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.
Then I found a quiet spot to read Ibn Arabi and do a bit of writing. It’s a lovely season and was a beautiful day; the wild chrysanthemums are blooming and the thistles are starting to flower too. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera or a phone. Blogging
I have accumulated several issues to handle in the blog, when I find time/feel like doing something about it. I already mentioned making the font sizes larger. Yesterday I found a couple more articles on static blogs, and one of these mentioned Google Lighthouse – a Chrome extension which is an even greater stickler than the tests that I have been using. It discovered a couple of things to improve. the SEO rating – where my blog suffers most – does not interest me, and could never be very high when I have included “No Index, No follow” meta, but there are a couple of other things to take care of. Regarding RSS, either I will learn to write my own, or I will depend on WP, which I have been using for archiving in any case. There may even be a way of using WP solely for RSS, with no front-end blog interface – I will have to check that.
I was looking again at Genesis in Lagrange. Because it is solely text-based, habitually lacklustre textual blogs seem even less inspiring to me when viewed in Genesis. One day I might decide to use it, but not now. Although I’m not a particularly graphic-oriented person, I do find that the likelihood of my reading a blog is somewhat influenced by appearances, and I have an unproven hunch that this is true of many people.
“My stack will outlive yours” https://blog.steren.fr/2020/my-stack-will-outlive-yours/
“My Static Blog Publishing Setup and an Apology to RSS Subscribers” https://tdarb.org/blog/my-static-blog-publishing-setup.html
Browsers
I found a few interesting articles to check out on browsers. One blogger insists that Pale Moon and related UXP browsers are the way to go, for web privacy. I find that I am staying with SeaMonkey except in cases where a website patently won’t work.
Pale Moon Hardening Guide https://blackgnu.net/palemoon-hardening.htmlUXP
UXP Browser Bundle https://albusluna.com/uxp/index.html
UXP Browser https://docs.temenos.com/ndocs/Solutions/Technology/Interaction_Framework/uxp/Browser/uxp/uxp.htm
Signal
I have stopped using Signal, because I don’t trust it; but I see that Russians are trusting it more and more, among other means, to get around censorship.
How Russian citizens evade Putin’s censorship – Protocol https://www.protocol.com/russian-internet-crackdown
Here are a couple of other articles regarding Signal:
Tell HN: iOS Signal eats your disk space | Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30972546
Moxie Marlinspike has stepped down as CEO of Signal – The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/10/22876891/signal-ceo-steps-down-moxie-marlinspike-encryption-cryptocurrency Other interesting links
Leave your shoes outdoors, these scientists say – CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/11/world/shoes-home-contaminants-scn-partner/index.html
I Liked The Idea Of Carbon Offsets, Until I Tried To Explain It https://climateer.substack.com/p/avoided-emissions?s=r