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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • It is complex and yet it isn’t. There are understandable psychological and historical causes for the current state. It is not black and white. But nothing is. We just want to make things to fit nice boxes.

    If you want to understand it, you need to understand radicalization and how it applies to MENA including Israel. Actions do not come from the vacuum and people are messy. Every person has an agenda.

    At the same time, in this specific situation, there are what according to well-established parameters amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. While there is terrorism committed by Palestinian groups, these crimes are largely committed by Israel. It might be that if the power imbalance were a little less we would see similar actions from the Palestinian state. But it is not.

    Just in the last week, we have seen apartheid, ethnic cleansing, what could be genocide, collective punishment, embargo and cutting vital supplies to the area you are occupying. This list is not exhaustive. This is univocally wrong.

    The most complex part is not understanding it. The most complex part is solving it.









  • In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.

    Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.

    I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.

    I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.







  • Things either need to be really, really bad and people are done or we need to find what they care about more than being comfortable. I was not always politically active. It took until my late twenties and seeing how bad things can really be. I have been an activist on the human rights front for about a decade. And it only happened because I really saw the issues in my country and continent. But while my family knows as I make sure they know, and some kind of care, it is not important enough for them.

    But weirdly. My country had literal neo-Nazis as a minister and everyone with a brain thinks we still do as bids of the same feather and so on. And suddenly my leftist but not active friends became active, online and outside that. It is weird when I have been warning that this is the road we are on for the better part of a decade it took it to happen for people to take action. Thankfully we are still solidly democratic so this might work. At least for a few years.





  • Pissing off entire nation state or at least people in power in that nation is unfortunately easy these days. And while the average person usually doesn’t run into these issues the shrinking spaces and criminalization of civil society even in countries you wouldn’t think are that far gone are at the level that surprising people might run into these issues. There are also some situations where you don’t need to piss off entire governments to get a lot of data from a person. Tech-savvy abusive spouse might be enough.

    We are not really disagreeing here. I just think that we need to be open about the vulnerabilities and strengths of software. The security of Signal and Matrix are absolutely great especially compared to things like WhatsApp. But they are not 100% secure. Very little is.


  • Of course use Signal or Matrix but please don’t think that makes your messaging entirely impenetrable. I am not saying their end-to-end encryption has been breached. But a compromised device is a compromised device. Signal might be secure at least for now, but is your keyboard?

    We do live in times of zero-click spyware and while the general public doesn’t necessarily have to worry about things like Pegasus atm, it is still used increasingly and not just against people who break the law.

    I do my best, although I do fail to be up to date every once in a while, to stay as secure as possible, but to think any communication is entirely secure is not a good policy.