Cinema Sabaya
Went with Y and D to see Cinema Sabaya, which is amazing. I didn’t feel like making the effort to see it and D almost had to drag me along – it would have been insulting as Y had already bought us the tickets. But I was immediately caught up in the film, because it’s simply so well done. A mixed group of Arab and Jewish women take part in a video-photography course. From class to class and exercise to exercise they learn about each other and themselves; where they can relate to one another as sisters and where they cannot agree; where they can support one another and where they shouldn’t press too hard. There are layers on layers of complexity. The film is utterly engaging and unfailingly authentic.
Epicyon
I decided to support Epicyon with a modest monthly donation on Patreon, because I like how this software is developing – and developers, especially those who do not have a big support base, deserve to be supported.
I still find lots of problems there, which will need to be ironed out; however, it’s working for me, and I do enjoy its simplicity. The UI looks better on the phone than on the computer.
That said, there seems to be a worse problem with federation itself. I don’t think this is unique to Epicyon, but may be more prevalent the further you move outside the Mastodon scene. I noticed also with Hubzilla that some posts do not seem to federate well, and I’m seeing it now with Epicyon, because I have duplicated my follow lists from fe.disroot to my epicyon instance. When I examine the timeline I see that my posts on Epicyon rarely reach my account on fe.disroot. I also see that not all of the posts from the people I follow on fe.disroot reach my instance on Epicyon. In other words, I cannot depend upon Epicyon (and probably not on fe.disroot) to see everything that someone has posted.
That’s a problem that does not exist in RSS, for example, which works mostly flawlessly.
My interim conclusion is that (a.) If I really want to know what someone is saying, I need either to subscribe to their RSS feed, or to look directly at their instance. (b.) My instance on Epicyon is still a valuable source – I find many interesting posts there. It’s just that I cannot depend upon it as a single news source.
I have yet to try using RSS feeds on Epicyon itself (which seems to be one of its features). That will be my next experiment.
Israelis in Qatar
It’s funny that Israeli journalists are shocked by the way they are being shunned by the people they try to interview during the World Cup in Doha. And it’s good to see that Palestine still finds lots of support in the Arab world. If not from the leaders, then from the man in the street.
I don’t think that these journalists should be shunned: it would be better to use the opportunity to speak directly to Israelis. A message like “Please tell the people in your country that I will be happy to speak to you once Palestinians can enjoy freedom and dignity in their own country. We Arabs are waiting for you to stop the oppression, the apartheid and the occupation of Palestinian lands. When Israelis learn to treat Palestinians as equals, we will welcome you in our countries as brothers.” Something like that. You can’t just boycott people – you have to adopt a carrot and a stick approach and state the conditions under which the boycott can one day be lifted.
Links
“If you make a dismal prediction and it comes true, it means you’ve failed to have utility. I don’t claim to have all the answers but I do believe that our survival depends on modifying the internet – to create a structure that is friendlier to human cognition and to the ways people really are.”
Israeli Filmmaker’s Critique of ‘The Kashmir Files’ Draws Fierce Backlash – The New York Times
This is marvelous. One guy had the courage to tell the truth*, unlike all the fawning diplomats who were left trying to clean up the mess.
- (I haven’t seen the film so I should say his truth.)