Freddie Joe Ward (December 30, 1942 – May 8, 2022) was an American character actor. Starting with a role in an Italian television movie in 1973, he appeared in such diverse films as Escape from Alcatraz, Southern Comfort, The Right Stuff, Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Tremors and Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Henry & June, The Player, Swing Shift, Short Cuts, and 30 Minutes or Less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Ward#Personal_life_and_death

John David Podesta Jr. (born January 8, 1949) is an American political consultant who has been serving as Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy since 2024, having previously served as the Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation from 2022 to 2024. Podesta previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 and counselor to President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2015. Before that, he served in the Clinton administration as White House staff secretary from 1993 to 1995 and White House deputy chief of staff for operations from 1997 to 1998. He is the former president, and now chair and counselor, of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank in Washington, D.C., as well as a visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.[1] Additionally, he was a co-chairman of the Obama-Biden transition team.[2][3][4] In his current role as senior advisor to President Joe Biden, Podesta oversees the disbursement of $370–783 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Podesta

Deborah Wasserman Schultz (née Wasserman; /ˈwɑːsərmən/; born September 27, 1966) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Florida's 25th congressional district, first elected to Congress in 2004. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Wasserman Schultz served in the Florida House of Representatives and the Florida Senate and was a national co-chair[1] of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign for president. Her district covers much of southern Broward County, including a large part of Fort Lauderdale. Wasserman Schultz was elected chair of the Democratic National Committee in May 2011, replacing Tim Kaine.[2][3] On July 28, 2016, she resigned from that position after WikiLeaks released leaked emails showing that she and other members of the DNC staff had expressed bias in preference of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Wasserman_Schultz

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal executive leadership board of the United States Democratic Party. According to the party charter, it has "general responsibility for the affairs of the Democratic Party between National Conventions",[1] and particularly coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office, as well as works to establish a "party brand" and to formulate the party platform.[2] While it provides support for party candidates, it does not have direct authority over elected officials. (more)

Micah Sifry: Inside the Fall of Obama’s Grassroots Army. Christopher Edley had invited them to join a “Movement 2.0 Brainstorming Group.” Together, they would ponder a crucial question: how to “sustain the movement” should Barack Obama, who was still a month away from accepting the Democratic nomination, go on to win the White House. (more)

David Plouffe (/ˈplʌf/; born May 27, 1967)[1][2] is an American political and business strategist best known as the campaign manager for Barack Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign. (Starting Aug'2024) he was the senior advisor to Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign.[3] A long-time Democratic Party campaign consultant, he was a partner at the party-aligned campaign consulting firm AKPD Message and Media, which he joined in 2000.[4] Plouffe was an outside senior advisor to Obama since the president's first day in office and was then appointed as a Senior Advisor to the President (inside the White House) in 2011 following the resignation of David Axelrod, who went on to start Obama's reelection campaign.[5] In September 2014, he became the Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy for Uber.[6] In May 2015, he left that role to become a full-time strategic adviser for the company.[7] In January 2017, he joined the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to lead its policy and advocacy efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Plouffe

David M. Axelrod (born February 22, 1955) is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President.[1][2] He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012.[3][4] Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015.[5] Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics.[6] His memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axelrod

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe". It is a common, informal name for a somewhat broad federation of social network servers whose main purpose is microblogging, the sharing of short, public messages. By running social network software that supports a standard set of protocols called ActivityPub, independently run servers can connect to the Fediverse,[1] allowing its users to follow and receive short messages from each other, regardless of which particular ActivityPub server implementation they are running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse See esp Mastodon. See related IndieWeb. (more)

An open source platform for building a writing space on the web... WriteFreely is built around writing... Reach outside your own site with federation via ActivityPub. WriteFreely lets anyone on Mastodon, Pleroma, or any ActivityPub-enabled service follow your blog, bookmark your posts, and share them with their followers. https://writefreely.org/ (more)

fediverse system. Pleroma is a free and open-source microblogging social networking service. Unlike popular microblogging services such as Twitter or Weibo, Pleroma can be self-hosted and operated by anyone with a server and a web domain, a combination commonly referred to as an instance. Instance administrators can manage their own code of conduct, terms of service, and content moderation policies, allowing users to have more control over the content they view as well as their experience.[2][full citation needed] It was named after the religious concept of pleroma, or the totality of divine powers.[3] The software also implements the ActivityPub protocol, which allows users to communicate and interact with content from other Pleroma instances or any server that is running software that supports ActivityPub (such as Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, etc.), a decentralized network commonly referred to as the Fediverse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleroma_(software) (more)

Excellent Dilbert series on the joys of Caffeine. (more)

book by Yochai Benkler ISBN:0300110561 (more)

for reasons other than Money? not amenable to Economics analysis (more)

There has been the occasional gift-based economy. As opposed to our Exchange Economy or a centrally-controlled Command Hierarchy.(Eric Raymond compares them.) (more)

A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States,[1] among whom it is traditionally the primary governmental institution, legislative body, and economic system... A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader's wealth and power. Potlatches are also focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan, and international connections, and the human connection with the supernatural world. Potlatch also serves as a strict resource management regime, where coastal peoples discuss, negotiate, and affirm rights to and uses of specific territories and resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

Node.js port of Multi-user SocialCalc (WikiCalc) https://github.com/audreyt/ethercalc - hosted https://ethercalc.net/ (more)

City formed to be limited to a Minimal Compact. Same as Charter city? Maybe StartUp=US, Charter=Elsewhere? (more)

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book.[1] The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story (of something new)", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new".[2] According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella... Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel (more)

Don Quixote,[a][b] the full title being The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha,[c] is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often said to be the first modern novel.[2][3] Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world[4] and one of the best-selling novels of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote (more)

The Progressive Era (1901–1929) was a period in the United States during the early 20th century of widespread social activism and political reform across the country.[1][2] Progressives sought to address the problems caused by rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption as well as the enormous concentration of industrial ownership in monopolies. Progressive reformers were alarmed by the spread of slums, poverty, and the exploitation of labor. Multiple overlapping progressive movements fought perceived social, political, and economic ills by advancing good democracy, scientific methods, and professionalism; regulating business; protecting the natural environment; and improving working and living conditions of the urban poor.[3] Corrupt and undemocratic [[political machine[[s and their bosses were a major target of progressive reformers.To revitalize democracy, progressives established direct primary elections, direct election of senators (rather than by state legislatures), initiatives and referenda,[4] and women's suffrage which was promoted to advance democracy and bring the presumed moral influence of women into politics.[5] For many progressives, prohibition of alcoholic beverages[6] was key to eliminating corruption in politics as well as improving social conditions. Another target were monopolies, which progressives worked to regulate through trustbusting and antitrust laws with the goal of promoting fair competition. Progressives also advocated new government agencies focused on regulation of industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era (more)