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.

My mom treasured the book and used it a lot – it had everything from her syrup sponge puddings to her Christmas cakes. When I was there one time I scanned the notebook and have now collected all together into a 20-page PDF[1] which I have placed in Hubzilla’s file storage.

If I would use it I’d want to substitute for ingredients like eggs and suet in some of them, but it’s a nice thing to pass down to future generations. I tried in various ways to get the PDF size down, eventually settling on a batch conversion in XnView. Finally I got it down from 162 MB to just under 15.

On the way, I have added a wiki post [4] describing what I like about SeaMonkey.

Zelensky and Palestine

Zelensky is to address Israel’s parliament on Sunday. (The speech will be also broadcast in Tel Aviv’s main square). The mainly Arab Joint List party may boycott it, though Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List says he will attend. He spoke on Israeli TV saying that evidently this was because they (with their communist roots) consider Russia to be a continuation of the former communist state. But Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian who self-exiles in the UK, writes in the Palestine Chronicle [6] why Palestinians might not feel so enthusiastic about Zelensky:

The Ukrainian establishment… is also disturbingly and embarrassingly pro-Israeli. One of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first acts was to withdraw the Ukraine from the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People – the only international tribunal that makes sure the Nakba is not denied or forgotten.

The decision was initiated by the Ukrainian President; he had no sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, nor did he consider them to be victims of any crime. In his interviews after the last barbaric Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in May 2021, he stated that the only tragedy in Gaza was the one suffered by the Israelis.

Thanks to Manuel for sharing a Spanish version of the article.

The Libre Planet conference [7] has some interesting speakers. Unfortunately my attempts to listen to it have resulted in failure so far, due to the buffering lag. Perhaps afterwards I will manage to watch/listen to the recordings. Links