Where have we been and what have we been doing?
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Hello everyone!
If you happen to be following us, you might have noticed we havent posted much recently. There are a few reasons for this, namely that we have taken on far too many projects than we probably should have, and writing articles and updates has been low on our list of priorities. I figured that y’all probably deserve a bit of an update at this point, because quite a lot has happened pertaining to MycoSystems and other related projects. To keep things orderly, here’s a list of all the individual updates that I’ll be outlining in this update:
MycoSystems is now an actual legal entity (a cooperative LLC), and it was a major pain to do this in a way that didn’t open us up to doxxing
We’ve helped to start Movement Infrastructure Research (MIR) along with some comrades, got a grant, and used it to spearhead some local infrastructure projects
We helped found a new anarchist community hackerspace in Atlanta
Not much has happened with Squat the Planet yet and I’m sorry about that
More misc stuff is happening that’s cool and interesting, and maybe you’ll think it’s cool too!
MycoSystems is officially a worker cooperative!⌗
After a lot of deliberation, MycoSystems is finally established as a cooperatively-run LLC. As much as we detest legitimizing the so-called “United States’” authority to declare who is a legitimate entity and who isn’t, doing this opens up many options to us than wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Namely, we can legally operate as a worker cooperative to bring in income to support ourselves & fund projects, we can finally open a collectively controlled bank account, and we can also open other various online accounts without using our personal information. This means we’ll also be able to start taking donations soon and opening up merch stores for both MycoSystems and Squat the Planet.
While starting an LLC is generally not particularly difficult, we had some requirements that made this process kinda painful. The biggest difficultly was doing this in a way that doesn’t open us up to easy doxxing. In most US states, owners of LLCs and other legal entities are placed on a public registry which showcases their full legal names. Luckily, there are four states which allow you to set up an “anonymous LLC”, concealing personal information from the public. We went with Delaware (we do not live in Delaware), and that led us down a rabbit hole of registered agents, virtual mailing addresses, and many other random legal mechanisms needed to do business in a state you have no business in. The IRS still knows who we are, but at least we’re a bit safer from prying eyes. Sometime in the future, we’ll publish the full process we used once we’ve worked out more of the legal kinks, as I’d imagine that info will be useful for other organizations that are at risk of fascist targeting.
MIR: Movement Infrastructure Research⌗
MIR is an initiative we’ve helped to get off the ground over the last year-ish. MIR was born out of a project we took on with some comrades here in Atlanta to build an anonymous and open-source jail support phone system built from existing FOSS PBX components. This is a project that has largely been successful and has been deployed for Atlanta Solidarity Fund as a trial system while we work out various kinks and issues. This is a project that we’ll release a full article on in the future (probably when we release a packaged version of this system). With this project in the works we were able to get a grant and formalize the group, now Movement Infrastructure Research, and absorb the jail support PBX project.
MIR exists as a container to conduct research and development work on radical open source projects and infrastructure for use by activists and social movements. Today, MycoSystems is now a formalized contractor of MIR, we are continuing to work on the jail support PBX project, and we have also started working with Autonomic to contribute to Coop Cloud, a radical open-source infrastructure deployment application. Without getting too into the technical weeds, I think Coop Cloud has the potential to radically change how social movements engage with private cloud technologies and evade the modern surveillance state. If you’re interested, check out the Coop Cloud website.
Sandbox: Atlanta’s new anarchist hackerspace⌗
Sandbox is a new anarchist hackerspace we’ve opened up with some comrades in Little 5 Points, Atlanta. It’s taken about a year to negotiate a lease due to various issues, but we’re finally open as of January! Sandbox was created to bring technology skills and resources to the local community and to social movements. We’ve been sourcing equipment through donations and dumpster diving, and we already have 3D printers, a server rack with multiple servers, CNC routers, an electronics prototyping station, video synthesizer equipment, and much more!
We currently have about 20 official members, and membership dues are how we pay for the lease in addition to some grant money. We are fundamentally a community space, and anyone is welcome to come visit, hang out, and use the resources (so long as a sandbox member is supervising). Members are already starting a plethora of initiatives and projects, so the space is getting even more dynamic and interesting every day.
From Sandbox, we are planning to host conferences, repair days, skill-sharing sessions, community infrastructure projects, and many other events. In April, we will be hosting a movement digital security conference with some great speakers and several workshops. We’ll be posting information on this event here on our blog fairly soon, and we’d love to see you there!
Squat the Planet: Sorry we’re slow :(⌗
Not much has happened lately with Squat the Planet, as you’ve probably noticed if you follow the forum. I posted over there a few months ago about a lot of our plans, most of which we havent gotten around to yet. If you’ve been particularly looking forward to those developments, I’m legitimately sorry we’ve been so slow. If you’ve read up to this point in the article, you probably have an idea now as to why we’ve been so occupied.
At the moment, MycoSystems is still just the two of us. Now that we’re an actual LLC with a bank account, we’re looking at adding some more members so we can contribute more to projects like StP, as well as allocating some funds to prioritize the work that itself doesn’t bring in much income.
So I promise we will get around to making the improvements and additions we’ve talked about, just bear with us and we’ll get to it. I can’t give a specific time estimate, but hopefully StP work will ramp up soon. Thanks for y’all’s patience (: Even more cool stuff!
In addition to everything above, we also have a few other noteworthy projects and initiatives to add! Many of these will get their own dedicated posts whenever we get around to it.
Brooke and I have been building out our personal camper-van project, which still needs a lot of work but has been coming together quite nicely so far.
I’ve been rebuilding CrumpetNode, which is one of our two primary physical server nodes we host both personal and MycoSystems infrastructure on. The form factor of the second-hand server rack we acquired is quite small and odd, which has posed some fun design challenges. I’m using as much dumpster-dived, ewaste, and second hand hardware as possible in this build.
We’ve found all sorts of fascinating (and valuable) e-waste! Most notably, we found a large quantity of industrial lithium batteries for solar energy storage, as well as grid connected inverters, and a few solar panels. The vast majority of all this is either working or only needs minor repairs. Some of the batteries were even new in-box. We’ll be building out solar energy setups with some of this equipment, and we’ll probably repair and sell the rest of it.
Sandbox had a kickoff event back in the beginning of February. I did a talk on dumpster-diving e-waste and utilizing it for building digital infrastructure, and Brooke did a talk on DIY invisilign and how invisilign might actually be poisoning everyone. We’ll soon be publishing the slides and notes from these talks
Y’all can probably expect more content on here soon about any of these projects/topics I’ve outlined in this update. We tend to take on projects faster than we write about them, but we’ll be trying to catch y’all up as best as we can. If you’re interested in this, feel free and subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Mastadon!