Zane Selvans @ZaneSelvans@social.coop

#introductions

I'm a geoscientist and co-op nerd in Boulder, CO. I work on creating affordable housing cooperatives and supplying them with food through a local bulk food buying cooperative. My day job is shutting down coal plants with data using Python as part of a worker co-op.

Also I love bikes and dense, walkable cities.

I'm part of these orgs:

https://catalyst.coop
https://boulderhousingcoalition.org
http://bouldercooperativefood.org
https://bocha-neighbors.org
http://picklebric.org

@ntnsndr having read the white paper, and watched the interviews w/ you and Jason and Yev, I don't get why crypto is involved. Why is that necessary to solve this problem? How is it beneficial? It just feels like an unnecessary layer of technical complexity. And one that I at least have a ton of negative associations with, from the endless parade of scams and cult-like manias that seem to be the norm for a lot of crypto applications. What's the reasoning there?

Hey @ntnsndr JasonW pointed me at Opolis when I posted a question about how we could hire remote workers overseas at Catalyst. And the idea of a co-op that exists to provide members with all the basic needs we've foolishly associated with "employment" in the US seems great and so obvious in retrospect! But...

I wish images enlarged when I clicked on them, and I could explore the public timelines of other instances without needing to create another account.

Catalyst Cooperative has started publishing our US energy system databases online via Datasette, if anyone feels like poking around: https://data.catalyst.coop

I'm using NordVPN on Ubuntu, with a little python based service/daemon called OpenPyn that stands in for the GUI NordVPN has on other platforms. But there's no obvious status indicator -- am I connected? To where? Is there a good VPN indicator applet for Gnome3 that would be able to detect and display the connection details continuously?

"It is possible to change the system through reason, but humans often need a deep crisis to get reasonable." Andreas Hofer, speaking about the real estate crisis that allowed Zurich's co-op renaissance to begin, 25 years ago: http://assemblepapers.com.au/2018/01/25/co-op-city-zurichs-experiment-with-non-profit-housing/

Is anybody here familiar with the Edith Maryon Foundation in Switzerland? Starting in 1990, they've brought 100+ buildings in Germany & Switzerland into collective / cooperative management, for a variety of (mostly residential) social purposes. Pretty awesome! https://cooperativecity.org/2017/10/24/stiftung-maryon/

What if Usufruct had become the dominant property rights paradigm? We're ephermeral beings. Our "time of enjoyment" is temporary. What if Abusus was always held in common, in the public trust?

"The Fructuarius could make such changes or alterations in the thing as would improve it, but not such as would in any way deteriorate the thing, or even render the maintenance of it a greater burden."

More on the history of Usus, Fructus, et Abusus -- the three aspects of civil property rights in Roman law: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Ususfructus.html

McSweeny's should really join DSA... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes

It'll be pretty awesome if #SocialCoop becomes a globally distributed co-op hive-mind.

My new favorite word is usufruct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usufruct

Well this is cool. Developers from Python & R are getting together to create common low-level data science infrastructure. In the computational commons, there's a benefit to cooperating, rather than competing. http://wesmckinney.com/blog/announcing-ursalabs/

The Boulder Food Co-op had a great annual member meeting & election today... and after 5 years of organizing I'm finally free! Looking forward to watching others steward the co-op into the future from a bit of a distance. https://social.coop/media/Yh7cO1r6HWh99aJ3YeE

The vulture capitalists that own our local newspaper just fired the Editorial editor, because he posted an OpEd on the web, which they refused to publish (criticizing them, and their destructive business model).

There's *got* to be better stewardship ownership models for journalism organizations out there. Here's the editorial that got him canned:

https://boulderfreepress.blog/2018/04/14/private-equity-owners-endanger-cameras-future/