It's been a busy week. I'm busy at work and have been 
endeavouring to set up my server in my spare time. I now 
have a completely working server, a dynamic dns provider, 
and a domain name. Yet part of me is torn by the whole 
experience. I like circumlunar.space and what it seems to 
stand for ... so do I really want to set up my own server? I 
don't know.

The contrary position is that it's important to turn this 
little corner of the internet back into what the internet 
was intended to be: a communications network in which 
everyone could both send and receive directly. A few years 
ago (holy hell, it was 2011 ... time passes so quickly!) a 
Columbia University law professor named Eben Moglen promoted 
plug servers as a means of decentralizing the net and ever 
since then I've wanted to be a part of that[1]. I can't 
believe how long ago that was... and that it's taken me this 
long to do it.

I've thought a lot about what to put on the server. So far,
it's a gopher server. I really like gopher. It's the 'slow
food' of the internet. You read long form. You think about
it. Maybe you respond to it. It might also become an XMPP
server. I need to read up on prosody and how inter-server 
communication takes place.

Anyways, there's no content on the server yet. Part of me
wants to start posting there. Part of me wants to stay here.
Maybe I'll just connect the two through links. I've seen a
few people doing that here and elsewhere.

I read solderpunk's phlog on Stan Lee and comic books. It
brought back a lot of memories. I used to buy a lot of used
comics at a huge secondhand store as a kid. I wasn't tribal
about it either. I liked Marvel and DC. I read tons of
Archie and Richie Rich comics. I read some of them over and
over. It's funny what a crazy little world they drew you
into.... those ads. I remember the ads for Star Trek: The
Movie on the back cover of pretty much every comic 
published in 1979 ... Sea Monkeys ... Some newspaper that 
American kids could deliver and earn "Prizes or Cash!" ...
A write-in section in Archie comics where kids explained 
what they thought the year 2000 would be like....   

Following up on a previous phlog, I did read through the
Debian constitution and it's incredibly democratic. It's
worth a read. I was really impressed by the emphases on
individual liberty and control from the bottom up. One of
the first substantive provisions (Article 2.1) says:
"Nothing in this constitution imposes an obligation on
anyone to do work for the Project. A person who does not
want to do a task which has been delegated or assigned to
them does not need to do it. However, they must not actively
work against these rules and decisions properly made under
them."[2] The developers elect (and can recall) their project
leaders, can amend the constitution, and (if I'm reading it
correctly) can vote to override the decisions of the project
leader and technical committee. It could be a fairly good
model for running an online community. The great obstacle is
that, unless a non-profit society is created, some
individual (or group of individuals) is stuck with the bills
and liabilities, and would have to be willing to concede
power to the users. That's no small thing. 

Anyways, I am going to watch some TV and rot my brain...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html
[2] https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution