What we’re about
Full disclosure: I was just made aware that my Meetup was one of many that suffered from a membership data loss that wasn't made public to the affected users by Meetup. I was able to derive the membership from the join rate. I have still received no answer about why we were not made aware of the January 2024 - August 2024 blackout as payment and pricing attempts were made by Meetup when we knew it had a blackout. This included trying to float/install a new dues based payment while they knew they had a data loss which might result in email loss. This resulted in membership going from 87 to 1 when they knew it wasn't a good time to be floating a new dues structure. At the same time, the Seattle area is struggling with societal generosity as societal sustainable feedback loops so bad they are struggling to pay for their own libraries. The cybersecurity event was scheduled to be fixed August 10, 2024 around after its outage around May 25, 2024. It was only resolved September 5, 2024. It took three months, when there were press releases of disturbing delay as early as two weeks in. (https://www.infodocket.com/2024/05/28/report-cybersecurity-attack-on-seattle-public-library-impacts-multiple-tech-systems-and-online-services/) That is a national embarrassment. We used to have 100+ people on this meetup and it's down to 1 because we asked for $5 dues to cover $60+ organizer fees. We deserve way better. Please don't join this or any ecology meetup if you don't even understand financial sustainability. The result of 80+ members leaving instead of paying a basic amount is embarrassing; I know other designs like Wikipedia saw the same thing where people were constantly on it and aggressively challenging other page writers but then struggled to pay the price of a cup of coffee to support it. It isn't just this meetup, it is also their very source of intelligence, the libraries, that they are struggle to value, fix, and prioritize. I can't emphasize just how aggressively shameful that is.
The Cauldron is a meetup for ecology, anarchism, and metaphysics. You can watch our previous meetups online. We don't expect to be popular, but we do expect basic support. We have real costs to cover and require those who discuss sustainability to practice sustainability by doing their fair share to cover the costs at $5. It seems that this area has a more Soviet style economic dependence waiting for the other guy to do it. That is not a sustainable practice, and is not about anarchism, but about sociopathy expecting something for nothing. Anarchism is sustainable and ecologically friendly, not demanding more than is needed but being real about what is.
