Just 10 years ago, landlords could ban you from putting solar cells on your balcony because it makes their building look "messy". Now Germany is really pushing forward to let everybody put solar modules on their balcony with these new laws. How is legalization of balcony solar cells in your country? Is setting up solar modules on your balcony easy or difficult law-wise?

Imagine I want to create a local internet for my community. Things that will be useful, helpful, and easy to use. Ideally, setup/maintenance would be relatively straightforward too, since I will for the time being at least be running this solo.

So if I'm going to be the community SysAdmin but also have free choice of what to run, what would you think about the following ideas of things to share with people?

-Radarr (movies) -Sonarr (TV shows) -Lidarr (music) -Calbire (or Readarr I guess, for books) -Jellyfin (media streaming) -Nextcloud (file sharing)

And then as for me myself, I'd probably set up a Graylog Open instance to aggregate issues, and have a couple of separate physical servers for these different things.

Do you think that would be helpful/useful/fun for getting community members to think about the potential of hyperlocal internet?

Alternatively, are folks doing this already? If so, how do you have this kind of thing set up?

If I'm dreaming big, I would also love to set up a mesh relay to offer this intranet stuff to the community.

I'm hoping that these ideas are solarpunk enough and selfhosting enough to warrant community feedback.

Basically, I guess, are there any other community SysAdmins out there doing this kind of work?

Thanks for your time.

Censorship in carceral settings

We will provide information about free resources and ways that you can get involved, help out, and help yourself and loved ones navigate censorship in the carceral system.

This panel conversation brings together people with different experiences of carceral libraries, creating carceral library policy, teaching, journalism, and incarceration to speak about the long history and pernicious and evolving impacts of censorship in prisons, jails, and detention centers in the US and its territories. Learn about the evolving landscape of censorship, and how current research and practice aims to document it and fight back.

Jeanie Austin (they/them)

Jeanie Austin earned their PhD in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are a jail and reentry services librarian at the San Francisco Public Library and has provided library services in juvenile detention centers and jails for over a decade. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles, their book, "Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access" was published by the American Library Association in 2021. 

Erin Boyington (she/her)

Erin Boyington has worked as a correctional librarian since 2013. After receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington, she began her library career at the Sterling Correctional Facility Libraries in Sterling, Colorado. In 2016, she joined the Colorado State Library's Institutional Library Development (ILD) unit. ILD provides staff training, develops policy, manages collections, and much more, for adults and youth in over 40 institutional libraries statewide. She has contributed to Intellectual Freedom Stories from a Shifting Landscape (2020) and Exploring the Roles and Practices of Libraries in Prisons: International Perspectives (2021).

Andrew Calderon (he/they)

Andrew is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the United States criminal justice system. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The New School in New York city, where he teaches data, design and community engagement, and additionally works as a Project & Product Designer for the Journalism + Design Lab, an non-profit initiative to develop civic infrastructure through free journalism and design training at community colleges.

Eldon Ray James (he/him) 

While serving a 70-month sentence in federal prison I decided to become a librarian. I made that happen by graduating from the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2007 with a Master of Science in Information Studies (MSIS). Amazing serendipity made Dr. Loriene Roy my advisor. She took me to Washington D.C. as a part of her presidential party. She introduced me to the American Library Association and a group called the Prisoners Forum where I found a family with carceral librarians.

One of those librarians, Diane Walden, asked me to help write the Prisoners’ Right to Read: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights and then help move it though ALA. That experience led me to my involvement in the Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC), Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT), and the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) of ALA. I was the 2022 FTRF Roll of Honor winner. I worked on the 4th International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners Working Group, and the ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained as a Project Manager and author. 

Victoria Van Hyning (she/her)

I am an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies at College Park. I arrived at the iSchool in 2020, after working at the Library of Congress on the By the People crowdsourced transcription platform for two years. Before that I lived and worked in the UK and earned degrees in English literature. As an academic and as a practitioner, I strive to create systems and experiences that widen access to information for a diverse range of people, and make space for people to tell their own stories and express their information needs. I served as a Project Manager and author for ALA Standards for Library Services to the Incarcerated or Detained.  My goals were to provide research and writing support for the new Standards, and to learn and shape how those of us teaching Library and Information Science at the graduate and undergraduate levels can prepare our students to serve in carceral libraries, educational programs, and related positions in public and school libraries serving the needs of returning as well as incarcerated or detained individuals.

Archived copies of the article: ghostarchive.org archive.today

If Americans want to keep policies we have in place (and do better) it's going to be critical to re-elect Biden and send more and better Democrats to both houses of Congress.

For Americans, that means:

• Check your voter registration — it needs to be updated if you moved, changed names, or if a Republican offical decided to purge it
• Get involved — volunteer time is key to getting candidates elected
• Give money — campaigns run on it.
• Pick a close house or senate race to get involved with too.

Although Germany has massively invested into green energy, the issue is that the electric network has not been sufficiently expanded. This means that solar and wind energy has to be turned off to not overload the network. However, the owners of solar/wind energy still get paid. This means that in Germany, the price of energy will only make up ~50% of the bill. The other 50% are payments for unused energy (to not overload the network) and costs for expanding the electric network (because some regions such as Bavaria refuse to have wind turbines or solar panels "because they look ugly", but still need electric). Lesson: When implementing renewable energy in the rest of the world, we have to keep in mind that we have to massively invest into the electric network as well or it won't work.