal) are for private communication, what we want to keep between individuals or trusted groups.

          This needs to be simple #KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid, but instead, we have well-meaning but unthinking devs and users trying to remix the worst of #dotcons culture, mushing together public and private spaces, throwing moderation at everything like it’s a catch-all fix, and muddying the waters of what these networks are actually for.

          This is not innovation, it’s common crap behavior inherited from systems built to manipulate, monetize, and pacify us all. If we want more of real, trusted, meaningful media, we have to get back to basics: public news needs to be built on #4opens, and it needs to be created, distributed, and discussed in public spaces.

          That’s why projects like #OMN (Open Media Network), #OGB (Open Governance Body), and the #indymediaback reboot matter. They offer paths where grassroots, trust-based publishing thrives again, outside #NGO capture and corporate control and enclosure.

          With this change in mind, why the #Deathcult Hashtag?

          People often ask why I use the hashtag #deathcult so much. It’s provocative, yes, but it’s not just for shock value. It’s a term that names the dominant ideology of the last 40 years: #neoliberalism. An ideology so pervasive that most people can’t even see it any more, even while it’s actively eroding the very values they claim to be upholding.

          You see this when a liberal proudly buys “organic” yogurt at Safeway while supporting systems that are destroying the planet. That’s not just irony, that’s the entire logic of the deathcult. It’s the normalization of destruction wrapped in “ethical” branding. And no, it’s not just the yogurt, that’s just the joke. It’s everything: our phones, our work, our schools, our activism.

          If you can’t find a part of your life untouched by the deathcult, it’s because it has touched everything. That’s why the hashtag exists: to make people uncomfortable. Because without that discomfort, we won’t challenge the roots of the system we’re all still living inside.

          This movement isn’t about reinventing wheels, it’s about returning to native paths. The public internet worked before. Let’s compost the #techshit by usefully separating the public from the private, and rebuild the “native” path on clear, #4opens foundations.

          We can do better, we already know how, let’s stop pretending we don’t.

          If I were a Communist

          Let’s get the shit-shoveling out of the way first. People get twitchy about the word Communism, waving their arms about “utopian” back-to-the-land communes or religious cults that gave up on society and ran off into the woods, on one side and on the other expansionist empires. That’s not what we’re talking about. Those were retreats, both dead ends. They didn’t believe the world can change, so they isolated themselves and built closed states in the shadows of the #deathcult empire we to often live in. That’s not compost, that’s too often decay.

          What I would mean by Communism is radically simple: a society based on practical equality. That means everyone has what they need, and nobody gets to hoard. It’s not abstract, it’s built on what people can do and what they really need, no more and no less.

          And this grows out of a basic truth, humans are social creatures. We exist inside society, not apart from it. So any real ethics, any workable economics, has to start there. The individual is not some walled-off unit of value, that’s the poison the #deathcult worships. And under the current system, that poison is poured into everything. It’s why we get so much waste, so much suffering, and why inequality isn’t a glitch, it’s the damn #mainstreaming path.

          So let’s be honest. There are only two ways to organize society: Slavery or Equality. Everything else is a mask. What we’ve got now is, for most people, the latest version of slavery – Wage Labour – which is just chattel slavery with the branding updated, and the chains made invisible. The #nastyfew ruling class, the “worthy”, decide what’s valuable and over the long term try and squeeze the rest of us dry. These self-declared “useful” people are entirely parasitic. The only productive class is the one they exploit: the workers, the creators, the growers. The rest are just shuffling paper and shifting blame, smoke and mirrors.

          Every age has dressed this up differently. Rome had chains. Feudalism had serfs. Now we have debt, wages, and endless hustle. Same shit, different form. But the composting truth, we’ve arrived at a point in history where this can break down. The system that enslaved us has finally created the possibility of liberation. That’s the dialectic, out of the rot, we can grow something living.

          Communism does not need to be a dream – it can be a practical toolkit for that growth. It says:

          From each according to their capacity, to each according to their need.

          And when they ask, “But how will you measure someone’s need?” we answer, in a real society, people grow up inside a culture of mutual care. You stop thinking in terms of what you can grab and start thinking in terms of what you can share. The culture composts greed. The idea of stepping on someone else to get ahead just doesn’t make sense anymore.

          You want doctors? You make space for people who want to heal, not for those who want a title and a paycheck. The community will support their learning because everyone benefits. A fake doctor who slides through on bullshit credentials won’t last long in a society that knows what real care looks like. The mask won’t work anymore.

          Yes, we’ll still need to deal with logistics, conflict, even assholes, “communism” isn’t heaven, it’s just a #KISS honest way to live. And it can maybe handle everything the current system handles, only better. Capitalism is a hack job, it hoards, it wastes, it burns people out. A communal society builds real wealth: time, beauty, knowledge, unpolluted air, clean water, and space to actually live.

          And how do we get there? Not by magic. Not by seizing the TV stations and declaring victory. The revolution is already underway. But it’s compost, not dynamite. We’re building a soil layer thick enough for life to grow.

          It starts by making more communists, by spreading the seed idea, that equality isn’t just desirable, it’s necessary. It grows when workers demand not just crumbs but real power, not reforms, but transformation. First they fight for better pay, then for control, and finally they realize the masters have no magic, no divine right – just theft, backed by violence and lies.

          The change won’t come as a single event. It’s a long decay and regrowth – a shift from brittle control to living interdependence. The capitalist state will still try to crush this change when the time comes, but by then, it could be too late. Its legitimacy will have rotted away. People will already be walking, building the alternative paths.

          In short:

          I could be a Communist because the current system is slavery with marketing.

I could be a Communist because I believe in people, not profit.

I could be a Communist because the future can be communal, or there will be no future.

          It’s not utopia. It’s not perfect. It’s just a path forward that doesn’t end in collapse, burnout, and brutal inequality. This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a spade in the soil. Time to dig.

          We need to compost the spiky and the fluffy nasty

          From hard walls to fluffy blocks – let’s compost the negative nastiness in our progressive spaces.

          A reflection on toxic communication in radical spaces, and how to build something better.

          In the 20th century, much of the nastiness came from the hard vertical left. Back then, control, ideology, and vanguardism created rigid hierarchies, enforced through forceful exclusion and dogma. In the 21st century, that same exclusion comes from the “fluffy” horizontal left, the #fashionista crew wrapped in progressive aesthetics. It’s still fear and control. It’s still the same mess. And it still needs composting.

          Even in spaces that claim openness and justice, we see “common sense” pushing of gatekeeping, moral absolutism. From both ends, the old vertical hardliners and the new fluffy puritans, we’re still well stuck in cycles of not hearing each other. One of the hard problems of the current left/progressive paths is this intolerance and dogmatic nastiness dressed up in fluffy cloth. Historically, from the hard vertical left, but much more common today is from our “fluffy” #fashionista “progressive” crew and their pushing of postmodernist language games as #blocking.

          It’s a real and persistent issue in left/progressive paths, we do all service by worshipping a #deathcult, so people are often “wrong” as this common sense worship is the normal, not the exception. It is a cycle where gatekeeping, moral absolutism, and social exclusion dominate on every side. But when this comes from the “fluffy” or “horizontal” side, it is even harder to talk about, as it’s too often masked as care or safety, but still ends up reinforcing fear and control.

          Non-nasty communication would be rooted in trust, a touch of humility, and most importantly shared purpose, and could look like a presumption of good intent, default to assuming people are trying, even if they fail. Then we need to replace instant cancellation with curiosity, “What do you mean by that?” or “Can we unpack that together?” in more constipated language that works for some more academic people.

          Yes we do need clear boundaries without exclusion, you can say “That’s not OK here” without blocking, shaming, or exiling. Encouraging dialogue before disengagement builds stronger communities than isolation does. Then in every step visible open process (#4opens Style).

          In group process, clear decision-making, open archives, transparent moderation, and rotating responsibility make space for people to learn and grow instead of fear missteps. If this goes wrong, and it will, deep listening, slow speaking. Let things sit. Respond with reflection, not reflex. Allow pauses and silences; don’t rush to dominate with the “correct” take.

          In the end, it’s best to see conflict as compost, not crisis. See disagreement as a chance to grow shared understanding, hold space for messy difference rather than rushing to resolution or punishment. A part of this is inviting language, use “we,” “let’s,” and questions more than commands or declarations. Say “I’m wondering if…” instead of “You’re wrong because…”

          In short and sharp, what to do when people are “wrong”, treat people as comrades, not problems is a good first step. Communication should be generative, less about winning, more about creating together. #KISS we do need to compost this nasty mess, do you need a shovel #OMN

          Then OK in the end you might end up hitting each other, but this should always be long down the process path, long down. Hope this helps 😉

          Dev test work for Makinghistory application

          The #makinghistory project is a decentralized, open-source archiving and storytelling network designed to preserve and amplify grassroots histories. It’s founded on the idea that history isn’t written by the winners – it’s made by those who resist, build, and care. Using digitized collections like the CampbellFamily archive as a seed, the project invites communities to reclaim their narratives through shared, federated networks. This isn’t just another data repository – it’s a living, breathing ecosystem where collective memory is gathered, enriched, and kept accessible for future generations and movements.

          The application functions as a community-installable tool that allows anyone to host their own archive node. These nodes, whether local or remote, connect into a wider peer-to-peer network of storytellers, archivists, and activists. Core features include uploading and organizing digital files, enriching metadata flows, and linking material to broader narratives using human-created tags and annotations. The platform follows a participation-first path, encouraging affinity groups to contribute not just data, but context, weaving a rich web of interlinked histories.

          But #makinghistory goes further than archiving. It’s a space for collaborative storytelling, publishing, and public exhibition. Its narrative layer draws from the archive to trace connections between people, places, and events, transforming scattered fragments into stories of solidarity, resistance, and change. These outputs feed both digital commons and real-world installations like the Resistance Exhibition, where history is brought to life in public, participatory spaces. This is the infrastructure for radical memory work, a composting system for movement knowledge. Developers are not just needed to build features, they’re invited to help shape the very flows and protocols that keep history in the hands of those who live it.

          Developer Roadmap: #makeinghistory – Testing & Prototyping

          • Phase 1: Core Object Listing
            • Implement a single-column interface that lists objects (text, image, link).
            • Set up two test instances that can post and sync objects between them.
            • Default view lists objects by most recent. Super simple.
          • Phase 2: Hashtag Columns
            • Add support for hashtag-based columns (inspired by Mastodon’s Tweetdeck interface).
            • Reuse and adapt existing open-source implementations where possible.
          • Phase 3: Story Objects
            • Introduce a new “Story” object that composes and links existing media objects, with added narrative context.
            • These stories are published through collective/community accounts (discussion needed on access/trust models).
          • Phase 4: Federation & Flows
            • Begin mapping and testing how edits, hashtags, comments, and objects flow across federated instances.
            • Align this with the #OMN trust model and the work from the #indymediaback reboot (estimated 90% overlap).
          • User Interfaces
            • Desktop: Use a Tweetdeck-style interface, similar to Mastodon’s current layout.
            • Mobile: Build a simplified UI with a single-column scroll. Objects open fullscreen with sideways swiping (like Tusky for Mastodon).
          • Every Object
            • Has edit capabilities (if user has login/auth).
            • Editable hashtags.
            • Comment threads.
            • All changes sync across instances via federation/trust flows (option 4).

          The current test interface and images will need refreshing, as they’re based on early-stage mockups. But the concept remains: keep the interface minimal, usable, and focused on narrative composting. This project is both infrastructure and imagination, grounded in the old but reaching toward the new.

          These images need an update as they were based on the dev work from back in the day. This is the very basic interface for testing. The mobile user facing interface is a flick sideways basic interface.

          The logic and workflow are all based on the OMN project and have likely a 90% overlap with the indymediaback project

          DEV of the #OMN projects

          At the core of the #makinghistory infrastructure lies the Open Media Network (#OMN) – a trust-based, human-moderated, #4opens project that offers a decentralized, federated database shared across peers. What makes the OMN unique isn’t just what it does – but what it refuses to do. Rather than chasing complexity or abstract “AI-powered” solutions, the OMN focuses on simplicity and social cohesion, using technology to support and grow human networks. Its structure is purposefully minimal, with only five essential functions:

          These core functions are: Publish (to share a story as an object into a stream); Subscribe (to people, pages, groups, or subjects); Moderate (to express trust or disapproval by pushing or pulling content); Rollback (to remove content from your stream based on trust flows); and Edit (to collaboratively change metadata across federated nodes where you’re authenticated). This framework serves as the back-end engine for building a grassroots, DIY semantic web. The front-end can take many forms: city-based or subject-specific sites like a modern reboot of Indymedia, regional storytelling platforms, or thematic archives like #makinghistory. Protocols like ActivityPub form the connective tissue of this system, the plumbing.

          In practice, this means people can build meaningful media spaces that reflect local struggles and solidarities without being dependent on corporate platforms or NGO gatekeeping. The data cauldron of the OMN stores the shared knowledge, and every community holds a golden ladle – a way to draw out, remix, and republish what matters to them. If you’re interested in supporting this effort financially, you can do so via Open Collective. And if you’re ready to dive deeper, we need to make this #KISS project work. Let’s build tools for memory, not marketing, infrastructure for resistance, not careerism. Let’s be #makeinghistory together, not sit bord looking at a screen.

          This #OMN path is “native” built on a simple, powerful truth: “This is the Internet”:

          GET
          PUT
          POST
          DELETE
          –MERGE–

          These basic actions — close to the core HTTP verbs every website uses — are all you need to create, share, remix, and grow.
          (From RFC 7231 and RFC 5789.)

          Then you have the #4opens which are about reclaiming the grassroots social power of the web:

          Open data

          Open source

          Open process

          Open standards

          No gatekeepers. No #dotcons middlemen. No closed silos. Just people, building together. This is what #openweb reboot looks like.

          Actors, Power, and Collective Publishing: Rethinking Fediverse Architecture for Grassroots Media