172 points | by gnabgib21 小时前
> No well-actually’s > No feigned surprise > No backseat driving > No subtle -isms
There seems to be something really magical about the Recurse Center social rules. Or maybe their admissions process. Or both. I did a batch a couple years ago and I was stunned at how fun and drama-free people are there. I've heard occasional stories of negative experiences but nowhere near what Id expect for a group of passionate intelligent creatives working at vastly different levels of expertise.
Anyway glad to see the RC rules propagating and love this idea. I'm inspired to try to start a computer club at my 5yo's school! *crossed-fingers
One weirdo can severely mess up group dynamics, which is deadly for a small nascent club-type thing.
What if you have someone join who's ferociously intelligent, and not outright evil but just inherently socially maladjusted? You just kick em out if they can't help themselves to continuous "well actually"s, even though they mean well? That in itself might create drama...
Anyway to actually answer your question I think that unfortunately asking people to leave is the mechanism by which they enforce those rules after a few attempts to course correct. I believe I heard stories about that happening but didn't witness it personally and it seemed clear that they weren't interested in broadcasting those instances to the larger community.
From the context, it sounds like it's not so much about "don't correct people" as much as it's about "don't uselessly correct someone to showcase your own knowledge and not advance the conversation".
So, as long as the conversation is about the colour of the sky, (or about green things) you can just answer it.
I think a far greater danger is your club becoming a dumping ground for parents wanting free childcare.
But yeah, running a club solo is not likely to be sustainable if you’re not (somehow) connected to the location that you are running it. At least with two people there’s a fallback. A lot of clubs don’t have this, though, so don’t let “perfect be the enemy of good”.
The Python minihackathon[0] group model was particularly great. You show up, write a line or two of what you're thinking of working on onto a whiteboard, and towards the end people go up and present what they worked on for a couple minutes.
It's usually "learning how to use this library" or something, but it's a great way to schedule some OSS work.
This is a bit different from a computer club, but if you have a space you can lock into and can get even 10 or so people together once every couple of weeks (or once a month), then it's a great way to be sure you _at least_ work on something 12 times a year.
It would be so cool to visit a maker space when in a different town (or country) with some degree of attached reputation (won't damage things, know the safety rules, history of good conduct).
Unfortunately, there is nothing like this at the national or global level that I am aware of.
// JRO from Cambria Labs
> No well-actually’s
> No feigned surprise
> No backseat driving
> No subtle -isms
referred to by the post link, i like it. The link is also cc0, which is the only license i'll put on something, really. This sounds like it would be challenging and rewarding and fun; but the only places a "group" can get together and have space is churches around here, so i'd have to travel like an hour to get someplace more amenable to "several computers running" even if laptops that are wall powered.
I have enough spare computing hardware that realistically i can provide equipment for quite a few people. lugging it around would be a pain.
Two other things i've been seriously contemplating is a hyper-local podcast http://adam.curry.com/html/HowtoStartAHyperLoca-16wQvxtGFbH0... and stand up either a static blog server or something "like a wiki" but just for managing information. I saw that johnny.decimal post earlier and maybe i can put something together that is like a "notes and data" blog but organized with johnny.decimal or one of the other alternatives for organization mentioned in that thread.
I should really get started.
probably crickets, but you never know. I even have a space we could use for meetings, my own pizza place.
[1]: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/read-online/f67468e3-5c...
This statement did turn me off a bit. "how to node.js apolitically" would in practice ofc just be "how to node.js", which should be perfectly fine for a computer club, just as a pro-social computing course. Maybe someone wants to use their computing skills for social good, maybe they want to use them for bioscience, smart contracts, home automation, or maybe they just want to create a website for their corner shop. I feel like all of those should have a place in a computer club.
"Political" doesn't have to mean 'relating to a political party or election'.
According to Wikipedia, Politics:
> is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals
One of the standard by laws for clubs here is "not bound to political party", i.e we had a few extreme right wing people and many left wing and a great mass of moderate.
GNU GPL is political, every choice you do in computers have a political component. You choose if you allow piracy, black hats, surveillance, alcohol, meat, veganism etc. These are political decisions that will effect the feel of your club, even if you actively do not care about a decision.
The important part is that the club needs to survive and it only does that if you manage to find new people who wants do stuff, and put partisanship aside.
This is obviously false with a tiny bit of consideration.
If your definition of "computing" is narrowly constrained to the abstract mathematical reasoning then sure.
But if we consider a broader scope, then computers, the internet, and how the software we use to interact with them are designed is absolutely a political topic due to how it shapes not just interpersonal interactions, but also the kinds of business models that are possible and, downstream of that, modern society as a whole. Among other issues.
A nuclear warhead is a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for various ends, both political and apolitical.
See how silly that sounds? Some tools have sufficient impact that they transform society, and that is inherently political.
Do you think firearm ownership and usage is free from politics? Do you think a gun club is free from politics?
Of course not.
> Do you think a gun club is free from politics?
That depends. Is it a "let's talk everything about guns"? Is it a "let's go to a shooting range and shoot guns" club? There's a place for people to discuss things, there's a place for people to do things together, and neither might be a good place for people willing to be political in the sense of some people trying to coerce club members into specific beliefs, or trying to make the organization pursue some social cause.
Want to have a social gun club? Find or start one specifically about gun-related social causes! There's space for that too!
Really, all this "political" vs. "not political" boils down to people wanting to "talk shop", discuss technical or practical or emotional aspects of something, without feeling coerced to join causes and judged for not joining them, or otherwise have their standing as a human being questioned by some zealots.
So "Democrat ladies who lunch and write patches for Mastodon," and "Trump supporters who drink beer and write surveillance software," or "meditation group (Haskell-only)" would work great, much better than "Your coworkers, but you've never met them before."
It's the same story over and over again. I think it was around the Donglegate era that this stuff started becoming really popular but that's how it is.
Probably no one, but might as well try
I agree but probably not in the way the author intended. To build a working, affordable, modern computer requires handling the most complicated mass consumer supply chain the world has yet seen - and that's before you get into any software you want to run atop it. The fact that such machines can be had new for less than the price of a used car is nothing short of a capitalist miracle.
They might have some other activities. I've never been.
The principles of “computer club” sound exactly like this with a socialist twist.
this is an instant turn off. this phrase means that the "computer club" is really a political club that lures people through computers.
in my experiences those places are always driven by some kind of narcissistic psychopath that wants everybody to align to their view of the world.
i'd stay away from those places. the risk outweighs the benefits.
I definitely indoctrinate young kids in our local computer club into thinking that:
1. You can DO STUFF with computers!
2. You can build your own computers!
3. It's nice that one can use this stuff called open/free software, so why not share ours with the world as well?
I even go as far as giving the kids USB keys with Live Fedora. Teaches them to -- looks around, making sure nobody is listening in on us, then continues in a hushed voice -- boot from different media to break free of our corporate overlords!
I don't really feel any shame over this. Especially since their schools push Microsoft so hard.
So you can have nazi computer club?