Ham and digital sovernity

Good morning or Afternoon! I have been rather busy lately and have alot to talk about!!

So first off the Ham and radio stuff.

I went to this months meeting at my local ham club, which was bitter sweet. Are treasurer for our club said at the previous meeting that he would be stepping down. He told the group he is just getting to old to do it. Which is understandable dean is in his late 70's and isn't getting any younger. This meeting i arrived on time and the group was already talking with the local ARES coordinator (pronounced Air-E's). Basically ARES is a volunteer program of people who took a 2 hour course to learn about weather formations and what funnel clouds look like. So if a ARES operator spots a funnel cloud he can call it in on a ARES repeater were a ARES coordinator while be monitoring during extreme weather. As-well as weather reports of local areas, i mean the news and tv stations can say light rain or 2 inch sized hail. But i trust local people more to say how the weather is compared to TV stations. But i digress, so the ARES guy is talking about signing up and says "you know not that many young people are getting into ARES" to which the whole group just got quiet and then looked at me (me being the youngest at 21, secondly to a 30 year old, and thirdly to a 50 year old, then basically everybody else is 70+) and one the one guy. Whom i do not know the name AND I REALLY SHOULD know his name, which i can only describe looking scarily close to the old man from pawn stars. He points at me and smiles saying "your our success story!". Which was kinda uncomfortable, i know this old guy is really excited to see young people get into ham radio. Brushing of the slightly odd comment, i grabbed a chair and sat down next to dean. Dean asked me if i was going to go for my amateur extra? And i replied well ive thought about it, that extra portion on the bands would be nice. And he asked if i wanted his amateur extra study guide, I asked why?
And he explained that him and his wife are getting ready to sell off majority of there stuff and have applied for a spot at a nursing home. He said he doesn't know if he can still come to the meetings and said he plans to sell most of his gear to make room for retirement.

This is honestly kinda sad to hear, he really likes ham radio and has gone at length talking about his glory days in the late 70's and 80's. And it honestly kinda makes me teary eyed, he is such a nice dude and its sad to see.

As my grandmother says "getting olds for the birds"

Something my uncle and i have talked about, is that Ham radio is slowly getting less and less new hams. And what that could mean for Amateur radio, so i see why a lot of the old men are eager and hopeful to see some younger hams. Ham radio means alot to alot of people, for me going from cybersecurity and infrastructure. Into a hobby where every transmission is linked to your real identity felt very off putting. However after 5 months of having my license, i can say its a different world. Its alot of nice people, who enjoy the hobby and i quickly learned ham radio is not a hobby. It a category of hobby, theres fox hunting, antenna building, POTA and so many more.
The callsign is a link to your identity because it gives you eminence power. More than a fishing license and pretty close to a drivers license. See even with a technicians license it gives you ownership of YOUR station, nobody owns the radio waves but everybody has the ability to use them. After you buy a radio and antenna. Thats it, no subscription, no monthly plan or charges minus the 10 year license renewal. And thats the allure that got me into ham radio, i originally got into ham radio, when meshastic or reticulum just didnt have enough range. And i really like the idea of an alternate network! One thing that i can honestly say is since 2023. I have done everything in my power to cut out the enshitfaction. Had a samsung s23, swapped it for a pixel running graphene.
Ditched Reddit for lemmy, mastodon for twitter
swapped my router for a openwrt router (still want a PFsense box) and setup dns blocking for ads and malware.
I run many docker instances with containers for my music and tools and a ZFS pool for google drive alternative.
And ham radio makes me realize how shit commercial radio is! Its just some paid talk show hosts who sit there and reads a script. Or just plays music, just listening to random HF conversations have been so much more interesting and REAL. Then the falseness that AM/FM commercial radio stations are it just feels so fake and corporate!

And i can honestly say, social media still is stressful with the news but for the first time in my life. I feel self governance, ITS MY PHONE, MY DATA, MY STORAGE and now its MY STATION.
I live daily and i feel what the original creators of the universal computer wanted.
Devices that serve the user, not the other way around.

I know with the current state of the world, with AI and data-centers and flock.
So many people are gaslit into AI is the future, But this is what i want people to know and i think everybody needs to hear!

in the late 70's there was a technology called Betamax, if you ask older people about it. Alot of people will say "Betamax should have won", It was better in every-way compared to VHS. The players were built better, the resolution was better. You could fit up to 5 hours of content on a single tape!

BUT IT LOST, and you know why?
BECAUSE THE WORLD SAID NO!
betamax didnt allow user to copy and share media, and even though Betamax was better in every way. It made the way of the dinosaurs!

This can be AI! who really likes having a AI chatbot on help desk support phone call?
Do people really want a AI in there GOD-DAMN TOASTER OVEN?
NO!!

Social media and all these primary networks are paid for!
They are paid to try to convince you to buy AI services, to use AI services. But we are all smarter than that!
By simply being stubborn and saying i don't want AI in my Car and toaster oven!
We can flush these stinkers down the Thomas Crapper.

Another example is Civilian Band Radio, in the 1950 when CB radio was introduced, you needed to pay a roughly adjusted for inflation $25-30. And were giving a call sign a lot like ham radio, a few people didn't and just operated illegally. The FCC punished them and in the early 70's CB in America had its boom. Thousands of people wanted a CB radio, in a time before affordable phones non the less portable. CB radio was extremely popular, however lots and lots of people didn't bother getting a license. $25 was expensive for a license and many people didn't bother, eventually the FCC lowered it to $15. Some people did buy a license but majority of people still didnt. And in the late 1975 the FCC got rid of the license requirement, because and i am purely speaking out of personal opinion. But im pretty sure the FCC got tired of trying to track down unlicensed users and just gave up.

It took 20 years but the FCC gave up on restricting CB radio to licensed only. It shows if enough people disagree with a implied normalization that eventually it will fall.

We the people decide how the world progresses, and just by simply talking to each other disrupt institutions whom try to decide for us.

Heres to the AI bubble popping 73's and cheers!
And remember you are a valuable person.