!Thanks sdf!
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agk's phlog
9 Mar 2021 @ 2249
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written on COMmode with x61
while roommate watches Oprah's
interview with Meghan Markle
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It was a pleasure talking with jasmaz and peron
tonight on sdf's OpenVOIP. Thank you publius for
bringing it back! We enjoyed each other's voices
across UTC offsets and international borders.
In Port au Prince, Haiti, after the 2010
earthquake made everything fall down, in a
Petionville tent camp of people displaced from
their pancaked homes, a family set up a little
cinema in their shelter of bedsheets draped over
sticks.
They hung a hand-written sign on a scrap of
paperboard outside that said "No Stress Ciné."
I think they were playing the same film
(Shottas) every time I visited.
No Stress Ciné was low-tech, convivial, tiny,
a relief from the concrete dust, devastation,
intense heat, and powerless anger of the day.
During disaster it feels very good to give.
It is hard to rest.
During this year of plague and recession, ice
storms, fires, and floods, sdf has been my No
Stress Ciné. Gopher helps me write, let go of
the day, and sleep well. I chat on com, listen
to anonradio, and laugh.
The Place Boyer Camp No Stress Ciné would have
been stressful run by a big NGO who required an
ID card to enter, US 82nd Airborne gunners on
the walls, infantry "guarding" the equipment.
This is how everything else was: food distro,
orthopedic hospitals, morgues. My imaginary
Beaucoup Stress Ciné might show blockbuster
Marvel movies or Wonder Woman 1984 on a large
screen, air-conditioned, with potable water on
tap. It would suck like Zoom sucks.
No stress comes when we do it together, for each
other--low-tech, informal, international, and
accessible. I like this server and the community
we share very much.
