[Noisebridge-discuss] Use of Nitrous Oxide in the space on Sunday night

Thu Oct 11 23:54:50 UTC 2012

I would also point out that characterizations of the people using as 
being responsible and behaving appropriate is not borne out by the 
facts. At least one person was high enough to fall out of his chair.

I
 also question anyone's ability to safely and sanely hack while under 
the influence. If someone is under the influence while using power tools
 in the shop, soldering, or, gods forbid, working on the server would 
give me nightmares.

- Reverend Mik
This message has not been approved by the Marketing Department, and as 
such is not considered valid for any official purpose. No focus groups 
have been held, no feasibility studies have been drafted, and the color 
of this message is not compliant with corporate standards.

--- On Thu, 10/11/12, Zach <organic_unity at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Zach <organic_unity at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Use of Nitrous Oxide in the space on Sunday night
To: "noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net" <noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>
Date: Thursday, October 11, 2012, 4:43 PM

Firstly, these are not just questionable substances by the state of california-- what happened Sunday was illegal and people should at least be clear about that if nothing else.

There are some definite problems with analogies being made here...

Whenever I perform a song at NB (and it has happened something like 5 times in the past 2+ years) I make a very loud announcement to the entire space telling people I'm about to use amplified sound and I ask if this will bother anyone. Only after doing this have I practiced a song, usually with the support of people there wanting to hear what it is. In the past year I have specifically talked with Mike Kan as well, because I know he is sensitive to loud sounds. I respect this and I side with him on enjoying an overall quiet and relaxing workspace. I have never argued with anyone about some imaginary right that I have to create noise disturbance in the space. 

The essential difference with this though, is that I am /sober/ when doing this, so if someone like Rubin or anyone else needed me to turn down the volume or do something to accommodate, I can do that in a regular state of mind.  People act very differently when they are strung out, and people did act differently on Sunday.  People responded to me in a very confrontational and aggressive/mocking way which I don't believe would have happened had those people been sober.
I am actually baffled by the fact that members of NB adamantly support illegal drugs in the space. No wonder people were using meth in the space last winter. 
To write this off as accepting NB as an anarchist space gives a really bad name to anarchist politics, among other things. It also suggests a link between anarchism and illegal drug use without any questions what-so-ever, which is also disturbing. And this has nothing to do with anyone being better than anyone else, it has to do with what kind of a space we want Noisebridge to be.
At the very least, as people have pointed out, this can lead to problems in keeping Noisebridge around. Part of that is alienating people that would otherwise enjoy learning about hacking and working on projects by having obvious, unavoidable, blatat, drug use in the space and making excuses for that to be okay. 
I am learning that I was very naïve as to what I thought NB is. Many collectives and communities are very intentional with creating supportive, sober, and safe spaces. This includes anarchist communities. Yes, people bring in beer once in a while but when people were drinking handles of vodka this was discussed as not being excellent behavior. I naively thought the same would apply to doing boxes of whippets for hours. 

I am not trying to attack anyone here or judge people's habits. I am saying only

people act differently when they are high

open, obvious, illegal activity at NB is not going to help it stay around

I personally don't like being around people abusing drugs
I wrote the first email and attended the meeting last week to find out if NB is a safe space for /me/ personally, not to police anyone. From the sound of things, I don't think it is and I plan on cleaning out my stuff over the next couple weeks. Part of the fault is mine for being under the wrong impression of things. Well anyway, thanks at least for everyone helping to share their thoughts. I prefer that to just ignoring the large elephant in the room.
Zach

From: Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net>
To: Susan Werner <heinousbutch at gmail.com>; Zach <organic_unity at yahoo.com> 
Cc: noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net 
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Use of Nitrous Oxide in the space on Sunday night

Susan Werner wrote, On 2012-10-10 14:01:
> 3. The people using whippits
 were making noisebridge an actively /hostile/ 
> space for a handful of people.

Susan: People doing anything in the space will make it actively an
unpleasant place for a subsection of people. You framework of guidelines
could be applied to anything, not just substances considered
questionable in the state of California. Audio levels, cooking, choice
of things to teach, the look and cleanliness of the space, simply who is
in the space, the color of the calls, the occupancy level, sleepers,
people playing video games, organizes commercial sports, anything could
drive people away.

I could make the argument that Zach's choice in lyrical live
improvisational music is really disruptive to my ability to work there
and has cause me to on multiple occasions relocate to other parts of the
building where I can't hear him, use headphones if I have them, or
simply leave, which for the most part kills any ability
 to collaborate
with anyone else in the space.

Do I have a problem with Zach or him using a PA system in the space to
bust flows out like no other? Absolutely not, it's Noisebridge and the
space isn't mission critical for anyone. We share a very experimental
and questionable space with a ton of people, and we're all into
different things and that's ok, Noisebridge harbors all of the things.
If Zach were to pipe fat rhythms and beats into my skull every second of
me being present at Noisebridge, then I would talk with Zach and figure
out a way to coexist where he can do his thing and I can do my thing,
but that hasn't happened and I'm happy to share the space with him.

On the same round of thinking, Mike Kan hates it when there's loud music
in the space (specifically I think he hates anything that sounds like
rap, which some how to him is pretty much all music, but that's for an
entirely different thread),
 and when I'm in the space and it sounds
stagnant, I tend to play music on the speakers we've got setup. No
matter how soft or loud the music is, if Mike can hear it he gets
annoyed. I've been a total dick to Mike numerous times by either denying
that I'm playing the music, or simply turning it back up after he
requests that I turn it down (we've totally gotten into remote volume
control wars over the network). And Mike has called me out on this shit
before. That's great and Mike is totally right for doing so! And I've
totally respected him in doing so. No frame work needed.

We don't need frameworks or rules, we simply need to remind people that
calling people out for their shit is an acceptable and totally excellent
thing to do, but to also remember the space isn't specifically tailored
for any one person or one grouping of person, other than people who self
identify as hackers.

Zach: I think it was
 great that you called out people on their actions
making you uncomfortable and it sucks that they weren't as receptive to
you and your concerns that they could have been.

As being someone in the space that night, and pretty much scheduling the
party, I can say that there was a group of folks near the sewing
machines being louder than normal. However I personally didn't have a
problem with their routyness as the space was actively throwing a party
and there were other areas that people could use just as well that
weren't as loud. I can also confirm that a brain scanning device was
used for science and many folks sitting around the table earlier in the
eve were for the most part working on projects while also socializing
with the group. I didn't observe any negative behavior towards anyone
coming from that part of the space (but that isn't to say it hadn't
happened).

With all that being said, I think
 there's a major difference between
calling someone out for being loud and disruptive in the space, versus
questioning the usage of substances in the space (with second hand usage
aside).

It's great that some folks on this thread are being receptive to Zach's
message and I applaud that and would like to see some resolution to what
sounds like people brushing him off at the party, but I'm really not to
keen on this discussion deteriorating into some new founded necessity to
police users of the space with whatever projects or experiments they
want to conduct on their own bodies.

Thank you and god bless.

-- 
Rubin
rubin at starset.net

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20121011/c8d4ce3d/attachment-0003.html>