Plex: 18 June 2025

The Biweekly Plex Dispatch is an inter-community newspaper published by Collective Sense Commons on first and third Wednesdays of each month. Price per issue: 1 USD, or your choice of amount (even zero).

In This Issue

• Wuppertal and the Neander Valley (Hank Kune)
• No Kings–What Was That? (Peter Kaminski and Pete Forsyth)
• Microcommunities (Peter Kaminski)
• Plex Patterns–An Update (Peter Kaminski)

Wuppertal and the Neander Valley

by Hank Kune

On a visit to Wuppertal–an engaging mid-sized city in Germany–we encountered its monorail, the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. It is 13.3 kilometers long, at a height of about 12 meters above the river Wupper, and began operation in 1901. Its ironwork construction is similar to the Eiffel tower, only horizontal instead of vertical.

Until the First World War, Wuppertal was one of the richest cities in Germany, based on its weaving industries; in its heyday, it had more than 4000 active looms. It was also the birthplace and home of Friedrich Engels, before he moved to Manchester.

It's now a city of impressive buildings, unexpected museums, and street art.

Not far from Wuppertal is the Neanderthal, where the first remains of what came to be called the Neanderthal people were discovered. In a beautiful valley of rolling, forested hills, there is a tower at the place where the remains were found, and a museum that tells a story to debunk many modern misconceptions about the Neanderthal humans.

Bonus Photo from Sicily

No Kings–What Was That?

by Peter Kaminski and Pete Forsyth

On Saturday, June 14, millions of Americans and many more people around the world expressed dissatisfaction with the corruption and the authoritarian tactics of the Trump administration, in the massively distributed “No Kings” demonstrations. The demonstrations were held on Flag Day, in opposition to the military review parade ordered by President Trump on that day in Washington, D.C.

On the No Kings protests page, Wikipedia contributors have written (emphasis added):

Organizers estimated that more than five million people participated in more than 2,100 cities and towns, including the flagship event in Philadelphia. More protests took place in the U.S. territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, and in 20 foreign countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, and in Europe. In countries with constitutional monarchies such as Canada and the United Kingdom, the alternate “Dictators” or “Tyrants” titles were favored over “Kings” to avoid confusion with anti-monarchic movements; Hawaii did the same to avoid confusion with a King Kamehameha Day parade held on the same day.

The No Kings organizers hope to spark a movement: “The road ahead isn’t just about one protest or one day. It’s about building a movement powerful enough to win against authoritarian forces dead set on destroying our democracy.”

They also stress nonviolent action: “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.”

The changes the Trump administration promulgates for the US are exceptionally broad and deep, and to many, antithetical to core values espoused by US leaders and citizens for 250 years. (For example, one huge planned change among many: dramatically defunding science, in what scientist Joshua Weitz calls A Catastrophic Vision of a Diminished America.)

Being overwhelmed by depressing events is relatable and understandable, but consider that it may be time to stretch beyond what’s comfortable, either on the basis of principles, or even just personal and family self-interest. Even if you or your loved ones have yet to be affected by abrupt policy changes, staying engaged and informed remains crucial. What seems distant today may impact you sooner than you think.

Learn more. Connect more with people with whom you resonate and trust. Take action, whether big or small. Learn to trust your gut and trust your friends. Our lives and our country depend on it.

Links

• NoKings.org
• No Kings: What's Next in the Fight? (YouTube, June 16th attendee debrief)
• No Kings Partners (supporting organizations)

Microcommunities

by Peter Kaminski

Some of my best experiences online were in big, public spaces like USENET (around 1993), Flickr (around 2003), and Twitter (around 2013). It felt like I could reach anybody online, and I could see around the whole space.

Flash-forward to now, and I’ve been sad that those big, open spaces don’t exist in the same way anymore. It’s been seeming like a regression or a failure of the modern world. Reflexively, I was thinking that smaller or more private online communities were “wrong.”

But then I had one of those epiphanies–small is kinda beautiful! I still miss the broad feeling of interacting with “everyone,” but I realized I’m in a lot of small communities. Forty-five (!) on Discord, five on Signal, five on Matrix, a few on Telegram, one on Slack.

I’m a lurker in probably most of them, but a participant in more than a few. And while it’s nice sometimes that they’re private, I still miss having the conversations within them discoverable to “friends we haven’t met yet.”

But so what? I think a much greater variety of people participate in these microcommunities today than in past decades. While I look forward to some magical future where conversations are more discoverable, and where good ideas get better distribution, maybe that’s not today’s thing.

So, here’s to microcommunities. I’ll start thinking of them as a feature, not a bug, and let go of my memories of bygone times, and still hold onto my dreams of a web that connects us in both big and small ways—where intimacy and openness can coexist.

Plex Patterns–An Update

by Peter Kaminski

Charles Blass and I talked about “Plex Patterns” in Plex: 3 April 2024.

After 80 issues now of publishing the Biweekly Plex Dispatch, I want to revisit some of the patterns I use while I’m assembling and publishing Plex. Here are the consistent patterns that have emerged:

Patterns

Purpose & Vision

• A focus on “intercommunity”
• Community journalism

Content Strategy

• Asking members of communities for updates
• Author attribution, emphasizing a collaborative publication
• Different kinds of stories: personal reflections/essays, photo essays, poetry, conversations/interviews, travel reports, technical discussions
• A mix of text stories and images or videos
• One long issue

Publishing Operations

• Publishing twice a month
• Use Ghost or Substack to provide both email and web versions
• Having a paid tier and a free tier, with same article access

Evolution

Overall, I’m reasonably happy with Plex, but there are also some things that I can see evolving:

• Instead of “Asking members of communities for updates,” I think it might be better to have dedicated “beat reporters” that provide more consistent reporting and storytelling. This could lead to deeper, more sustained coverage of communities, rather than occasional updates.
• “One long issue” is nice to create the feel of a periodically published newsletter, but we sorely miss directly linking to individual pieces (hi, Jerry!). I’d also love to integrate with Massive Wiki, NeoBooks, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
• Plex has used only Ghost since its inception. Ghost is a great platform, and it’s consistently getting even better. I also really value that Ghost is open source, so there’s a self-hosting option. However, Substack has continued to develop strong subscriber growth strategies, and I wonder if Plex should take advantage of that. I’m intrigued by Anna Burgess Yang’s approach in “I Publish on Substack, Ghost, and Kit. Here’s Why”—she uses each platform’s strengths while maintaining her content across all three.
• Jack Park is inspired by Plex to think of building a new kind of social network around it—addressing the challenge of making intercommunity connections more interactive and persistent.
• Jordan Sukut imagines Plex patterns being used to build a decentralized, distributed news network that also gently encourages more participation and engagement. One of the things that hasn’t worked as well with Plex as I’ve wanted is the idea of “intercommunity.” I wonder if decentralized Plex nodes should center more on intra-community news, with informal syndication sometimes between nodes–perhaps that’s a better way to do “intercommunity” by building strong local nodes first.

If you find this kind of brainstorming interesting, join us as we think more! Send me an email: kaminski@istori.com.

Thank you for reading! The next edition will be published on 2 July 2025. Email Pete with suggested submissions.

Grateful appreciation and many thanks to Charles Blass, Pete Forsyth, Michael Grossman, and Hank Kune for their kind contributions to this issue.