The exiled chief rabbi of Moscow says Jews should get out while they can. [The Guardian/Stephen Burgen]
Pinchas Goldschmidt says that, historically in Russia and the USSR, when things go bad, the government scapegoats Jews.
Jews have been fleeing Russia for a century. In 1926, there were 2.7 million Jews in the USSR, 59% of whom were in Ukraine. “Today only about 165,000 Jews remain in the Russian Federation out of a total population of 145 million.”
My own grandparents bugged out of Eastern Europe around 1900. Poland on my father’s side, Lithuania on my mother’s.
Also:
Ukraine has a long history of antisemitism from pogroms at the end of the 19th century to facilitating Nazi massacres during the second world war. The most notorious of these was the murder of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv in 1941.
Given this history, Goldschmidt said it was remarkable that Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who made no secret of his Jewishness, was elected Ukraine’s president with more 70% of the vote.
That fact made a nonsense of Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine was being governed by neo-Nazis, the rabbi said. “Show me another country that is in the grip of Nazis where the Jewish community is thriving.
“However, I don’t know how Jewish the president [Zelenskiy] feels. He plays the Jewish card to ask Israel for help.”
I imagine Zelensky’s Jewishness is much the same as my own. I am not observant, nor do I have a religious preference in my associations. But am I Jewish? Hell, yeah.
Goldschmidt also noted that while Russia’s Jews faced an uncertain future, antisemitism was on the rise in what had long been seen as a Jewish sanctuary, the US.
In 2018, a gunman killed 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Last year the Anti-Defamation League recorded a record 2,717 antisemitic incidents in the US, ranging from assault and harassment to vandalism.
“For many years, Jews in the US believed that it was an exception, that whatever happened in Europe and other countries could never happen there,” Goldschmidt said. “But over the past three years there have been more attacks on Jews there than in Europe.
I have not been alarmed by the rise of anti-Semitism in the US. It still seems like a lunatic fringe. But perhaps I should be alarmed.
Musk’s Twitter cuts include a data center, janitors, and toilet paper [NYTimes/Kate Conger, Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac]
With people packed into more confined spaces, the smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors, according to four current and former employees. Bathrooms have grown dirty, these people said. And because janitorial services have largely been ended, some workers have resorted to bringing their own rolls of toilet paper from home.
Cal Newport: On Quiet Quitting.
“Every generation reaches a point where they begin to think more critically about what role, exactly, work should play in their life.”
I’m still working on that. I’ve always been a late bloomer.
Ian Welsh: How To Relax, Change & Be Free.
“… everyone is acting according to conditioning: religious, social, family, school, philosophical, etc… They’re in chains, and they regard those chains as themselves.”
Ben Dreyfuss: Romanian Cops Did Not Find Andrew Tate Because Of His Greta Thunberg Video: “This is a lesson in media failure and misinformation.”
This seems like a black-funny story until you read the charges against Tate. He”s not just your average MRA grifter. He seems like a monster and predator who should never breathe free air again.
Andrew Tate Arrested for Human Trafficking in Romania After Pizza Box Gave Away His Location. [Laura Bassett/Jezebel] “A video the men’s rights activist tweeted in response to Greta Thunberg’s burn about his small dick energy reportedly led authorities right to him.”
Four days after Elon bragged about unplugging an important server rack, Twitter went down hard. — Mike Masnick at Techdirt @mmasnick@mastodon.social
The woke mind virus strikes again!
“I remember reading an interview with a minister of an African state who said approximately, ‘every time a western minister visits us we get a lecture, every time a Chinese official visits we get a new hospital.’”
— Ian Welsh: A Map Showing The Two Main Geopolitical Blocs
Religious upbringing is great for kids, even for those of us who find ourselves nonbelievers, agnostics, or atheists. It helps a person figure out the world and cosmos and their place in it.
Talented trans woman writer Charlie Jane Anders @charliejane@wandering.shop remembers her time as a choirboy. She saw the best and worst of religion—“complicated and messy.”
Do you set aside time every day to unplug?
Yesterday I read this post by Craig Mod about how he spends a big part of his day just walking around, unplugged, not connected to the Internet or listening to anything on earphones.
The Sorta Kinda Life Changing Bliss of Walking Solo
It made me think about how I seem to be looking at screens or listening to podcasts almost all the time1, and how maybe it would be better if I just … not.
In particular, I thought about how lately I’m listening to many podcasts out of habit, rather than real interest.
So I set aside a half-hour of my walk yesterday to just … walk. I took the AirPods out of my ears and listened to nothing but ambient sound and my own thoughts.
Do you set aside time in your day to unplug?
Or does your life naturally encourage unplugging? I imagine if you’re working with your hands in an activity requiring thought, you can’t be listening to audiobooks at the time.
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Phrased that way, it seems shocking. ↩︎
Crypto craziness craps out — and about time too. By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (@sjvn@mastodon.social) at The Register.
At a recent fintech open source fintech conference, crypto was only mentioned in passing. “People would talk about it in the same way you’d talk about your little brother’s latest embarrassing TikTok video.”
From where I sit, this is the slow but sure fall of what has always been one gigantic Ponzi scheme. There has never – never – been any real value in crypto. Yes, I know all the arguments about how fiat currencies have no intrinsic value either. You know what, though? If I go to the grocer, I can buy milk, bread, and butter with my fiat dollars or pounds. Dogecoin? Garlicoin? Trump NFT trading cards? I don’t think so.
…
At least with famous financial scams of the past, such as the Dutch Tulip Bubble and the 2008 real estate crash, you had tulip bulbs and houses for your money when all was said and done. With crypto, you’ll be left with nothing at all except meaningless, pointless, valueless blockchains.
I’ve been saying that bit about the tulip bubble for years. At least you had tulips.
The Sorta Kinda Life Changing Bliss of Walking Solo. By Craig Mod @craigmod@mastodon.social
Folks seem scared of solitude but solitude is a superpower when used well. Alone, in your basement, it breeds anomie, but out in the world, moving through the world, step after step, clear goal in mind, I’d argue that a solo walk during which you are engaged — paying attention, with your phone turned off, no headphones, no podcasts, no escape routes — is the quickest way to elevate a human. Basement solitude — isolated without serendipity, static, stagnant, stuck with your face in a screen, manipulated by the algorithms — is the death of the soul. The solo walk outdoors, in the air, beneath the sun, the rain, the snow, bumping into drunken horse betters, kind gardeners, farmers covered in blood, women beating mattresses at dusk, tractor trailer drivers leaning against their cabs for a smoke, is the opposite, the antipode, the physical palinode to basement solitude and the death of the mind and body.
I walk the dog more than three miles nearly every day, and that counts as walking alone. But I’m almost always listening to podcasts.
I sorta kinda remember who the author, Craig Mod, is—I think he’s a travel writer, currently living in Japan, and from this essay I gather his daily walks are part of his work. He seems to photograph and video the things and people he sees, and interviews the people, publishes the results on the web, some by subscription only, and sells it in books. Very different from my life (though it sounds appealing). He walks 12-45 km per day (that’s about 7.5-30 miles), carrying 12 kilos of photo and video equipment (26 pounds.
The walk, he says, is his work platform, the way the computer and Internet are mine.