Urushiol

Poison flowers

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.

Music

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.

Epicyon

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.

Thorns

I so love thorns.

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.

I wonder about the mentality of people who formulate such questions. Israel is a fairly open, western-style democracy (for Jews). It isn’t ruled by an autocrat and isn’t a place where the violent overthrow of the government might be seen as more humane than preserving the status quo. But, even in this blessed national oasis of democracy, it would, for example, be an “extremist view” to hold that the Israeli army regularly commits “war crimes” in Gaza. The idea that Palestinians have a moral right to resist the occupation, such as by throwing stones at tanks, would be “extremist”. Even to express humane, democratic values would in some case be “extremist”. One could be convicted of incitement for expressing such views.

And what of Britain itself? Those climate activists who, the other day, broke the windows of media outlets for producing feel-good stories about the recent heat wave – “Enjoy the sunshine, carry on as usual” – would obviously be seen as dangerous extremists in the minds of those who created those forms. Maybe they should be expelled from the UK? – if they happen not to have UK citizenship they probably could be – but if so, they might not be allowed into other countries that express a similarly restrictive mentality and who produce similar visa forms.

The visa costs around £350. There’s another £50+ for a meeting to provide biometric data (where one pays to enjoy the privilege of being fingerprinted and photographed). Every additional service, such as help with uploading forms, asking procedural questions, even getting an SMS to inform you that your passport has been returned to you, carries an additional price tag. Calling someone to ask questions costs 69p per minute. I would personally have strong doubts about seeking a temporary work permit to assist in a UK charity if I had to go through such a process. I would probably conclude that the UK is a paranoid and exploitive nation undeserving of my support, though it might be badly in need of all the help it can get.

Blogging

Read Write web

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.

I think that whatever system one uses – and there are so so many today – it should preferably be frictionless; both for composing and for editing. That should be obvious, but not all blogging platforms are easy to use. WordPress, one of the most popular, still makes it quite hard to blog, presenting many confusing options that must be daunting to newbies. Facebook is also not frictionless; especially if one wants a post to be formatted in a certain way. And editing after the post has been made is sometimes difficult or impossible. There are some platforms that don’t allow the editing of posts, or seem to frown upon it, for the reason that reactions are sometimes made to an earlier version of the post. The problem could be solved, in the case of social media, if the platform would obligate mentioning that a post has been edited and allowing the perusal of earlier versions.

Besides frictionless composing and editing, a blogging system should respect users by making it easy to do backups and export data. WordPress is okay with this, provided that one uses plugins. I have not lost any of my blog posts made to WordPress and have been able to move posts from one server to another. Hubzilla and Zot based systems have nomadic identities, so that it is possible to move easily to another server or even use two identities simultaneously. Where I have lost Hubzilla posts I have only myself to blame. Fediverse servers go down all the time, because they are run by individuals rather than big corporations. One needs to be ready for this to happen and, outside of Zot, it is difficult or impossible to remain in control of one’s content and social media contacts.

This static blog under emacs orgmode maintains local plain text and html versions of every post. The Blazeblog sytem I was using previously created a separate directory for each post and made the post the index file of the directory. I found that aspect rather cumbersome and prefer to have plain text versions of all the files, kept locally in a single directory.

There may be ways to improve this emacs system. When one day I grow more knowledgable about the system I might add excerpts and other features, assuming that I stay with the same system.

There is still no way to make comments. The only time that I used comments was when I was using the Hubzilla to WordPress cross-post plugin, which allowed the transfer of comments between the two systems. I stopped using it becasue there were certain unrelated issues with the plugin, related to formatting.

I am still deliberating on the issue of whether to use the obvious possibilities of distribution of posts through links in the fediverse or Twitter but, in any case, my posts are not very appealing; I’m blogging mainly for my own pleasure.

One tendency that I want to avoid is the cultism that goes with many of the platforms, particularly alternative systems like Mastodon, Hubzilla and Gemini. I do not want my posts to be read or taken as evidence simply of allegiance to a given platform. If we are not posting to “walled gardens,” (which at least in some cases is actually a good idea) we are netizens of the open web, an anarchic and heterogeneous conglomerate. The particular method we use to post to it is irrelevant: we use whatever platform we find to be convenient or aligns with our concerns.

Auroville

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.

The atmosphere of conflict has continued during the intervening months with the attempt by the secretary and chairman of the Auroville Foundation to replace the existing management teams with new people and to sack employees who had held key positions for decades. Workers were locked out of their offices, computers confiscated, hard-drives erased and the entire internal communications disrupted. Email accounts were compromised, FIRs were taken out against previous committee members, meaning they were threatened with jail; visa renewal recommendations were cancelled, and there were orders to put a stay on new decision-making.

Although it’s hard from the outside to understand all the nuances and intricacies, let alone the justifications, for all this, obviously the township is in crisis and the residents must be anxious about the viability of their continued existence in Auroville. I don’t envy them.

From the outside, the processes there seem to parallel what is happening in India as a whole. Under the guise of improving “law and order” and internal security, there is the attempt to undermine democracy, establish authoritarian rule, stifle opposition, etc.

Whatever justifications can be brought in in the case of a nation, this kind of behaviour is obviously not the way to advance a community that is based on spiritual values.

And yet in-fighting and bickering has been there from the beginning in Auroville. It seems that the community has not developed strategies to overcome this. Few spiritual and religious groups do, in fact manage to mitigate human failings through spiritual practices or community-building. Krishnamurti ridiculed the hypocrisy of these efforts.

If one is an aspirant caught in such a hostile spiritual environment, the only way to preserve one’s morale and sadhana may be to stay clear of all this negativity. But then, the question arises why one would stay in such an environment if it is not providing the mutual support that was the whole reason for establishing the community and for remaining there? It is probably better to strike out on one’s own.

Sadhaka Dharma

I think that a sadhaka should not have any truck with the politics of a country. He must, of necessity, live in some country because that is the way human society is arranged. He is entitled to choose the country of his habitation, but, having done so, should remain detached from the affairs of state and be, as it were, indifferent to its political processes and the machinations of its rulers.

For peace of mind, that has to be the way. There are responsibilities that fall to the general population but not to the sadhaka. I think the sadhaka needs to be aware of what’s happening but at the same time, must remain emotionally detached, as well as intellectually disengaged.

This is an elitist way of looking at the issue, perhaps. Certainly not everyone can enjoy the luxury of living in this way. It is to be hoped that citizen involvement will remain strong, in order to safeguard democracy and human rights. A sadhaka who exempts himself in this way lives a somewhat parasitical life, just as he is parasitical in some other ways. Nevertheless, the rules are different for a sadhaka.

Gardening

Hubzilla

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.

Lately I’ve been thinking that WordPress still offers me the best ability to create websites, among the platforms that I understand. But my indecisiveness is prodigal.

Gardening

I just bought the chain saw attachment for my Stihl combi tool. It’s quite impressive. I have always been scared of chain saws, and like the idea of keeping the chain on the other end of a rod; as with the hedge trimmer.

So I took the new toy out for a spin this afternoon. All went well, though, due to my lack of experience, there was one occasion when I got the thing stuck in a tree trunk, which is awkward when the machine is at shoulder height. I had to call for D and eventually she came. While she held it, I managed to climb up on the roof and push the trunk away from from the blade. I never thought to disengage the machine end from the chain saw attachment; that would have made it a little less awkward to handle.

Anyway, the machine did quite an impressive amount of work, lopping off high branches and weed trees. The expense already seems worthwhile.

The outdoors

There are less mosquitoes this year; possibly because we haven’t set up drip irrigation to the plants around the balcony. I’ve been sitting outside, and although I put on some Odomos, it wasn’t needed. There hasn’t been a single mosquito buzzing around me. It’s really pleasant outside in the evening, during the hours when no breeze enters the house and the walls continue to radiate heat absorbed during the daytime.

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.

I began by considering solutions like Neocities. But actually I have had my fill of shared hosting providers, and economically it absolutely makes sense to prefer a VPS. I have done it a couple of times before over the years. The one I have now picked is Kamatera – mainly because I saw they are cheap and have servers in Israel. Their lowest cost is currently $4, which gives a server with 1 MB of RAM + 20 GB of file space. That should be more than enough for my modest needs, and the cost is about the same as what the phone company charges for a permanent IP.

At Kamatera it was possible to use a server image that already included a LAMP installation and Phpmyadmin, so that was convenient. For now I need only PHP.

I learned a new word today, “KISS” – someone coined it to refer to simplicity as a software principle, and that well describes what I’m trying to do: to always choose the simplest solution and as close as possible to what I, with my lack of tech knowhow, can have a hope of getting my head around. It certainly won’t always mean using the best tool for the job, but will be the closest to what I understand. Modern languages and advanced frameworks will often get the job done in a better way. But on various occasions I have had difficulty with some of these. Sometimes there will be dependency problems, or inconsistencies between versions that are difficult to sort out. So, whereas the software application itself may be elegant and simple, the framework that supports it may be complex.

In general, whenever a software developer boasts about his product’s beautiful simplicity and ease of use, I have learned to take that with a lot of salt. The 2-minute installation will take hours to get working because he didn’t factor in my stupidity, evidently.

We are living in an age – fortunately – where we can create amazing, beautiful websites with almost no technical skills. And we can opt into networks like Tumblr or Blogger or WordPress where everything is done for us. My attempts to avoid these platforms look stuborn, almost ludicrous by comparison, and the results are unimpressive, old-fashioned and primitive. I spend hours to obtain something that can be done in a few seconds otherwise.

But on the other hand, without being a trained programmer or developer, I am doing things my own way and am closer to being in control of the tools that I use. That’s the extent of my aspiration. And hopefully to do some nice things with these tools.

I don’t want to be too much of a Luddite (I know, that’s a term that is wrongly used) Wired has an interesting article about OpenAI and the growing use of artificial intelligence in writing code. It’s a pity that Microsoft got their clutches on it, but I can really see how this could change everything. It has potential like the Internet, like Guttenberg, to empower ordinary people. On the other hand, in trying to explain its value to my wife, I was unable to come up with many good examples to prove my point.