Although I'm in a rural area, internet coverage is provided, by wire (not satellites), so I'm in what amounts to my home office, in terms of devices. I even have the same Samsung monitor, which fits in the trunk of maxi taxi (changed her oil), not exactly a bizmo, but certainly at home on the freeway.
The weather: stormy rainy. My dwelling machine has been wobbling in the wind. But with breaks and sudden sunlight. Oregon is like that. Bhutan too: you get the whole range of weathers in like a 24 hour period. High variability in other words.
I tend to use the word "clique" a lot, you may have noticed. I find it a refreshing alternative to "cabal" and/or "conspiracy". Also, in listening to Quakers (Friends) I hear complaints about their cliquishness, but then I'd imagine that's a common pattern in any temple, meeting or church. Synagogue, mosque or whatever. The oldsters seem to all know each other whereas the newcomers may feel left out, even exploited at the end of the day.
Speaking of Quakers: their patterns are influential on my thinking more generally when I think of those experimental prototype communities, such as we'd briefly stage over the New Year days (Dec 28 - Jan 2 mas o meno) in a remote yet well-appointed retreat space, owned by Church of the Brethren. Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites have a lot in common and seem to exchange memes a lot.
By "their patterns" I'm referring to the Faith & Practice of unprogrammed friends, pastorless, who rotate through job descriptions / positions, as recruited by nominating committee, and overseen by oversight committee. However that's just a snapshot in time and using already dated terminology by some reckonings. These were unpaid positions, volunteer, but also personal growth opportunities as it takes what they call "people skills" to operate a shared business.
"Wait", you might be thinking "why do you say business, I thought we were talking about a church?". One of the quaint things about Quakers is their religion is couched in the phraseology of the industrial revolutionists of Merry England, meaning their form of worship is cloaked in a vocabulary of running a business. Meeting for Business, run by clerk and minuted by the recording clerk, but not according to Robert's Rules, is what replaces the "board room" and/or "shareholders meeting" in a lot of ways.
I go into all this in my critique of USA-style democracy, to which much lip service is given, but which is not the practice of your everyday pleeb, who goes to work in some rat race hierarchical oligarchy most likely, be that civilian or military. Opportunities to practice democracy might come on weekends, through one's bridge club or pet walking shared event, a naked bike ride in Portland maybe, or golf on the links. I'm not forgetting the corner bar (or maybe it's mid-block, or in the sticks...).
In other words, why do we expect Americans to be any good at democracy when they get so little practice using it to run big business. Am I saying the American Quakers are any different? Not really. Their meetings (not called churches) are tiny nonprofits in the grand scheme of things, not at the center of any sprawling industrial base like in the science fiction novel The Iron Bridge, or in Quakernomics.
My brand of Quakers put a lot of emphasis on transparency, which partially accounts for my experiment: I abdicated my membership in favor of attender status, as newcomers also have (gaining membership is a process), but then upped my level of participation including by undertaking such "insider" roles as clearing others for membership.
"Wait, you're saying a non-member might be part of, or even in charge of, a non-member's clearness process?" In principle, yes, although at the time I was simply nominated within Oversight to form a clearness committee per usual; I was not clerk of Oversight itself. My point though, was membership includes the willingness to publicly identify as a Friend, to be out there as a booster and advocate for the Religious Society (of Friends), with the understanding some Monthly Meeting has said member's membership on record. Members will be vouched for, in other words. But from this special status it needn't follow that members have secrets from nonmembers, process-wise. It's not like members are the most entitled.
Consider a case wherein a surrounding state or city is somewhat hostile towards and/or suspicious of Quakerism and it's a liability to claim membership in said Society, except maybe in exceptional cases. This was more how the religion got started, as an underground, as a network of religious people unwilling to accept the authority of a state religion and its mandates and edicts. Those stepping forward and claiming to be leaders in this movement risked jail time. Those days are long gone, but gives a sense of where the institution of membership arose, among those most willing to stick their necks out, as it were.
However, when it comes to recruiting practitioners to the Faith & Practice, it's better that they check it out top to bottom, serve on all committees, take part in all the processes a meeting requires, with the optional process of becoming a member being one of being "convinced" (that's the jargon) as in persuaded, that this organization has nothing up its sleeve, and how would you know that if you hadn't had the opportunity to witness its inner workings at the core level? Quakerism is open source in the sense of transparent but also in the sense that branching and forking is always feasible (not that every mutation pans out).
