January

Yay, music!

We know the value of listening to a good playlist, the joy of music made by people just like you. The tunes and beat affect our mood, we often find ourselves humming and tapping along. Music is so powerful that the right song at the right time can give you what you need to get through the day.

That’s why we are so happy to announce the release of a music compilation dedicated to Riseup’s 25th anniversary! In the words of the creators:

“The #montreal4riseup compilation, in support of Riseup to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the collective, is now available at music.riseup.net or mtl4riseup.bandcamp.com.

#montreal4riseup is a project of 20 songs, released (or not) between 2020 and 2024, that span a range of genres including rap, industrial, folk, rock, noise, punk, post-punk, anarcho-punk, hardcore, oi, crust, grind, and more."

So now that you have amazing music to listen to while reading your emails, please remember that Riseup needs your help to run - https://riseup.net/en/donate

PS: On January 13 we are discontinuing our old helpdesk and there will be a new, better one! There won’t be any tickets transferred so please remember to open tickets in the new system for issues you still need assistance with.

A day in the life of a riseup bird

Attention: it is essential to read this in some nature narrator voice

A usual riseup bird’s day starts by waking up between 6 and 9am local time depending on how bad their sleep was and how much insomnia kept them awake late or woke them up early. Once they get their body out of bed, most birds will start their day with some coffee to get their brain up and running so they can avoid messing up servers as much as possible. (The birds that like fresh juice or tea are fast asleep at this time, dreaming of a world with no masters.)

The first thing the bird does is check in with other riseup birds that live in faraway places and are ready to close the glowing magic box for the evening. Next they visit a special riseup web page with metrics, alerts and weird computer words or alarming messages such as “vpn host is down”. The bird then has to fly like the wind to find what the problem is and fix it before anyone realizes. Sometimes, when it takes too long to resolve, they even remember to update riseupstatus.net so that other animals can feel assured knowing that the coffee today has worked and the bird is typing quickly to get the service available again.

When there’s no important issue, the bird will settle in their routine of responding to help tickets, documenting their work and improving the infrastructure. It is here where we observe the riseup bird in their natural habitat. They go into a fierce battle of deciding priorities and dancing all the dances needed to not get lost in distraction. The best and really rare days are those when there’s nothing urgent at all. The bird is able to focus on their planned tasks and the only distraction is the dog that needs to go for a walk. It is during one of those walks on one of those days that this bird decided to write about riseup days to all of you.

PS: The dog says donate to riseup if you can - https://riseup.net/en/donate