Links from 2022

In short: not much unless doing device management.

We live in undeniably ugly times. Architecture, industrial design, cinematography, probiotic soda branding — many of the defining features of the visual field aren’t sending their best. Despite more advanced manufacturing and design technologies than have existed in human history, our built environment tends overwhelmingly toward the insubstantial, the flat, and the gray, punctuated here and there by the occasional childish squiggle. This drab sublime unites flat-pack furniture and home electronics, municipal infrastructure and commercial graphic design: an ocean of stuff so homogenous and underthought that the world it has inundated can feel like a digital rendering — of a slightly duller, worse world.

I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet.

Some reasonable tips here.

A lot of the posts I’ve read about companies leaving Twitter talk about trust and safety issues, and some about ideology, some ideological leavers fleeing after the reinstatement of Trump. But from a purely practical standpoint, this post is a pretty damning[...]

HN discussion on Takahē

An efficient ActivityPub Server, for small installs with multiple domains

This is magic.

Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why? One reason—among several—is that as soon as subcultures start getting really interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them. Subcultures have a predictable lifecycle, in which popularity causes death. Eventually—around 2000—everyone understood this, and gave up hoping some subculture could somehow escape this dynamic.

Two teams of five is not the same as one team of ten.

Outernet boasts of being “the world’s foremost bridge between the real world and the digital world”, a place where the metaverse meets meatspace, where virtual luxury trainers can be sold as NFTs alongside the real thing. There are plans for it to grow into a worldwide network of 10 connected hubs, with New York and Los Angeles next on the list. But it shows what happens when urban development is conceived in the same way as making a website or running a TV channel – “curating a brand neighbourhood,” as O’Ferrall puts it. Pings, clicks and content trump human experience, until advertising swallows the city whole.

This brings us to today, where the loudest complaints about “cultural stasis” tend to come from Gen X adults whose cultural interests have long been anchored in obscure and openly-artistic cultural forms. From their perspective, today's cultural capital does feel very tame. Being "with it" requires listening to top-charting albums, watching blockbuster movies, and being well-versed in internet memes. Compared to Gen X, Millennials who grew up on the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC would have fewer qualms about a pop culture centered around Harry Styles fandom, Harry Styles albums, and Harry Styles cinema gossip. Meanwhile Gen Z, in its rebellion against Millennials, appears to appreciate obscurity as a virtue again, but this is a new obscurity, not based in artistic complexity and historical knowledge but the discovery of amateur videos lurking at the edges of the internet.

Tools and structures from social.coop, "a coop-run corner of the fediverse"

A governance toolkit for great communities.

Fediverse stats

GoToSocial is an open-source, ActivityPub compatible, federated social media server. It's easy to install, lightweight, and perfect for small servers

Some good pointers here.