Rubin Starset

Audio: OGG / MP3

About two weeks ago (October 27th) while up in Seattle I was invited to participate in a podcastable discussion about the current overlap of technology and the Occupy Movement.

The inaugural episode of the BrainMeats podcast is devoted to the Occupy movement and what hackers and makers can do to support the protesters on the ground. Willow spoke over Skype to Ari, Ella, Matt, Rubin, and Smári about the history of OWS, the meaning of illegibility within the movement, software tools for protesters, and more.

I was a little groggy through most of it and wish I had more fruitful things to say other than being the devil's advocate that I normally am. Anyhow it was a good discussion and if you're interested I recommend listening in on it. If you're curious about any of the sites/services/things talked about, please check out Willow's post for more details.

The podcast is provided under the Creative Commons: Attribution, Share Alike, Non Commercial license.

So tonight at some point in time I went to the front door of my flat, to find this...

2lb and 9oz of political spam, 53 piece in total, ranging from supporting runners for offices and propositions to bad mouthing individuals and groups. For the most part I consider much of this fiction and not worth my damn time. It's weight is approximately 10 times what my household normally gets a week in paper snail mail spam. All of it went into the recycling bin at the top of my stairs under our little mail slots for each housemate. I could sit here and do the carbon footprint math, but just by looking at the pile of junk it's pretty apparent that there's a bunch of money and resources wasted that go into these paper campaigns.

It boggles my mind on how we don't have a system to opt out of this trash.

Next to the recycling bin we have a bench, where this was sitting on top of...

9oz of fact. I would like to see political parties throw their money into making this booklet easier to read and not as daunting, more recyclable, more apparent that it's available online.

I don't care how much politicians want to toot the truth or name bash the other runners, but please stop doing it in print, stop filling up my mail box with this garbage, it makes me not want to vote for any of you, or maybe that's just the point?