These are my recent Pinboard.in links:
- “…The rest of this post is a link dump of some of the people and things I saw at the conference. I’m no “curator,” just a typist, sorry for the lack of organization.”
geo software-development mapping resources - collection of scripts and other tools in support of the Distributed Proofreaders workflow
Distributed-Proofreaders scripting toolkit - “It will be observed that this square when turned upside down is still magic.”
mathematical-recreations amusing nudge-targets - “Guy Aldred is an obscure but important figure in the history of socialist thought. He sometimes crops up in histories of British socialism, syndicalist and labour organisation, but rarely in discussions of socialist theory. His uncompromising commitment to activism perhaps explains this neglect: as Aldred himself argued in a commentary on British anarchism, ideologies are too often shaped by the philosophical reflections of educated elites, leaving the thoughts of working class autodidacts who spend a lifetime standing on street corners, propagandising, ignored. Perhaps, too, his evangelical roots make his work an acquired taste: Aldred writes with moral certainty and conviction that leaves little room for debate. Most biographical accounts suggest that he was not an easy man to get along with and though he did not lack organisational skill, he found co-operation difficult. The pleasure he took in the pun of his name – ‘the man they all dread’ – was indicative of the problem. Yet Aldred’s ideas are compelling and the judgements he made in his early life were consistently revolutionary, libertarian, anarchistic and usually good. Aldred campaigned against marriage and for birth control in support of women’s liberation before the First World War; he encouraged conscientious objection in both world conflicts and publicised the vindictive abuse that COs suffered for taking their stance. In all his early writings, he elevated the struggles of common people – from religious non-conformists to convicts. Drawing on the reports of his comrades, Ethel MacDonald (1909−1960) and Jane (Jenny) Patrick (1884−1971), he supported the 1936 anarchist revolution in Spain [1] and until his later life, he consistently opposed the dogmatism of orthodox Marxism, whether it was expressed in the theoretical pieties of the European social democratic movement or, after the Russian Revolution, in the cold, physical brutality of the Stalinist regime. The passion with which he advanced these causes captures the spirit of an optimistic, utopian, romantic current of socialism whose hopes and ideals, squeezed by social democracy on one side and state socialism on the other, were ultimately disappointed but which remain inspiring.”
anarchism history biography socialism