The ShiftPod was originally created as an answer to things like the hexayurt. Longtime Burning Man attendee Christian Weber came up with the idea for something that could be set up quickly, that could withstand heavy winds, and that was big enough to stand up in. He definitely succeeded.
I love my first-gen ShiftPod, but I have to say, the second-gen version is a step up. It’s a bit bigger–enough to notice, for sure–it’s more reflective, which means it’s cooler inside during the hottest part of the morning, and it’s just a little more modern. It feels like a second-gen version. As well, it comes standard with what’s called a Blast Shield, a highly reflective cover meant to make it possible to sleep a little later in the morning, even when there’s no shade.
[Photo: courtesy of the author Daniel Terdiman]
The consensus in my camp, where, amazingly, there were seven ShiftPods this year, was that the Blast Shield probably made it as much as 10 degrees cooler inside than without it. Given that the ShiftPod 2’s higher-reflectivity alone probably cuts 10 degrees over a first-gen version, you’re looking at up to 20 degrees less searing heat by moving from a coverless ShiftPod 1 to a v2 with a Blast Shield. That’s big.
About a quarter of all sites on the World Wide Web run on WordPress, a phenomenal achievement from Billionaire2 commas Burner Matt Mullenweg – although it is eclipsed by Burning Man chief technology guru Brian Behlendorf’s Apache which is running 38.2% of the Web (Jan 2018).
Anyone using WordPress should check out the plugin Steempress, which I’ve just installed here. Everything we post at Burners.Me will automatically get shared on Twitter, Facebook, and on the blockchain forever via Steemit.
Censorship and the “Internet 3” idea of paying you to use the software instead of stealing your data for advertisers is driving many people away from the “Internet 2” social media platforms. Steemit is the best of the new ones, and stories of people making more than $10,000 there just from posting, liking and sharing are now common. In 2 years one blogger made more than $127,000 and popular YouTuber #truther Titus Frost has made around $36,500. I’m not quite in their league, with around $420 in the last 6 months, but I am enjoying the uncensored platform and the friendly community there.
Speaking of smart, friendly, and tech-savvy community [drink!]…It’s 2018, why haven’t BMorg embraced crypto yet? Larry said they would when asked about it in 2013.
Steemit is the new Facebook, and Presearch is the new Google. We’ve also added the Sharpay sharing button. Just by sharing stories from here, you can now earn cryptocurrency. Gifting, meet Decommodification. Radical Self Reliance, meet Radical Self Expression. Communal Effort…well, you get my drift. It’s an economy without money, based on goodness and liking and sharing! We’re making the world a better place, and if we don’t succeed, at least everyone got paid while it happened. Internet 3 is the opposite concept of volunteerism or surveillance capitalism.
It seems I’m not the only one. Burning Man’s first Chief Technology Guru, Brian Behlendorf, is one of the whales of the tech industry.
Image: LinkedIn
BB went on from Burning Man to Davos and the World Economic Forum, and is on the board of the EFF and popular “secure” communications app Wickr. He also used to run the SFRaves mailing list. Oh, and half of the entire World Wide Web runs on his Apache web server – which is open source.
Old skool raver
His plan to fight fake news? Put Snopes on the blockchain. Get the list of “what’s fake news” and record that on the blockchain so everyone can rely on it as absolute fact.
The title of the video is “what if the Internet could not tell a lie”, but in fact what he is describing is a single source on the Internet telling us what is a lie and what isn’t – driven by Snopes.
There has been a massive purge of “alternative news” channels and videos on YouTube since the Progressives were defeated in the election by a huge margin. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Snopes and Reddit were all caught trying to silence conservative voices and stories, while promoting all sorts of things from cultural marxism to communism to child abuse to cannibalism.
This is who Brian Behlendorf thinks we should use on the blockchain to determine “truth” once and for all? Yes, seriously, it is. Watch the video.
In other bizarro alt-media news, Alex Jones of InfoWars also married an escort…allegedly.
Who says any of these organizations should just be assigned the role of determining complex arguments, such as the JFK Assassination – where the CIA just “lost” an entire volume of their files on Lee Harvey Oswald, after years of stonewalling their release. Are we to believe the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, 19 hijackers with box cutter knives? The University of Alaska just completely debunked the official story about the collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by any plane – so what is true? The official government story, or the scientific conclusions? Why not record the case for and against any topic under debate, present the evidence for both sides, and let the people decide what they find most compelling.
Snopes, Google and Facebook do not deserve to become the arbiters of truth. What ever happened to Objective Truth, “truth is truth”?
There is only one truth, everything else is just opinion. Let the truth speak for itself, and if there are questions over truth or arguments of “alternative facts”, let’s get them ON THE RECORD too. Get all the evidence out, record the Grammar and the Rhetoric, let the people use Logic and decide for themselves. We need the pertinent facts and documents out there in the public domain. And then debate their existence, authenticity, or relevance.
What we actually need is to use the blockchain to record truth and facts. Record all the stories around a topic – even the rumors – and let people expand on them or deny them with opinions and evidence. Like WikiPedia, but one that can’t be censored for political or other, more shadowy reasons. Bitcoin is not really suitable for something like this, Ethereum is better with its smart contracts capability, but both these blockchains are busy doing financial transactions. What is needed is links to an immutable data store like the Internet Archive. In some cases the amount of data around a topic (such as JFK, or Burning Man) will be very large. Other topics, such as disaster relief using the blockchain, are newer and easier to get one’s head around with less controversial content.
The point I agree with BB on is that decentralized, distributed ledger technology is the best hope we have to fight against censorship. Will the solution come from those deep within the Deep State? Or from We The People?
