A really cool thing just happened! I'm sitting here in a coffee shop in Edinburgh, Scotland, and up walks Max Parzen, founder and director of PyPSA Meets Earth, "An open source energy system model initiative for our Earth." He approached me because he saw the Four Freedoms sticker I have on my laptop, which just goes to show how valuable such stickers can be.

Already feeling pretty high from having just left an inspiring experience at the OER 23 Conference, talking with Max and learning about PyPSA gives me renewed motivation toward launching Social Justice Computing as a non-profit organization this Summer, providing a way for interested folks to contribute financial resources toward some of the projects in which I am involved already, and others that will emerge as a result of the increased resources.

It seems to me that the only real hope we have to minimize the horrors our global capitalist system is now creating for us is to leverage humanity's massively networked, global collective energy and to use it to make the world a better place. This is no easy task. The tech oligarchs now running the planet control the infrastructure on which doing this will depend, and they aren't going to allow us to use the tools they control to democratize away their power over us without a fight.

Still, knowing that initiatives like PyPSA exist gives me some hope it might be possible.