Interesting to look back at this five months later ... here's what's currently happening today in terms of decentralization the ATmosphere.

• @rudyfraser.com announced today that Blacksy feeds and moderation service are now powered by our own atproto relay -- and it's an independent implementation, not using Bluesky's reference code. It's really worth reading the thread, which has a great analogy for how a relay enables custom feeds.

• @edavis.dev has configured deer.social (a third-party app) to to point to a self-hosted bsky appview which reads from a self-hosted relay which subscribes to a self-hosted PDS which is where this -- as he says, "Bluesky independent from Bluesky".

• @bnewbold published A Full-Network Relay for $34 a Month, updating his post from last summer. The network size has increased by close to an order of magnitude since his first post; the cost of a realy

• #FreeOurFeeds is donating a $50K to the AT Community Fund to support the #IndieSky working group. The notes from last week's Ahoy IndieSky Europe give a sense of the energy here -- and also link to a bunch of other projects that sure look decentralized to me and discusses the prospects of Eurosky.

Of course, like I said in the article,

""Decentralization" means different things to different people. As the links in the Appendix highlight, people who are focusing on the (very real) concentration of power in the ATmosphere today, or the potentially-centralizing architecture of AT, find it more useful to describe Bluesky as centralized."

And the power concentration -- or "operational centralization" as Bluesky folks were calling it at the ATmosphere Conference -- is still very real. Bluesky still runs almost all of the infrastructure for the ATmosphere, and it's by far the most popular app, and most other apps (as well as Bluesky) use the Bluesky AppView, Relay, and labeler.

Then again, that's clearly in the process of changing, and it'll be interesting to see how it looks six months or a year from now.

@laurenshof @fediversereport @cyrus @cwebber @rysiek @jonny @possibledog @oblomov @rwg @Kye

The #SpaceShuttle was notorious for being a “flying brick” , but it could be steered. By angling or unbalancing any #spacecraft already in motion, engineers can create lift that steers their craft in a given direction – even in #Mars’ relatively thin #atmosphere. https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/well-need-a-whole-new-landing-approach-to-put-humans-on-mars

#AMAT allows the user to simulate #atmospheric entry trajectories, compute deceleration and heatingloads, compute aerocapture entry corridors and simulate aerocapture trajectories. AMAT supports analysis for all #atmosphere-bearing destinations in the #SolarSystem: #Venus, #Earth, #Mars, #Jupiter, #Saturn, #Titan, #Uranus, and #Neptune https://amat.readthedocs.io/en/master

It makes sense to use the Martian #atmosphere to help with deceleration and save on propellant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5seefpjMQJI This method has been tested and validated on Earth, using #SpaceX #Falcon9 first stages in the high atmosphere to simulate #Martian conditions https://marspedia.org/Landing_on_Mars#Powered_landing

Here's a few specific questions I have ... very interested in hearing people's thoughts! If you'd prefer to respond anonymously, here's a CryptPad form (it takes a few seconds to load, so don't panic; and it's kind of long, but all the questions are optional).

• What examples have you seen of successfully leveraging social networks for organizing and mutual aid? (It's fine to include examples from centralized commercial social networks as well as alternative and/or decentralized social networks)

• How could social networks better support organizing and mutual aid?

• What do you see as the most promising and/or urgent short-term opportunities?

• Are there relevant studies, articles, papers, books, videos, and/or podcasts?

And if you'd like to get involved, you can leave your contact info in the form and we'll follow up with you once there are some concrete next steps in place. (Although you're also welcome to fill out the form anonymously!)

More notes on Organizing, Mutual Aid, and Activism on decentralized social networks

https://privacy.thenexus.today/more-notes-on-organizing/

This was originally going to be a #FediForum session ... oh well. But why let the FediForum organizers' screwups sabotage a worthwhile conversation? We decided to go ahead with the discussion anyhow. Here's the notes.

Feedback welcome! There are some specific questions in the reply, or here's a CryptPad form if you'd rather give feedback anonymously, but I'm also interested in reactions to topics we discussed in the meeting -- and thoughts in general!