The Netizens fight back
I have been a terrible mood for the last few days, which i will write about in a another post. But this article on Buycott really made me smile. The short version is this app (written by a lone 26 year old over the last 16 months) has the capacity to scan a bar code on something you are thinking of buying with your cell phone and see the corporate lineage of what you are considering buying.
This answers the question, which has been asked recently “How do i boycott the Koch Brothers or Monsanto?”
partial display of buycott screen example.
What is exciting (but potentially deceptive) is that this app reached number 10 in the downloads nationally within hours of it being released (tho they had to ultimately pull the droid version because of some bug). The Forbes article points out that for some things (like conventional breakfast) nasty corporate domination as set in, in a way which will make it difficult to have any conventional breakfast.
It harks back to the question “Can Social Networks Save the World?” The answer is still probably no, but with each iteration, with each attempt our chances improve and things start to get better.
[The author of this post works for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a heritage and organic seed company in Virginia, which is part of the lawsuit to stop Monsanto from suing farmers who have been contaminated by their GMO seeds.]
UVa Dumpster Dive
One thing that is especially satisfying for me is to bump into an organizer who has complimentary skill sets with another organizer. So it is with Irena at Acorn. She is good at staying on task, which is definitely one of my weaknesses. We work together on several things: the Communities Conference, the mechanics of the Seed business and most recently on the UVa dumpster dive.
Irena kept pushing me to work with the gal who runs the sustainability program for UVa, and thus got us pre-qualified for Chuck It for Charity, which is UVa’s answer to the growing dumpster diving “problem” that they face at the end of the academic year. But to understand this “problem” you need some back ground.
All the attire, courtesy of UVa dumpsters.
UVa is a large affluent school in Charlottesville, the nearest “big city” to Twin Oaks and Acorn. The academic calendar is designed so that the last day of exams is the day before all the students need to be out of their dorm rooms. So of course all of the students carefully manage their time so that they get their studying done for their exams early enough so they can pack all their stuff in time for the move-out deadline. And if you believe this, you apparently never went to college.
Instead the students study non-stop right up until their final exam, take the test and then try to pack up everything in their dorm room in less than 24 hours. This results in them simply throwing out a tremendous number of valuable things, from furniture to food to computers to (my big find a couple years back) an entire unopened case of beer. And with all of this wealth going straight into the dumpsters, it attracts a significant number of dumpster divers trying to salvage this stuff before it goes to the landfill.
We found no shirts with this emblem
For a few years (say 5 years back and earlier) things were pretty okay. Students threw stuff out, dumpster divers rescued huge quantities of stuff and it was still wasteful, but on some level it worked. For many years Twin Oaks would send several vans and a dozen or so members into town to scavenge and rescue for the entire day. We would then display them up at Emerald City in the warehouse (our “industrial park”) and dozens of members, many whom would not be comfortable jumping into a dumpster, would come and free shop the rescued treasure.
But then things shifted. My story, which i have no evidence for, is that someone in the legal department at UVa decided that some dumpster diver was going to get hurt and then sue the University, and the campus housing division and campus safety should be stopping dumpster divers from getting stuff in order to protect the university from this liability. As far as i know, no dumpster diver has ever sued a corporation, and certainly no judge has ever ruled in favor of a dumpster diver over the corporation which owned the dumpster. But reality and logic are not driving forces in liability issues.
As a result, a few years back Twin Oaks basically stopped doing the UVa dumpster dive. Their crews got stopped in the act too many times. I was banned for UVa for a year at one point as part of one of the last runs. But not to be scared off, Acorn (in large part because of Irena’s persistence and initiative) went this year as part of the Chuck it for Charity initiative.
It was fun and slightly surreal. We went and signed up, and were told that what they did not want was for people sorting through bags of clothes and cherry picking what they wanted and leaving the rest behind. Of course this is exactly what we wanted to do. So we had part of our group working behind the building sorting the clothes we wanted to keep (which was a surprisingly large fraction) and then re-bundling them. Then we returned the clothes we did not want to one of the approved Chuck it for Charity sites, with markings on the bags so we would not pick them again.
Turns out no one wants rugs, so we got a lot of them for the rave. And micro wave ovens and full length mirrors and cubbies and lots of clothes. It seemed to me like we were more interested in the stuff than any of the other charities, but perhaps they came after we left.
And some from our party were not going to be satisfied without getting into a real dumpster, so we went to one of the large dorm complexes. We were immediately told we could not be in the dumpsters by someone from student housing, but lingered around more discreetly (much of our group looks like college students, especially after they have donned the clothes the students were leaving behind) and got lots of food, including a number of cans of corn, which i was excited about.
In the end, it was a long, exhausting and quite rewarding day.
May is Kewaunee Closes
i missed the Dominion Resources shareholder meeting this year after having attended faithfully every year for perhaps half a dozen. Perhaps CEO Tom Farrell missed my annoying questions about how the utility which i own two shares of continues to waste money on plans for another reactor at North Anna, which will likely never be built. [I am told that Farrell finds annoying shareholder questions to be one of the most headachey part of his job, which i have to say gives me quite some satisfaction.]
I was not able to be there to gloat over the fact that this month Dominion was forced to close the Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin. As the NY Times wrote about this plant’s closure:
The decision was viewed as an early sign that the wave of retirements of old generating stations across the Midwest is now stretching from the coal industry into nuclear power, driven by slack demand for energy and the low price of natural gas.
Also in this NYT article Dominion’s Farrell said of the closure of the plant:
“This decision was based purely on economics.”
It will not surprise people who watch nuclear power closely to hear that this is not what Dominion often says about how they make decisions. As with the North Anna 3 project we often hear that we need “a mix of fuels”. This is the marketing plan the PR people have cooked up to rationalize the poor economics of this plant. They are not doing it to make money for the company, they are doing it because it is important to have a diversified portfolio of energy types. Using this pathetic logic, Dominion should be opening day care centers where they were harnessing kids on treadmills.
No, the real reasons are always they same. They build reactors for the money, but the reason they can not be direct about it is because if it public where the money was coming from, there would be additional problems. For example, the utilities in Georgia and Florida are able to charge their customers now for reactors they are in the process of building or even some that they are thinking about building.
Then there are other tricks, like the “stranded assets” gambit, where the utility says “We built these reactors thinking we were a monopoly, and now that you are changing the rules and we are not a monopoly, we should get the profits from these poor investments as if the market did not exist.” As crazy as this sounds, this scheme has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars being transferred from rate payers to utilities.
How Dominion’s plans to make money on North Anna 3 is not completely clear. But rest assured it is not because they think there will be a carbon tax in the US (this was used as a justification for a while) and not because they believe they need to keep all options open (otherwise they would be more serious about renewables). Dominion is not the largest contributor to political campaigns in the state of Virginia because it feels candidates don’t have enough money to run their campaigns. The reason is that they have a clever plan to bilk customers (and sometimes the state) for money and they are confident that they can pull it off.
Poly Comics
The talented and lovely Tikva has started a comic which is largely about polyamory.
poly means more processing
Tikva and i lived at Twin Oaks together some years back…
her talents are not limited to art stuff
Of course poly folks are our own best critics
guilty
Tikva is telegenic – making for great blog material.
how many times have i heard this …
i recruited her perhaps a decade back on the Harvard Yard, she was a shooting star
Her comic can be found at http://kimchicuddles.tumblr.com/
A hammock for you, my American Friend?
In hopes of starting a new community, i have largely dropped out of the general management of the Twin Oaks Hammocks business. i do continue to do some work with Hawina and Dawn and Gordon mostly on retail marketing of our website (TwinOaksHammocks.com).
We are exploring discount codes to find out which advertising we are using works. And i am pleased to announce that this blog has it’s own discount code. When you buy a hammock, before you check out if you enter the discount code PAXUSBLOG you will get 10% off, which is our deepest retail discount and cheaper than you are going to find these hammocks anywhere.
three lovely unrelated people, presumed to be a family by most viewers
But if you want to win your hammock instead of buying it, you can enter one of our two Fathers Day competitions. Before you get your panties in a twist, we have defined father so broadly that a 3 year old girl could qualify as a deserving dad. Here is the link to the 500 word essay contest or the 2 minute video contest
Spring is here, relax a bit and enjoying it.
Mysterious internet tendencies
i check my blog statistics regularly. Which generates far more questions than answers for me:
- Why do i have clusters of readers in Pakistan and in the Philippines?
- Why do i get so many people finding the blog thru image searches?
- Why are there some many people who found me by searching for just “Red“
So the other day i come in to look at traffic, which has been a bit down recently and i see that there are over 2000 hits for the day on an old post (which i might get 400 or 500 on a popular post most days). And as i look more carefully, these are all coming in thru an image search for “Bart Map and Schedule”. And when i check further, completely inexplicably to me this image which i put up in that post
How did this end up as number 1 in yahoo.images?
is now ranked number one on Yahoo Images if you search for “Bart Map and Schedule”. And almost as quickly as it came up, the traffic from this vanished in the days following this promotion. The image remains in its top ranked position, but the traffic spike abated.
This is an image i stole from the regular BART site, as i presume hundreds of other people have. But for mysterious reasons i have been promoted to this top spot.
Barefoot Bible
i have long been slightly on the fence about going barefoot. i definitely like the way it feels and i also appreciate the foot protection and speed afforded by shoes. Today i fell off the fence.
“You know that there are studies showing there is a preventative effect on Alzheimer’s and other aliments by going barefoot.” Feonix said.
Feonix does yoga int he shadow of the Tapan Zee Bridge
And i saw my mind decisively shift. Even if there was only a small chance that there were significant health benefits from walking barefoot more often, i live in places where i can often easily be barefoot. And on this day i was working at a craft fair on the beautiful Lyndhurst estate outside New York City, and i kicke doff my shoes. i carried them with me some, where they made occasionally convient detached pockets, but mostly this afternoon i was bare foot on grass. More generally on the commune it is fairly acceptable and accessible to be mostly barefoot, Rowan has modeled this behavior for his full 17 years of life.
Am i sure this is better for me? No.
especially in running there maybe something
And i dont need to be completely sure to try something which might be good for me and see how it works. And it also works for me to step out of shoe conformity, to test whether we have hurt ourselves by donning shoes.
Feonix tree dancing
And there is a kind of primitive appeal to the entire idea. What if this presumed benign technology turns out to be the source of a number of problems ? Have we heard this theme before?
There are some interesting tech fixes for the hazards at least.
Better Ways – Frisbee teams and bike intersections
Twin Oaks Ultimate Frisbee Game
The first time i played pick-up ultimate Frisbee i was introduced to a new way to select teams for the many one-on-one sports out there. As we gathered as a group someone said “find someone of about your ability and pair up with them. Everybody on the left is on this team the rest are on the other.” It was fast, it felt fair and it was completely novel to me.
I selected my fine friend Rabbit as my partner, not so much because we were the same ability, but rather because i knew him. This was a tremendous mistake. Rabbit could outplay me in almost all aspects of ultimate. The afternoon was frustrating and exhausting. And what was clear was that this was my choice. This also demonstrated the self-correcting nature of this system, since i would not repeat this mistake.
I thought to myself afterwards: why don’t we select all teams this way? It seems to be better in every way. I mentioned this to a couple of players who were often selected as captains. They did not see a reason to change from the existing system which rewarded their talents. They talked about team work and balancing abilities, the need for leadership. None of it was convincing. This was one of the foundational moments in my embracing anarchism. The broken system was perpetuating itself, despite clear better alternatives.
i had a bit of the same feeling when i saw this video:
This design takes exactly the same footprint in terms of space and makes it better for bicycles and safer for car and bike interaction. And why does this better design not happen (in the US)?
artists rendition, taken from Copenhagen, Denmark
Thanks Basha for your comment and your link to this informative YouTube video on the history of Dutch bike culture and how it advanced after WWII. Instrumental in this it turns out was:
- Dramatic increase in car culture with increased affluence
- A significant increase in children killed by cars and the resulting protests
- The 1973 arab oil embargo, which hit the Netherlands far harder than the US
- National level political will to resolve these problems.
Check out this video
Beltane at Twin Oaks – photos and more
The organizers made a deal with the forces which control the weather. “If you don’t really need it to rain, it would be great if you could hold off until after the celebration”. With this deal struck, the rain remained at bay until after the circle was open.
assemble in the courtyard
Willow and Hawina before the ritual begins
Acorners are part of the event
The procession begins
Dawn welcomes people to enjoy the sweet and the bitter
Cloud and Sapphyre smudge
Kassia and fiddle
The circle assembles beside the may poll
Inter-generational participants
Hawina welcomes air
Claire brings us fire
Purl tends fire
Dance of the God and Goddess
Maypole dancers
i give willow back his wreath mid dance
Sapphyre and Gwen dance
Willow and Gwen hold ribbons
One of the things which is significant to me personally is that my son chooses to come to these rituals. Last year he played the role of the element of fire during the callings. When i was a kid, there was nothing about the spiritual or religious experience of my parents that i would choose to do.
Shal and i help Gwen up the poll
Gwen climbs alone
Part of what gives people confidence to try climbing the poll after the dance is complete is that even if you don’t make it, the crowd cheers for you. It is not about success, it is about being willing to take a chance and try.
including my son
Church groups and sex toys
In the lead up to the Loud Love event we have reached out to several different communities to both bolster the attendance of the event and diversify the world views of the participants. This has put us into conversation with local progressive church groups, some of whom are curious about why we reached out to them. In response to one pastor’s query about my characterization of the event as “edgy” i wrote the following letter.
i think it is totally appropriate for you to consult with members of your church before you go forward with posting our announcement. And part of what i think makes churches and other groups “progressive” is their willingness to engage with people who have quite different views than they have. There are several sets of parents already registered for the event and there is child care provided. We are quite conscious of what is child appropriate and what is not.Rather than being vague about what is “edgy”, i wanted to give a couple of examples. In the Drag Kings 101 workshop there what has been called a “Reverse Strip Tease” in which the facilitator of the workshop goes from being dressed in male clothing and donning tough demeanor thru costume changes and ultimately appears as a classically “dolled up” female. There is no nudity in these theatrics, but it is a very powerful transformation which challenges notions on gender and identity presentation.There is a workshop on kink through a feminist lens. Which discusses sex play that is outside many peoples experience, but this is not a tutorial on these practices, but rather an exploration of how these are made safe for the participants and how to insure that everyone involved is operating with full consent.And while the event does push on peoples beliefs, the organizers are committed to it being respectful and inclusive. We hope it is possible for you to promote it to your parishioners and we appreciate you considering this conference.
“…. a sexuality resource center and toy shop where you will find a
body positive, sex positive and shame free environment in which to
grow your sexual knowledge and increase your pleasure. The foundation of The Garden is sexuality education for adults and a commitment to body safe and eco-friendly products.The Garden is a queer woman owned business that caters to the whole DC community no matter your sex, gender, race, income, sexual experience or….well…if you have a body I want you to learn and shop here! ”
