gemini://inconsistentuniverse.space/gemlog/2021-12-30-myriad.gmi

Hey geminispace this is going to be a slightly more relaxed post than I sometimes make on this server. I sorta have a bunch of individual thoughts that warrant maybe a paragraph or two but not much more than that, so I figured I'd make a single post talking about all these things.

So there's been a lot of good posts in the last couple of days about what actually even is decentralization and how to classify different things that feel like decentralization:

One of the things I really found thought provoking was gardenappl's point about services that treat the distributed/peer-to-peer nature as an implementation detail. She argues, at least to some degree, against that and in favor of things more like peertube where you the human element is very explicit: you know, obviously, that there is another person hosting and it's obvious how you would do your part to host as well. So she pushes back on things like the hyper protocol that I'm normally pretty positive about because they hide the decentralization behind abstractions.

I feel like I'm still stewing on this, on the social implications of the ways our tech is designed and the importance of making the digital commons feel like a commons we all maintain as opposed to the way supply chains at the supermarket work: you don't know where things came from and the system is built to make sure you don't have to care.

I've been using it for very personal stream of consciousness content, musing about life, things like that. It's where I've also been talking more about depression, the pandemic, and just all the sad thoughts in my head. Why do that there and not here? I suppose it's because it feels like a better fit for the content: there's no links, not need for hypertext, just straight up diary entries with another folder of small dithered photos to document everyday life.

For those of you who have both gemini and gopher presences, do you use them for different things? I know a lot of people just mirror content between them but I like the idea of trying to find a way to connect the different protocols to different uses

I have *a lot* of executive dysfunction issues and a combination of bullet journaling and commitment devices is basically the only way I'm able to get anything done at all, especially during the pandemic. What's a commitment device? Well it's things like Beeminder, which I've been using for years,

where you basically set goals and put money on the line to actually follow up on them. A more low key commitment device is when you tell someone something you're going to do in order to make sure you do it so you won't lose face.

I just discovered a new one today to help me stay off my phone more: Digital Detox, which locks you out of your phone for a period of time unless you pay a 99 cent penalty to use it again. I mean yes you can always declare that it's an emergency and just bail out of the challenge for free, but that's a theme of basically all commitment devices: there's always some way to cheat if you really want to, because there's nothing that can actually make you do something you don't want to do.

Since New Year's resolutions are such a thing, I've been taking new stock of my beeminder goals, ways to cut the amount of time getting stuck on things I'd rather not spend time on, and how to stay focused.

I mean hopefully we'll be getting the permacomputing grant I helped write this fall. We also, at some point, will be trying to open this makerspace but all the mess with omicron is pushing back opening for at least another couple months. It might be longer if we continue to get new variants but, god willing, we'll actually get a little reprieve by the time spring rolls around.

re: distributed services, habits and the new year, and phlogs vs gemlogs

Distributed vs. decentralized vs. federated

Phlogging vs. gemlogging

Habits and commitment devices

What's coming this year?