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.

On the other hand, our individual solutions have very little effect, compared to those of the big companies and climate criminals. What Greta Thunberg points out in her book is that despite the relative insignificance of small individual decisions, when they join together to form a mass movement, such as a mass boycott, they count for more - so we need to be public about them.

But being public about anything reminds me of past instances of moral hypocrisy. So, when someone tells me they are flying to Prague or Paris for three days for a "short getaway", it's hard for me to say I'm not sure that's the right thing to do during a climate crisis. And I can't say I'm going to set a good example by flying less, or not at all, because that's not something I can be sure I'll do, in a country where the only way to reach Europe or the rest of Asia is by flying. So I keep quiet and don't say anything, which means again, that whatever I do has virtually no effect.

The hamsin is supposed to let up by this evening or tomorrow. It's currently 41°C outside. A hamsin is actually a kind of sirocco, which Bedouin colourfully describe as issuing from the mouth of hell. Yesterday afternoon, we were sitting on the balcony of La Brasserie by Mary's Well in Ein Kerem when a sudden blast of wind surged up the valley, felling huge, stone-mounting umbrellas, which in turn gave one of the diners a nasty blow to the head and toppled her to the floor. She was OK. The restaurant owner apologized profusely and offered the couple a meal on the house. He said he'd been there for 11 years and this was the first time it had ever happened.

On Thursday evening Magdalena organized a musical performance at her photo studio in a nearby village. There was only room for about 20 people but we all squeezed in, to hear Marwan Halabi, a young Druze singer-songwriter with a sublime, amazing voice. Accompanying himself, just with a guitar, he sang some of his own compositions; some were traditional sufi songs, and one or two Egyptian. Most were in classical or spoken Arabic, with a couple in Hebrew. He can be found on Spotify and SoundCloud - I include a SoundCloud link because that's the service I usually prefer - worth a listen!

Links

16 year-old girl murdered in Delhi street; no one even bothered to call the police

There were so many people when the murder took place, but no one helped the girl. Even if they would have shouted, maybe the girl could have survived"

‘Farming good, factory bad’, we think. When it comes to the global food crisis, it isn’t so simple - George Monbiot

Real solutions to our global food crises are neither beautiful nor comforting. They inevitably involve factories, and we all hate factories, don’t we? In reality, almost everything we eat has passed through at least one factory (probably several) on its way to our plates. We are in deep denial about this, which is why, in the US, where 95% of the population eats meat, a survey found that 47% wanted to ban slaughterhouses.

The answer is not more fields, which means destroying even more wild ecosystems. It is partly better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories. Among the best options, horror of horrors, is a shift from farming multicellular organisms (plants and animals) to farming unicellular creatures (microbes), which allows us to do far more with far less.

I have put Monbiot's book Regenesis on my reading list.

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.

My strategy of interacting very little, posting only sparingly, keeping my follows off-record and, in my bio, discouraging people from following, seems to be working quite well :-)

I get that Mastohost (which is hosting my new instance) is a poor model for the Fediverse: too much concentration of instances on a single server. Personal instances, such as on Mastohost, is still much better than for everyone to join a few big instances, which then eventually go down, just as the mastodon.technology instance is about to do. The owner/developer of Mastohost has committed not to hosting more than 25% of all Mastodon instances. I think a better plan would be consider not the the total number of instances, but the total number of users. A quarter of all instances already sounds like a large amount, but if those instances are large, it could translate to the majority of users on the Fediverse. It's also true that lowering the bar (of technical know-how and expense) is what will get more people to run their own instances, which is what the Fediverse needs. Whereas the administrators of large instances can be expected to have greater technical know-how.

The first preference should be to get individuals to run personal instances from home. But the second preference should be to encourage the creation of many small instances. A way to achieve that could be the model of small co-ops renting space on green VPSs. There would be sharing of ownership, administration, costs and maintenance, together with restriction to a handful of users. That way, there is not too great a concentration of instances on one server, and if an administrator quits, the instance can still continue.

We download and stream a lot of video content, but personally I can never watch more than a couple of movies or TV shows per week. Beyond than that just feels like overload. Even if I'm bored I won't watch more any more. I read, surf the web, listen to podcasts or listen to music. So I haven't watched anything new in the last few days. I tried watching "The Worst Person in the World", but it didn't hold my interest. I watched the latest episode in "The House of Dragon". But without great enthusiasm.

I am still really enjoying SoundCloud. In Israel/Palestine it isn't possible to pay for a SoundCloud subscription, which means that much of the mainstream content isn't available, but, on the other hand, I noticed while in Portugal and Spain that it wasn't possible to listen to my usual content without taking out a paid subsciption. So this works very well for me, because I practically never listen to mainstream western music, and I'm amazed by the almost infinite supply of free content. I would never be able to discover so much wonderful music without a service like SoundCloud. It's like entering a secret world with musicians that few people have ever heard of.

Currently listening to the station of Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian musician. Beautiful tracks from musicians from the Middle East and around the world.

I'm reading Ville Triste by Patrick Modiano. I'm reading in French on the Kobo. It's helpful to be able to click on an unknown word and get the translation. Modiano's books are fairly short, which also suits me, as I'm a slow reader (even in English). I love Modiano's prose and the atmosphere that he is able to establish. This book departs a little from the kind of story that he usually tells, but the familiar elements are there. Did he deserve his Nobel? Sure, why not.

The stories that most interested me were:

The revelation of Liz Truss's influences though I haven't been able to verify the facts of that story.

Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt’s Cop27 masquerade

Although the venue is much less important than the success of the meeting.

Pesticide use around world almost doubles since 1990, report finds

It isn't a pretty picture. Not getting better. The EU is not living up to its commitments to limit dangerous pesticides either.

Saudi Arabia sentences US citizen to 16 years over tweets critical of regime

When you take an average modern nation-state, which is already embarassed and touchy about the exposure of its dirty laundry (see under Assange) and you add to that an autocratic leader who, either for political expediency or due to severe psychological issues, is wary of the least opposition, you get a mixture that guarantees that virtually every citizen lives in fear of criticizing the regime, or maybe even thinking bad thoughts about it.

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.

Y found music by an interesting artist couple - he sent the link to Spotify but I also found them on SoundCloud: Santi & Tuğçe - I am listening on headphones to their stuff just now, and it is nicely blocking out the lousy music from a hinna party taking place next door, as well as the sounds from the TV. There is so much good and interesting music that is being produced. I don't know how the artists are making their money, when we can listen to it for free, but the variety is so varied that something must be happening right.

It seems that I made yet another mistake with my server while trying to get Friendica working the other day - the support person claimed that I'd deleted the ETC directory. All I know is that I had attempted to get Filezilla working better, and was trying different configurations - then suddenly nothing worked. I deleted the server, and then created another to try again with Epicyon - this time with nginx. Meanwhile, I've put the blog and the photos back on Fastmail.

I so love thorns.

Ibrahim Maalouf - Red & Black Light (Live Au Zénith Nantes Métropole, 2016) https://soundcloud.com/yecine-khmir-1/ibrahim-maalouf-red-black-light-live-au-zenith-nantes-metropole-2016 Live performance, with audience participation - warm atmosphere.

Palestinian baby dies after treatment delayed by Israeli blockade of Gaza https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/01/palestinian-baby-dies-after-treatment-delayed-by-israeli-blockade-of-gaza

‘Publicly, Israel is a boycotted enemy. But behind the scenes, a great deal happens’ - Israel News - Haaretz.com https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-when-mideast-states-treated-israel-as-their-secret-mistress-1.10711812 Missed opportunities, leading to unnecessary wars.

Tumblr Is Everything - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/02/tumblr-internet-legacy-survival/621419/ Reading articles like this makes me realize how ignorant I am of web culture and history.

Viktor Orbán wins fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/viktor-orban-expected-to-win-big-majority-in-hungarian-general-election Countries should have laws to prevent any candidate - from left or right - from running multiple times.

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.

On the TV news they keep interviewing Ukrainians on how they are feeling. Probably the majority of them understand the issues differently, and with greater subtlety than the average western viewer.

On SoundCloud I have been listening to Sufi musicians like Farida Busemann. Some of it is a little too ethereal, but it is appropriate some of the time. A part of me cleaves toward bhakti; it's just that I'm constantly being put off by the religious frameworks in which devotion is usually caught-up. Sufism suits me because it has always played the outsider; sometimes tolerated or co-opted, but never really embraced by formal religion; and nowadays positively despised by Islamic puritans like the Wahhabis. It's also a form of devotion that finds common ground with people of completely different religions, such as Hindus. I think that some of us may be Sufis without even calling ourselves as such, without even knowing that we are so. Going back to music, I think there are songs that embrace the spirit of Sufism without properly being Sufi. I'm just now listening to Zara and Djivan Gasparyan's wonderful rendition of the Armenian folk song Dle Yaman. Garage Philosophy

In car garages you really meet the essence of Israel's existential realities. They are places where Arabs and Jews come together and achieve a shaky interaction and cooperation. Often the Jewish mechanics or owners will speak fluent Arabic, though most of them are also right wing. The other day when I visited one to get a new battery for my daughter's car, I was treated to an unexpected harangue about "left wingers". The garage owner happened to use the word "Kushi" in describing someone. It's equivalent to the N word in English (though in Biblical times, Kush was an ancient African kingdom). He said he had no problem about using the word "kushi" whatever people might say about that. He went on to "explain" related phenomena, like how Americans can't even say "he" nowadays but have to use "they" instead, and how this was all leftwing bullshit. Of course, he obviously took me for one such American, though that was never stated, and he said everything in a friendly way, as if only fools would disagree with such obvious truths. I just muttered the expected words and picked up my credit card and receipt. And now he has lost my custom; I'll never go back there - not because his opinions differ from those with other such people I need to deal with, but because he made the mistake of talking plainly, to a customer who had only came to get some work done on the car, rather than to benefit from his enlightened views on unrelated matters.

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.

But there are others who refuse to see the experience that comes to us unlooked for as extraneous to purpose and admit it within their purview. Seen in a certain way, experience is no longer distraction but essential to life. The trick is to find the essence in experience, rather than to resist it as "distraction".

If one is following a path, there are are two conditions to the above: One, not to "look for" or deliberately to put oneself within the field of distraction. Two: not to grow attached to what comes to one along the way. This is the territory of the lotus eaters", in the story of Odysseus, and the "linger on, thou art so fair" in the Faust story.

Be that as it may, I have been thinking today, after spending a few hours in trying to set up remote access to my home server, that although we have many ways that we can use our time, we need to be conscious of time as a precious resource, and to discriminate between the essential and the non-essential. And that means defining one’s goals. It’s a consideration when it comes to the choice of the systems that we use. The aim should be simplicity and flow.

I don’t think I want to deal any more in my writings with technical matters, but to deal with the essence discovered from them. Instead of detailing my technical discoveries, I will simply put them into practice, after trying different options.

I am finding SoundCloud to be a real source of joy; there is so much beauty to be discovered there, and this springs from the creative well-springs of humanity.

משרד הביטחון קיצץ בשני שליש את מספר המדינות שחברות הסייבר יכולות למכור להן | כלכליסט https://www.calcalist.co.il/calcalistech/article/sjnu1zhof

Important clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist https://protonmail.com/blog/climate-activist-arrest/

Friday FOSS fest: Franz, RamBox, Pidgin and more • The Register https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/19/friday_foss_fest/

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.

I don’t feel like hearing any mainstream western songs, somehow, so most of what I’m listening to are "organic house", "downtempo"* or electronic versions of ethnic music from around the world. And sometimes the original music, without any synthesized sounds. "Quieter than Silence" by Mehdi Aminian and Mohamad Zatari continues to satisfy – I like it more each time I listen to it.

Note: It’s with a bit of hesitation that I write "organic house", "downtempo", etc., because I actually have very little understanding of what the terms mean. They are just words that appear next to the titles. My interest in such kinds of music is quite recent. And anyway, I have little understanding of music in general. I only know what I like. And that’s subject to change.

Just now, I’m listening to Jose Solano.