Not too far from Aix en Provence you can find a Roman bridge with two arches under which to pass as you cross. I expect that the stones from others were quarried and so this is the last surviving example. If we check the sources we might find mentions of more.
First things First, I have had a lot of fun at festivals, and I have volunteered for a few. What I object to is the noise pollution. In the 21st century we could avoid that noise pollution, so we should.
And now for the rant, now that I have told you I like festivals, when they don’t get in the way of other peoples’ desire for silence, for sleep.
As I write this I am in a sleep deprived state because I was unable to sleep according to my circadian rhythm due to a music festival. The sound engineers that work at music festivals are pretty dumb, so they build powerful stacks of speakers that are so loud that you need hearing protection at the music festival, and the surrounding countryside is filled with noise pollution.
I Know, I Know, They Don’t Care.
I know, I shouldn’t insult an entire profession for taking no pride in their work, and not taking any responsibility for the harm they do to the surrounding countryside. They can’t help it. They’re just not very bright.
I write this for catharsis, because for five hours yesterday the music festival upwind from where I live was noisy from 1900 to 0100. I felt like going to sleep earlier as I knew I had to get up early. In the end I failed to get to sleep until an hour or two after the noise pollution ended.
Highly Polluting
In the 21st century, and given the audience, you would expect music festivals to be environmentally friendly. They boast about “compostable cups” and recycling and more. They then encourage columns of cars to park on crop fields, where, if it rains, or if vehicles are leaking oil, the ground becomes polluted with festival goer hydrocarbons from cars.
The noise pollution is a serious problem. Near Nyon there are two big festivals. Caribama, which is taking place now, and Paléo, next month. Both festivals are filled with altermondalistes who want a greender planet, corporations to be socially responsible, and yet for a week each, these festivals make noise pollution several nights in a row from 1900 until 2 or 3am. For those weeks it becomes challenging to sleep.
Yesterday I had two fans going, at full power and I couldn’t block out the thudding from the bass that the music festival was pumping out. If I had wanted to, I could have listened to the festival for free.
FOMO
Although governments, the Far Right and the media they control have said that the pandemic is over it isn’t. Music festivals were a source of psychological torture because they reminded us that whilst we were self-isolating and trying to avoid long COVID the alcoholics, and less intellectually bright, were getting drunk and enjoying themselves, with no thought or consideration for the impact the substances, sleep deprivation, and long COVID could have on their health.
I Have Volunteered at These Events
I am not against these events, as such. I used to enjoy them as a young adult. It’s as a middle aged “grumpy” man that I hate them. I don’t hate them for what they are, but for their disregard for people’s intimate sphere. I dislike them for their invasion of the private sphere, through noise pollution.
In the 21st century, in the age where we can’t mow lawns between 1230 and 1330, where we can’t vacuum on Sundays and more, why is it socially acceptable to allow such noise pollution until two or three am for a week at a time?
I thought that festival goers wanted a fairer, greener, more responsible world, and yet they pollute fields with parked cars, make it impossible to sleep and more.
Do festival goers not realise the paradox of wanting a fairer world, despite their own selfish behaviour?
Let us sleep. Lower the volume. Be kind and considerate of those that are not participating in your event. Show empathy.
Last week it was comfortable and warm so it was tempting to go cycling. This week it has gone back to being cold. Yesterday it was cold and windy and today was cold but sunny. I went for my usual walk but rather than listen to a podcast I watched TikTok videos as I walked at full speed. I am so used to the paths that I do not always need to pay attention.
The paths are dry. It hasn’t rained in days. The rivers are lower than they’ve been in a while and in theory river walking may be possible once again, as long as you don’t mind cold feet.
What was out of the ordinary today is that I saw people walking through fields on two separate occasions. On one occasion it was a trio of older people and their behaviour made no sense to me, for the simple reason that you can very easily walk around the field, and that the field has crops on it. If you’re going to walk through a field make sure that it has been harvested, that it is fallow or that no cows are using it.
I later saw a duo of people doing the same thing on another field and this does seem odd. Why would two groups of people have the same discourteous behaviour of walking over a crop?
Rather than walk along the usual routes I cut through the forest, walking through leaves, over dead branches, between trees and more. I filmed the progress I made. At the moment walking through forests is easy because none of the undergrowth is out yet. Walking between trees is easy, and so is navigating. When the undergrowth grows in spring such explorations will no longer be possible. That is when cycling will be more fun. I look forward to the cycling season starting properly once again. I went to be on the bike, and to explore. I also want to feel that something is finally changing.
I saw a Trio of older women and I thought that they may be having adventures like the three men in Last of the Summer Wine. A trio of friends going for mischievous adventures in nature during their afternoon walks.
Before the pandemic, when life was normal, I would go to three or four events per week organised via websites. These days, on meetup.com things are organised every two weeks, and for just 15 people at a time. This means that if you’re not first to sign up you’re on a waiting list and you could be social once every few weeks, rather than three times per week. This frustrates me.
There is a simple solution. There is a demand for events to be organised. I recently bought fresh Via Ferrata stuff and may start doing them regularly once again. I want to accertain that I am comfortable with the sport after such a long break, and once this is done I can create my own via ferrata and walking group. I would organise things at least once per week, maybe more.
The biggest nuissance with Meetup.com is that it requires a monthly fee for having a group. The result is that groups are created, run for a bit, and then destroyed to avoid paying for longer. The alternative is to use Facebook but I absolutely hate what Facebook is and what it represents. Every time it abuses of peoples’ trust it and gets caught it never apologises.
I have car and I have three seats. Like I used to do before the pandemic I can pick people up in Nyon, drive them to and from the activity, and when it comes time to say goodbye they can contribute towards petrol and the cost of having a group.
I would never charge people a fee to participate in an activity because that goes against my ethos, but having people pay a fair share towards petrol is the right thing to do. If you don’t charge people for the petrol used, they abuse of our kindness as drivers.
There is an added benefit. The problem with group activities is that when they end people rush to the train, without saying goodbye and I find this really strange. Before the pandemic there would be a stop at a bar to have a drink, and then drive home. In the Pandemic age that stop no longer occurs. I find this to be a shame. At least by driving from Nyon to the via ferrata or hiking location there is a moment for conversation before and after the journey.
I could be like others, and take the same trains as they take but that would increase my costs for participating in events. It also doubles or triples the journey time.
Last week I walked an extra eight kilometres rather than take a train, so it isn’t that I want to use the car. I have spent five or six years doing almost all of my bike rides and walks from home. The point of the car is to expand my range, once again.
And Finally
As I got to the end of this post I noticed that I am included in the hike that I thought was overbooked, and I see that other people are doing a VF at the same time on the same day and now I am torn about which one to do. The beautiful irony.
The old paradox is back. Nothing to do for the entire week, and then two activities to do at the same time.
Facebook would like us, in Europe, to start paying to use Facebook, Instagram and Threads, eventually. I will never pay for any of these services because they do not provide us with anything of value. The day we begin to pay for Facebook and Instagram we will be paying to be spammed by influencer content whilst not seeing content by friends, family and colleagues. In light of this we’re paying to see more adverts. We’re paying to have our time wasted.
Influencer Spam Rather than Posts by Friends
At the same time as Facebook wants us to pay for their mediocre sites there is another option. For 6CHF per month or so we can setup a mastodon instance, or a Pixelfed instance, and we can microblog, or share images, or both, for 12 CHF per month. Facebook wants us to pay 14 Euros per month to be spammed. I will not pay Facebook anything. They experimented with making us miserable, without saying sorry. They did nothing to stop the genocide that was being orchestrated from their social media platforms. They turned Instagram from a photo sharing app between friends to a spam network for influencers. Why would I thank them, by paying for services that they made worthless?
Interesting Alternatives
Flickr is still alive, and people are still active on the site. People are still sharing hundreds of pictures per day, in some cases. Others are sharing occasional images. For 156 CHF per year for Instagram you could get Flickr, and share with people passionate about photography, rather than utilitarian influencers.
For around 6.47 CHF per month you can get a mastodon instance that can be shared by five users. For around the same price you can also get a Pixelfed instance but I think Flickr is more interesting, because it’s a legacy community with 20 years of conviviality. I also think that Pixelfed might be pleasant to install on most instances, unlike Mastodon which I have tried, and so far failed to implement on a personal web server that I control fully.
And Finally
Since 2007 I said “think of ROI for users, not advertisers” and Facebook is finally realising that they should have, but too late. I would have paid for Facebook and Instagram when they had healthy communities of friends that I met on a daily basis. Now that it’s a dormant network of friends, populated by influencer spam, I have no desire to pay for their services. I was on Facebook and Instagram for the IRL community I knew. Now that it’s a network of strangers it would be irrational for me to pay 13 Euros for a primary account and 6 euros per supplementary account. For 20 Euros a month you can get something much more interesting.
There is a case for reverting to web forums. Web forums are small communities of like minded people that form around topics, ideas, or ideals. They want to have conversations where you look at topics and sub topics, rather than following people. By having conversations on a smaller scale there is more waiting around for answers, but the connections should be more worthwhile.
Recently the ActivityPub plugin for Wordpress jumped to version 1.0.0 from version 0.0.something. In so doing I expected to find that two way conversations would be possible from wordpress to the Fediverse, and back from the Fediverse to WordPress and ClassicPRess.
That isn’t the case. Much Ado about Nothing. I really thought that the experience would have bounded to be a full-fledged solution.
Facebook and Twitter
When they were new Facebook and Twitter were great. Twitter was great because it was a community of strangers who had deep conversations online, so that when they met in person they felt like old friends. With hashtags, and the desire to have more followers people lost track of conversations, and so it became an impersonal popularity contest.
With Facebook we had a community of university friends that we got along with, in person, that reconnected with online, to share images, events and more. At the time this was great. The problem occurred when we went from conversing with friends, to playing Zynga, because after that Facebook became a place to waste time, through no fault of our own. It was designed to become a waste of time, to keep us active.
The Fediverse
For a few weeks, or even a few months I felt that the fediverse had a lot to offer. Eventually I saw that all the problems that I saw with Twitter were also present on the Fediverse. People wanted to be followed by millions, they wanted lists, and they wanted hashtags. I also felt quite a bit of aggression, trolling, and people with baggage. I deleted myself from several Fediverse instances because I didn’t feel that they were healthy places to be.
Enter phpBB.
phpBB is one of the oldest parts of the social web. phpBB boards have been around since the 90s but as we got used to Twitter, FaceBook, Myspace and other sites we forgot about the smaller, interest based communities. I don’t want to invest thousands of hours in a twitter clone. I went to become part of an online community that is small, but convivial. Setting up a web forum is easy. It’s finding a community that is challenging. That’s the challenge I face.
My Ideal
My ideal is to find an online community that is local, to chat with online, before meeting in person on a regular basis. I should be able to find that through a sporty community, like I had for years, before the current doldrums.
And Finally
One of the weaknesses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other online communities is that we follow people, rather than topcics and ideas. Of course we can follow “hasthags” but for me this is awful because it helps people spam, and distracts people from having conversations around ideas. By following people, rather than threads of conversation we’re on an open web of noise. With web forums we revert to a quieter social network where we wait for answers. in theory we can ask for notifications, rather than waiting.
I think that reverting to web forums is a good idea, because it allows us to re-build communities on a personal scale.
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