# Having Lunch with Alex I: Alex Had Pasta and I Had a Salad, We Talked About Lesbians Falling In Love. <iframe width="700" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hD9rzo6g5JU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> ---- Alex had pasta, again: I guess it is hard to figure out what to eat now that she is lactose-intolerant, or claims to be. Honestly, until I see the tests I can't tell if it is actually happening, although I guess we need to trust her doctor. She says she is not eating pasta because she cannot eat lactose: this is only the leftovers from the weekend. Alex prefers to be referred as she/her or they/them. Right after we sit down to eat at the big table on the third floor, Alex tells me she is super happy her partner is coming back soon from the work trip. She has been away for a while. Then she makes a joke about how she seems to have settled down. I ask instantly: **"What do you think about this stereotype of the lesbian that looks for a partner, meets one she likes, falls in love fast and settles for a long time? Do you think this is true? and if yes, why?"** A stereotype? Definitely. Then again, stereotypes have some type of truth in them. The issue I have with stereotypes lays on how they manage to homogenise a group. Alex tells me she thinks a lot about this. At first glance, she believes it is a consequence of a combination of things: it seems too reductionist for her if we see it as a consequence of one reason only. She is is right. Firstly, our heteronormative traditions come to mind - *Ohh Normality, how we missed you - we meet again*: It is expected for anyone who has been educated inside an heteronormative society to aim at holding long term relationships, and in a more normative way to have a monogamist long-term relationship. These conditions are a sign of success: it seems if we choose these types of relationships our peers will approve: we are the good children in the weirdos' group. We both agree monogamy as well as the long-term element in relationships (more in the sense of Eternal Love) are elements that Heteronormativity teaches us. The lessons are everywhere: think of the TV shows you watch, the books you read, the ads you consume, the friends you have. Our bodies are not capable of heroic feats. Instead, they do not withstand the various forms of oppression within which we experience. They adapt to these conditions by becoming submissive or by altering their boundaries in a dynamic way because coercion is subtle, but present at all times—and even the idea of ‘time’ should be capitalised as it is already regulated and fractionated to be understood in certain manner. Long-term, Long, Long, time. Eternal. Love. Success. Today I used a t-shirt to hide my homosexuality to others in a subtle but powerful way. As my clothes are read as holding a distinctive role in the community, the way we design our relationships are related to our conception of ​​Freedom and define us in other people's eyes. A Long-term relationship tells a lot. "Lesbians have less chances to experience spontaneous sex encounters" - is this enough to explain the stereotype of the lesbian who wants to settle down for eternal love? Alex mentioned that once she read an article explaining the way the Lesbian community defines their relationships is a consequence of particular hormones combinations in their bodies. We both agreed this is not only reductionist, but also dangerous. Why do I have a Long-term relationship? Habit I guess? or maybe I also need external approval. "Cis male gays have it easier" - Alex always mentions this when we discuss getting laid. Yes: there is a part of the community that holds relationships with multiple partners, do not believe in long-term agreements and has a different idea of what a partnership is: isn't this "liberating"? Isn't this one of the many ways to escape from the heteronormative rule? Should we fight the institutionalisation of long-term relationships through marriage in the same way we are fighting the ways Medicine institutionalises our reproductive systems? Power has infiltrated the body of the winners, but those unable to win have shown that desire was not enough. They shaped the power in their bodies into a quasi-erotic dialectic. What happens to the significance of desire, lack of recognition, and dignity? Perhaps desire only allows dominant categories of being, but these categories are so oppressive that they become a sort of golden cage. Alex is happy to see her partner on Saturday and I am happy to see mine tonight. Over dinner. A Long dinner. Long.
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- A runtime is a political instrument, but also a consequence of it. - All views expressed here are my own. - https://twitter.com/nachortti
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The Human Blockchain: Join the Kappa Sigma Mu Society on Kusama Network

Due to gorwing interest in the Kappa Sigma Mu Society in the last weeks, I have made a detailed overview on what the Society is about, what the rationale behind it is and what to expect from Kappa Sigma Mu. What's All This Fuss About? In technical terms, Kappa Sigma Mu is a collective created using the society pallet on Substrate, which in principle, is defined as an economic game incentivizing users to participate and maintain membership through rewards paid by the collective treasury. But in actuality, the Society is more than just that: It aims to make the Kusama network and its functionalities known to non-technical users, raise awareness of new forms of organization and identify the link between the onchain and offchain worlds. The Kappa Sigma Mu Society has specific conditions for users to join as members: An onchain convention of membership approval exists for candidates to follow. In order to become part of the Society, the candidate must show "Proof-of-Ink" (PoI) to existing members: in other words, to become a member you must get a tattoo meeting the specific requirements. The Society was founded by an anonymous single member who automatically became the original Head. The members support this anonymity as the Head shows commitment to the society by voting on new candidates (and many feel that it makes this game more interesting). How to Become a Member in a Few Simple Steps

4/12/2021
Of Memberships, Bids And Rewards: Claim Your Bid on Kappa Sigma Mu

Kappa Sigma Mu is a membership club using the Substrate Society pallet. The society can be understood as an economic game to incentivize users to join around whatever the rules are decided to be. In essence, the society looks to experiment with the connection between the onchain and offchain worlds. Members are incentivized to participate in the society via the rewards paid by the pot. These rewards will be available to be claimed once a specific locking period passed: but how to know when and how to receive your bid? Here are a few simple steps to find out. When Can I Claim My Reward? Members are incentivized to participate in the society through rewards paid by the Society treasury. New users must have a bid to join the society. A user can make a bid by reserving a deposit. Alternatively, an already existing member can create a bid on a user's behalf by "vouching" for them. A bid includes reward information that the user would like to receive for joining the society. A vouching bid can additionally request some portion of that reward as a tip to the voucher for vouching for the prospective candidate. These payments have a maturity period for new members before they are able to access the funds. In the Society pallet, the locking period can be seen here. It is important to note that as the number of members grows, the lock period approaches the maximum.

10/8/2020
Vox Populi, Vox Dei: Kusama and The Decentralised Benevolent Governance Design

Tags: Council, Kusama, Governance Shortly after the birth of Kusama Network (Polkadot’s wild cousin), Web3 Foundation launched Polkadot’s first candidate chain. In my opinion, both networks are designed to explore how governance can find an appropriate resistance to change, start thinking of immutability as a spectrum and essentially model a political entity on a blockchain. Kusama’s logic is a result of referenda submitted by the community. This reflects the network’s understanding of the meaning behind decentralized governance mechanisms. Its configuration allows us to upgrade the logic of the blockchain and make changes to its runtime using these processes, and both actions have the goal to try and fix unpredictable human errors in place with new processes once the network is running. The Polkadot Claim Process and The Use of Multisig Wallets For both Polkadot and Kusama Networks, the claim process for users who participated in the sale of 2017 required them to sign a message with the private key of an Ethereum account - the same private key used by participants during the sale. When the sale mechanism was designed, the use of Ethereum private keys for the claim process was not taken into consideration and this became an issue for some users who used multisig wallets to participate in order to prevent problems caused by the loss or theft of a private key. In the last weeks, I worked with Web3 Foundation to solve a particular claim issue caused by the use of a Gnosis multisig wallet. These wallets operate as a smart contract in the Ethereum blockchain, so while there is an address, there is no way to sign a message since the contract does not have a corresponding private key. This means multisig users had no way to claim the tokens, given the current process.

7/9/2020
Kusama Treasury Funds Seven Teams in Seven Weeks

By Raul Romanutti, Kusama Council Member The Kusama Treasury plays a fundamental role when incentivizing organic development and growth of our community. At the time of writing this post, more than 190,000 KSM (Kusama tokens) sit on the Treasury with no effective use whatsoever: we need to put them to work, right? What is the Treasury? Its role in the economic design The Treasury is essentially a pot of tokens collected through transaction fees, slashing and staking inefficiencies on the Kusama Network. This repository of tokens is managed by the Kusama Council, whose main role is to represent passive stakeholders. In order to incentivize the complete spend of all tokens at every period, a system of burning KSM is built into the design, with a subsequent deflationary pressure on its standard implementation. However, on Kusama the treasury burn is currently set to 0 (subject to a change on the runtime) meaning that no repository KSMs are burned at the moment. Initially, much doubt surrounded the use of spending proposal submissions, primarily as a consequence of the lack of off-chain mechanisms for designing and planning proposals that would effectively be approved by council members; this caused much inaction when it came to the use of the Treasury. We are slowly changing this through new spending mechanisms and alternative ways of using the current methods.

6/25/2020
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