Art by Trish Deneen from “Cave Dwellers Unite” blog post by Danica Swanson for Black Stone Sanctuary.

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The first-ever Black Stone Sanctuary meme. Made by a follower of the /blxstonesnctuary channel on Farcaster unsolicited.

We loved it and decided to run with it, so it became an emergent three-way collaboration.

Idea: @zoo
warpcast.com/zoo/0xc1c3fd58

Implementation: Danica Swanson + Trish Deneen

Images: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the US.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aleister_Crowley,_Golden_Dawn.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goblet_MET_69261.jpg

Could community-owned Farcaster channels + cryptoeconomic rails (including the new Moxie Protocol) spark a long-overdue creative renaissance by making it easier for creatives to make a living?

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What's important for long-term sustenance of writing as an art form? What's not so important? This outline and inquiry is part of the Slowcore Nerd Notes series.

Also published on Paragraph as "Slowcore Nerd Notes: On Sustaining Writing As An Art Form" - paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-sustaining-writing-as-an-art-form?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-sustaining-writing-as-an-art-form?referrer=danicaswanson

From "On Religious Place-Making and the Sacristan Role" by Danica Swanson.

Image: a divination table and fully-lit shrines at Black Stone Sanctuary, circa 2016. Photo by Ilana Hamilton.

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What might it mean to build a Farcaster channel as a "slowcore room," noting that attention is both given and paid?

What if the path toward thriving Farcaster channels begins with measures to address attentional value leaks?

This is an edited version of "Slowcore Nerd Notes: On the Value of Attention." Read the full post on Paragraph: paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-the-value-of-attention?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-the-value-of-attention?referrer=danicaswanson

Read more about the concept of slowcore value: zora.co/collect/zora:0x24453ebe8d78de52f6d253cf26fec18ab34b041f/3?referrer=danicaswanson.eth

The Slowcore HQ channel on Farcaster now serves as home to the FC-seeded slowcore movement. Here's the backstory on how the channel got its name.

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Onchain evidence of enjoyment.

What are some elements that might help unlock or facilitate "slowcore" value for writing as an art form, and help open paths toward a sustainable living for writers?

This excerpt is from "Slowcore Nerd Notes: On Value Flows" by Danica Swanson. Read the full post on Paragraph: paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-value-flows?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/slowcore-nerd-notes-on-value-flows?referrer=danicaswanson

Read more about the concept of slowcore: zora.co/collect/zora:0x24453ebe8d78de52f6d253cf26fec18ab34b041f/2?referrer=danicaswanson.eth

The rant and personal story associated with this image "Violet Visions" (title: "Episcopagan: Why This Polytheist Attended an Episcopal Church") was originally circulated privately within Black Stone Sanctuary's inner circles only, and then released to the public in 2020. It became a reader favorite, so in 2024 the Sanctuary is bringing a lightly edited and updated version onchain.

TL;DR: Pagans, if we ever hope to build enduring religious traditions, it's time to grow up.

Read the full post (11 min read) on Paragraph: paragraph.xyz/ href="/blackstonesanctuary/episcopagan-why-this-polytheist-attended-an-episcopal-church?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@blackstonesanctuary/episcopagan-why-this-polytheist-attended-an-episcopal-church?referrer=danicaswanson

Slowcore is an affirmation of a commitment to cultivating patience, holding space for emergence, protecting our time and attention from extractive forces, and respecting the indwelling intelligence of the creative process.

A 'north star' for slowcore aficionados is deep refinement, reclaiming, and sovereignty of human attention.

Slowcore was first used by Danica Swanson to express distaste for hustle culture, and later adopted as the name of a Farcaster channel for Black Stone Sanctuary, a Pagan polytheist monastery-bootstrapping project by Danica Swanson and Trish Deneen.

(Note: there is also a musical genre called slowcore, so to avoid confusion, we don't use the term in musical contexts).

Thumbnail art: "North Star" by Trish Deneen. Collect the art here: zora.co/collect/zora:0x24453ebe8d78de52f6d253cf26fec18ab34b041f/1?referrer=danicaswanson.eth

"North Star" by Trish Deneen appears as a thumbnail for the Slowcore HQ collection, and on the screenshot essay "What is Slowcore?" by Danica Swanson.

Read and collect the essay here:
zora.co/collect/zora:0x24453ebe8d78de52f6d253cf26fec18ab34b041f/2?referrer=danicaswanson.eth

The “mint first edition” box is left unchecked as a way of retaining the option to upload future editions in this collection as pre-mints for first minters to select.

Black Stone Sanctuary is a Pagan polytheist monastery-bootstrapping project by Danica Swanson and Trish Deneen. We call it contemplative animist monasticism with a goth nesting instinct.

Collect the art on Zora and read the full post about our experimental liturgical framework on Paragraph:

paragraph.xyz/ href="/blackstonesanctuary/liturgy-at-black-stone-sanctuary/referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@blackstonesanctuary/liturgy-at-black-stone-sanctuary/referrer=danicaswanson

Collage art, words, and resource curation by Danica Swanson.

Explore Black Stone Sanctuary's releases from onchain launch week (April 8-15, 2024), and peek at what's in the pipeline.

Art by Danica Swanson.

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What is slowcore? And why did Danica and Trish decide to launch the next phase of their niche Pagan polytheist monastery-bootstrapping project on Farcaster?

Words by Danica Swanson. Zoon with stars art by Trish Deneen.

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Welcome to Black Stone Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is a Pagan polytheist monastery-bootstrapping project by Danica Swanson and Trish Deneen. Our work is inspired by animist pre-Christian Nordic and Germanic religious and folk traditions.

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Sketch by 9-year-old me. Inspired by "The Black Stallion" classic children's book series by Walter Farley.

Sketch by 9-year-old me. Inspired by "The Black Stallion" classic children's book series by Walter Farley.

Sketch by 9-year-old me. Inspired by "The Black Stallion" classic children's book series by Walter Farley.

The vast majority of pro writers don't earn a sustainable living from their creative work. This is a huge collective loss. Can web3 do better?

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Image source: UNC Commons (public domain)

I think of scenius as a self-organizing form of swarm intelligence that perpetuates itself by sending tendrils out to seed and nourish further creativity. Each artist contributes something unique to the mix, and in doing so, emboldens other artists to pursue their own creative work.

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I often imagine Zorbs as focal points for a collective commitment to sustainable ways of supporting creative labor on artists' terms and in positive-sum ways, as a counter to extractive systems that use chokepoints to seize control of the value artists create.

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Perhaps one of the most beautiful ideas of Zorbs is that true positive-sum wealth can emerge out of a "free" "useless" meme if enough people believe in it and bring it forth from the imaginal realm.

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In a digital media climate inundated with quickly buried "content," art labor that's met with sufficient collective attention, care, and real reciprocity can generate positive-sum value.

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Zora Protocol Rewards gives artists who release "free" (i.e., gifted) work an option to earn from it directly, without prices or paywalls. In reciprocity-driven contexts, then, artists can choose to pay it forward by releasing creative work as 0 ETH Zora Mints without leaving their own pockets empty.

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What if Zorbs act as vessels or archetypes for collective infinite games...?

One can never be sure where trails in the imaginal realm might lead, after all.

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Protocol Rewards is the first reliable web3-native positive-sum counterweight to the extractive economic forces that financialize "free" art to the detriment of artists. The key to this value unlock is reciprocity: rewarding "free" creative labor that has long been undervalued.

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In healthy arts networks, normative patterns of value flow follow positive-sum logic, in which "free" creative work includes obligations of reciprocity to the commons. Extractive forces prey on these norms of gift economics by capturing this "free" value and financializing it in zero-sum ways that shift risks and costs onto artists.

Read the full essay: paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/free-and-valuable-zora-protocol-rewards/?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/free-and-valuable-zora-protocol-rewards/?referrer=danicaswanson

Though some say they hold no intrinsic value, Zorbs inspire wonder: might there be more to the story?

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Zora is onto something significant — something capable of building generative network wealth that can only unfold over time, and only in expansive contexts that enable art to be both free and valuable on artists' own terms.

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Protocol Rewards gives artists a new way to earn ETH rewards over time as their "free" (0 ETH) hidden gems get discovered and minted. This opens never-before-seen possibilities, especially for underrated and emerging niche artists.

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Artists' time, labor, and creative gifts are frequently taken for granted or treated as an afterthought — i.e., implicitly assumed to be available "for free." Accounting for the true costs of "labors of love" would involve a reckoning with this tyranny of valuelessness.

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What if more web3 projects took a page from Zora's playbook and developed positive-sum mechanisms that reward creative labor as wealth generation?

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With expansive fees, Zora is beginning to reclaim artist-generated value from being structurally co-opted and accumulated by extractive forces.

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Imagination and attention are acts of creation. Let's use them wisely.

May reciprocity lead the way.

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Zorbish esoterica and philosophy. Home of Zorbsplaining for Word Nerds. Art by Trish Deneen; words by Danica Swanson.

Still figuring out how to publish essays directly on Zora with clean HTML, so images and links have been removed. In the meantime, you can read and collect the full original version of the essay (with links and images) on Paragraph: paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/the-magic-of-zorbs/?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/the-magic-of-zorbs/?referrer=danicaswanson

Imagine a future in which Zora Protocol Rewards inspires many other positive-sum mechanisms and reciprocity norms that recognize creative labor as wealth generation.

Imagine these mechanisms as force multipliers for collective intelligence in diverse web3 ecosystems.

Imagination and attention are acts of creation...

Read the full essay on Paragraph: paragraph.xyz/ href="/danicaswanson/free-and-valuable-zora-protocol-rewards?referrer=danicaswanson.eth">@danicaswanson/free-and-valuable-zora-protocol-rewards?referrer=danicaswanson