@adamgreenfield@social.coop
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adamgreenfield

@adamgreenfield@social.coop

Endurance athlete, heavy-music fan, compulsive greeter of cats. My next book is “Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in A World on Fire,” coming from Verso mid-'24. #syndicateofinitiative

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pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

Half thinking of starting an hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.

Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail.

adamgreenfield,
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@pvonhellermannn 10,000% this, goodness.

adamgreenfield,
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@pvonhellermannn In a class on the architecture of public participation I once taught at [institution], I had cause to show the famous image of the Tiananmen Square “tank man.” Not a single one of the Chinese students in the unit, which was 11 of the 14, recognized the image (or would admit to recognizing it in front of their peers, which is another kind of problem but with the same effect on in-class discussion).

adamgreenfield,
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@pvonhellermannn I felt that by far the better part of the 11 were not prepared to discuss or do work relating to public dissensus at the graduate level they were ostensibly there to pursue, and that we were sandbagging the one or two who were really into it by facilitating their enthusiasm & then sending them back into the maw of a context where they had no way to act on it.

adamgreenfield, to random
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In a low-diligence culture like the UK – a term I’ll explain shortly – overlaying digital systems (like these smart meters) over the processes of everyday life results not in efficiency or productivity gains, but in just the opposite: compounded failures that take extra time, effort and resource to correct. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/26/smart-meter-rollout-number-faulty-machines-leaps-great-britain

adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@sarajw I am sorry, I didn’t want to be one of those insufferable “everything’s better in the States” people. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve thrown in our lot here. We’re on Shite Island for good!

adamgreenfield,
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rather slapdash comedy of errors, the result is not improved accuracy or streamlined process flow. It’s a new and supervening set of faulty readings, with its own particular kind of plausibility and authority, that people must somehow summon the energy to challenge and counter. Occasionally, this has literally lethal effects - if you do not live in the UK, prepare to be shocked speechless by the Post Office/Fujitsu scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

adamgreenfield,
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Heya! I’m really grateful for your interest in the question of a diligence spectrum, but for those of you who have asked or suggested, I’m afraid there’s no real way one could quantify the appearance of this quality in a culture – other, I suppose, than doing the kind of thing that brash and overconfident management consultants do, i.e. collating a few proxy statistics, and calling it a finding. These are simply anecdotal and partial observations, drawn from my own experience.

adamgreenfield,
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@Loukas I think that’s absolutely correct. It’s a stretch, but I wouldn’t be surprised either if some everyday solidaristic institutions here (and here I’m thinking primarily of pubs) derive some of their motive power from the fact that they offer a platform for commiseration and low-key mutual aid in the face of it.

inquiline, to random
@inquiline@union.place avatar

Are we allowed to be glad Lieberman is dead on here

(affirmations only)

adamgreenfield,
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@inquiline 🎉🥳

adamgreenfield,
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@inquiline I know there’s people here who think Amrika gonna Amrika no matter what, but on the basis of harm reduction alone I think it’s better when Democrats are in the Oval Office, and I have always held this manifest sack of shit responsible for George W. Bush.

adamgreenfield,
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@inquiline Joe Lieberman was up there with Kamala Harris so far as terrible running mate choices go. I sure hope selecting him wasn’t some kind of cynical ploy to lock in the Jewish vote – all the Jews I know despise him on GP, and always have.

FredKiesche, to random
@FredKiesche@dice.camp avatar

And there it is…the first novel-length installment appearance of the BOMB-PUMPED X-RAY LASER!

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adamgreenfield,
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

@FredKiesche @KarlSchroeder @hendric @sudnadja @SteveBellovin @cstross @isaackuo @nyrath Peter Watts’s Theseus did this, in “Blindsight.” I found it wonderfully convincing.

adamgreenfield, to random
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A friend spotted this in Hackney this morning. Just putting folks on notice that if I encounter one of these, I will take preemptive countermeasures, believe it.

adamgreenfield,
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What made this even creepier (given its obvious video-capture capability, the propensity for children to be attracted to it, etc.) was that it was being operated by a middle-aged dude between two schoolyards. I dislike stranger-danger hysteria as much as anyone sane, but sometimes the red flags wave harder than the Brezhnev-era Kremlin on May Day.

adamgreenfield,
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We should all take lessons from these civic-minded workers. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/248225/robo-sabotage-is-surprisingly-common/amp/

adamgreenfield,
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@neonsnake @passenger There’s a reasonable argument to be made that Hackney is the Philly of London boroughs. ❤️

adamgreenfield, to random
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Here’s a pamphlet introducing the idea of Convivial Research, from the pleasingly-named Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy. (Via Ashley Cooper – she’s not on here, is she? Damn.) http://cril.mitotedigital.org/sites/default/files/content/ccra_convivial_research_2-18.pdf

adamgreenfield, to random
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Anybody care to hazard a guess as to the significance, if any, of the paperback copy of “Dhalgren” that chap is ostentatiously carrying around in “3 Body Problem”? Don’t worry about spoilers: I’ve finished the series, and reread the book every few years.

luis_in_brief, to random
@luis_in_brief@social.coop avatar

Missed this Sunday. I think some sorts of engineering projects are very hard to make welcoming in this way, but I should probably still sit with the challenge rather than rejecting it out of hand.

https://social.coop/@adamgreenfield/112150560235170951

adamgreenfield,
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@luis_in_brief @edsu Very rich seam here, and you make some great points. The first thing I want to pick up (and I treat this explicitly in “Lifehouse”) is that invitationality in the Occupy Sandy case absolutely depended on the abundance and availability of labor, to the degree that an uncharitable observer might characterize some of the things I saw people doing at 520 as the nonhierarchical equivalent of makework, i.e. people doing self-directed, low-intensity things that may not have been

adamgreenfield,
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@edsu @luis_in_brief in material furtherance of the OS mission, but neither interfered with that mission, alone or in very small groups disconnected from the main functional areas of the hub. I’d wager that this in itself lent the space a quality of being easy to participate in, and, as you suggest, it meant too that there were always bodies available to greet, do intake and indoctrination, etc.

adamgreenfield,
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@edsu @luis_in_brief Uhh, let’s see: as far as “looking over someone’s shoulder” goes, someone I’d like to properly credit (but who I can’t, due to the broken search up in this place) yesterday posted a response to the thread that offered the example of “legitimate peripheral participation,” and that felt right to me – though, again, as you observe, far easier to realize in some contexts than in others. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimate_peripheral_participation

adamgreenfield,
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@edsu @luis_in_brief Right? I found it a super-helpful framing.

adamgreenfield,
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@cfiesler @edsu @ldodds @luis_in_brief lol. I’m glad someone said it.

adamgreenfield,
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@edsu @luis_in_brief @cfiesler Yes, I want to be clear that @ldodds was clearly responding in optimism and good faith! The fact that I don’t, personally, think OSM is the greatest model only speaks to the very great difficulty technical initiatives face in being anything like invitational as I’ve tried to define it here.

adamgreenfield,
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@cfiesler @edsu @ldodds @luis_in_brief See, I don’t understand what that means. And I’m someone who tried to contribute locational information for 12,000 Chicago bus stops to the project, unsuccessfully.

adamgreenfield, to random
@adamgreenfield@social.coop avatar

Sunday! And that means it’s time for this week’s thread. Last week we talked about the ; this week I want to cover something that I see as at least as important to the idea of a functioning Lifehouse network or federation, which is the distinction between formal openness and a quality I think of as “invitationality.”

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