cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/28517038
Web browsers were very limited compared to today's offerings but still very extensive when compared to other applications. Now, browsers on desktop are at a point where they're equivalent to an OS in scope.
This frustrates me as it's led to stagnation, where very few companies can hold their position. Firefox can only keep up due to preexisting groundwork and the large amount of funding from Google. Chrome had billions thrown at it to quickly enter the market.
The thing that kills it the most for me is there is no way to fix the massive amount of effort needed for a web browser. It's extensive because it has to deal with thousands of situations: image rendering, video rendering, markup language support (HTML), CSS support, JavaScript support, HTML5 support, security features, tabbed browsing, bookmarking and history, search engine integration, cross-platform compatibility, performance optimisation, developer tools, accessibility features, privacy controls, codec support, to name a few.
Now, for my unpopular opinion: stripping back a general-purpose browser to its core, forcing web redesign, and modularising the browser. Rather than watching videos in the browser, an instance of VLC would be started where the video will be streamed. Instead of an integrated password manager and bookmarks, we have something akin to KeepassXC with better integration. Markup documents and articles automatically open in word processing applications. I know this idea seems wholly impossible now, but it often crosses my mind.
https://unicornriot.ninja/2024/anarchists-gather-for-conference-at-the-corner-of-the-world/
A global gathering of anarchists took place in Mexico in late January, focusing on international resistance to border militarization.
Before the meeting I wrote another, slightly more detailed description of our project, ourselves (as vague as possible) and the event - all nice and harmless and aligned with the goals for sustainable development - sent it for a last minute proofreading to my kid, and printed it 30 min before the meeting (yes, printer acted up, I should have known better, but I managed).
Four people from the council were present, and they were really friendly and really tried to help. They would have preferred to just integrate our ideas into an event they are planning and not have to think about our separate event, but we just stayed firm, pointed out again that our important community project deserved its own event, reminded that we had this incredible space available. Not like they could have really stopped us. We ended up being offered the council's collection of stands, tables and benches for our event, and maybe a cleaning of the place. Plus, we get to promote the project on the other event as well.
Lots of events. What about the community center? In the last days I have been researching how to formalize our group-to-be and found someone who knows cooperative and association law and can give us advice, and I am reaching out to other existing groups for inspiration and advice.
Next weekend we will both promote the event at another market further away, and meet some people from the local foreign community to present our project ideas.
I'm confident this will manifest in some good things, and I'm also quite dizzy and surprised about the positive reactions so far.
Next steps: find more interesting participants for the event, promote the event, get the necessary equipment booked, start to outline the structure of the project with interested locals.
This thing is really starting to take off. Not bad for something conjured out of thin air and a 'For sale or rent' sign on an empty building!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-68639876
Hybrid Air Vehicles aims to make 24 ships a year at the site in Doncaster.
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2024/03/22/the-herbal-solidarity-project-resisting-state-oppression/
Freedom introduces its new PROFILE category, where we will focus on people or organisations; we begin with activist Nicole Rose.
We decided to set our date, designed posters and started publishing, mostly on FB and local groups on different messenger apps, despite silence from the town hall until today. I messaged the owner with our date. We also started contacting local people who we would like to invite, and set out requests for market vendors and artists.
This afternoon the town hall got back to us in a polite, but somewhat concerned sounding email, about 'clearing up doubts about our project and request for support' proposing a meeting next week! We are obviously delighted to be important enough to be honoured with a meeting, and have responded that 'we will happily introduce our project, clarify doubts and talk about support'.
We have already some artists and vendors, some associations wanting to present their work, and lots of people being very curious. Somebody offered us a translation and further help, someone else has been connecting me with potential organization structure examples our project could follow.
Best thing about all this: it's a community project and I feel very light about setting its seed and slowly sharing it with others. I am usually very anxious around other people and having to speak, scheduling stuff, having to present things ... and now it's just fun and I am so curious as to where this leads to.
what if
the angel came
as a mushroom
or divorce
a disease or a despair
what if it kissed your head
so impossibly pale
you forget how to breathe
for a moment
for the lifetime of an empire
and then remember again
Today we visited the local town hall and asked who to speak with about the initial fundraising and people-raising event. I quickly threw together a paper with the basic data and a wish list to try and get their support. Took only a few minutes and someone came to talk to us, said as we are on private grounds we need no licenses other than an insurance, and to email a formal request for support to the president.
Can't say that I really thought the town hall people would downright stop our event, but talking to politicians and public servants can be a little 'ew' (it wasn't in this case and many local people had advised us to go there and that they would be friendly, but we were nervous before). I'm glad to be able to present our important points about project and event in an email, anyways, which I find a lot easier than talking to people.
So it looks like this event is going to happen! Next step is crafting a beautiful email (currently in work) for the presidente!
Parallel to this work we have started contacting artists, possible collaborators, insurance company (266€ for the event, ouch!). Our date isn't really fixed yet, we plan for 2 months from here. I've started setting up a website, designed a crappy logo and wrote up some descriptions.
I'll document our steps, maybe it can be of use to you if you would like to build a similar thing, or you have good advice for us, because frankly we are making this up as we go. And also, it might help sort my own mind.
So I and my boyfriend get bored easily, and in our local industrial estate stands a huge, empty factory - for rent or sale, with a phone number.
We made a quick list of all the things that could and should exist in a community center and contacted the owner hoping to get him to visit the place with us and agree to allow us to hold a first event in the location.
Apparently he owns another factory, so I first spoke to his secretary, then waited a few days for him to make time for a visit. In the meantime we set up a rudimentary website with a first presentation and crafted sort of a presentation email. Not handling things in my native language, so it can take some effort to come up with sth acceptable.
Then the owner called back and wanted to meet same day, so we went there, three wonderfully unprepared odd people, and since I forgot my phone and the man was late I sent bf for the phone and kid for cake and stood there alone when he and his wife drove up in a big fancy car. I was probably about as clumsy and unbusinesslike as possible presenting our project - because let's be honest, there isn't much of a project yet. I remember some 'in person activism' advice I saw recently that started with 'gather your friends' and the thing is, I don't really have any friends?
The place is huge. On 2500m2 indoor area there's huge rooms, cooling chamber, probably around 150m2 stores of office spaces, another two separate large sheds .... plus 10.000m2 outdoor area. While visiting the place I ended up talking to the woman more and she was kind enough to ask me the right questions to make our idea understandable to her and she warmed up to the whole thing, and so did he. Bf and kid arrived eventually and did another tour through the factory while I stayed talking to the owners outside.
They did agree to the event, skeptically but then they don't have much to lose really. They suggested we should speak to the local council, and get back to them with the event plans.
So, we've basically started with the location because it's just soooo neat, and are now hoping to find people by organizing this event. If we get a large enough group of people wanting to use part of the space we might be able to raise enough money for rent or purchase. We are planning to create an association once we find collaborators.
It's stupidly ambitious, we are enjoying ourselves. If this place or approach doesn't work we'll move on to the next.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-landlords-game/
The story of how a homemade, anti-capitalist game created by a woman becomes a mass-produced uber-capitalist game that profited a man.
@schmorpel
@slrpnk.net