I always get excited by new Bluetooth mesh network technology because it is extremely useful for pro-democracy movements. Wherever the Internet could be censored, monitored, surveilled, or shut down due to security reactions to social movements, protests, rallies, and marches, a Bluetooth mesh network like FireChat, which was used throughout the 2010s in Hong Kong during the protests against Chinese authoritarianism that came to be known as the Umbrella Movement, can keep communications flowing to a large group of organizers in the field, avoiding confusion, the fog of war, and other roadblocks. Mesh networks are equally useful for underserved areas in rural or urban communities. There have been some successful examples. One in particular comes to mind of an urban community that installed local Internet through a Wi-Fi network that was based on mesh networks. Now, of course, the ideal mesh network would simply involve every phone that had downloaded an app onto it as transmitters in the network, and this would be immensely useful and especially if the phones could do this while they were not in use. So we have the possibility of mesh networks installed in remote areas, and also created by the natural network effect of our phones. These technologies should be more in use. More to the point, Signal has accomplished a new level of communications for organizing; however, there are certain gaps such as sharing your phone number or the fact that it uses cell service to transmit although-encrypted messages. I think this kind of work should be supported in some way, shape or form.
In the month of July, — The Honeybee from Religious Symbolism to Enlightenment Why was Deity associated with the honeybee? There’s a sort of speculative fiction book that explores the origin of religion in ancient Mesopotamia through a sort of meta-narrative of science fiction, and on the surface level, I’m drawing from that novel. ( Fall , Neal Stephenson.) But storyline aside, there’s an interesting take there on the origin of the connection between Deity and the honeybee, showing how practices of worship situated around agricultural rites eventually foregrounded the importance of the honeybee, and that insect and its hive became a symbol of deity, perhaps brought about through the actions of devotees to a specific Canaanite religious sect, but also through a generalized familiarity among the population of the ancient Near East with the honeybee’s pollination abilities and the honey it produced, which could have strengthened its position as a symbol, even among those who...
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