THE EFFECT OF CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION ON OUR LIVES COOL APPLICATIONS
NEXTCLOUD HUB
-------- Daniel Lloyd-Miller
I’m stoked to let you know that there’s finally a professional looking and feature complete replacement for Google Suite and Office 365. Nextcloud Hub keeps you in control over your own digital life by providing an attractive and modern way to share or sync files, chat and video conference, sync your calendar, contacts, and a complete email system. With Onlyoffice, a beautiful word processor built right in, you can edit documents by yourself or with friends and colleagues. What makes Nextcloud Hub so attractive over Office 365 and G Suite? The latter are appendages of international corporate data surveillance mechanisms and any files you save to their cloud (their computers) become the property of Microsoft, or Google, or Apple as much as yours. It is not idle conspiracy theory to state that corporations spy on people and that governments become the final recipients of that data: it is a comprehensively documented and well oiled machine. I disagree with any notion that “if you have nothing to hide, why do you care about surveillance?”: If you have nothing to hide, then give me your email password. Entrusting all of your personal data to just the largest corporations isn’t a solid plan for data privacy: the only truly secure way is to keep your stuff local and in your own hands. I recommend Nextcloud Hub for a few other good reasons besides avoiding the Orwellian grid. For one, Nextcloud is open source, meaning the programs are transparent about what they do on your computer. Second, you can run Nextcloud on your computer(s) of choice: an old computer laying around your house can easily run as a home server. If you’d rather pay someone else to host your files and skip the burden of self-hosting, you can choose from any number of more privacy focused hosting services. There are also prebuilt Nextcloud computers ranging from small, yet effective Raspberry Pi’s to the most badass servers you can dream of. You don’t need to be a small business to ditch your reliance on tech titans, give Nextcloud Hub a try for free at https:// nextcloud.com. Available on every computer system, with apps for iOS and Android.
NOTES FROM THE CREW
Kevin Dacey -Editorin-Chief
You have discovered the first 8 page Boston Compass since 2016! Last month we celebrated 10 years of this rag...this month we celebrate expansion! We’re jumpin’ straight out our jeans with joy for all the amazing new content you threw at us, so please take those meat claws and whack ‘em together for the hardworking crew that has chosen to volunteer with us for dozens of issues AAAND for the rad new bunch we’ve acquired in the past couple years. From the designers, distro-heads, social media interns, managers and more, they all work to make sure you know that BOSTON IS NOT BORING. We are here to show you there are many diverse circles of art and culture thriving in this city despite the ever growing costof-living monster looming over us. This paper and your support are proof that the corporate, collegiate and hegemonic boundaries in Boston are no match for our need to create art. We need to work around and sometimes with these institutions to show them what we think is important. If you’ve been brainwashed into thinking fun only exists in a nightclub three nights a week, then I’m sorry you need to flip back through these pages and take a harder look. It’s all here for you. The more you participate and spread the word, the longer venues and galleries will stay open and the more artists will matter to the bigwigs who run the show. We can change this city’s reputation so take a rag, toss it to a friend and hit me up with your cool events or want to jump in with us! kevin@brain-arts.org
------- Kari Vann
Dear Reader, Open your refrigerator. Open your drawers. Open your cabinets. What do you see? The lifeless commodities staring back at you have stories to tell! Do you know what they are? If you’re like most people, you probably have more questions than answers. As I enter my thirties, I’ve started to pay attention to the absence of craftsmanship and utter anonymity that characterize so much of what we now consume. The stories behind what and how we consume today are vastly different than those that defined our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. And as I begin to view my possessions less as disposable commodities and more as inheritable symbols with intangible value, I’ve grown more and more curious about the nature of this difference. When my mother’s family immigrated to the industrial town of Lynn in the seventies as refugees from the Soviet Union, they didn’t have a lot, but what they did have, they cherished. They brought with them what they could. Some of it I’ve inherited, though I didn’t have much competition; of five grandchildren, I was somehow the only one who wanted these heirlooms. Today, a wooden drinks cart with gold plated wheels belonging to my grandparents, handbuilt by a craftsman in Italy, welcomes guests in my living room. My grandmother’s modest set of white, gold-rimmed fine bone china from Poland entertains visitors on holidays. These items sound expensive, and they were! But for a time, they were all my family had. Even in times of scarcity, it was worth the investment to secure something valuable, made with intention and quality, that would last a lifetime and then some, carrying wealth in some form from one generation to the next. We no longer live in the same kind of scarcity that my grandparents did. Instead of using our wealth to invest in a few possessions of great value, we distribute it across numerous possessions of increasingly little value and quality (sometimes so low in value, we can justify throwing them in the garbage after a single use!). At first, I resented that it was such a struggle to find today’s equivalent of my family’s heirlooms, which would tell the story of my life and my marriage and my generation to my kids and grandkids, the way my family’s objects convey our history to me. All of the jewelry on my mother’s side, for example, had been handcrafted by her uncle, a master jeweler who trained in Romania. He was so skilled, that after he and my grandmother fled World War II to Soviet Armenia in the forties, the wives of elite communist party members would go to him in secret (since in USSR, symbols of wealth and class like jewelry were discouraged). Today’s mass-produced jewelry feels cold and shallow by comparison. The epitome of this is the modern department store—or better yet, a discount store—like a TJ Maxx, or a Marshalls, overflowing with crap, plates and pots and silverware stacked on top of each other, no rhyme or reason like a hoarder on steroids. I shop at these places, too. And I used to think they were a Godsend, because, wow, a dutch oven for $30! But as I matured and started to compare my possessions side by side my mother’s and grandmother’s, I started wondering if I was getting such a great deal, after all. Who makes all this crap? Why is it so cheap? What’s the actual context here? I started wondering how we went from that to this in such a short time, and if there wasn’t a better way. When I perform my patriotic duty as an American, that is, buying shit, I sometimes have to remind myself that this *is* our generation’s story. It’s not as romantic, but it’s no less telling, and it’s just as important that we listen to it. On the surface, the commodities we surround ourselves with— which now include our houses, built not to live in, but to sell—have been smudged clean of any individuality or character, as though the humanity these traits convey were a performance failure, an imperfection, a flaw in the matrix, something to be purged. Yet as hard as we strive for “quality control,” sterility, and uniformity; you don’t have to scratch far beyond the surface to see the humanity (which isn’t always a positive attribute, by the way) lurking underneath. The story of *our* generation’s stuff was pretty much decided for us by Baby Boomers after World War II, and it is one of industrialization and technological advancement, which has resulted in nearly limitless economic growth. The accumulation of wealth from this growth has trickled down just enough to raise the standard of living in developed countries. This “democratization” has afforded more people the resources to own things that were once hard to come by, which is, in many respects, a good thing! But it’s had some profoundly negative side effects, too, which under different circumstances, may well have been avoided. That our economy is built on the backs of consumers is the most nefarious part of our story. More people can afford to own more things, not just because they’ve gotten all that much richer, but because due to industrialization, the price and quality of pretty much everything has plummeted. Cheapness is in many ways a facade. There’s a great saying in Armenian, which translates to “There’s no getting around the true price” and that’s truly the case here. For one, industrial producers do not pay the true costs to nature. That $2 ceramic bowl from India in no way reflects the materials, energy, and labor that went into its production. Furthermore, the reduced quality of our possessions is often part of a business strategy, called planned obsolescence, in which products are built of lesser quality so that they will break and that the consumer will have to spend more money to replace them. Consumption, consumption, consumption! And the only ones who can meet our insatiable appetite for more things aren’t the craftspeople and mom-and-pop shops of old, but giant corporations, whose practices are blind to the limits of nature, which we are rapidly reaching. But though the picture I’m painting of the world sounds bleak, there’s *humanity* to be found every step of the way! The reason things are as bad as they are is because throughout this history, in our pursuit of advancement and perfection, we humans have made countless bad decisions and terrible mistakes! That’s just what we do! And for some reason, that humanity undermines every piece of this story is an odd source of comfort to me. As you can tell, this is something I think about a lot. Too much, perhaps. So last year, I took up an odd hobby as an outlet for some of the frustration I was feeling about all the crap lining the shelves of mainstream supermarkets and stores. I started writing letters to the corporations responsible for them. At first, it felt like an exercise in futility. What did I actually hope to achieve? But it allowed me to explore some of the confusion I feel about the rules which govern commerce today, and turns out, it’s pretty therapeutic to troll a faceless corporation! I’ve decided to start publishing some of these letters in this column I’m calling “Letters to my Corporate Overlords.” Not all the letters are to corporations, some are medium-sized businesses. Occasionally, I’ll write a scathing letter to a politician. And sometimes, I actually get responses! They’re usually from a robot, though. But I’ll be sure to publish those, too. Each letter tackles some aspect of production, but is often related to an environmental concern, as the natural world is what I feel we stand most to lose from all this senseless overproduction. Lastly, the medium. Letters are such a personal, intimate, and very human mode of communication, and I feel like this highlights the void that these corporations have created in what should be a rich and thoughtful part of our lives. Letter-writing is also a sort of craft, a dying art which has suffered at the hand of mass-produced greeting cards. (Maybe one day, Hallmark will get a letter, too!) And I feel quite strongly that many of our troubles would not be so complicated to solve, if we had not placed enormous corporations at the helm of our society, whose only real responsibility is to their bottom line, which is somehow, very abstractly good for “the economy,” but has literally nothing to do with any of us and how we’re feeling about the world this morning. Sincerely Yours, KARI V. (P.S. You can write letters to me, too, at vann.karine@gmail.com!)
It’s March, Aries/Pisces season and the preshadow of spring; a time of decompression for everyone edging out of the seasonal winter depression that blankets New England (like the cheap fitting sheet you know isn’t a comforter -- but damn it, it’s cold). Musicians in the local scene must utilize a variety of different resources, tools and tricks to maintain themselves, not just this season but year-round! The Art of Healing delves into just what helps these artists tick through the tests of time, what practices psychologically, nutritionally and spiritually they use to thrive in such a mentally and emotionally taxing music industry. In this installment we catch up with BostonMusic-Award-Winning recording artist, aunty and experienced human: Oompa! After dropping a successful sophomore album in 2019 ‘Cleo’ to both national and critical acclaim and doing dozens of subsequent shows (i.e Hellablack ) privacy seems to be the center of Oompa’s selfcare regimen. “I do the minimal on social media and disconnect, sometimes to the point where people take offense to it -- I just take space.” She reflects “My self care practice is disconnecting and hibernating.” Oomp’s candidly honest insight on her methods of self-care shines a spotlight on her astrological placements as a source of strength. “Privacy has been becoming more important to me; the older I get, the more I come into my Taurus moon. I’m so grateful for my Gemini rising, it saves me.” She praises the support these aspects bring while jesting their disunity. “They work in tandem… most of the time.” “Yes” She responds when prompted with
the question of if she is spiritual “whether or not I wanted to be in the past there has always been some connection to the spiritual world that I’ve had. [A connection] that was literally harnessed through Christianity -- though there are a lot of parts in Christianity that have been hella weaponized.” Refocusing, she states: “my interest is going after universal truths.” “I don’t have a name for it, but it’s mostly me trying to master the compass I have internally.” Things weren’t always so clear cut for the young rising-star--in the past, Oompa had alternative coping mechanisms she no longer uses. “My coping strategies in the past have been… drinking as an escape for me.” And when schedules got busier she found it harder to “pay attention in this industry that is constantly taxing you mentally and emotionally”. To remedy this Oompa dedicated the first month of the year to rest and finding a professional therapist she could see regularly. Growing, healing and learning Oompa is a super talented multi-faceted human living an experience many others face but find hard to articulate. When asked what advice would she give readers to cope with the stresses of life and artistry she states “You either proactively take care of your mental health and wellness or you’re going to be forced to do it.” She concludes “I think that’s my biggest lesson in the past year… This world will make you think you constantly have to be making something, producing something and making money. It’s really hard to sit down sometimes for a day or three because it costs something. But sometimes you just have to, man, it’s
the difference between being alright or not.” You can see Oompa live Friday, March 27th at the Sonia Live Music Venue in Cambridge, MA and Thursday April 23rd in Allston, MA. Follow her on Social media at @oompoutloud on all platforms, and go to her website www.oompoutloud.com for all of her content! Peace bless and manifest! —Terry Borderline By LillyLilly Dick---------inson Dickinson
Advice for Lovers Q: So this winter I went to Scotland to see some friends and serendipitously fell in love with a mutual friend of mine. It was really amazing for the 10 days I spent with him, but then I had to go home and now our communication is bad because we are both really sad for different reasons and I don’t know what to do to find joy in the waiting until I get to go back and see him for the summer. Do you have any suggestions on how to let go of my expectations for this relationship while I’m 3000 miles away? A: The perfect mix for a fantasy/fling: A vacation, he is friend approved, temporary trip means magnified feelings, and the fact that he is physically far from you allows room for longing. You ask how to find joy in the waiting — there is no joy in the waiting unless you are a masochist! With infatuation, there are no distractions to bring you happiness to dim the pain of absence. Are you asking to let go or put on hold until your return trip? You need some more distance in your hindsight to recognize that this is infatuation. ----- xoxo Heart Soaked