JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-06-15 08:46 am
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Dreaming about 18’ 2x4s and complicated bus rides

I dreamt that I participated in some sort of experiment of local low gravity centered around one point near the Earth’s surface. My participation consisted in hopping on a 18’ 2x4 as if it was a stilt. I had attached a GoPro cam to my end to capture the moment. When all was said and done, my sponsor asked me for the GoPro camera back, but I left the “stilt” back at the experiment site (with GoPro attached), so I had to go back and look for it.

I also dreamt about taking a new bus route to get some new place and I was not very familiar with either the bus stops or the routes. On the way to the first exchange hub, I realized I did not have a copy of the route, was not sure where I had to get off and what was the next bus I had to take. I frantically started to look for the info on my cell phone, but I could not figure out how to activate the keyboard on my keyless phone. All I could do is watch videos and no text field was visible.

Context: My real life 8 hours weekly commute time (half driving, half train riding) might double in the fall. My opinion is that all the social media apps on iOS have gotten worse and worse from a usability POV and I loathed the disappearance of the cellphone keyboard (especially the old-style Blackberry). I am also dealing with a pond fountain pump that needs to be pushed further from shore (usually with a 12' 2x4), a long 12'+ downspout that needs fixed and a tall 10'+ 100% metal smokestack that needs wrapped in some wire mesh at the top to prevent birds from flying inside it and ending up trapped in our wood-burning stove (which has happened more than 3 times already). I was also dealing with a Kafka-esque series of automated email warnings that my (old) work cellphone was outdated with re: software, even though I returned it and I told a human about it with proof when they inquired about it.
JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-06-12 07:00 am

June 9 Open letter to PM Carney about Israel

On this morning’s CBC Metro Morning just after 6:20 am, I heard Alex Neve have a quick chat with David Common about the June 9 open letter to PM Carney. Here are the five priorities mentioned by the letter (with my emphasis on some sections that I think would have more effect long term):

Work actively towards an immediate, permanent ceasefire and the release of all Israeli and Palestinian captives.

Insist on full humanitarian access to Gaza and demand that the Israeli ban on the UN Relief and Works Agency be completely lifted.

Publicly support the role of and fully comply with international courts in holding to account those who violate international law.

Pursue all possible domestic measures, including immediately withdrawing from the free trade agreement between Canada and Israel, imposing sanctions on Israeli leaders, initiating investigations under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, enforcing a full and comprehensive two-way arms embargo, and stripping charitable status from organizations found to be complicit in crimes under international law.

Without further delay, join the 149 states who recognize the State of Palestine and support all efforts for Palestine to be admitted as a full member of the United Nations.


Within the recommendations, this part stood out for me:

request the RCMP to launch investigations into allegations that Canadian citizens and organizations incorporated in and based in Canada have committed, or aided and abetted the commission of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity in Israel or Palestine, including while serving with the Israel Defense Forces, with the specific aim of prosecuting alleged perpetrators;
JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-06-11 09:24 am

Doga, Eminescu, Micle, ochiul tau iubit

Eugen Doga passed away about one week ago. I stumbled upon Ochiul tău iubit, a musical composition of his (on verses of Eminescu written for his beloved Veronica Micle) as sung by soprano Valentina Nafornița: official video (2017; with over-produced framing story that does not match the song which is repeated twice with terrible English captions), 2017 (live in Leningrad), 2018 or 2023 (live in Chișinău).

Ochiul tău iubitYour beloved eyes

Ochiul tău iubit
Plin de mângâieri
Dulce mi-a lucit
Până ieri.

Oare te pierdui
Pe acest pământ
Fără ca să-mi spui
Un cuvânt?

Luna în zadar
Bate în ferești
Și mă întreabă iar
Unde ești?

Ar luci pe zid
Până ce te culci
Până ți se închid
Ochii dulci.

Chipul tău frumos
Să-l privesc întreg
Cu atât ponos
Să mă leg.

Să am parcă în vis
Al cele vederi
Care mi-a surâs
Până ieri.

De te-ai potrivit
Astei rugăminți
Fericiți vom fi
Și cuminți.

Zână din păduri,
Umbră din povești,
Glasul tău cel bun
Unde ești?

Unde ești?

Your beloved eyes
Full of caresses
Sweetly shone on me
Until yesterday.

Did I lose you
On this earth
Without telling me
A word?

The moon in vain
Knocks on panes
And asks me again
Where are you?

It would shine on the wall
Until you go to bed
Until your
sweet eyes close.

Your beautiful face
To look at it all
So little
To tie me up.

To have as if in a dream
Of that sight
That smiled at me
Until yesterday.

If you had agreed
To this request
We would be happy
And good.

Fairy from the forests,
Shadow from folk tales,
Your good voice
Where are you?

Where are you?

Here is another version of Eminescu's poem.
JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-06-09 03:13 pm

Chris Hedges on Israel and latest US witch hunt

Ho, ho, ho! Chris Hedges has an interesting take on how Israel and its Gaza war is covered in US along with the latest US witch hunt. Excerpts:

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress.

[...]

Of course, appeasement does not work. This witch hunt, whether under the Biden or Trump administration, was never grounded in good faith. It was about decapitating Israel’s critics and marginalizing the liberal class and the left. It is sustained by lies and slander, which these institutions continue to embrace.

[...]

Media outlets regularly publish articles and OpEds uncritically accepting claims made by Zionist students and faculty. They fail to clarify the distinction between being Jewish and being Zionist. They demonize student protesters. They never bothered reporting with any depth or honesty from the student encampments where Jews, Muslims and Christians made common cause. They routinely mischaracterize anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian liberation slogans and policy demands as hate speech, antisemitic, or contributing to Jewish students feeling unsafe.

[...]

The New York Times, in a decision worthy of George Orwell, instructed its reporters to eschew words such as “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Palestine, according to an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. It discourages the very use of the word “Palestine” in routine text and headlines.

[...]

In December 2023, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul sent a letter to university and college presidents who failed to condemn and address “antisemitism,” and calls for the “genocide of any group.” She warned that they would be subjected to “aggressive enforcement action” by New York State. The following year, in late August, Hochul repeated these warnings during a virtual meeting with 200 university and college leaders.

[...]

“We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us,” gloats Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed…it doesn’t interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares in the world,” Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, told Israel’s Channel 12 on May 16.

The perpetuation of the fiction of widespread antisemitism, which of course exists but which is not fostered or condoned by these institutions, coupled with the refusal to say out loud what is being live streamed to the world, has shattered what little moral authority these institutions and liberals had left. It gives credibility to Trump’s effort to cripple and destroy all institutions that sustain a liberal democracy.

[...]

Harvard, like Columbia, the media, the Democratic Party and the liberal class, misread power. By refusing to acknowledge or name the genocide in Gaza, and persecuting those who do, they provided the bullets to their executioners.

They are paying the price for their stupidity and cowardice.
JMA-PSOS ([personal profile] ionelv) wrote2025-06-05 04:04 pm

GMO mosquitoes with serial numbers: half truths conspiracy

Apparently, people are freaking out about GMO musquitoes with serial numbers since 2022. France24 has an excellent debunker video. Tldr: Some lab APHIDS might have had numbers painted on their back. Bill Gates is funding a World Musquito Program to create GMO musquitoes as vectors AGAINST diseases and even the CDC has a page about them.