Some personal blogs that I like (mine included), all of them are indie and as far as I know they all are maintained by a single person (so they don’t post several times a day!):

• A Shroud of Thoughts
• Alex’s Blog
• Ben Werdmuller
• Elizabeth Tai
• Felix Crux
• GioCities
• James’ Coffee Blog
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jo’s blog
• KE Garland
• Mark Sutherland
• Maya’s Blog
• OpenPLUTO
• Sara Jaksa
• The Maven Game
• Tracy Durnell
• Writing at Large

Two websites that I use quite a lot to find cool personal blogs/RSS feeds:

• Ye olde blogroll is a hand-curated list of interesting personal blogs in English
• The IndieWeb webring is a webring where people with indie blogs (ie. no substacks, no big websites, etc.) can sign up to get more visibility, it’s a real treasure trove

mina le’s videos are always so good!

I really liked this read! I blog, and I like my blog, but sometimes get stressed out because I feel like nobody’s reading it (I’ve removed all analytics on purpose because I used to get obsessed with them). Blogging for the simple act of blogging, and not for engagement, is the best!

you’ve been an absolutely wonderful admin. please take all the time you need and come back when you’re ready, if you’re ready; don’t come back too soon and burn out again. take care!

I work in a tech role for a big tech company, so at first glance, not much. I like to believe that I’m good at planning stuff and figuring out how many hours by how many people it should take, which is a good skill for all kinds of issues.

It’s easier to start with the small things, like moving to another email provider (I used mailo for a while, which is free and independent, that I really like), changing your search engine (DuckDuckGo is free and a great “gateway” in my opinion), and/or using alternative front-ends for Youtube videos (like Invidious). Once you get used to those, it’s easier to see the value of de-googlifying other stuff! I still use Google Calendar and have an Android phone, but I don’t use many other Google products anymore :)

Just signed up for a trial account and it looks really good. Search in French is surprisingly decent compared to DuckDuckGo.

I am incredibly lucky to live in a country that strongly protects workers, to have no children and to be able to afford an apartment 10mins away from my partner’s place rather than living together and depending on each other’s calendar. I remember how lucky I am every day. I really hope the baby is doing well and that things will settle down in a year or two - obviously it’s still not going to be “unspoken for time”, but hopefully things will settle down a bit at least!

Congrats on the new job and on enjoying spin class!!

That sounds like an absolute nightmare, I’m really sorry. I hope everything will end up fine.

Oooo enjoy the weekend, whatever you end up doing!

Congrats on making it through the exams and good luck for finding the summer job!

I took next week off from work just because I can and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’d like to make the most of it but I can’t decide between doing something really cool and doing nothing at all; both are tempting!

Otherwise, things are going pretty great. I might be able to go full remote at work (which would mean I don’t need to quit anymore), and I’ve prepared a wonderful peach, feta & cucumber salad for lunch.

Fun fact: this applies for pretty much every language, except for 50% of French punctuation.

I really don’t think this pact has any legal value to begin with.

I was thinking “lifetime opt-in but no retroactive effect”, but a “grace period” could be interesting for viral cases, yeah!

I’d go with the following:

• Everything is CC-BY by default, copyright is opt-in.
• If someone opts in to copyright, it ends whenever they die (I’m going to be nice and say “until the last person dies” for a group project).

I hate copyright, but understand that some people really want to keep their work for themselves. Maybe they can do that - in a world where copyrighting isn’t default, we’d have so much to choose from that we wouldn’t need the content made by the kind of people who decide to prevent sharing their work.

Wonderful, thank you!

Here are my notes on the video. Formatting may be a bit broken so you can also find it on my website.

Foundational concepts of a library economy

Advantges of a library economy are:

• Less production
• No wasted things in storage
• No point for excess and planned obsolescence

Usufruct

Based on Murray Bookchin’s The Economy of Freedom.

Usufruct is the freedom of individual or groups to access and use (but not destroy) common resources to supply their needs - as opposed to limitation of access based on exclusive ownership.

Imagine this applied to: libraries of decor, libraries of furniture, libraries of tools. You could borrow cushion, designs, paintings, then switch things out; you could borrow a shovel for a weekend or while you need it.

_A note from Alex:
__My hometown has an art library that belongs to the city library network. They have loads of paintings, and you can borrow 3 paintings for 3 months at a time, for free, with the only obligation being that you need your home to be insured.
Bibliothèques de Grenoble
_

Irreducible minimum

Guaranteed minimum resources to sustain life, that everyone should have access to regardless of their individual contribution to the community.

Libraries provide free access to knowledge (note from Alex: and fun!), but that’s just one component.

Libraries of consumables (food, drugs, toiletries…) might be difficult to imagine. A library economy needs dispensaries of necessities: a cooking collective, with common farming, could work to provide everyone with enough food.

An emphasis on slow fashion by diverse retailers would ensure clothing that lasts, in the style we like. For this we’d need a vast reorientation of all our priorities.

Complementarity

People must choose themselves how they labour and how they leisure. Nothing should be defined by, or limited to, what they contribute themselves. They should always get satisfaction and joy from what they do.

For the things that no one enjoys, find ways to rotate, gamify or transform these tasks.

Imagining a library economy

Based on 5 laws of library science, first conceived by S.R. Ranganathan in 1931.

1. Books are for use: things are meant to be used, not hoarded. Make them accessible: location, hours of operation, comfort & quality of service.
2. Every person has their book.
3. Every book has its reader. Applied more broadly: develop a collection that’s as broad as possible to serve all needs and wants, no matter how niche, because that’s what creates an abundant life.
4. Try to save the time of the user. Libraries require a lot of effort to maintain. We need systems, services, etc. to manage the resources as efficiently as possible.
5. A library is a growing organism. A library economy should always be growing and evolving, the project is never complete.

A few common concerns

• Will this system make us dependent on others? We already depend on others.
• How would we provide for everyone? We definitely have the technological capacity to do it, we just don’t distribute it fairly as of now.
• I like owning things, I don’t have to borrow things I use all the time! Nothing says you’re not allowed to own stuff! Keep everything as long as you need, but also, if you really love something and use it enough to justify owning it, get your own!
• What about scarcity? The community should organize to distribute things efficiently: booking times, wait lists…
• Who administers this system? We must all administer it and have a say in the decisions. Popular assemblies will allow for that. We can have a few people full-time for administration etc.

Visualize pockets of library economies that connect with one another and end up spreading worldwide!