While browsing the fediverse I come across more and more accounts that seem ... a bit off, a little uncanny. The stuff they post seems random, their comments slightly weird. What's going on, is the fediverse being overrun by bots? Or am I as a fanatic anti-AI person just losing my mind and seeing the enemy everywhere?

I hate the fact that I now question every interaction that seems a bit off - it seems such a stupid waste of my time and I'm afraid I might just end up blocking real people who happen to express themselves in a strange way - as a neurodivergent person I know how bad I would feel about being ostracized as 'too strange to be real'. How would you handle this?

As I seem to encounter quite a few anarchists who just love to produce word salad, here's some grandmotherly words of advice. When you want to create a better world and you do so by writing, learn how to write in a way that is accessible. The people you are trying to reach might not have time to work through pages of word salad. The language you write in might not be their native language. They might not have any academic education. They might be dyslexic or have a short attention span.

It is tempting to use long words and sentences. You might be concerned that if you write in a simple way people will think your message is not true, or that your philosophy lacks depth, or even worse that someone else could think you are stupid. But in the worst case people will think none of those things because they can't be arsed to read beyond the first few words of your text in the first place, and will immediately move on to something more easy to read. Also, there's a big difference between Trump-level populism and accessible texts with substance.

Accessible texts with substance point towards some activity people can do in real life, some change they can bring about by doing a specific thing. Nobody cares if Anarcho-Capitalism or Anarcho-Coprophilism is better, but you can convince people to buy at a small grocery instead of a big supermarket. Don't tell them they should engage in mutual aid - instead give them ideas about how to help their neighbours.

I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to posing as a smartass - but I try to fight it, because talking to each other to be heard is better than being very clever while nobody understands what we actually want to do.

When buying stuff, consuming media and picking jobs - where do you draw the line of considering something too evil? Among my peers there's a lot of people who will actively avoid Nestle products, or who don't eat meat. But none of them bats an eye at using Facebook or X. Nobody cares about using products made in China under awful working conditions. I have worked as a freelancer translating greenwashing for a few doubtful megacorporations, others work as lawyers or programmers supporting them.

Especially when it comes to work I find myself between a rock and a hard place. I have tried doing blue collar jobs instead to avoid this. My body tells me very clearly that it's not a full time option for me and I have been running into the same problems of having to consider working for people who either get their money from evil megacorporations or and/or having to do stuff that actively causes some kind of harm, and being forever poor while doing so.

Where do you draw the line? How do you live your life in such a way that it doesn't support evil directly or indirectly while being able to bring food to the table and pay the rent?

World is an absolute shit show with no signs of improving, personal life just keeps turning upside down, everything makes me terminally tired. I am trying to remain positive and be a positive force for others. I do stuff to make me feel better, like art, take walks, talk to a therapist, grow plants, community work - and I do manage to squeeze a tiny happiness out of my activities but it doesn't seem to be worth the effort. I try to connect with people and quite a few people actually seem to like me but socializing makes me feel exhausted. I catch myself thinking "Let the fucking war arrive and burn it all down" and that's terrifying stuff to carry in one's own head. I just feel I'm part of the overpopulation and that there's no point of existing.

I have a kid and don't want them to be sad because their crazy parent offed themselves and that's all that keeps me going.

Those of you feeling like this: what keeps you going?

EDIT: Wow, this has been quite a day. Thanks for your answers and advice, it was so far the darkest day I found on my path and you really helped me through it! I'd like to send a virtual hug to all, especially those who seem to be struggling as much as I do and who stay around for the sake of their loved ones, or simply out of spite and anger. The heavy tension-inducing weather that was been brewing here all morning finally unloaded into an impressive thunderstorm with bucket loads of rain, and then a friend arrived telling me she was feeling quite the same way (the weather clearly didn't help today!), and she inspired me to host a meeting I wanted to do since a long time, so I finally set up a date for it and announced it. So here we go again, despite or with the rage, the spite, the heavy heart. See you tomorrow, hopefully with some sun to try that 'baking cookies in my car' thing I just found in the shitposting community. At least there will be cookies to go with the doom tomorrow!

As composting enthusiasts who want to build a project around compost, we had been intrigued about the waste ever since the council had announced their new bio waste collection program and advertised everywhere for people in town to collect and deliver theirs. They handed out buckets, a few containers appeared in two neighbourhoods, and it had something to do with the sustainable development goals.

But no composting facility anywhere in the council, so we asked around and finally got hold of the right person. Found out the waste is carried a hundred kilometers away to a huge central facility, once a week.

Now we need to find out if they let us do better than that?

A good overview and link collection around small scale hydro power technologies

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

If you have tried several self-hosting platforms like the above, please share your experience.

I have so far only tried Yunohost and I'm quite satisfied. It does help to read French, sometimes solutions can be hidden in French forum topics.

Coop Cloud seems to be docker-based, as far as I understand, and I just never managed to wrap my head around containers and why I should use them. Not sure though if Yunohost does container stuff in the background that I am not aware of?

I've just started to use my Yunohost installation for some small scale collaborative stuff so I really hope it scales (to probably not more than 100 users) and keeps running smoothly. Starting to host common stuff is a little more scary than just fucking up my own private files.

Web 3, nature conservacy, crypto-somthing, blockchain? So this organization appears to be buying land to then put in the hands of stewardship organizations. One of the places being bought under this scheme is Traditional Dream Factory.

Their plans and ideas seem sound, I just don't understand the crypto part and tokens and what these are supposed to accomplish as opposed to something like traditional shares or just write everything down on a piece of paper?

Is crypto ultimately just an ultra complex way of record keeping here?

I would really appreciate your opinions. In terms of activities and spaces, a lot of the TDF setup is very close to what we would like to build, so I try to study and understand different ways people organize such projects.

A group of friends is currently planning to approach the local council about getting to rent or being ceded some kind of facility to use as community space and find out about other support options that might be available for such a project.

While working with local government (or depending on them) has its risks and might turn out to be the wrong approach, we will at least consider it in the beginning - it might be surprisingly easy to get a space in this way, considering the many empty and abandoned properties where we live. Stepping in with a project the council deems support-worthy could really get us started.

So for that, I would like to design a small brochure or presentation with our ideas and find that rather hard. I have a list with what we would possibly include in such a space, but could do with some inspiration as to how to present it so it highlights how the community will profit from this project.

Has anyone ever designed such a document, or knows of one they could share? Or has any ideas to share? Successful recipes could and should be copied, documented, passed on.

So far, imagining loads of space and a factory-sized building, the ideal community space could have:

Space for Community, Collaboration, Cooperation

Compost and growing

Outdoor event space

Metal/vehicle workshop

Community Kitchen

Office and collaboration space

Wood/Electronics workshop

CNC/3D printing/Hacker space

Indoor event space

Storage

Mushroom lab

Preference of community hosting instead of self hosting has recently come up in a permacomputing chat, and in this sense I am trying to set up a tiny yunohost server that can serve my local alternative community - a series of mostly rural living people spread throughout the landscape around a small towns. I want to support local barter and trade, local tool sharing and connections between people.

I am trying to feel my way towards what functions could be useful for a mostly non-tech community, and what is out there to self-host? And what is especially useful and makes sense for local communities? Event calendar, small ads and some sort of map functions come to mind, what else? I guess a lot of what Facebook does.

As I don't see myself in the position to replace Facebook anytime soon but would like to pave the way towards having Facebook and the like replaced by many small scale solutions like the server I am building, I would like the server to have other useful stuff. Currently using CryptPad for collaborative editing, got a SearXNG instance and a digital book shelf with stuff related to gardening, foraging, homesteading, renewables, but none of this is really local. Maybe offering people a small portfolio website where they can put their offerings, skills?

I currently have an Epicyon instance installed that does all of this, it has skill sharing, item sharing, even a calendar, and I really like what it does - but I'm afraid it might be a little tough on the non-tech users.

Please dump your suggestions and ideas about what could live on such a server. As I am still a baby admin I'm not too far in to notice that people's eyes glaze over when I mention things like 'server' or 'search engine'. Trying to keep it intuitive enough for a big enough group might be a challenge, especially when keeping it all clean and FOSS. Probably needs to work really well on mobile phone as well.