Testing anew

I wonder if this still works?

Diary

Successfully upgraded MX Linux to 21-3 (currently the newest version). I used the previous version for about four years without upgrading it (and I see that it is supported till 2024). But Debian 10 was becoming a little problematic. I had to use several backports, app-images, flatpaks, etc., so when my VPN stopped supporting Debian 10, it was definitely time to upgrade.

Diary

I've booked a ticket to Istanbul for August 1. I want to get away for August, and wasn't sure whether to go east or west. But, from a journey I made almost forty years ago, I know that I like the city, and it serves as a hub, so I will decide what to do when I'm there; either spend a couple of weeks and come home, or, indeed to extend my journey. If D decides she wants to join me, it will probably be to Europe; otherwise I may decide to go to India.

(continue reading...)

"Do you believe in God?"

Sometimes there is a problem with the way that questions are asked. Those are the questions to which our response is sure to get someone upset. Perhaps they should not be asked? Perhaps they need to be asked differently?

(continue reading...)

The meaning of purpose; the purpose of meaning

Purpose or lack of purpose is something that exists in the human plane. To escape suffering that is caused by war, famine, climate change, a person risks his life with the purpose of reaching a better place. Purposes relate to cause and effect; to agency. A subject acts and an object receives the action. By virtue of our lived experience, we interpret the universe in terms of separation; we see causes and effects and we look for purpose. If we find it, we decide that there is meaning to our lives, to the universe. If we do not find it, we may decide to believe in a supernatural or an unknowable purpose: "mysterious are the ways of God…" Or contrarily, we decide that there is no purpose, neither meaning. It's all a blank.

(continue reading...)

Machine translation of Sanskrit

In 2022, Google finally added Sanskrit to its machine translation program: “Sanskrit is the number one, most requested language at Google Translate, and we are finally adding it”

(continue reading...)

"Once I let go of what was expected of me..."

"… I began to paint like this."*

(continue reading...)

Diary

This June has been one of the rainiest on record (they said since 1957). One day during the week we had thundershowers intermittently for most of the day, combined with temperatures that were quite cool for this tiem of year.

(continue reading...)

The Book of Arkovia

It may well be just a combination of poor editing and poor translation that makes me feel that this book I bought on the beachfront is unreadable. Although I'm in favour of everything indie, traditional publishers try to make sure that what reaches our eyes has some integrity, either by refusing to publish something, or by making sure that if they do decide to take a risk with it, it is properly edited.

(continue reading...)

Street names; Dorab; Astravakra Gita

The current issue in the village is street names. We never decided on any. There are house numbers, and that's all we need for most issues.

(continue reading...)

Fixing a leak

Around lunchtime, Regina called from the village office to ask if I'd tried to do anything about that leak that she'd told me about a week or two ago. "It shows 20 cubic meters for yesterday", she said "haval - that'll cost you a lot of money!"

(continue reading...)

A good citizen; hamsin; musical performance

Being a good citizen of the 21st century requires knowledge and awareness so that we can make good decisions on an individual level, about what products to buy, what to do and what not to do.

(continue reading...)

Sumud

The Palestinians have a word, sumud that encapsulates their practical philosophy with regard to their dealing with adversity, particularly the adversity of the Occupation. It roughly means resilience. It can take the form of various forms of resistance: violent or non-violent. But it comes from a mindset or historical consciousness of clinging to the land and outwaiting every new conqueror - be it the Jews, or the British, or the Ottomans or the Crusadors, or whoever boisterously asserts their claim to be the new power in the land. Sumud is a powerful force in the face of opposition: a "we will prevail, just like we have always done" statement. Invaders will come and go: the Jews will eventually go back to their countries, with their tail between their legs, just like the Crusaders did before them.

(continue reading...)

Jerusalem - Ramparts Walk

While out on my morning walk, I had a spontaneous decision to take the bus to Jerusalem. So I walked down and got coffee at the Latroun petrol station. I then took the new minibus service bus 430 from the junction to its end stop at the National Insurance Agency.

(continue reading...)

Afternoon in Tel Aviv

It's raining hard, though no water is coming out of the taps due to some problem with the water supply. Rain at the end of May is unusual it unusual in itself in these parts, except at the end of a khamsin, the weather phenomenon we had yesterday, with grey skies and 33° C heat.

(continue reading...)

Lazy day at home

Went for an early morning walk with my new barefoot-like sandals: crossing through the pinewoods, descending the path that leads down to the vineyards in the valley, then back up through the woods towards home. Surprised that despite the stony paths around here, there was no discomfort in these sandals, except once when I was looking at my phone and banged my toes into a rock lying on the path. That's the thing about walking without adequate foot protection: you have to be mindful.

(continue reading...)

Shavuot holiday

It's the Shavuot Jewish holiday today, so an excuse for a family meal.

(continue reading...)

Fediverse

Yesterday I signed up for yet another server, this time KNThost, because they have a managed service for Hubzilla (also Streams). At this stage I really think I need to have some help with running Hubzilla instances. The one that I hosted on an unmanaged VPS has gone bad, and no longer shares posts. It's a one way hub, with a growing queue and database problem.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I didn't decide yet whether to travel anywhere, but should make up my mind soon, if I want to get away before the high season starts; I'm also not sure how much I may be needed at home during the summer months.

(continue reading...)

Diary

In the morning picked up one of my grandchildren from the railway station in Modi'in (one of two such drives today, because in the evening I had to pick up son). I had a meeting with the accounts department people at the office, then spent the morning doing some cleaning and laundry (but then, forgot to hang the machine till about midnight, discovering it only on my room and lights out check.)

(continue reading...)

photos

I purchased an e-book, "X series Unlimited" by Dan Bailey and spent a few hours reading that today. I didn't learn a lot from it so far, maybe because my particular X series Fujifilm Camera is one of the oldest and simplest among them. But I did learn a couple of things, all the same. On my afternoon walk I made some new experiments with settings, and I think I got some slightly better results.

(continue reading...)

Jerusalem

Sometimes I aspire to the kind of life lived by Sri Aurobindo, in his later years, or Ramana Maharshi, in his earlier years, i.e. mostly in seclusion and never venturing out into the world. Perhaps I'd just go on long solitary walks, read, or spend time in meditation. I'm invariably cheerful in my own company.

(continue reading...)

Afternoon walk

On my afternoon walk today I wore for the first time a pair of multifocal glasses that I just had made and picked up today. As anyone who has such lenses will be able to attest, the initial experience is a bit disconcerting, so walking out with them for the first time across uneven ground gave me a slightly drunk and giddy feeling. In addition, I was trying out some of my camera's special colour effects and filters, so it was a special kind of walk.

(continue reading...)

Machsoum

I brought the Palestinian workers from the "machsoum" (army checkpost) in the morning at 6:15 as Tuesdays is the day I volunteer for that. They go back in the mid-afternoon but one of them, Issa, stayed behind to do a bit of side-work, gardening for my daughter, and I took him back at 6:15 in the evening, exactly 12 hours later. And that on a day that the temperature got up to 36°.

(continue reading...)

Pronunciation

I grew up in the UK and the US, but have spent most of my adult life in Israel/Palestine. I have done some studying in all three places. However, the majority of my learning has always been from reading.

(continue reading...)

Reality

The news media, like the rest of us, tries to get the pulse of what people are doing, how they are thinking, what they are dreaming, while simultaneously reinforcing those patterns. It's not completely true that we are living in a dystopia, and that everything we experience is fake: just that our notions of reality become necessarily distorted by our mental formations, our tendency to see reality in terms of a separation between I, the experiencer, and the world experienced (and then between the different "objects" of our seeing). It is not as if, were we to suffer sensory deprivation for an extended period, we would wake up to find the world beautiful beyond all imagination. It isn't as if our rediscovered appreciation for beauty would lead to any new awakening. That's just aspirational. Our minds would immediately enforce the same old patterns.

(continue reading...)

retreat

Returned from a mindfulness retreat at Kibbutz Inbar, near Mghar, in the Galilee. It was restful, and fairly intimate, with about 30 participants in all. I didn't photograph the retreat itself, but went for a walk this morning and took some photos on a walk around the kibbutz and nearby.

(continue reading...)

Veganism

In the early 2000s, when I first visited Plum Village, the mindfulness practice community near Bordeaux, it was vegetarian. In some of the meals they would include eggs and dairy products, then, as a response to climate change, Thich Nhat Hanh and the community members decided that Plum Village would observe a vegan diet. That was how the retreat I just attended was also conducted. As someone at the end of the retreat calculated, that was 360 delicious meals prepared without the use of animal products.

(continue reading...)

A wedding in Ethiopia

On the way back home from my late afternoon walk I met a fellow community member, B, who had just returned from Addis Ababa. I invited him in to tell us the story. He, his wife and daughter had been invited to Ethiopia for the wedding of G, who, years ago, they had taken into their household when he was a young refugee newly arrived from Eritrea. He had been at the time recovering from a gunshot wound sustained while crossing into Israel from the Egyptian border. Refugees were, at the time, at the mercy of dangerous people-smugglers - I'm not sure if he had been shot at by Egyptian soldiers, the Israeli army or the smugglers.

(continue reading...)

Fungi

Our guest showed us a film about fungi, a subject that is increasingly at the intersection between spirituality and environmentalism, as science learns about the way that fungi live and people become increasingly interested in the curative or psycho-active properties of some them.

(continue reading...)

Independence Day Evening in Tel Aviv

Tuesday was my last day at work, so I'm now officially retired. I sat with Ira again, explaining a few more of the responsibilities and departed the office in the early afternoon.

(continue reading...)

My afternoon

In the afternoon I picked up from the local junction a Glaswegian photographer and sangha member doing a project over here (she sent the photo below from the bus stop at Latroun to make sure she was at the right one)

(continue reading...)

Diary

I have the house to myself as D has gone up to Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee for a personal meditation retreat with Hagit. I was invited but didn't feel like being in the proximity of thousands of Israeli weekenders. Although Tabgha itself is a more private place; it's mainly a Christian pilgrimage center.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I cut the grass and the weeds around the house this morning with the brush cutter. It took about 90 minutes. There's more to do.

(continue reading...)

diary

Happy with the photos I took yesterday around the village, and that more of them came out well than did not; a sign that I'm getting a hang of the X10. Just one or two of them were out of focus or poorly exposed.

(continue reading...)

Keep software simple

In the early 2000s when I began to use Linux, a lot of things seemed a bit experimental and iffy. I would install and reinstall distros and software. Nowadays I feel that it is generally more stable, and there are long periods when everything works just as it should.

(continue reading...)

Back from America

Back from the US to the turmoil of this Jewish-Israeli intifada, which is only getting worse. With this people and government it's like the cliché about when an irresistable force meets an immovable object. So far neither are giving way though the government is showing more signs of stress than the people on the streets are showing signs of despair.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I am in the US for the last ten days. I came over because my brother was in hospital. He drove himself there just in time, in the middle of a heart attack; collapsing on the hospital floor. They gave him CPR and snapped him back, and, in the following days performed catheterization and angioplasty. However, he suffered another three cardiac arrests afterwards at the hospital, where he also needed CPR. I arrived just before they installed a device called an Implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which is considered necessary in order resolve a problem known as arrhthmia, where the heart is not able to maintain its normal rhythms.

(continue reading...)

Saving our sources of inspiration

Spirituality is an important human impetus. It provides meaning to our lives and helps us to see beyond the horizon of our known world. Without it, existence would be flat and two-dimensional. With spirituality, we regain a sense of wonder at a universe that seems to transcend our finite understanding and diminished view.

(continue reading...)

Diary: software, blogging, estrangement

The new woman who is set to replace me when I retire in a couple of months seemed a little surprised today. First of all there was a screaming match going on in the next room over the submission of a fundraising proposal. I wasn't paying much attention to it as I was busy trying to explain some things about the job (maybe that surprised her too). Then, when I got into explaining about Piwigo (the photo gallery software we use), and kept praising the recent changes introduced by the "developer", she asked me what I meant by "a developer." She is used to big companies with hundreds of developers, not free open source software. She said she didn't feel safe otherwise because "What would happen if the developer goes away?"

(continue reading...)

No democracy under apartheid

We went up to the demonstration in Jerusalem yesterday. There were said to be 80 - 100,000 which made some people feel hopeful. "The young are beginning to wake up" was something I heard there. But it's not clear that even the large show of people had any real influence. The first stage of the legislation went ahead, after all. Politicians have the quality of being able to convince themselves that they are loved by the people even when everybody's against them.

(continue reading...)

NATO and Russia

It's frustrating to see that people calling for peace in Ukraine can be dismissed so easily as Putin sympathizers. This is a classic move to silence critics and peaceniks, in almost every conflict. Accuse them of working for, or playing into the hands of the enemy. So that's how we should relate to these statements also today. There are some, like Donald Trump, who aren't afraid to speak bluntly. Quoting Jonathan Cook's article of today, Trump apparently said: “FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES. Get this crazy war ended, NOW.” Easier said than done. A stitch in time would have saved nine. But for people with vision and courage, there could also be an opportunity here: to rethink and remake the security arrangements between NATO and Russia in such a way that neither side feels threatened, and ensure peace into the 22nd century. This was something that needed to be done quite some time ago. How much further do we have to go down the road towards annihilation before we realize that this is what was needed? I think the war was, all along, never really about Ukraine.

Practice day / book launch, a film

This morning I took part in a practice day / book launch for the translation of Zen and the Art of Climate Change (the same theme as the book launch that I previously described in Tel Aviv. Here there was maybe a greater effort to describe the common ground between the spiritual approach and the phenomenon of climate change, which Avner Gross managed to describe very well. the event was much smaller (about 40 people) so there was a chance for the audience to express themselves - their remarks were interesting.

(continue reading...)

National self-harm

I watched the 2nd part of the BBC's The Modi Question, heard a discussion with a historian of modern India, on The Wire, and watched the Israeli TV news.

(continue reading...)

Diary

We watched the film "Only the Animals" (Seules les Bêtes) directed by Dominik Moll. Wikipedia has a good article about without too many spoilers. I agree with what most of the critics say about it; I would also give it about 4 stars. It could be categorized as a black comedy; but it's many things. Not a feel-good film; all of the characters are suffering badly - all of them want something they can't get and therefore end up hurting each other.

(continue reading...)

Misguided by the stars

I recently read the novel, "Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead" (and then saw the 2017 film adaptation, "Spoor"). This is the first I've read by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. The novel kept my attention, though I did not feel any great endearment towards the story or its themes. The novel could be said to revolve around a couple of main motifs: the question of freewill vs. determinism, and the question of how much importance to give to non-human lives. Because I had already made up my mind with regard to these themes, it was not so meaningful for me to revisit them.

(continue reading...)

I listened to T.N. Ravi's speech in Auroville from November 7. He is both the governor of Tamil Nadu and the chairman of the Auroville Foundation. His talk was intended to inspire and wake up Aurovillians to what he saw as their responsibilities at a time of much discord within the township.

(continue reading...)

Interoperability

I am not so worried about a few big tech companies embracing fediverse, because if a couple of them do, it may draw the even bigger fish in too, meaning that for the first time we will have interoperability between major social media companies.

(continue reading...)

Bits and bats

Shifting as I do between Markdown, BBCode, Orgmode, SPIP PHP tags and plain HTML there's a tendency to get a bit mixed up sometimes. Bill Gates would say that the wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them.

(continue reading...)

2022-12-30

For Christmas, one of my sons gave me a new set of in-ear noise cancelling bluetooth earphones, which are very nice; great in fact - they remain comfortable after hours of use and I'm not bothered by things like the TV.

(continue reading...)

Diary

There's something about social media that it's both a time-suck and an energy-suck. I've been so busy with it lately that I have not found the time or the energy for my blog. Not that I have been active on social media: that would not be true. It's more that I have been either reading timelines, or evaluating and playing with its possibilities. Or installing, or reinstalling, and not getting very far with anything.

(continue reading...)

Hubzilla, links

On Hubzilla, I have now created a channel in order to reconnect with the people over there. Epicyon does not federate well with the Zot networks. For now, it's on https://zotum.net/@hosh

(continue reading...)

fediverse thoughts again

I've been thinking that from a practical point of view, there is probably something wrong with my conception that decentralization should be as fine-grained as a universe of individual servers in communication with one-another. I've had this conception for the last twenty years at least, so it's hard to shake. But recent posts I've seen about the Fediverse seem to demonstrate that this conception is expensive in terms of resources: at least, with regard to the way that federation of instances works: the more instances, it seems, the more expense.

(continue reading...)

Trends I'm seeing

Israeli TV news reported that homophobic hate speech and attacks are up 75% since the last elections, which were a victory for religious rightwing extremists, who want to reinstate "Jewish values".

(continue reading...)

Our truth and our persona

Are we just who we think we are, or do we always represent something - some group; some nation; some identity? There are things we would like to say, but then we remember that as a "privileged white male" or as a citizen of a former colonial power, or something else, it is probably better to keep our mouths shut. That's what I'm reflecting on now, with regard to that Israeli film director who raised a furor at the Goa film festival (see my previous post). What he said, regarding the "vulgarity" of the film ("The Kashmir Files") may (or may not) be true. On the other hand, if one is a foreigner and, on top of that, speaking about a highly sensitive issue - well, maybe there are places you might not want to go.

(continue reading...)

A film, thoughts about Epicyon and federation, links

Went with Y and D to see Cinema Sabaya, which is amazing. I didn't feel like making the effort to see it and D almost had to drag me along - it would have been insulting as Y had already bought us the tickets. But I was immediately caught up in the film, because it's simply so well done. A mixed group of Arab and Jewish women take part in a video-photography course. From class to class and exercise to exercise they learn about each other and themselves; where they can relate to one another as sisters and where they cannot agree; where they can support one another and where they shouldn't press too hard. There are layers on layers of complexity. The film is utterly engaging and unfailingly authentic.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I made a new fedi personal instance using epicyon. It took hours, and wasn't even my first choice. I rented the new server under the assumption I'd be using Streams. See the post I wrote on epicyon itself here. It's actually a temptation to continue using epicyon's blogging feature. But org-static-blog gives me better possibilities for presentation.

(continue reading...)

The tathatā of time-wasting

Usually when we choose the title of an article, or a network, or a domain name, we want something that will express the essence, the spirit, the suchness or tathatā of the thing we are naming. Or we are being humorous. There's a new instance on the Fediverse called the "godpod", whose owner has chosen a god-avatar for himself and makes bold declarations, such as that it was a mistake of his not to include mastodons in the ark. Well, "godpod" has a certain ring to it. Whereas Mike McGirvin - the author of several social networks and social networking protocols and of attempts to bridge between them and others, was expressing the suchness of his despair when naming his instance "unfediverse".

(continue reading...)

Diary

I'm still suffering from my by cold. We had a couple of guests over the weekend. C H, a Canadian citizen, who is associated with the Thich Nhat Hanh sanghas - a former "boat person" who escaped from Vietnam just after the war. She is a member of a Buddhist practice centre in Ontario, and on her way back to Canada, was about to visit another practice centre in Italy.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I have picked up a slight cold, as often I do when cooler weather sets in. "Cool" may be a bit misleading for folks north of here. We haven't need to turn on the heating so far, but also haven't turned on the A/C for a month at least. Since we don't need either for several months of the year, perhaps our carbon foot print is a bit lower than the results given by those websites that try to estimate one's carbon emissions. On the other hand, most Europeans don't use A/C in the summer as we do.

(continue reading...)

Pleroma and Streams

Maybe my last post was a little harsh. I modified it slightly afterwards. Anyway, I felt an urge not to be directly on the social network that everyone's currently talking about. Disroot's instance runs on Pleroma. (Update: or rather "Soapbox". Is Soapbox still a front-end for Pleroma or a fork of it? - it isn't so clear). Anyway, for now, I'm squatting there. Yesterday I also read about Mike McGirvin's new effort, Streams, about which he says

(continue reading...)

Instance blocking; the open web

After so many years in the Fediverse, I thought that I understood it well by now. But looking lately at the landscape, through the portal of Mastodon, I'm not so sure. What I see there is a culture where blocking becomes the solution for whatever you don't like, particularly instance blocking.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I was making Earl Grey with the quantity needed for milk tea, so it came out too bitter. Just a flat teaspoon, then three or four minutes brewing time, is enough. I still add half a teaspoon of sugar. But I'm happy to get rid of the milk (anyway it's always milk substitute in our case).

(continue reading...)

Diary; thoughts of the day

Spent some time reading through my fediverse stream and catching up on various kinds of terminology, gender relationships, human relationships… Sometimes it seems like I've been hiding in a cave all these years… words like swerf and terf were new to me, and what's harder, understanding them often requires going more deeply into what people say about them, and then trying to make an evaluation. Then I learned, also from my stream, about Glenn Greenwald's mutual embrace with right-wing media, and the acrimony between him and Micah lee and others. Again, hiding in a cave.

(continue reading...)

Diary

At the office, I saw Avigail was back at her desk.

(continue reading...)

Saturday

On Saturday morning I fixed a few broken items with epoxy glue, but not a pair of shoes, whose sole has become partly detached. From watching a couple of YouTube videos, it looks like it will be better to buy a specialized glue for that - one that's waterproof and flexible.

(continue reading...)

Gregory David Roberts

I started to watch Shantaram, which I found surprisingly good - it captures the atmosphere and feel of the novel and the casting is brilliant. I read the novel in 2009 and loved it, of course, like everyone I know. But I didn't read The Mountain Shadow, Roberts's second novel, because I read a couple of negative reviews when it came out. I sort of passed him off as a "one book" writer. Someone introduced me to that term when describing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek writer Annie Dillard; though I actually enjoyed a couple of her other books.

(continue reading...)

Culpability

There are a couple at climate sites where one can take a quiz to calculate the quantity of CO2 each of us produce. According to the parameters of the test, it turns that I'm pretty much a climate criminal. My wife and I share a free standing house of about 150 square meters and travel everywhere by car or by plane. That's enough, apparently, to tilt the scale towards 11 - 13 tons of CO2 per person, regardless of diet or other factors.

(continue reading...)

The big social networking platforms and their troubles

Facebook’s Monopoly Is Imploding Before Our Eyes

(continue reading...)

On daylight-saving time

Twice a year, there are lots of comments in social media about the stupidity of daylight savings time. Israel has DST too, and keeps in step with Europe and North America with regard to the date of the change-over. But many nations, like India and China, don't bother with DST. Those two huge nations also impose a single time zone from east to west, regardless of the inconvenience it must cause to areas distant from the capital.

(continue reading...)

Kfar Hittim

Went up to the Sea of Galilee with the family, staying in Kfar Hittim, in the large house of an Israeli-Indian couple who seem to spend most of their time in India. We were 12; 8 adults and four kids. Kfar Hittim is near the place where Salah ad-Din's forces won a decisive battle against the crusadors towards the end of the 12th century. It's said that they won by cutting the crusadors off from the lake and then starting a wildfire where they were encamped. The battle decimated the crusador forces. Afterwards, more than 200 knights were beheaded, and the ordinary soldiers were enslaved. The king and some of the barons were shown mercy.

(continue reading...)

Optimism vs pessimism vis à vis the climate emergency

In his recent interviews, Kim Stanley Robinson has been saying that the 3 or 4 years that have passed since he wrote Ministry of the Future have given him more room for optimism that we will successfully address climate change. On the other hand, Amitav Ghosh another novelist who has been doing some non-fiction writing on climate change, looks at the same period and finds reason to be pessimistic. Probably both writers would qualify such categorical statements, but that's the drift. Others like Yanis Varafoukis, Noam Chomsky, Miguel Fuentes and (ultimate pessimist) Guy McPherson have been weighing in on the subject.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I am gradually picking up many of the connections I previously had, just because someone ends up boosting posts by one of them, here and there. As a result, my timeline is growing more interesting by the day.

(continue reading...)

War and occupation

Jonathan Cook and Noam Chomsky have good pieces comparing western attitudes on the war in Ukraine to wars and occupation in Palestine and Iraq. Predictably, it's fine to express righteous indignation towards what the Russians are doing in Ukraine but not against the US or Israel.

(continue reading...)

Freedom outside the press

Yesterday I listened to a 90 minute interview of Kim Stanley Robinson by journalist Ezra Klein in his podcast. It's the first time I'd listened to Klein - I had never even heard of this seasoned American journalist. But the interview was impressive from both sides. Klein, who says that Robinson's Ministry of the Future was the most important book that he'd read that year managed to ask questions about many of the central features of the novel, and, in response, Robinson spoke about topics like Eco-Marxism, which is an ism that I hadn't heard of.

(continue reading...)

Alchemy

Yesterday evening I finished watching the first season of "The Bear", which somehow lives up to all the rave reviews of the critics. It does so more on account of its presenting a situation than for its storyline - the plot for all of the first season could be summarized in two or three lines.

(continue reading...)

Walks, thoughts

It being the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the roads become quiet and the sounds of nature come to the forefront, I enjoyed my afternoon walk through the woods and fields, without the distant roar of traffic.

(continue reading...)

How aesthetics influences my use of software and the web

It's hard to admit it, but if I look at my consumption habits on the internet, and of my use of software in general, I am definitely influenced by the way a site or an application looks. I will tend to prefer those that look attractive to me. I can point to various examples.

(continue reading...)

New fediverse instance

I decided to take the plunge and launch a new fediverse instance, using the services of mastohost.com. The new instance is at social.vikshepa.com/@hosh.

(continue reading...)

Europe and its problem with Fascism

The world watches in trepidation while yet another European election threatens to bring in right-wing populists - this time in Italy. It's pretty exasperating to see this constant tussle between inept centerist parties and their far-right adversaries. Europe needs change, but its people keep looking in the wrong direction, choosing the worse over the simply bad.

(continue reading...)

Free speech

PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

(continue reading...)

The Ministry for the Future

Enjoying this book by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's less a novel than New York 2140, or Aurora, the only other books of his that I've read.

(continue reading...)

Back home from Camino

We're back home from the Camino: this time the Camino Portugues. It went well, despite mishaps. The principle mishap was getting COVID about 3 days into the walk. Both I and D got it, by turn. It wasn't so significant - just fever and a cold for about 3 days - but it slowed us down. We mostly rested those days, and took private rooms, of course, rather than dorms, and wore masks everywhere.

(continue reading...)

Diary

I'm enjoying PKD's The Man in the High Castle. It's one of his more coherent books - it would be a good introduction to his writing.

(continue reading...)

Social media keeps putting people in jail

Links

(continue reading...)

Dystopia as a muse for fiction

There is one positive aspect of the increasing darkness we see all around us - the climate emergency; the victory of anti-democratic forces; the increasing number of refugees; the continuation of proxy wars; the smouldering animosity between nations; the expansion of hate-speech; the erosion of civil rights; the development of technologies for mass surveillance; the spread of motiveless crime; the destruction of the biosphere; the resurgence of religions; the growing gaps between rich and poor; the prevalence of modern slavery, the subservience of the state to corporations; the loss of culture and of cultural diversity and all the rest - it is a fertile bed for the imagination. Ugliness and nastiness are a perfect palate for great art. Good books and films are incubated in dark places. The horrors of World War II and the fascist regimes of the time continue to be a source of great movies. Post-apocalyptic dystopias are a recurring feature of science fiction. The horrors of the feudal era and of warring kingdoms inspire fantasy like that of George R R Martin. As things get worse, the literature gets better. Regardless of the consequences, whether, say, novels and films about climate change, are actually effective in spurring us to action, or whether imaginative fiction about dark regimes can urge the populace to vote for change, such art has a value in its own right. It keeps us engaged, entertained and enthralled, immerses us in realities that are even worse than the one we are presently suffering. The present is dark and the future may be blacker, but we live not only in reality but in our dreams, and usually these stories of wretched hyper-realities are populated by sympathetic figures and heroes who need to find their way in the darkness; either through ingenuity, by discovering their superpowers, through the exercise of compassion and humanity, or by cleaving to other hapless human beings in a similar plight.

(continue reading...)

India's independence day

Just as it's hard to think of Israel's independence day without remembering the Nakba, it's impossible to think of India's independence day without remembering Partition. Although it took place 75 years ago, the news media have still been able to find survivors who remain traumatized. Soon, there will be no one left to remember.

(continue reading...)

Salman Rushdie

I read about the attempt on the author's life and his wounding in the attack. I've read only one of his books - Shalimar the Clown, and a couple of short stories, which I enjoyed. Satanic Verses I once tried to read, but it didn't hold my interest. I find something irritatingly affected about the man that keeps me at a distance. Maybe more than other authors, his personality seems to infuse itself into the writing. But my judgment is only cursory - I can't really claim to understand Rushdie from reading one novel and listening to a few interviews. And it's just a personal bias. Still, I obviously know him better than his would-be assassin - I suppose religion was the motivating factor and Rushdie was just a symbolic target. What an idiot, what a presumption, by an ignorant 24-year old, to harm one of the great writers of our era.

(continue reading...)

Animals

There are two or three cats that pass at every hour by the pateo screen door, on what look like regular patrols. Their pace is unhurried, as if they have all the time in the world. If the door is open behind the screen, they take a moment or two to peer in; no doubt if they could enter they would do so. I don't want to discourage their patrols. One day on the path we found a dead snake; perhaps that was their doing.

(continue reading...)

Diary

For several months, at all times of the day and night, there have been sounds of distant shots being fired. Seems to be hunters - probably of quail. On my walks, I've never seen or met a hunter, which leads me to imagine that these are deeply personal men, hiding somewhere in the undergrowth, unseen, vigilant, harboring a passion for killing things that keeps them up even through the summer night.

(continue reading...)

Various approaches to photography

Photography influences our propensity to experience reality visually. Professional photographers are more likely to identify subjects of interest because they are actively looking for them. Lately I have been pondering this in the context of awareness and consciousness. The cultivation of seeing can help us change the way that we view reality. But the heightened awareness can also be inimical to our mental state or spiritual purposes. For example, an instagrammer who loves to publish viral photos will always be on the look out for them. The eye and center of consciousness shifts in accordance with one's intention. If I have a prior conception of the unity of all beings, I might look for expressions of that; if I have an ideology of compassion, I will be seeking a compassionate vision. In every case, this is about finding ways to support established opinions or conditioning: My prior opinion determines the way I see reality. I look at and photograph the world from a certain viewpoint.

(continue reading...)

New walk planned, film

It took several hours today to decide on a flight to Porto, in Portugal, in order to walk again on the Camino trail. Perhaps we will make it to Santiago on this one. Flights are expensive in this season - and increasingly immoral. But the only way to reach the European continent from this country is to fly, so it's either that or stay at home. At least when we reach our destination, our manner of vacation will be environmentally friendly. The trip is planned for September.

(continue reading...)

Blog and photos back where they were

I spent the last few days messing with servers on Kamatera's VPS hosting. After abandoning the attempt to set up an Epicyon fediverse instance, I tried to re-utilize the same server for the blog and photo galleries. I'd chosen a NGINX based server, and somehow I couldn't succeed with it, so eventually I gave up.

(continue reading...)

The film festival

YS invited us this year to see films with her at the Jerusalem film festival. The festival takes place every year in July, and, for many years we have been going to see four or five films. Choosing them has always been difficult, but this year we let YS choose them for us. It was actually at the film festival, one year, that we renewed our connection with her.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-26-urushiol

It's the pleasure of finding articles like this that makes the web worthwhile. The non-commercial web. The writer describes the qualities of the oil found in poison ivy, which causes so much grief to Americans, but which is prized in Japan for its use in traditional lacquer-making. He also points out, or claims, that Japanese and native Americans are less susceptible to injury by the oil or the plants that contain it. The plants are related to the cashew and the mango that hail from South Asia, which also cause nasty allergic reactions in those who need to deal with the trees or harvesting their fruit. Only humans, it seems, suffer from the bad effects of urushiol.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-20 UK visa process

I spent the late afternoon and evening helping a neighbour and friend fill out his application forms to obtain a temporary charity work visa to the UK - a frightful process. Among the tasks involved was to detail every visit to another country within the last ten years, page after page of form filling, questions about having expressed "extremist views" or support for "terrorism", if he had committed "war crimes", if he had been convicted of breaking any law.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-15-blogging

I was just reading the definition of the "Read Write web", which was a revolutionary concept in the early 2000s - the idea that browsers could be used not just to consume content but to create it, and I was thinking again about blogging. Having set up this blog on the new server and finally reinstated a passwordless command for updating it within emacs, I realized how important this step was for encouraging me to write.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-14

Last night I was reading through the archives of their semi-internal weekly news sheet "News and Notes", and I see that the township is still in turmoil; a situation that seemed to start at the end of last year when the new Secretary tried to roll over all objections to complete the Crown Road project.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-13

I have been working at a snail's pace at the Hubzilla installation, with flagging enthusiasm as I'm not really convinced of the need for it. Zap would have been a better fit, but Hubzilla has better instructions. I just had a look at Friendica; which I once used, though never installed. I suppose that's another a candidate. There's no platform that really wows me. I have always thought that the best way to use social networks would be a desktop client like pidgin. Android clients exist, but I see nothing similar in Linux. Anyhow, I still need a server.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-05 - SPIP CMS

Am having problems with another of the web sites for which I am responsible. It works on the SPIP CMS. I like SPIP, but there is always a problem with updates. I was a bit behind, so I did one update that broke the menus. That's something that I was reasonably sure I could fix, so I did the next update, and that one nuked the entire site.There's a PHP extension called sodium, that my web host, Hostgator, doesn't permit on their shared plan.It would be necessary to upgrade to one of their VPS plans, but their prices aren't really competitive for that.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-03

In the course of my search for a good Activity Pub server, I found that there are a number of options in development. Here's a curated list. I was specifically looking for an option that expressed the KISS principle (was simple to install, use, maintain) and geared towards single users.

(continue reading...)

2022-07-02-new-server

After my recent problems with the phone company's new fiber network and its restrictive modem, I decided to look for a VPS for my hosting needs.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-26

I just noticed that there are many blog posts, mostly from last year, that I haven't moved over into this blog. When I find some time I will do that.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-23 Home Server Woes

Well, unfortunately I did not succeed to use our phone company's infrastructure for properly hosting my website from home. Their fiber modem comes with various cyber protections and although it claims not to be operating under a firewall, it still seems to be. I was able to almost get NGINX to serve my pages without https, but the service seemed wonky, hit-or-miss and did not stabilize for the first 24 hours, at least. I don't want to give too much time to this, having already spent many hours getting things up and running with the old modem. Fiber is still a little new around here. Bezeq, the phone company, is trying its best to seal people in to its own service and does not allow one to use a non-Bezeq modem without using an adapter. Eventually I will probably find a freer ISP because there are competitors.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-22 Fiber | Israel-Palestine

Yesterday we were connected to the fiber infrastructure and, hopefully will receive more robust internet connection, though that flimsy wire hanging flapping about among the bushes, leaves me feeling rather doubtful. In the newer section of the village, the cables are buried; in the older section where we live, we depend on wires and poles, which occasionally get hit and pulled down by passing trucks. The phone company technicians are known for their resourcefulness. For years, our connection was dependent on cables twisted together inside an old coke bottle on our roof. I suppose the technician didn't have a proper connection box handy on his several visits.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-18-Website work, thoughts about India

I spent most of the day working on the Israeli Thich Nhat Hanh sangha site, mindfulness-israel.org. It's completely voluntary but I enjoy it and it feels useful. This is a Wordpress site with the flexible Weaver theme, which sometimes frustrates me, but it is at least malleable, unlike many WP themes.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-05-Wordpress

I spent most of the day improving a WordPress website that I manage voluntarily. For that site and another, I use the flexible theme Weaver. The theme developer tries his best to keep up with WordPress's changes, but maybe it's a losing battle. It seems to me that at a certain stage Autommatic lost the plot. In the attempt to make everything simpler, they keep making it harder. I've tried a few times to adopt their block editor but each time gave up and went back to the classic editor, which itself is sufficiently cumbersome and unfriendly. I try to do some of the editing in html but Wordpress usually messes it up.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-04-photo-albums

By myself in the house for a few days, after taking D to the airport on Thursday. This presents an opportunity to spend time with my personal website project. The main challenge today was the photo galleries.

(continue reading...)

2022-06-01 NGINX

Continuing my server odyssey, I managed to set up NGINX, eventually, after looking at several options for alternatives to Apache. Although I was drawn to Hiawatha (mentioned in yesterday's post), there were no current binaries available for Debian (the directory and repository came up blank). It would have been possible to compile it from source, but the instructions were long and complicated and its own documentation "strongly advises" using a binary.

(continue reading...)

20-05-31 Server again

I began the installation of Dokuwiki but had some difficulties along the way. The instructions seem to assume that one has set up a site for it under Apache, so I went about enabling that. But then, before I was able to proceed further, Apache began to give errors, which affected the server as a whole. I wasn't able to solve that problem so quickly, so I transfered the server content over to my Fastmail file storage, and changed the domain DNS to point there.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-30 Wikis and web servers

I've been looking again at several aspects of the site. On the weekend I spent several hours trying to set up Epicyon, which is intended to be a simple social networking application based on the activity pub protocol, created by Bob Mottram. I previously had partial success setting up Epicyon, under Mottram's Freedombone (now called Libraserver, I think). It didn't work very well, then, but there is reason to hope that it is more mature now. Be that as it may, I failed in my attempts. Not because of Epicyon but because the instructions for setting it up are geared for the NGINX web server, and what I have installed is Apache. There's a method of installing NGINX as a reverse proxy for Apache, and that's what I was trying. By the end of several hours what I had was a server that served neither through NGINX nor Apache. So I shrugged my shoulders and disabled NGINX. Now the blog works again, happily.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-29 Solarpunk conference, "Children of Peace", diary

On Friday there was the DocAviv screening of "Children of Peace", a documentary made by Maayan Schwartz on the second generation of kids who grew up in the village. It's based on conversations with friends who grew up with Maayan. Some of them have returned to live in the village; some have made their home in different places around the world. A central theme of the film is the mixed identity that some of them feel, as people who have grown up with the narratives of both peoples and the ongoing conflict; the ways in which the conflict penetrates the village itself. It's a powerful film, I think, though it's hard to see it as someone who doesn't know the people and the village might.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-27 Links of the day

In the firing zone: evictions begin in West Bank villages after court ruling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/22/firing-zone-evictions-begin-west-bank-villages-court-ruling-masafer-yatta

(continue reading...)

2022-05-24

I have successfully passed all of the home-spun html entries from recent months into org-static-blog, meaning that I now have a continuous archive for the last three years. The ones from before that time can be found on WordPress. I don't plan to move more of them.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-20-Diary

I decided to join D for part of her planned trip to Plum Village, so I'll be there for her "Lamp Transmission" ceremony. That meant booking flights. There are less options today, following the pandemic, and many trips to Bordeaux involve travel of 20 - 30 hours or more. I struggled for a couple of hours with Expedia, trying to find something cheap and convenient, but eventually gave up. D came to the rescue with E-Dreams, which, in this case, seemed to have more options with the cheapo companies like Veuling, Wiz and whatever. She was able to find a cheaper flight, which I eventually booked.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-18 Progress with the Server

Eventually I'm using an old EEEPC netbook for a new home server. It's many years old, but the battery life is still excellent, so it's less likely to suffer the kind of shocks that rendered my previous server disk unbootable.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-15 - Server software

I've been looking at my various options regarding the home server; whether to try to restore my old Hubzilla installation, or something new. I have several old laptops lying around that could be used. I thought again to try to use Bob Mottram's freedombone/libreserver installation. It doesn't have Hubzilla, but does have another Zot/Nomad based platform called Roadhouse. But I instantly got stuck with that because his basic instruction for installation does not work, and the directions are unclear.

(continue reading...)

2022-05-14 - Does my village have a right to express an opinion in my name?

It's always a question. Yesterday the EU and the US "condemned" the behaviour of the Israeli security forces at the funeral of the Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh. When we hear that our country has condemned something, we don't think too much about whether we think that this represents us, as a citizen in that country. But when it comes to a small community of people making a statement in our name it's closer to home and we worry about it more. Here's what I wrote to the village, regarding this, regarding another controversy about making a public statement:

(continue reading...)

Tech problems | stress

Just before an enormously busy period at work, my home server crashed. I'd had problems with the internet connection, rebooted the router a few times, and turned off the power, without shutting down the server, as a result of which it seems to have damaged the disk. FSCK gets stuck. It's going to take me a while to get back to normal, so, for now, have moved the blog back to my fastmail storage. It's easy enough to do with a simple static blog like this one. I just haven't been able to bring back all the photos yet. For now, there's a way to blog again.

(continue reading...)

writing in html - imagining a better future

One thing that I like about this composing this blog in Bluefish editor is that I am writing it in the actual html used to publish it online. Not in BBCode, Markdown, some sort of WYSIWYG view, or a word processor. It's somehow liberating to use the actual code, even if I do find occasional validation errors afterwards. That's also why I want the code to be as clean and easy to read as possible. For example, I shift long html anchor links to the end of the post.

(continue reading...)

2022-4-26 - olives, loquats | dealing with complexity | web fonts

The olives are in bloom, meaning many people will have allergies. It looks like there are many flowers this year: does that mean there will be many fruits? (Olives are famously biennial bearing).

(continue reading...)

2022-04-25 - bookmarking | music | dream

I haven't completely given up on Hubzilla bookmarks, because it is so easy to drop them in through the bookmarklet. So now I have two parallel systems of dealing with links, each fighting to assert its supremacy.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-22 - Hubzilla | state of the web

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but, in my free time I have been tidying up my Hubzilla site and making various improvements. One intended improvement resulted in the accidental deletion of one of my wikis, but it was not such a significant loss. After going back and forth on the question of how to collect web links - such as for comment in blogging. Hubzilla's bookmarks module looks like it still needs some work, though it is very easy to share bookmarks to it, via a browser bookmarklet. See my channel timeline for a discussion on the pros and cons of the system. In the meantime, I will be using another Hubzilla module.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-17 | Drive My Car | Movies

We watched "Drive My Car" in two sittings… it's a 3-hour film. A great film. Hey, it's 2022 and they are still making good films, somehow. I have not read the Haruki Murakami story upon which it is based, although I've read so many of his novels and stories. And I have also never seen or read Uncle Vanya, which is enfolded within it. It isn't the first film to do that - I have the earlier one in my library to watch.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-15 Shelf-hanging fail | links

My daughter sent a photo of the shelf I hung for her a couple of years ago, above the bed where her 6-year old sleeps. The shelf collapsed while he was sleeping, though fortunately, with his head on the opposite side of the bed. Nobody woke up. This could have been serious! Shelves should never be hung over beds.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-14 Collective fantasies

I've been thinking that, considering the unreality of the world, or worlds, that we inhabit, it may be more intelligent to spend as little as possible time with what seems to be “the hard reality”. Children, when they are given the freedom to be somewhat detached from a need to earn a living or take an active part in their parents' world, grow wings. They have the ability to dream, to engage in fantasies of their own making. We all think that this is wonderful. Yet, when children “grow up” they are gradually expected to conform to the hard realities of the adult world, where engaging in fantasy is excoriated and shunned. Collective fantasies especially are reviled, such as QAnon, by people who are not part of that, and vice-versa. Half of society is accusing the other half of engaging in fantasy, and there are sub-groups and cults: political and spiritual.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-13 A walk | the blog | browsers | Signal messenger | links

I have been feeling a need for a bit of seclusion lately. Maybe because in Israel-Palestine the holiday season with its seasonal tensions is on us again. I went for a walk in the woods and fields today and ran into a battalion of boy/girl scouts. One of them - maybe their security detail - was waiting for me as I approached, with questions about where I lived, whether I was Jewish, how relations are between Jews and Arabs there - he got mostly a stony silence from me as I marched through. Luckily I'm harmless.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-13 Ibn Arabi

" That is to say, if he has not… drunk the glass of love, and has not found annihilation in the ipseity of God, when he says "He", he will be speaking according to his own conjecture, imagination, understanding and relativity. He brings the Being of God into imagination, and gives it a form. Because he has not divested himself of being and reached Absoluteness. Consequently, he puts God under a condition, according to his conjecture and imagination and draws around him a limit; thereby he will have immanenced Him and invented Him. And thereby he has worshipped a creator which he himself has originated."

(continue reading...)

2022-04-10 Spread of Autocracy | Messaging | Degoogle resource | Libre-DNS | Sri Lanka

I am thinking to make the font size of this blog bigger. In my browser, I do that anyway, and I find that I like the look of blogs with a large font size.

(continue reading...)

2022-04-05 Hubzilla | Deezer | Gardening

I updated my hubzilla to 7.2, which was painless, except I discovered that PhpMyAdmin had stopped working. Shrug. Not sure why; hoping it will fix itself through Debian updates. I normally use it to make backups, so I had to do a backup independently.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-30 Crazy ironies

The scene of the terror attack in Tel Aviv yesterday was an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Yet two of the five victims were non-Jewish Ukrainian workers. Another victim, an Arab policeman, was the hero who rushed to the scene and shot the attacker, preventing further killings. Two of the three policemen killed in the latest wave of violence have been Arabs.

(continue reading...)

2002-03-29 Trying to recycle an old router as a range extender | nations

There are a few articles and YouTube videos on how to do what I spent a few hours fiddling with today. But eventually I grew convinced that the reason I stopped using my old router was that it simply doesn't work - in any capacity. Not even after several attempts and a firmware upgrade. Also another old range extender didn't work. I do have one range-extender working, and I've done this before. Never mind; now I know just to ditch these old devices.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-27 Updating Thunderbird, growing the root partition

I managed to update Thunderbird from version 78, which was from the MX Testing repository, to version 91, which I found as a flatpak. Transfering the old profile was not so easy, but when it worked, it worked painlessly.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-26 Mail servers and providers

I don't have the courage to run my own mail server. First, there's the difficulty with getting the security right. Second, there's the problem that my home server goes down whenever there's a problem with the electricity (I will get a UPS one day). Third, there's the likelihood of getting blacklisted by the big companies.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-24 нет войне

I am home alone for a long weekend while D is away on a mindfulness retreat. Plenty of work to do though - both for the office and around the house - some gardening if the weather permits. Just woke up at around 5 AM and am sitting here listening to Cafe de Anatolia music [1], a little loud.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-19 Auntie Alice's recipe book - opml files - SeaMonkey - Hubzilla Cards - Zelensky

When we moved from Yorkshire to Virginia in 1969, my Auntie Alice gave my mom a handwritten notebook of her cake and dessert recipes.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-17 Hubzilla menus in mobile view - guest access tokens - PDF editing

In the morning we were busy with a guest. In the afternoon I had another look at a couple of things that have been bothering me regarding Hubzilla.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-13 Tidying the blog

I had a problem with my server computer the last couple of days; apparently because of a failed update. In the meantime I tidied up the html on this blog - I was thinking there was something wrong with it because bluefish editor incorrectly highlights some of the syntax. SeaMonkey has a link to an html validator. It found a few errors, but these were not the reason for bluefish's wrong syntax highlighting, which continues, though all the code now validates.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-10 - Phone messaging | Int'l Rescuers Day | Diaspora connections

After hearing from Ivan Zlax about Telegram and its founder Pavel Durov, I felt that it may be time to ditch the program from my phone. He dug up an old bio about him in the Internet Archive that has the following:

(continue reading...)

2022-03-08 - Photos | Big Tech | Registration Walls | Telegram

I posted a new photo album from our walk last Saturday.

(continue reading...)

2022-03-07 - Media blindfolding

"The first casualty is truth" is drivel in a world where wars are completely unnecessary for the proliferation of fake facts, but I know from my Israel-Palestine experience that whenever a truth seems too unequivocal, reality is probably not what it seems. So when, thanks to someone on the Fediverse, I discovered Max Blumenthal's article on neo-Nazi infiltration in Ukraine, I breathed a sigh of relief and started fishing around for more. Noam Chomsky, of course has interesting things to say too (US Approach to Ukraine Has “Left the Domain of Rational Discourse”).

(continue reading...)

2022-03-05 - Thucydides

" A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all."

(continue reading...)

2022-02-23 - Russia and Ukraine | Sufi music | Garage Philosophy

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian has an interesting article about how we ended up with the current situation - as expected, it isn't all Russia's fault. Also, according to him, Russia has already won, in terms of denying Ukraine the possibility of joining NATO, because the alliance does not admit countries that do not control their borders.

(continue reading...)

2022-02-22 - Russia and Ukraine

Now that Russia is actually invading Ukraine, thoughts about what both sides could have been doing to de-escalate the situation and avoid war become irrelevant. It's a clear case of a large country bullying a smaller one, and the Russian leader deserves to be reviled. There was a lot of nonsense spoken about how such military intervention and aggression is no longer possible in the 21st century, and that the build up we were seeing was "actually the war". Subtlety of that sort doesn't exist in Putin's world; people were forgetting his long record. I also feel incredulous at wars and military campaigns. I feel like that every time Israel embarks on its periodical campaigns against Gaza. But it is dangerous to project one's personal value system and think that leaders and nations share it. They don't. It's the same group violence we have known for 10,000 years, using the technological means and systems of the current era. It isn't likely ever to stop, just to adopt new forms.

(continue reading...)

2022-02-17 - Diary - a Turkish film - links

In the morning helped D prepare for her Day of Mindfulness at the Spiritual Center. In the daytime, I was at home. My son and his daughter brought the "family cleaner" to clean up the rooms they had been living in before moving into their new house. The mother of M said originally told me that he was from New Guinea, but it turned out he was from Konakri Guinea in West Africa. He has been spending time in Israel on-and-off for years, since 1988, and is now aged 56. He belongs to the Fulani tribe - which is huge - they are spread across more than 20 countries, all across to the Red Sea. Most are Muslim. He says that in Guinea, there are no inter-communal problems, unlike, say in Nigeria. But Guinea has a history of military coups and is currently again run by the military. He is planning to return again soon, as he has been away for awhile. He has one grand daughter, whose picture graces the wallpaper of his phone. They have a house in the city and another, a few hundred kilometers away in a village. He says that he enjoys the village the most; it's very green there and the family are farmers. We talked a little about music as I like a few musicians from neighbouring Mali - Kandia Kouyaté, Salif Keita, Ali Farka Touré, and he likes these too so I played him some of the music while he worked. He says that also in Guinea they have great musicians and told me a couple of the names to check out. Meanwhile he did a really good job of cleaning. I don't know if he has a profession besides cleaning, but he is quite a smart guy.

(continue reading...)

2022-02-15 - Trackball mouse

I spilled coffee on my Ergo M570 but it was getting pretty worn out anyway. So I've replaced it with its successor, the M575. It's a better mouse. I ordered it from Ali-Express, as it was a bit cheaper. It arrived, after about 3 weeks, in a package that looks like someone had previously returned it. There was no plastic package or manual, but the mouse itself was in perfect condition. The dongle was out of sync with the mouse. Solaar didn't manage to pair it. Eventually I gave in and downloaded the Logi unifying software to my wife's Windows laptop and got it in sync. This mouse is more accurate that the M570 and feels better in every way. It has the ability to connect without the receiver, via Bluetooth. But that connection doesn't work very well, at least not with my computer: its movements are too jittery.

(continue reading...)

2022-02-13: Kimi

Watched Kimi, based on the review in The Guardian. Since I agree with the review, and this Benjamin Lee writes reviews better than I can, there's not much to add. I too would give it 3 or 4 stars, because it's enjoyable, well-made, does what it intends to do, and doesn't try to be more than it is. Films like this feel "transactional"; it feels like we, or the company that purchased the film, have entered into an agreement with the director and s/he has lived up to the agreement and handed over the goods. He (Soderbergh) and the cast may have given it their all, worked really hard, or just had a good time - it doesn't matter - as the product has been delivered in perfect condition.

2022-02-12: Revenge of the non-nerds

The fediverse and blogosphere are full of super-intelligent people who write code using JavaScript runtimes and web application frameworks in trying to find alternatives to the proprietary platforms of surveillance capitalism. I'm not a programmer or a developer, but I have sometimes tried to implement their solutions, which invariably claim to be even faster than WordPress's famous 5-minute install, and have mostly failed miserably. There are static blogs like Jekyll and Hugo and Pelican, and there are a bunch of alternative social media platforms out there. There are others who are attempting to ease the process of setting up home servers. With the latter, I tried to install YunoHost and FreedomBone (which now has a new name), but eventually found it easier to install a server "the hard way".

(continue reading...)

2022-02-10: Adventures with OsmAnd

I had a journey to a local town today, so I decided to do it with OsmAnd. I already knew the route, so nothing much could go wrong.

(continue reading...)

2022-02-09: A prodigious amount of paper

In North African and Middle Eastern countries, Jews traditionally preserve every scrap of paper in storage places called genizot - sometimes temporarily for formal ritual burial. I first learned of this from Amitav Ghosh's book, In an Antique Land - in which he describes his research in the Cairo Genizah, which is the most famous of them all.

(continue reading...)

Diary and links

2022-02-02 22:22 - Wow that's quite a time and date! Not intentional, I swear. Today was also my brother's birthday, and the day my eldest son moved to his new house. Our own house suddenly got bigger since they were moving out from the part that we divided off to rent out. I think we're done with renting, so we'll have a couple of guest rooms.

(continue reading...)

Amnesty Int'l report on Israel apartheid

Amnesty International says that Israel's treatment of Palestinians, whether in the OPT, in Jerusalem or in Israel itself amounts to the internationally recognized crime of apartheid (without making direct comparisons with S. Africa). As such it joins a string of Israeli and international human rights organizations. So the accusation is not new, but the report is certainly thorough, running to 278 pages. Such a report cannot easily be cast as based on "lies", though that is what Israeli officials are attempting to claim. It may be easier to claim that the organization is using "double standards", though I haven't heard of Amnesty sparing any country from censure. If anything it is the governments of western countries who are using "double standards" in giving Israel so much slack. That's true also of the news media. The report did not reach the front page of The Guardian today. I read what CNN, Aljazeera, The Guardian, HaAretz and the Times of Israel had to say about the report. Only AlJazeera had the link to the actual report - but I have often noticed that news organizations, when reporting on such matters, tend to leave out the links to the subject of their reporting - I don't know what journalistic policy lies behind that terrible decision but I find it inexcusable. When an NGO publishes a report, it does so with the intent that it will reach the widest possible audience. News outlets are not doing their job if they don't help them in that.

(continue reading...)

exhibition

2022-01-30

My younger son and his fiancée came over from TA and I brought D's mom over from her retirement home. We kept her away from my daughter and her kids because they were exposed to someone who has been sick with the Omicron, lately. The weather started to clear up, though it remains cold.

(continue reading...)

Moxie and Ceglowski

I found this Twitter interchange regarding Telegram, between Moxie Marlinspike and Maciej Ceglowski, interesting. It is from December 2021. I had somehow seen the Moxie tweets earlier, but hadn't seen Ceglowski's, who brought the practical example of Telegram's use during the Hong Kong protests.

(continue reading...)

2022-01-27

I think the tiredness and weirdness I feel today may be a result of the 2nd booster shot that I had yesterday. It just occurred to me that that may be the cause. I hope it's the vaccination and not the virus itself.

(continue reading...)

2022-01-18

The main story today was the news that according to a report in Calcalist, the Israeli police is using NSO's Pegasus spyware against Israeli citizens. Apparently it takes advantage of a very large loophole in the legal system: while there are very strict regulations regarding "wire-tapping" there is no specific law that makes it illegal to break into a citizen's phone to harvest information or, at least, the Israeli police made their own interpretation of the laws in determining what was permitted. In the case that a surveilled person was charged, the information they gathered through Pegasus was not used directly as evidence. Etc. According to the article, Pegasus is being used in a very similar way to that discovered in many non-democratic regimes around the world. Haaretz, in its own analysis, concludes that NSO is an arm of the state.

(continue reading...)

2022-01-23

As I grow older, I seem to forget projects that I had gotten into a while back. In 2020 I discovered org-static-blog and apparently forgot all about it in a few months. I remember having tried various static blogging systems, and recently read about Barry Kauler's static blogging system, and was thinking to try that, due to its simplicity. But this is even simpler, therefore better, if simplicity is what I'm looking for. I'm just afraid that one of these days I will lose even more of my marbles and be left blogless and helpless. Hubzilla is great, and Wordpress has many advantages, but both of them require a complicated setup (if they are on a home server), including php and mysql (or MariaDB). I may decide to go back to this, and, if I require something beyond a blogging system, to use ordinary html in SeaMonkey or Bluefish.

2022-01-17

I managed to listen to the end of the 3 hour meeting in Auroville (see my blog post on WP yesterday). It was fascinating to hear the different arguments, for one side or the other, expressed so well; all convincing. (Usually in meetings I find myself agreeing to the last person who has spoken.) But in the end I think I remain on the side of those who say the work should be done quickly. I know the road in question quite well because I travel on it daily whenever I'm there.

(continue reading...)

Auroville

In the morning I came across a story about Auroville in the Guardian, Bulldozers, violence and politics crack an Indian dream of utopia

(continue reading...)

2021-11-27 - Distraction

Distraction is considered in a negative way by those who are "serious". The "serious" are those who embark upon a career, would-be absolute rulers, sadhakas and mumukshutwis, and all others who are taking the steep path up the mountain.

(continue reading...)

2021-11-26-home-server

On my home server I have, till now, Hubzilla and WordPress. Hubzilla is a good all-round piece of software that does various things, though not perfectly: it is an activity-hub connected social network, a place to store photo albums and files; a content management system for blogs, and a place where you can make static websites.

(continue reading...)

2021-11-25-SoundCloud

I’m just starting to use it, but I think I like the interface of SoundCloud over that of Deezer, and am finding it easier to find music that I like. I am still listening free for now, but haven’t heard any ads so far. SoundCloud’s paid service isn’t available in Israel, so it will always be free for me.

(continue reading...)

2021-11-23-reading-links

"Son Visage et le Tien", a long essay by Jenni Alexis. Interesting, so far. The English Wikipedia article about him references an article in the Atlantic, “When does a writer become a writer“[1]. Alexis, like T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, John Steinbeck, Margaret Duras and so many others that the article doesn’t mention, has a daytime job. Winning the Goncourt prize came as a big surprise for him. It’s the kind of attainment that so many aspiring writers dream about.

(continue reading...)

2021-11-22-news-feeds-paywalls-books

I put some of my RSS Newsfeeds in order in Vivaldi. My idea is to use it for blogs, rather than busy news sources. For that reason I first added RMS’s political notes, and then removed it. Because if I want to use it as what Dave Winer calls “a river of news”, RMS dominates too much. But the links are good. It would be better if Vivaldi made it possible to use sub-folders for different areas (and hence sub-rivers – by being able to click on the top folder that includes each set of feeds).

(continue reading...)

Adventures in Wikipedia

Kennings are poetic compound-words used in old English and Icelandic literature. Thus, a word for the sea (appearing in The Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer) is "whale road". Compound words are a feature of most Indo-European languages. "Himalaya" means literally "abode of snow". The various kinds of compounds (samasa) were carefully catalogued in Sanskrit, from Tatpurusha to Bahuvrihi. When Homer speaks of "the wine dark sea" (οἶνοψ πόντος) this too is a compound or epithet, rather than a metaphor, as the word "sea" does not appear in the original. The words literally mean wine + faced.

(continue reading...)

Reality

Up at sunrise again. Actually I was up twice in the night too, so my days and nights are similar periods of rest and wakefulness. I'm still reading "The Earth of the New Sun", and am enjoying Wolf's conception of a universe where space and time and creatures inhabiting these worlds are highly flexible, and tend to flow into each other. Genders, strange creatures, androids, all are in a fluid mix. I could well imagine a similar combining of time periods in our own world, where wisdom from past times augments the knowledge of the present, with intimations from the future. This is very much the universe of science fiction writers, an embracing of all that is possible, and a refusal to reject anything outright.

(continue reading...)

World Wide Waste

There's a website called "World Wide Waste" that is dedicated to the subject of digital waste and its costs to the environment. It seems to me that it is less of a subject for the individual than for the corporations, although we are all guilty of over-streaming. I wonder whether the environmental costs of internet streaming is greater than reliance upon satelites? It may be that since both exist, it makes little difference. It must be better to use videoconferencing than traveling and commuting. Harari makes the point that we don't really have an energy problem - there is infinite energy that we could obtain. It's just a technological and an environmental problem. If we can only solve the 21st century technological problems of polluting industries, we will be able to enjoy the tech advantages, but, along the way, we are making terrible misjudgments. Humans are inherently wasteful. We need to cut down on packaging and processed foods, products that are wasteful.

(continue reading...)

Extraordinary times

We are living in an extraordinary time in which the viability of our institutions, the myths of society, and the true worth of leaders, is severely tested. Some leaders, like Donald Trump, are so completely confounded by the challenges that whatever they do or do not do places them in a situation of appearing ridiculous. Others, like Angela Merkle, do not need to be very vocal, since they sit atop functional systems that just work, or at least work better.

(continue reading...)

happiness

Flight to Tel Aviv: I have been reading Sapiens, and reached almost the of the book now. I have just finished reading his discussion of happiness; in which he writes particularly of the Buddhist understanding of the concept. It is close to the one I find in Yoga philosophy, though I would phrase it differently. I think that happiness is the state normally found when consciousness rests in the present moment and is not in a condition of resistance to it. In other words, the mind is at peace. In a moment that we are caught off-guard by beauty, such as when one opens the curtains to behold a golden sunrise, the mind is "enraptured", if only for a moment, perhaps. Something comes between our thoughts of the past, our memories, regrets; and our plans hopes and desires for the future, so that we know peace, for a fleeting moment.

(continue reading...)

June 27, 2020

Finishing up my time here in the US. I think I will miss the quietude of being at home alone, and will not enjoy the bustle of being in a full household again. Coronavirus cases are sky-rocketing in Israel again, so I won't want to go out even after the period of home-isolation. I think I just want to live the rest of my life in quiet places; Neve Shalom or Auroville. There isn't much on offer outside of solitude. It's true that I need to keep my body more active, so that it doesn't grow weak and inflexible, but there are solutions for that.

(continue reading...)

Dealing with others

I knew two persons in the Sivananda Centers, perhaps more, who related to others quite differently to most people I have known.

(continue reading...)

June 24, 2020

I was reading in the Guardian a story about failed art restorations; a statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, in which the infant was restored to a kind of monkey; a similar painting of Christ in which he comes out looking like a plump gremlin; and finally a tower in Istanbul that, according to social media, resembles a giant Sponge Bob. I actually don't know about the character of Sponge Bob, but this had me doubling over in laughter anyway.

(continue reading...)

June 23, 2020

What I have to admit, from the beginning, is that I know nothing, and yet I know too much. I know nothing, on the basis that I’m poorly read. I have read little of the great western philosophers. But also because the state of our knowledge, in the first quarter of the 21st century, is also very poor, compared to what it will be fifty or a hundred years later. On the basis of what we knew, in the 20th century, we have committed terrible errors and vicious crimes against humanity. On the basis of what we currently know, it is clear that we are destroying our biosphere.

(continue reading...)

Naming and shaming

Owen Jones, in the Guardian says: "History is not being erased by those seeking to topple the statues of slavers and murderous white supremacists; it is being remembered. That is the real sin as far as the protesters’ detractors are concerned. They understandably fear what will happen if historical atrocities committed by the British state enter wider public consciousness."

(continue reading...)

Looking through my father's photo albums

There's something inexpressibly sad about looking through these old albums. My father, as he grew older, no longer looked at them. Most of the people there were already dead - he had simply outlived them all. And now I have outlived my father. But that is not the reason I find it sad. It's more because seeing these images, many of them representing “peak" moments in life like weddings, vacations, and time spent with children, can make the whole of life seem pointless. It's true, of course, that the memories thus enshrined, the majority of them, were not my own. But recently Dorit sent photos of me with my children and I felt something similar. It was as if the persons there - my children and me - were of someone else. I hardly recognized them. Who was that person?

(continue reading...)

Documentary film festival

Spring is usually the time for the DocAviv documentary film festival in Tel Aviv, but this year, of course, there's the pandemic, so they have postponed it till September and, in the meantime, are streaming some films that one can watch from home.

(continue reading...)

Gradually importing my Wordpress blog

I've made a bit of progress in importing my Wordpress blog, though I must admit it is quite a struggle. Although I'm using Emacs for the blog, I'm very new to Emacs. As someone has said, it isn't so much an editor as an engine for the LISP programming language, with many arcane functionalities. You basically program Emacs to work in whatever way you want and do the things that you want. But I'm not a programmer and don't know LISP, so that means trying to figure out what other people have programmed for it and incorporating the useful parts.

(continue reading...)

About

This site follows the general principles of the Small Web and contains the following parts so far:

(continue reading...)

Home Server?

I’ve been thinking more seriously about setting up a home server. Yesterday I looked at the Freedombone, Yunohost and Freedombox projects – these are some of the noteworthy attempts to make a Linux distro specially geared towards home servers. All three are based on Debian Linux and can be run on a variety of hardware. Cheap Raspberry Pis, old computers and other cheap machines are what people normally use. In my case I will be trying from an Eeeepc netbook, since I have one lying around and its electricity needs are a bit smaller than those of a normal laptop. I do have an unused Raspberry Pi, but it’s one of the early models and has only half a gigabyte RAM.

(continue reading...)

Planet of the Humans (again)

Reading George Monbiot’s critique of “Planet of the Humans” I appreciated his ability to sift through the many details, see where the errors lie and then state the ways in which the film is inaccurate, dangerous and damaging to the cause that it is supposedly trying to support. Environmentalists face so many challenges from the political right and those with vested interests who wish to undermine challenges to the continued degradation of the biosphere.

(continue reading...)

Immobile Phone

I’ve almost given up using my mobile phone during the pandemic. I’m at home most of the time anyhow. When, at first, it was announced that the security services would be following our every movement (that seems to have been defeated in court for now) I decided to call it quits. I would leave it turned off except when I absolutely need it. The rest of the time I switched on the follow-me service so that when people call my mobile number the call gets transferred to the house phone. People are often surprised how quickly I answer, because the action of picking up a desk phone’s receiver from its base is usually quicker than locating and then answering a smartphone.

(continue reading...)

2020-05-05-The coronavirus pandemic has hit Japan’s economy hard

Link: https://vikshepablog.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/the-coronavirus-pandemic-has-hit-japans-economy-hard/

(continue reading...)

Foreign workers

“Foreign workers are particularly vulnerable, with a weaker support network and language barriers that prevent them from seeking government help…”

(continue reading...)

"Planet of the Humans"

I watched this movie, (it’s available free on YouTube) by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore, as there have been appeals from the Green movement to take it down and, who knows, maybe they’ll succeed. While the film is, as critics say, no doubt hurtful to efforts to lobby for greener solutions, I think the central thesis of the film is correct, that without addressing the root causes of our environmental problems – overpopulation and unrestrained economic growth – any technological fixes we try to find will not work. (Update: See George Monbiot’s critique of the film.)

(continue reading...)

Human

Human-themovie.org by Yann Arthus Bertrand

(continue reading...)

my-great-grandfather

Before she passed on a few years ago, I was able to collect a number of stories from my mother from her childhood. This is one that she told.

(continue reading...)

Wind-killed trees

After a night of 100 km winds, our nearby pine forest sustained a lot of damage.

Still in Kochi

Still enjoying Fort Kochi, a town that is inherently interesting and enjoyable. Perhaps too many tourists, though thanks to them there are so many guest houses, restaurants and cafes. You can’t have it all ways. But the kind of tourists seems to be wealthier and older than in most places in India, which influences somewhat the prices. There are still enough backpackers to ensure that there are also cheaper places to stay and eat. Prices go as low as 250 Rupees or less for accommodation in dormitories. I would not stay in such places. I have a pleasant, though non-A/C room with attached bathroom. It’s clean and in a good location, close to the main tourist area, but on a quiet street.

(continue reading...)

Kochi

There’s a nice little vegan dhaba around the corner that’s run by two Japanese women. Yesterday I arrived just a little early for lunch and so had to eat there a second breakfast; a kind of muesli that was was more like a bowl of smoothie. There I got talking to a young English guy called Joseph who was in India for the first time. He’d just been writing his diary. I was telling him about the many Malayalis who come to Israel and the Gulf countries. He’d read an article about the mistreatment of foreign workers in Dubai, and said that after reading it he’d decided to cross Dubai off his list of destinations. I said that if I started like that I would need to cross off Israel, where I live, and India, which I often visit, and there would be no end to it. He hadn’t heard a thing about the latest political developments in India and said that he’d stopped watching the news.

(continue reading...)

Enjoying Kochi

I arrived on Monday morning in Kochi, a direct flight on Arkia. The plane was full of middle-aged to elderly Israeli tourists, many of whom appeared to be part of organized tour groups. A few young people; two or three Malayalis returning home. But it was an easy flight. Arkia, unlike what seems to have been the arrangement a few months ago, took a route that skirted Saudia Arabia, heading down the Red Sea as far as Djibouti, then turning east. So it was longer than in could have been. But since it was a night flight, it didn’t make any difference. While on the plane and waiting for departure, I booked a room in a guest house. Although this wasn’t necessary, I think it makes a better impression with the immigration people if one has an address to give upon arrival. The room wasn’t great; full of mosquitoes, and cockroaches emerging from the bathroom grate at night. By the second day I found something more suitable, though still inexpensive.

(continue reading...)

The Sheltering Sky

Reading The Sheltering Sky of Paul Bowles. It’s interesting and well-written. The characters are racist and sexist, of course; I haven’t a clue whether that reflects the views of the author, because we aren’t intended to admire them.

Linux on My Thinkpad

I am pleased with the transition I made from Windows to MX Linux on my Lenovo Thinkpad T470p. It’s a beautiful machine, but much better now that I no longer have to use Windows 10 in it. I am back in the operating environment that I know and love and don’t need to make any compromises. I have used MX Linux previously, on lower-powered and older machines, but although I know that I could easily run a fancier distro under my 32 GB RAM, I wanted something that I already knew would be stable and that I would probably stay with. Initially I tried installing MX with the Gnome 3 and KDE Plasma desktops, then reinstalled and tried Budgie. I liked Budgie best, but it’s a bit buggy, so I’ve gone back to XFCE. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with any of the others, but XFCE is the desktop that MX Linux comes with, and MX seems to play best with it.

(continue reading...)

Creating a buzz: Turkish beekeepers risk life and limb to make mad honey

"History is littered with stories of the psychoactive properties of deli bal, still produced today in the Kaçkar mountains"

(continue reading...)

Seen This

I’ve joined a French microblog community called SeenThis with an active community of bloggers who share interesting articles. It’s on quite a high level. Unlike my French. But it does include a translation engine for when I get stuck, and I’m strictly trawling, rather than actively participating.

Mindfulness and Dreaming

The Guardian has a tag for Mindfulness. It’s https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/mindfulness. There are already 161 results. I just read an article, No tricks. No mantras. I just want to learn how to do nothing: my quest to stay still.

(continue reading...)

Fighting systems from the inside

There’s always a disagreement between those who think it’s better to fight the system from the inside and those who say it’s better to oppose it totally. Some are total conscientious objectors and others, in the Israeli context for example, say that it’s better for humane soldiers to control the checkpoints than racist bastards with no respect for Palestinian lives. The usual contra-argument is that the system corrupts; that it isn’t really possible to maintain humane values within a framework that is toxic.

(continue reading...)

Be careful with the WP plugin “Advanced Excerpt”

I wish I’d avoided this. It removed “read more” links on some posts with more to read, and created other problems. Disabling & deleting did not remove some of the mischief it had produced.

US says Israeli settlements no longer considered illegal

"Declaration marks rejection of 2016 UN resolution that settlements on the West Bank area a 'flagrant violation' of international law"

(continue reading...)

Reality versus our vision of it

So I was thinking that spiritual teachers so often see a version of reality that corresponds with their natures. Describing reality in one manner inevitably leads to the disparagement of alternative ways of describing it, which seem to have a different or opposite vision. It is not so different from the flaw in our everyday vision, according to which we define objects by their function or usefulness to us. In many languages gold or silver have come to mean “money”, while our word “salary” indicates a measure of salt.

(continue reading...)

Dharma as a spiritual practice that can maybe save the planet

The world, the universe, reality, can be said to exist both in diversity and in unity. In diversity it exists as a conglomeration of separate semi-autonomous parts. These semi-autonomous parts are governed by laws of self-preservation. But ultimately they depend upon and are absorbed back into the underlying unity from which they have arisen. The universe of things is intimately connected – no thing exists independently. It is joined not only by what we think of as physical “laws” that govern the way in which the parts interact with each other (gravity, magnetism, etc.) but also at a deeper level, in that all of these “things” are manifestations of the same underlying field of existence/consciousness. Each “thing” is not a partial but, in its essence, a full expression of the underlying field.

(continue reading...)

False views

The universe was never created. Matter, energy and consciousness are one. There is no center, no periphery, no end to time and space. Seeing is interpretation. All statements about ultimate truth, including this one, are a lie. There are multiple ways to apprehend reality But not taking into account the error of our seeing, and not glimpsing the unity in the diversity, Leads us astray.

(continue reading...)

Computer fixed

The Lenovo Thinkpad was fixed and it is working wonderfully. The repairman came and replaced the motherboard, sitting at our kitchen table; a guy about my age, who didn’t want to drink coffee because then he would have to pee en route between destinations. It was a pleasure to watch him work at the computer, with his practiced hands. He had been working for IBM for 20 years. Asked whether IBM is a good company to work for, he said it used to be better, before the 2008 crash.

Cross-platform FOSS apps (again)

Now I’m on MS Windows (see earlier post), because that’s what I acquired with the Thinkpad given or loaned to me by my son. But we seem to be reaching a stage where the actual operating system is not of prime importance.* I mean I had to fiddle quite a bit in order to set up the machine as I wanted it, minimizing the connections with Microsoft and setting up the same software I always use on Linux. I’m beginning to think it’s a useful constraint to go for software that’s available everywhere, on all Linux desktops as well as MS Windows and Mac. Not everything works as well as the non-FOSS options. For example, Foxit Reader (which isn’t FOSS) is much more feature-rich than Evince, which I also have set up. But for everyday tasks, Evince is enough.

(continue reading...)

Lunch was...

home-made hummus/tahini from:

(continue reading...)

Added MC to my Windows toolkit

There seems to be just one cross-platform file-manager: Midnight Commander. I’ve always added it to my Linux installations, but have been lazy about using it. However, learning it well will be knowledge carried over between platforms. So I’ve pinned it to my taskbar.

(continue reading...)

Thoughts on Brexit

The UK has not been my home since childhood. I will probably never go back to live there. Yet my only passport is British, and I might wish to live one day in a European country. Here’s what I think about Brexit.

(continue reading...)

New computer

My son has given me a new computer; one which he purchased himself for coding a couple of years ago. It’s Thinkpad T470P, which comes with a good 7th generation i7-7000HQ processor, 32GB of RAM and an SSD. So it’s the most powerful computer I’ve had. It has one flaw, which prevents him from just selling it on eBay, which is that if the computer is jolted, it turns off. This isn’t a problem if work is being done on a stable surface, but I could imagine that it might be a problem if working on one’s lap or on an airplane. It’s possible to move it around the house in an ‘on’ state, usually, but there’s always the chance that it could turn off. Anyway, that’s not a serious impediment for the way I use a computer. What is more questionable is that the computer comes with Windows 10 Pro, and I don’t want to remove it in case he needs the computer back at some time.

(continue reading...)

The web itself

We had a discussion with Christopher Titmuss the other day, in which he talked about community. Someone raised the issue of “virtual community”, implying that his focus on real community might be a little backward-looking in the light of the advent of virtual communities. They gave the example of people in need being helped by crowd-funding. Titmus in his response focused on the surveillance capitalism aspects of Facebook and popular platforms. He said this was a poor substitute for real community, and that we should not delude ourselves into believing that there is any real community to be found in platforms intended only for the gain of their owners. He said that if he uses these platforms it is only to send announcements.

(continue reading...)

Authoring

Social media and news site talkbacks have ushered in an age where everyone feels a need to comment, discuss, and venture their opinions. A few years ago, one had to be quite upset or sure of one’s authority to go to the trouble of writing “a letter to the editor”, and till today, when we read a book, it’s very unlikely that we will be able to enter into a discussion with the writer. Well-known authors often cherish anonymity, writing under pen-names. Many refuse all public appearances. In any case, the most we can expect is to learn about them through the intermediary of a journalist, who, we hope, will ask the same questions that we have.

(continue reading...)

Richard Stallman's site

I’ve been checking Stallman’s site to see what he will say about his resignation from the Free Software Foundation, as I think it is curious that on the site he mentions his resignation from CSAIL at MIT but nowhere mentions his resignation from FSF. That’s true till today, though a week has passed. I suppose he’ll get around to mentioning it eventually, but it does seem a little odd. For now, there is only the notice on the FSF website to rely upon.

(continue reading...)

"Long Day's Journey into Night"

I saw the Chinese film “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (2018) the other day. It’s very long, and I only just managed to stay awake till the end (my partner didn’t). But still I’m glad I saw it. Visually, it’s among the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Every frame is stunning. In terms of the plot, you just have to accept that it’s all a jumble – it’s deliberately so. Only the 2nd part of the film creates a coherence – but it’s the coherence of a dream, where the brain takes many disconnected elements and somehow weaves them into a story. After the film, it’s helpful to read what the critics say, in this case. The most helpful essay I found was Roderick Heath’s on Film Freedonia. Seeing this film, and thinking about it more deeply, is sure to offer a lot.

Stallman's resignation from MIT and FSF

https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190917-01.html

(continue reading...)

The stuff I use

I’ve been using MX Linux the last couple of years; before that AntiX; before that Puppy Linux and a variety of other distributions.

(continue reading...)

Regarding Stallman

I once went to a Buddhist meditation workshop where the teacher pointed out that if we were there in the room, it meant that we had not attained perfection, and that we still had something to learn. It’s also true that if we still believe ourselves to be here on the planet, living a separate existence, we have something to learn. And what we have to learn is basically that there is an underlying unity upon which everything depends. Our world is an illusion because our perception is false. It is false because it fails to include awareness of the unseen unity that gives life to all that we see. Including ourselves. There are many ways to express this truth, and none of them are going to do it very well, because we are attempting to express the inexpressible. When we do so, contradictions emerge – a Buddhist will say this in a certain way; an Adwaita Vedantin will say it in another way, a shaman in a third way, and to our minds they seem to be contradicting one another. When it comes down to words, there are always going to be contradictions. Words are a vehicle for our thoughts, and thought cannot capture the reality that underlies the thinker and her thoughts.

(continue reading...)

Gene Wolfe on literature's mainstream

“Incidentally, I’d argue that SF represents literature’s real mainstream. What we now normally consider the mainstream—so called realistic fiction—is a small literary genre, fairly recent in origin, which is likely to be relatively short lived. When I look back at the foundations of literature, I see literary figures who, if they were alive today, would probably be members of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Homer? He would certain belong to the SFWA. So would Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare. That tradition is literature’s mainstream, and it has been what has grown out of that tradition which has been labeled SF or whatever label you want to use.”

(continue reading...)

Blogging in the mainstream

I’m not sure how popular blogging is these days; I’ve read about a mass turning away from traditional blogging in favor of Facebook. My own evidence is only anecdotal. I find quite often when going through my bookmarks that blogs I had once visited now lie dormant, neglected and forgotten, or worse, show a 404 error code.

(continue reading...)

At the film festival

This year at the Jerusalem Film Festival we saw three films: “House of Hummingbird”, “Young Ahmed” and “The Invisible Life of Eurydice Gusmao”. All three were special. “House of Hummingbird” was the best; a poignant coming-of-age film where not a lot happens (for its 2 hours and 20 minute running time) but it holds the attention and keeps the eyes moist throughout. For a lot of people, this will have been their favourite film in the festival.

(continue reading...)

Affectation

Twice in 24 hours, I’ve come across news articles that muddle the use of the words effect and affect; today it was CNN: ‘Some protesters say this is their last chance to affect change before 2047, when the “one country, two systems” model that Hong Kong is governed by expires.’

(continue reading...)

Making clothes last longer

The Guardian has a very informative article on making clothes last longer, with many links to related matters, such as buying second-hand, preferred methods for laundering, which fabrics to buy, how to fix clothes, etc. If we think of our three essential needs – food, clothing, shelter – obviously looking after clothes is one of the most important subjects to learn about, as we go further into the climate emergency. Last week they had a related article about an organization that is working with clothing companies to improve the manufacture of jeans.

Gun Island

The novel is true to Ghosh’s more recent swashbuckling style, as well as to his concerns, while at the same time preserving his scholarly core. He has found a way to offer serious ideas in a popular style, and he has always been a magician at storytelling. The product probably wouldn’t work if he took himself too seriously.

Sebald's "The Emigrants"

Sebald’s The Emigrants is the only book, fiction or nonfiction, that I’ve managed to read from beginning to end in recent months. His books always grip me like thrillers, though ostensibly they meander in the most leisurely way, and it’s hard to classify them as either fiction or nonfiction. I suppose they are a kind of artful rendering of the real world.. i know nothing of literary genres, but surely his style is unique.

(continue reading...)

Auroville

I’m in Auroville for a few final days before returning to Israel/Palestine. I’ve been coming here for several years now, though usually for a much longer period. This year I decided to spend the majority of my time in Tiruvannamalai.

(continue reading...)

Pondicherry

Meanwhile in Pondicherry it was only 37 today. I took the moped there from Auroville in the morning to have a new pair of glasses made. I had my current pair made there too, 3 years ago. Eye tests seem to be growing more sophisticated all the time.

(continue reading...)

The Sea of Trees

Auroville has a movie theatre which seems to specialize in films no one ever heard of. But the screenings are free, the place is airconditioned, and sometimes there are real gems. Tonight’s offering was “A Sea of Trees”, which is about a man who goes to commit suicide in a Japanese forest that is a popular suicide spot. A special film.

Munnar and the Tea Museum

In Munnar I had some extra time so, for a lark, visited The Tea Musem, which traces.the origin of the plantations in the Western Ghats from the time of the British to the present time. Today , according to their film, the Kenan Devan Hills Plantations Company is 82% privately owned by the plantation workers themselves, and run with a bottom up management “the first and largest participatory management company in India, with 12,500 employees as shareholders “(2005). They have started to change over some of their plantations to organic teas and are doing research on organic methods. Unfortunately their teas, under the Ripple brand name, are available only in Kerala, according to the sales woman.

(continue reading...)

Appam

Appam – They brought me this for breakfast and it was the first time I’d had it. It’s quite vegan (made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk. South India has a wide range of breakfast possibilities. (https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/appam-recipe-kerala-appam/)

Dave Winer: "You should use Facebook"

Dave Winer, the “proto-blogger” and creator of the RSS news feed system, says that he basically agrees with the criticism of Facebook by the New York Times and other news publishers, but he believes also that their bias is disingenuous, as long as they cannot suggest alternatives.

(continue reading...)