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This meta post isn't our typical monthly update.
📡 Technical updates 📡
The previously announced server maintenance of the supplementary services (Movim, XMPP, Wiki) had to be postponed to this month due to some difficulties encountered with the upgraded host system. We are currently looking into making it a bit more modular, but the PHP software doesn't lend itself very well to containerization.
We also started some slow improvements to our overall network structure to prepare for a potential upgrade to a 10 gbit fiber connection next year, but this will likely not have a big impact on SLRPNK itself as we are currently still far from exceeding the currently available bandwidth. It could allow for a sister Peertube site or something similar though.
💌 Donation support 💌
We hope to finally open a way to donate for helping to run the infrastructure that SLRPNK runs on this month. Initially it will be possible to donate through LiberaPay or directly to us through Stripe with a credit card. Since we are not a registered non-profit or so, we cannot provide you with a certificate for tax deductions though. If there is a big demand for alternative donation platforms like Patreon or KoFi etc. we can also consider it, but usually those just end up costing additional fees with little or no benefit to us.
We also applied for a small grant from NLnet to help us implement an option to donate through GNU Taler, which might become available to people in EU countries via a German coop bank sometimes mid 2025. We will keep you updated if that grant gets approved and how and when you can try it. If you are generally interested in GNU Taler, check out /c/money.
The United States elected a fascist government
SLRPNK is an international instance, and we try to avoid centering United States politics and news, as there is enough of that elsewhere in the Threadiverse. As the center of the world order, unfortunately much of what happens in the USA has resounding repercussions across the world. Sometimes those events are so big it becomes important to discuss them, even in our tiny corner of the internet.
During the campaign, the centrist Democratic Party appropriated a leftist talking point: Trump is a fascist. Now the Democrats are preparing for the peaceful transition of power to a fascist. This in unequivocally a bad thing for the people of the United States and the people of the world. A small cottage industry has arisen overnight of pundits giving post-election analysis. Here's what I think is relevant to you as a solarpunk:
You and I are in the midst of fomenting a media revolution through our participation in the Fediverse. It may sound self-congratulatory to compare the invention of ActivityPub to the printing press, the radio, internet, social networking sites, and micro-blogging. But I wouldn't be this committed to the platform if I didn't believe it was true.
Pay close attention to how fascists made extremely good use of emerging media messaging methods this election to disseminate false information to gullible voters. The last time fascists came to power, they did the very same thing with the new technology of radio broadcasting.
I believe there is a structural difference between Fediverse technology and those previous technologies - most of the fascists have already fucked off to their isolated islands, while our social graph continues to grow. If we can keep the Fediverse growing, the political revolutions it will eventually facilitate will have a much different character.
The other thing to notice is it wasn't just the United States where the incumbent party lost votes this election. Pundits have noted that during times of high inflation, it is typical for the electorate to blame their economic anxiety on the current government. This is backed by data.
[Image Description: Data showing historical and recent shift in vote share from incumbent parties across governments]
Every ruling party in every developed country got a smaller percentage of the votes than it did in the previous year. This is attributed to worldwide inflation and economic hardship.
As one of the few communities not in passive or active denial of the seriousness of global warming, we can recognize the climate catastrophe is directly responsible for a significant amount of this economic chaos. We can also predict that since little is being done to slow environmental collapse, economic conditions will get worse.
If there is an election in four more years, it is unlikely that fascists will stay in power. If there is no fair election, or Trump suspends elections, that does not change the facts on the ground. Ask Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain if autocracy saved them from popular unrest due to inflation. Trump is planting the seeds of revolt now by planning to dismiss his most competent generals and hundreds of thousands of female, gay, and transgender soldiers. If there is a revolution in the United States, it will probably involve the disbanded military.
Two years after the death of Hitler, Albert Camus published La Peste. It is a story where a plague overruns a city, only to disappear just as quickly, but with the looming threat to one day return. The plague is a excellent metaphor for fascism. I can't offer much solace, but I'm confident of this -- fascism is terrible but not sustainable. The silver lining of this tragedy is that it will one day be over. Let's continue our preparations so that day comes sooner, and that we and our loved ones survive to see it.
The preparations
The future is more difficult to predict than ever, but we can narrow down some essential preparations that could end up being the most critical. These recommendations are mostly based on Deviant Ollem's talk on Risk & Preparedness. I'd recommend watching that for more detail, if you have the time.
Find a good lawyer and memorize their phone number ⚖️
This goes for everyone, but especially if you are an activist, a minority, trans, an immigrant, a person who is publicly leftist, or any other person who is likely to be targeted by the new regime. If they use the legal system against you, already having a lawyer in mind and their number in your head (or a business card with their number on it inside your phone case or wallet) will give you a critical leg up if you're sitting in a jail cell without access to the contacts in your phone. This advice may become less useful as time goes on and the courts become sidelined entirely, but at least right now, I would consider it worth the effort.
Get your passport 🛂
If you've ever thought about getting a passport but have been putting it off, or you have one that's expired: get one. Get it soon. There may come a time when you need to flee the country quickly to save your life, and the most critical piece of documentation you will need is a valid passport, and the time to get one is long before you need it. If it eventually becomes possible or necessary to legitimately claim asylum in a less hostile country due to political persecution in the US, having a passport will be essential.
Also, though this is highly dependent on your lineage, if you have a parent, grandparent, or possibly even great-grandparent who was a foreign citizen, look into the process of applying to become a dual-citizen for that country by ancestry. Some countries make the process somewhat easy, and will even be willing to sorta fudge things a bit to grant you citizenship (Italy is one example, more details in the Deviant talk linked above). If you're able to take this route, this would give you the easiest escape route out of the US if it became too dangerous for you to stay. If this is a viable route for you, I would advise you to gather the required documents and begin the process as soon as possible, as some countries can take 6 months or more to get a foreign passport in your hand, while others can be quicker.
Consider acquiring the means to keep yourself safe 🛡️
Having a good can of pepper spray probably wouldn't be a bad idea; they're cheap, easy to learn how to use, non-lethal, and usually quite effective at giving yourself an opportunity to escape a bad situation (I would recommend POM, who also offer inert training canisters to practice with).
In addition, it may be worth considering taking a reputable self-defense class that teaches you how to fight with your hands or a melee weapon effectively. Learning how to take a punch will really help if things get physical.
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
It is equally, if not more important, to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt. This is a tremendously useful skill for anyone to learn, you can never have too many medics.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you'll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven't already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other's problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We've been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way.
This isn't only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don't want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Open Discussion
You don't have to endorse my or any of our views to be welcome on this platform. Our fight for a better future brings us all together. This isn't just my soap-box though - it's your soap-box too. If you've got questions about the server or the Fediverse in general, this is a great place to ask them. If you notice an issue with the service, posting the problem here will get it visibility.
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Introduction
Every month we have a community check-in, to talk about the instance and how things are going, and to create a space where you can share stuff too. This post will be pinned and we'll check it regularly over the course of the month for new comments to read and respond to. We're really grateful that all of you have chosen this instance, and are making it such a great place to hang out thanks to your contributions. I get a serious hit of dopamine when I encounter someone who's made a great comment in a remote thread, and recognize the username is from this instance. It's a pleasure to admin for so many intelligent, thoughtful people.
Snippets from Last Month's Canvas
A 'Canvas Event' is a participatory time-limited art-form where individuals can alter one pixel at a time, and through competition, negotiation, or coordination with each other, create coherent images together. Now that the event is over, here's some featured results:
Nice job converting @roguecache's solarpunk logo to a manageably smaller pixel version. Bonus points for the neighborhood - the banner is in good company.
Where's Wally? Martin Handford's world traveling scamp is right at home in this visually noisy tableau.
Does this image fill you with unease and confusion? Read the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and you too will have seen the fnords.
No communal canvas is complete without Kilroy! Graffiti and Canvas have a lot conceptually in common, and Kilroy may be the oldest meme to survive into the digital age. For more adorable rebel art, check out !grasweeti.
We're so consonant with the earth, we compost our vowels! Thanks for giving us even more space to shine :)
Canvas is a reflection of the zeitgeist of the Fediverse, and it's rewarding to see our communities, causes, and memes represented there. Thanks to everyone who participated this year.
Community Highlights: !disaserresponse, !conservation, and !fungus
This month we added three more communities to our directory. Our gracious host @poVoq created Disaster Response, because we know it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's going to be a source of information about getting yourself and your community prepared so you're in a position to help others as well as yourselves. Shout out to @JacobCoffinWrites for the great community banner.
It wasn't too long ago that @Midnight joined the moderation team on !collapse, and has done a great job giving that community new life. They've created a new community about wildlife conservation and protection, you can check it out at !conversation.
For the latest in Toadstool technology, check out !fungus, recently created by @solo. Special thanks to both @solo and @Midnight for bringing so many great posts to all of the communities on this instance.
Welcome New Mods!
As demonstrated by Reddit's decline and Feddit.org's revival, moderators are the life-blood of social media. There are few things you can do that will increase the Fediverse's success than joining a moderating team, and learning the skills to nurture and manage healthy communities.
This last month, a number of new people have stepped up to take over abandoned and undermoderated communities. Check out what's new in these classic communities:
- No Lawns: A community devoted to alternatives to monoculture lawns, with an emphasis on native plants and conservation. It continues to get posts weekly, and @quercus and @LibertyLizard are now the active mods.
- Writing: A community for writers, to discuss writing approaches and what’s new in the writing world, and to help each other with writing. Solarpunk author @grrgyle has taken the helm, and is leading monthly writing club goals, the first one ending today. Congrats to everyone who participated!
- 15 Minute City: an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services is 15-minutes from any point in the city. The new active mods are @vudu and @solo. Thanks to both for keeping this going.
- Art, Aesthetic: @WanderingPhoenix has added @SolarMonkey to the mod group.
- Buy It For Life: @ProdigalFrog has also added @SolarMonkey to the mod group.
- Utility Cycling: @Nemo joins @JacobCoffinWrites as an active mod.
- Podcasts: in addition to !nolawns, @LibertyLizard is keeping an eye one !podcasts as well.
Our goal is to have at least one active moderator supporting every community on SLRPNK. Unmoderated communities can attract spam and abusive behavior, requiring us to freeze or shut them down. Thanks to everyone who stepped up, we love having a vareity of communities on this little instance.
Movim blogs
Our supplementary Movim service which can be used as a federated XMPP chat app and a long-form blogging site now has some early adopters for the blogging feature. You can follow the personal blogs two of our members here:
Any SLRPNK member can automatically use their Lemmy account to log into our Movim instance and thus use their XMPP account to chat and blog. Say hi on our Solarpunk group chat :)
Technical Updates
We did some behind the scenes changes with the firewall setup which will make it easier to identify and block scraping attempts and other such abuses of our technical setup.
Background tasks of the Lemmy backend now also run in a dedicated process, which should enhance the responsiveness of the site a bit.
Our hosted alternative Photon and Mlmyl backends got some nice updates lately.
Open Discussion
It’s now your turn to tell us what’s new! Any topic related to this community, our infrastructure, or the Fediverse at large is fair game. If you’ve created a new community, this is a great thread to tell us about it. All comments will get extra visibility up until the beginning of next month. Got questions? Ask’em!
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Introduction
Every month we retire the pinned community meta post from the last month, and create a fresh one with updated news. We summarize the state of the instance, and create a space for public comments and discussions that don't merit their own meta post.
International Worker's Day is May 1st!
In 1886, a May 1st general strike called by the American Federation of Labor saw a significant response in New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee. But in Chicago, due to the International Working People's Association founded by the anarchist Albert Parsons, the number of people who went on strike was larger than twice all of those other cities combined. On May 3rd, Chicago police fired indiscriminately into a crowd of striking workers, killing several. On May 4th, the anarchists held a peaceful street meeting where several luminaries spoke. But near the end of the meeting in the Chicago Haymarket, police arrived in formation to forcibly disperse the peaceful crowd and order they desist their first amendment-protected activity in the name of the law.
Whoever it was who threw the bomb into the crowd of officers, all sides agree they were not one of the anarchist leaders who were later arrested, put on trial, and executed. The blast killed one, but 7 more officers and 4 working people would die of wounds from police bullets fired in the smoke and confusion. In the legal farce that followed, the capitalists of Chicago demonstrated through their ghoulish reaction how much they feared working people when they band together. The Haymarket heroes became not just a regional cause célèbre, but coverage of their show trial and martyrdom spread the message of the strike internationally, perhaps the most significant and successful general strike in history. It ended the common practice of 12-hour workdays, and lead the 8-hour workday, your average 9 to 5, to become the international standard.
On this day, we celebrate their sacrifice, and remember the power of working people everywhere. Celebrated in almost every country on this day, it is a symbol of cooperation between people unrestricted by national borders. In the spirit of solidarity, the admins at SLRPNK wish everyone a happy International Worker's Day!
Activity and Data
It continues to be a pleasure supporting you as an admin. When looking at data, it's easy to draw unqualified conclusions, and worse, use them as benchmarks and goals. The most important thing is the unquantifiable vibe of the instance, and whatever the numbers say, I'm pretty satisfied with that metric.
That being said, I know people are curious about the numbers, and the numbers are indeed curious. It's now official: the increase in new and active members was not a quirk of the change of reporting code at the beginning of the year. It appears there's been a reversal, and every month since January has seen the number of active members increase over the previous month. The growth is small but steady, and is even more curious due to the trend of declining or stagnant reported growth over the same period in larger instances with better funding and fame.
In addition to the growth of active members, our total number of posts continues to grow in a fashion suggesting an exponential curve. Fun.
We don't do any kind of deep analytics where we could pin down more accurately what's driving growth and why, so it's irresponsible to make too big a deal out of this data -- but it's definitely not bad. Whatever is happening, there's a good chance some of it is due to trends outside of our control, similar to Reddit's API exodus that brought most of us here almost a year ago. My advice is ignore the numbers and keep doing what you're doing. Whatever it is, it's making SLRPNK qualitatively a great place to hang out.
Software Status
@poVoq has done a wonderful job keeping Lemmy and Movim software up to date while screening new versions for major bugs. He has added a collaborative editing application Etherpad to the suite of community tools, available at https://pads.slrpnk.net/. Hedgedocs at https://docs.slrpnk.net/ will be retired due to lack of activity from the software maintainers. I'd like to personally thank @poVoq for hosting SLRPNK and keeping the software working and up-to-date.
The wiki on https://wiki.slrpnk.net remains a bit rough around the edges, as we have not yet gotten around to fixing the remaining issues with the login and easy page editing, but a few people started updating their community wikis anyways. Please let us know if you run into specific other issues. It will likely take some to get them fixed, but at least we can document the various issues for now.
Community Highlight
Check out these two communities created last month: !zines@slrpnk.net created by long-time member @toaster - a place to find great short-form self-publishing, and !forced_obsolescence@slrpnk.net by @activistPnk, a great idea that complements our vibrant !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net community by @ProdigalFrog.
I'd also like to draw attention to !fullyautomatedrpg@slrpnk.net, a forum the authors @andrewrgross and @JacobCoffinWrites are using to imagine a fantasy future to build collaborative stories in. They've put a lot of work into their world-building and are eagerly seeking public participation in the project. Congratulations to FA on being boosted by famous sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow!
Finally, !selfhosting@slrpnk.net I think deserves more attention. I have a great deal of admiration for @poVoq, and part of that is the alternative vision he has from most of the rest of the Fediverse and Lemmy instances. While some instances compete for position as the largest general purpose forum, others are happy to be small niche subject instances. SLRPNK falls into the latter category, but with a twist - with us, the medium is also the message. We will hit capacity one day, but we want the Fediverse to continue to grow in spite of us. We're very transparent about our administration decisions in XMPP moderator chat, and that's partly because of our social compact with you, but also to teach by example. Projects like !selfhosting@slrpnk.net, the Fedi-admin guild, and the wiki are part of the technology side of this goal -- to allow anyone who is interested to replicate what we're doing here, and improve on it.
The Solarpunk project is bigger than us, and we think Lemmy's ability to scale through federation is key to allowing us to grow without putting too much power and responsibility into the hands of a few people. Cloud services take away your agency and lock you in to their platforms while violating your privacy. Self-hosting is a way around that technology trap, and the skills you learn can also be applied to eventually host part of the Fediverse as well. If you're curious about what's possible, subscribing to !selfhosting@slrpnk.net is a great place to start.
Call for Moderators
Moderating a community here is a great way to build skills useful for online community management. We love to see new communities people are passionate about - but that's not the only way to get involved. Several communities are undermoderated despite continuing to attract activity. We didn't get around to closing any communities this month, but will likely start that again soon. Joining the moderation team will help keep the communities you love alive. The first step is joining XMPP chat and asking around. The moderators channel is extremely active, and a great way to coordinate and get support from us and other moderators. You'll also get a peek at what's likely to show up in the next monthly meta.
We are still planning to build a new a space for women on SLRPNK since we closed !twoxchromosomes two months ago. @punkisundead has started a discussion on Loomio to gather resources, and @schmorp has also joined the Fedi-admin guild to contribute. We are actively seeking more voices, as this is an important project, and the more people who cooperate on it, the greater chance it will have of success.
Open discussion
It’s now your turn to tell us what’s new! Any topic related to this community, our infrastructure, or the Fediverse at large is fair game. If you’ve created a new community, this is a great thread to tell us about it. All comments will get extra visibility up until the beginning of next month. Got questions? Ask’em!
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Introduction
Each month we pin a post to give all members an update on the state of the instance, as well as a place to direct public comments and discussions, so let's get to the updatin'!
Community highlights
This month we thought to shake up our usual routine to highlight new communities and instead decided to highlight some nice, but older communities. So have a look at these and maybe add them to your list of subscriptions:
Any other communities you would like to highlight? Comment below!
Transfer to new server
After our last attempt to move our Lemmy instance to a new server had to be reverted at the end of 2023, we tried again this month. The new server has been hosting the Pictrs image backend and the various frontends for a while now, but yesterday we finally also migrated the main database and the backend to it.
The new server (a refurbished Intel Xeon with 64GB RAM) is probably somewhat oversized for a small Lemmy instance like ours, but it looks like the multiple times faster NVMe database storage array finally fixes the performance issues we had before.
Let's hope this time we will not run into hardware issues like with the previous dedicated server.
A brand spankin' new Wiki
SLRPNK now hosts a fully functional wiki for our communities to utilize, based on the DocuWiki project.
Currently, only community Moderators can edit the wiki, and like our XMPP instance, you'll be able to use your SLRPNK login to access it, along with editing privileges for your community automatically given.
We have a quick-start guide written that should help you with the first steps of how to create your community wiki.
A few plugins have been added to the wiki to extend its functionality, such as a WYSIWYG editor in addition to the standard markup editor, along with some other bells and whistles. You can find a complete list of the plugins used here.
If you need any help getting your community page setup, you can either leave a comment in this thread below, or message one of the admins, and we'll do our best to get you up and running. :)
Other technical additions
You might have noticed the new bot account that was added as an instance admin last month. This account is currently connected to two additional services that we added:
An automatic RSS feed poster that can be added to communities. Let us know if that is something you are interested for a community you moderate here.
An instance level auto-moderation bot that scans new posts and comments for spam. The software behind this is still a bit of a work in progress, but it should allow us to react more quickly to future spam-waves from multiple accounts.
If you have other suggestions on how to utilize this bot, let us know.
Server Stats
With another month, comes another round of stats!
Right off the bat, the hardware upgrade is having a noticeable effect on the latency of the server, which is pretty darn sweet.
And 65 new solarpunks joined us last month, bringing the total up from 1,138 members to 1,203. Hopefully they find this to be a good home. :)
The monthly users are holding steady, with a slight increase up from 290 to 299. With that amount of people, there always seems to be something interesting to see or read on the server just from our users alone. Counting people coming in from other instances, it really is booming around here!
The Big News
We're proud to announce that Slrpnk.net is now officially sponsored by Exxon Mobile™ as part of their Global Green Outreach for Innovative Forward Thinkers™ program.
In collaboration with them, we'll be featuring new eco-friendly technologies that were produced with net-zero emissions as a long-term goal, which has only been made possible thanks to Exxon's Big Heart Good Guy Partner™ initiative.
Starting us off this month is this fine Gasoline powered Alarm Clock, which gets an unthinkable 24 hours to the gallon! The efficiency wizards at Exxon have truly outdone themselves. Hopefully we'll see one of these pop up in every home in the coming decades.
Open discussion
That about wraps up this month's news. If you have anything you'd like to ask regarding the site, our new tools, or anything else related to this community, let us know.
If you've created a new community or would like to make your own announcements about something happening on the server, you're also welcome to post them down below!
All comments will get extra visibility up until the beginning of next month.
Have a great April, everyone! ^^
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