User:Nthmost

Naomi Most aka nthmost — Member since August 25, 2009

Contact: nthmost on Discord | Slack | GitHub

Currently

Working on guild structure as a model for distributed authority, restorative communication practices, and helping Noisebridge navigate community dynamics.

Old hacker on a rocking chair sessions: 5:55pm every Tuesday until the Tuesday meeting. Hear stories, meet other members, ask all the annoying questions you're too afraid to ask your own anarchist mom or dad.

Recent writing: Anarchy Paralysis • Missing Stair • Restorative Communication • Open Letter

🦆 Rubber Ducky Guild 🦆

The Rubber Ducky Guild is my flagship guild concept at Noisebridge.

The premise: explaining your problem to a rubber duck (or any patient listener) often reveals the solution. This guild practices:

• Listening without fixing - Sometimes people just need to talk it through
• Question-asking as an art - The right question unlocks understanding
• Psychological safety - No judgment, no mockery, just presence
• Debugging life, code, and everything - Works for technical problems AND emotional ones

Status: Active concept, seeking interested practitioners

See also: Rubber duck debugging on Wikipedia

Background

Languages: Irish/Gaeilge 🇮🇪 (fluent) • French (business fluent) • Japanese/日本語 (conversational) • English (native)

Academic: Math & Linguistics • Bioinformatics • Data Analysis

Noisebridge: A Conceptual Timeline

2009-2012: Learning to Be a Good Member

Became a member in 2009. Founded Security Working Group, Community Working Group, and Fractal Working Group to address infrastructure and social dynamics. Learned by doing.

(Success metric for Fractal WG: we haven't had a single meeting yet)

2012-2013: The Post-Occupy Period

We supplied WiFi to Occupy. Occupy mapped us as part of their squat network. Took a year to recover.

Here's what that was like -- this actually happened to me:

Lumpy guy sitting in lumpy armchair whipping a knife around: "Anarchy means I can sit in this chair and play with a knife, and you can't do anything about it!"

Me: "Actually, yeah, I can ask you to leave."

Guy: "But you can't make me leave."

Me: [look over my shoulder at friend as if to say I've got a live one here]

Guy: "What are you gonna do, call the cops?"

Me: "I have no problem calling the cops."

Guy: "But you're anarchists, you're not gonna..."

Me: "I don't care that cops aren't anarchists, I can do-ocratically call the cops to make you leave if you're being unexcellent."

Guy: "...oh." [leaves]

2014: The Reboot

Major community intervention: CONTROL-ALT-DELETE. Sometimes you need to turn it off and turn it back on again.

2015-2017: A Period of Relative Peace and Prosperity

[work in progress]

2018: The Year Mitch Got Bullied Out

Several members bullied out. Space became eerily quiet. Those responsible also left, but the damage was done.

2019-2020: ❄️ Nuclear Winter

Membership severely depleted. Had to find a new physical space. Saved by anonymous donation of 1 Bitcoin.

Created Guilds concept with Mark (Arity) to address social fractionation and provide structure for stakes-based ownership of maintenance.

2020-2022: ✨ A New Hope

LX creates NB Discord. Liz Henry provides leadership as new folks arrive. I decrease involvement due to exhaustion and ongoing grief from 2018, but keep tabs. Discord usage ramps up. My participation ramps down.

2023-2025: 🌑 The Dark Ages

Mcint creates monastic tradition with infra meetup. Space requires multiple physical and costly social interventions that seriously impede recovery from 2020 move. Much of the glory of 2169 seems lost, but there is still hope. Personally, I stopped paying attention. Sometimes, "NOW MY WATCH HAS ENDED" is the correct response.

2025-Now: 🌅 Renaissance???

With multiple hardships cleared and heroic levels of "holding it down" achieved by those who remain, the way is paved for visionary rebuilding.

My Open Letter to Noisebridge

Current work:

• 🦆 Rubber Ducky Guild
• Restorative Communication practices, if we can only get people to RTFM
• Pattern documentation: Anarchy Paralysis, Missing Stair, Policy Injection, Consensus Spoofing

Open Source Work

Python libraries & tools

Project	Description	Status
metapub	PubMed/NCBI research access library	100s of ⭐, cited in papers
illuminate	Bioinformatics toolkit	In use at CDC
secureconfig	Secure configuration management	Active
sensate	Sensor data toolkit	Active

All projects: github.com/nthmost • pypi.org/user/nthmost

Tech I like

AMQP • liquidsoap + icecast • Asterisk PBX • Raspberry Pi • Python (obviously)

Community Patterns & Systems

Documenting what I've learned about how hackerspaces work (and don't work):

• Hackerspace Community Dynamics - General patterns
• Guilds - Distributed authority as solution to recurring problems
• Anarchy Paralysis - Why communities fail to act on harm
• Missing Stair - Routing around harmful behavior instead of fixing it
• Restorative Communication - Framework for addressing conflicts before they become crises

Project Graveyard

Projects past but not forgotten 🪦

Streaming Radios

Hosted various internet radio stations

Live studios:

• Mutiny Radio

Algorithmic stations:

• Feliz Navidad Forever
• Radio Loki

Stack: liquidsoap to sculpt the station, Python to wrap it, icecast to stream it.

Miscellaneous

Voluntary Public Embarrassment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE1oFJ9Ce6I&index=29&list=PLF7EFE57DDF6BDEE9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy6VSrdQZ8U&index=30&list=PLF7EFE57DDF6BDEE9

Public Keys

My public RSA key.

/etc/passwd entry

$ sudo adduser --gecos 'Naomi Most' --shell /bin/bash nthmost