belochka

You are saying this as if you were flexing your old age to me, while so am I.

No. You can't see their face.

Chat rooms and web forums were in some sense safe spaces. There would be intrigue, but somewhat limited by what concerns a specific forum, or even a specific part of it, or a specific chat. Even conflicts in one place between two people would often not extend to some other place.

And also, believe it or not, people frequenting same spaces would sometimes have offline meetings and know each other personally. Especially moderators and such.

But I agree that what you mentioned was like halfway there from today's online communication which sometimes seems just useless.

I suppose. NOSTR-based Marmot is being developed now, it seems more interesting for me than XMPP or Matrix, but it's still a new thing.

I get depressed after long periods of remote work, go to office, then remember why I didn't particularly value the experience, get back to remote.

So here in Russia there's such a thing as dachas, it's small plots of land with non-winterproof (sometimes not) small houses (sometimes more like a chickhouse for a human) on them, people go there at summer to have barbecues, grow stuff, have fun.

We have that, it's on a place with a lot of clay (good for growing apple trees, too) and I have always felt weird from eating and drinking anything with local water (from the well, boiled).

That is, I have ASD and BAD, and my mental condition is always different when being there a lot with that water, it's both more intense emotions, but also less like BAD symptoms. Also that somehow makes me feel full faster. And stronger.

Honestly it's as if in the city I had BAD, but there I had BPD. I become more touchy-feely there. Still it feels good and human, just not very safe.

But I've also read that water with such contents is not too good for one's kidneys, shouldn't overdo it. Better use filters.

The point is, I do feel as if my nutrition were better when using that water. Even a few portions of rice a day with lots of tea feel quite different there. But might also be the cleaner air, it's a relatively low place, though not a swamp, and a very pretty one.

Because those who see each other's faces coordinate closer socially and might eat you. We live in a society, not a friendly place sometimes.

Any ideas why it's always Matrix? Not even XMPP.

With not very performant servers and not very rich choice of clients, and still work in progress. And notably more fit for group chats rather than anything private and secure.

It's just Matrix being popular?

If you've read Lem's Fiasco, then that's the alternative scenario where "they" are the society lower technologically. It's very well written and tragic.

Yes, convenience is often ruining discipline, not for me (ASD) and perhaps not for you, but social ties form between coworkers. That part about behind closed doors - see, they always will.

I mean, we live in a society. Not seeing the faces of the others is a weakness. It's not all about work.

That's called a 2 party system. What you seem to wish for is an omniparty system, which in a dialectical anything with competition for electoral victory can't exist. And if you don't like this, you won't like a 1 party system, like in USSR (deceased) or China.

Ranked choice might help. I've noticed that support and distaste for that seem to be about similar between R and D supporters in English-speaking Web, but I live in Russia, so it's just my blabber.

Also the way it is now you have generally red and generally blue and mixed areas, while with ranked choice there might suddenly be raising friction in politics, which in turn might cause upheavals. And with the way everyone on the Web seems to like potential violence, probably not the best idea.

And I have thought in the past about all kinds of potential balanced systems, with pseudo-random choice of representatives, with balancing that and electoral and literally bought places, with various veto schemes, and it's possible to design a political system doing exactly what one wants, it's just that nobody is in power to make that and impose it upon others, and in rare situations where such a non-compromising new electoral system creation happens, it's something like Russian Civil War where the winning side designed a political system where you can technically (mathematically) have guaranteed victory with 3 levels of representation, 2% of votes and gerrymandering.

That's not very good. That illustrates how those having power to single-handedly change things are not usually those you'd want to.

And that's one example of how one progressive goal (of reducing emissions, ecology, regulating industry etc) and another (of right to repair and tinker) can require a compromise.

OK, from where I am your problems in US are cool to read about, here that kind of customization is in the "fuck around and find out" territory with huge fines, but I see no concern about ecology either.