Electronic Mail

519 words September 07, 2021

Electronic Mail
message sending
delivered once, like a package

surveillance capitalism isn't compatible with social justice, in the long-term, for a number of reasons, despite its alluring short-term convenience and the ease of forgetting its there

imagined evading surveillance capitalism as a slow non-linear transformation, that happens individually and collectively, and transforms your device into a site of magic&connection instead of control

it can start with one thing and move to others,
it doesn't need to happen all at once,
its also a form of mindfulness that can be valuable for its own sake,
hearing each keystroke as you type noticing where it goes like noticing what you put in the "trash"
"throw away" is an interesting verb, one could imagine other verbs for relating to waste

artificial intelligence is a common term. computers are often compared to living beings, but the fact they have no water in them isn't discussed enough. computers are really more similar to a rock. but this isn't necessarily a put-down. crystals are also rocks, and have long been appreciated for their capacities for harmonic resonance. enjoy imagining the computer as a strange crystal. the non-linear process described before, then can be seen in a different way.

writing into textedit offline always felt different than writing into something in the cloud. the more I make my computer an offline-first device, the more magical it seems to me. I may provide more suggestions on this in the future

this summer I did a deep-dive on deleting my gmail account and exploring other providers.
here is the report on Electronic Mail in September of 2021

top recommendations:

  1. gandi.net
    included in the price of a domain name are two email accounts thus, you can have an email account with your own domain name, which is good from the standpoint of user autonomy,being able to migrate to another provider if desired, without losing your network

  2. migadu.com
    19 USD / year, you get an email account which you can use with your own domain

  3. disroot.org
    inspiring tech collective in a number of ways. I recommend looking at their website. the images of riots where there are usually cutesy graphic design in standard tech platforms is refreshing. the veneer of polish, while the rest of the world remains unseen. an internet of many disroots, instead of tech conglomerates, is a recurring image I'm drawn to

disroot comes in at #3 for now because they don't have a straightforward way to use your own domain name. I'm on the lookout for disroot-like thing that supports this

I also did a deep-dive into self-hosting email, you can read more about that here if you are interested, but its a bit of a rabbit hole. it was interesting, but not what I would recommend in general

while writing this on the train, I decided that I would try just writing a bit more fragmented and you could find what interests you instead of me

"giving up on convictions", "i am a piece of dirt (and thats ok)", dumpster diving infinite bread

I recommend the podcast "In Defense Of Plants"

happy new moon
M