Talash

This entry will be left hanging on top of this journal. Kindly comment to it for offtopic and such. All comments will be screened.
If you wish them to stay screened, please specify so, since if I might unscreen them at my discretion later if I don't see anything I think is confidential otherwise.

Thank you for understanding.

Had to go to Jerusalem today to sign papers for my dorms; my way back lasted almost 3 hours because everything was blocked.

Попытался объехать с одной стороны-- не вышло, попытался объехать с другой стороны-- не вышло, попытался объехать с третьей, и как то оказался посредине всей этой черножопой¹ мрази. Они навстречу моей машине и мимо нее; за ними бежала по моему пол миштары со всего израиля; тех кого догоняли тут же на месте жестоко пиздили, потом тащили и бросали в машину. За полицейскими бежала куча репортеров с видеокамерами и на колесиках и фотоаппаратами которые больше напоминали телескопы; они остервенело все снимали. Проехал мимо полицейского, спросил как мне уехать к черту. Мне открыли заграждение и я уехал. Потом еще довольно долго петлял по иерусалиму поскольку были еще заграждения, в конце концов выехал через шоссе 443.

Это пиздец, это полный пиздец.

¹ Черножопой потому что они жопу не вытирают никогда.

This story with a Yeshiva student who ran this cashier over with his car is getting uglier every day. Did you know that the giyur of this cashier, which she had undergone a few years ago, was cancelled by our rabbinate?

And also that the story only surfaces now, when the candidacy of the judge who gave this ruling is being considered for the high court, with the ruling having been given quite some time ago, says a lot about our whole court system.

For the record, the name of this yeshiva student was, apparently, published in earlier court documents.

/hate.

toying with dreamwidth.org account
not sure if (and why) i need one. testing whether is imported and crossposted correctly.
this entry should get autocrossposted to livejournal.

This entry was originally posted at http://talash.dreamwidth.org/322516.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

( jerusalem of steel )

Some idiot whom I don't know has made a friend request with me on facebook.
This is the exchange that followed

W.T.F????

UPD: It seems that the avatar is related to one Alon Gur Arye and the movie HaMosad HaSagur. How pathetic.

Exactly three years ago today, I went to London, a trip between jobs.
This entry will be about two artifacts left from this trip I found in my room.

We will start with the end of course. The writing on this pack of cigarettes is in Korean. I took it from a korean girl on my last night.

Here's how it happened: I had a flight back to Israel from heathrow early in the morning. On my last night I decided I wouldn't sleep, but rather spend it in the hostel bar, drinking and having random conversations. That I did.

A girl sat next to me. She had just arrived to that hostel. We started talking. Drank a couple of pints, moved to the mess room. She took out that pack of cigarettes and tried to light one. At that moment, being drunk, I (surprisingly for her) took it away from her. "This is confiscated" I declared. "Give it back to me!"-- "No, this is confiscated."-- "But why?!"

"Can't you read Korean?," I replied, taking out the pack of the cigarettes in my pocket. "Here, let me read it for you. The Ministry of Health Warns You: Smoking is Dangerous for health". She tried to snatch the pack of cigarettes back from me, but failed. "You know, there are a lot of other, healthier activities other than smoking" I said. "That a young girl like you destroys her body increasing her probability of lung cancer in the future is most unfortunate..." I said and put the cigarettes back in my pocket.

We talked some more and then there was more to this; later, much later, at around 4am when I left her for my room to take my bag and get the hell out of the hostel, I noticed that the pack of cigarettes was still in my pants' pocket. I took it out and put it in my bag instead, got out of the room, checked out; night bus to paddington and heathrow express and a plane back to Israel; the cigarettes in the bag lay forgotten for a very long time; they were in some sidepocket and I didn't take them out immediately, so I only discovered those when I needed the bag for some con or something.

The other artifact is actually from the first day of that trip. It has a partial list of multiple versions of the name "aya" as they may be spelled in Japanese to reflect its different possible meanings. "aya" was the name of one of the girls in the hostel room I stayed in on the first night. There was another one, but I do not remember hers. The first night I talked to them and somehow the conversation got to the meaning of names. "Michael means something related to god, no?" she asked me. "Yes," I answered. "Who like god." -- "And what does 'aya' in your case mean?" I asked. "It's a long story." -- "Really?" I said. "I do know several meanings of that name; none of those seemed too complex to me" -- "what meanings do you know?"-- "well, 'truth' for one" I said. "also 'beautiful' and 'colorful-like-the-rainbow'. and also silk, but not just regular silk, rather, a very special kind of silk with patterns and twill-woven. And I believe I also know how to write the kanji for ''colorful''".

At her request I then wrote the kanji. "yes, it is correct what you said" she told me. But my name is different. She wrote the hieroglyph. Then she explained.

It was a long story. I do not remember all of it now. Something involving her ancestors and a feud between two clans of samurai which lasted for 200 years and ended with a marriage between members of those clans sometime in the 13th century and that she is a descendant from that marriage and so "aya" in her case means something like "peace and prosperity between earth and sky" (IIRC) with earth and sky being significant to the two clans in question and so reflected in the way her name is written. There was also some bit about some ancestors of hers committing seppuku over this, but I don't remmeber that part.

She talked about this until some 3am. It was fascinating.
They moved out after that first night to go to Scotland I think. Pity. I would love to have talked to her some more.

if anyone knows which dorms in huji are better: "kfar ha studentim" or "reznik" I would much appreciate tips about that.

am 26.

Which reminds me of the following "netlenka" ny shaulreznik

Спать пора, уснул бычок.
Спи и ты, мой дурачок,
А иначе Майкл Джексон
Тебя схватит за бочок.

У него горячий пыл,
Парк автомашин и вилл.
Он афроамериканский
Знаменитый педофил.

Его музыка плыла
От столицы до села.
Его нос из силикона,
Его глаз из оргстекла.

Повернись к стене бочком,
Спи, малютка. Всё пучком.
Скоро будет Майкл Джексон
В камере играть очком.

hashkem hashkem baboker - hava albertstein

Wasn't familiar with this excellent translation, and since it's not on the internet yet, I think it should rather be. Here goes:

Rule 35: there will always be worse shit you will be disgusted by on the internetz than what you had seen before.

yup. they made a SECOND bme pain olympics video. address is bmepainolympics2.com. And I'm not linking. You don't want to see this one. Copy and paste on your own responsibility. You have been warned.

The media as well as some people have been discussing the latest visit of the pope and what he said or did not say in his speech.

I find this amusing.

It is not really relevant what the pope did or did not say. The so-called "Holy See" is a fucking criminal organization and the pope is the head of that fucking criminal organization. As such, it's not really important what he does or does not say during his visit.

Short historical recap: here are some links to some things the criminal organization in question did in the past:

1. Had a nice institution called the Roman Inquisition.
2. Executed Giordano Bruno by burning him at the stake.
3. Tried and tortured Galileo and a bunch of other scientists whose theories did not fit the dogma
4. Banned Books (abolished only in 1966!)
5. Kidnapped people.

in more recent times:

6. helped nazis escape

today:

7. is being the #1 money-laundering organization in the world (link, link).
8. Funds terrorists in the palestinian authority and others (link to be added)
9. Harbors pedophiles (link
10. Impedes stem-cell research and other science it deems "unholy" (fortunately they can't burn people those days).
11. Spreads anti-abortion propaganda

Q: What has changed in the Holy See and the structure of the catholic church since the inquisition?
A: they lost some of their former power. Naturally, this did not happen voluntarily. And nothing at all changed in its internal structure. If they could torture scientists that do "ungodly" research, like that into embryonic stem cells, they would.

But instead of being treated like the criminal organization that they are, they are given a seat in the UN and have presense in most of the world-- this is called "diplomatic relations," mind it.

oh well, not that I would expect anything else.

Clearly the best thing of anything this year. In fact I think this is the best thing I've ever hear on a Eurovision contest, ever.

Also, will please, please, please Israel stop pushing politics into everything? Fuck, it's a nice-sounding song, not worse than most of the other stuff, but damn, this feels so much like ass-licking.

Apparently, the Mossad uses a Linksys router to spy on Lebanon Also loved ynet's "router that was used for data transfer" caption under pic.

In fact I'm stealing this one for a u-pic.

And also they have it in the big version:



ROFLOL.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, article on Ice Axe

Another usage for the ice axe is as a weapon. The revolutionary Leon Trotsky was killed with an ice axe.

In the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show Frank slaughters Eddie with an ice axe in jealous rage.

Hmm.

I owe a large part of my searching and evaluation skills to this man.
I have been following his website and messageboards since 2002 or so and
RIP Fjalar Ravia 1952-2009

http://www.searchlores.org

Anyone knows of a cool lag-baomer gathering to be in?

Like most Russians, I think, I was taught that the radio was invented by Popov. This isn't something that someone specifically said to me, but rather what I heard and saw all the time. In physics books that I used to read as a kid (which, obviously, were in Russian) and in all sorts of russian sources the invention of the radio was credited solely to Popov, the Radio Day in Russia, sometimes announced by the news readers is celebrated in honour of Popov, my parents are firmly confident that the inventor of the radio is Popov and nothing ever seemed wrong about it.

I do not know when did I first hear the name "Marconi," but one thing is certain and that is that it has been significantly later than "Popov." And not in a scientific book at all, but rather, I think, something by Umberto Eco, I think "Foucalt's Pendulum." I must have been thirteen or something by that time. I didn't investigate the thing back then and after that I have, of course, heard the name Marconi many more times after that, but that did never shake the firm inner conviction that this is all bullshit, that those who credit Marconi as the inventor of the radio do not know what they're talking about.

That is until some sort of an argument prompted me to investigate. Investigation turned out that:

- Marconi was not the first to actually invent the radio, but rather only the first to massively commercially distribute radio units.
- Popov carried out his demonstration a few months before Marconi's experiments
- It seems, however, that Marconi was not aware of Popov's demonstration when he conducted those and so invented the radio independently
- The two met later in 1902
- Nicola Tesla had a demonstration of radio waves production in 1893, two years before Popov and Marconi. On this basis Marconi was denied a patent in the United States (imenno, you were correct!)
- However, it is not actually clear what does it mean to "invent" the radio in the sense we know it today and whether what Tesla did could actually be called inventing the radio.
- There had been theoretical research into radio waves before Tesla by Hertz and other physicists
- Marconi was a fascist

Based on this and this article, I would probably say that the inventor of the radio is first and foremost Tesla, then Popov & Marconi, with Marconi after Popov.

Another interesting thing is the propaganda surrounding this issue. Russians and russian sources are most likely to hail Popov as the inventor and ignore all the rest. I imagine the opposite is true in Italy with Marconi.

The really interesting thing is, if you answer the question "who invented the radio" unhesitantly with "Popov," you are probably Russian. The inverse relationship, as this survey shows (of people answering something else-- e.g. Marconi-- not being Russian by origin) is not true (although I should probably try this survey with people who grew up in Russia), but I haven't yet seen anyone mentioning Popov who wasn't Russian.

And deep inside I might still be thinking that Popov is the "real" inventor.

Deep and firm inner convictions that persist from childhood are bitches.

Please answer the following question without checking with google or wikipedia or elsewhere and without thinking too much:

Q: Who is the inventor of the radio?

(comments are screened).

Дурацкие споры о том имеет ли смысл фильтровать порнографию. Меня всегда веселит когда кто-то говорит что я не имею понятия о чем я говорю.

This last Saturday I went to the Body worlds exhibition together with a friend and it was beyond amazing. Bodies in various postures and cuts revealing different internal organs, body parts of internal organs of healthy people vs internal organs of people with various diseases, embryos on all stages of pregnancy, blood vessels, nerves etc. It was the most amazing thing I had seen for years.

After that we wandered around Haifa for some time then went home. On the way back we got into a huge traffic jam because everyone and his dog was coming back from a holiday day out.

Saturday was a good day, but starting from Saturday evening moderate crap started to happen.

In the evening I went to the Olamot convention hoping to see the "Life and death of Liam O'Leary" musical but tickets were sold out. Went back, almost ran over someone who decided that taking the evening walk in the middle of a dark highway is a good idea. Saw the idiot, braked and swerved in time; thankfully there was nobody in the other lane.

Sunday and monday was the Olamot con. It was mediocre, although people have been met. Queerest event of the con: "meet the committee" event on Sunday (to which I went hoping to get amused by it and it exceeded all expectations in that sense) during which the head of the Israeli Science fiction committee, Amir Arad, delivered a 40-minute speech full of drama about "a certain man who had decided to wage a personal bloody vendetta against the Israeli Science fiction society who is sitting in this crowd and whose name is Ittai Greif"-- he went on into details about this "vendetta"-- which included way too much information for a speech one would expect at a public "meet the committee" gathering and was more like a reality show. He didn't let Greif speak when he was delivering the speech and he finished it with the announcement that because of said "vendetta" he is resigning from his position as head of the committee. Went out of the room and turned in his badge, still without letting Greif reply to that. He hadn't notified the rest of the committee members of this before he actually made that speech so it came as a surprise to them as well and everyone kinda sat baffled by it. So now no one knows whether there will be an ICON this year and whether the Society will be a part of it.

The Israeli Science Fiction Society has always been known for its amazing capacity for internal conflicts and drama, but here it exceeded its own self.

The rest of the conventioion was, like I said, mediocre and ZOA house isn't a very good venue IMO. On sunday I lost my parking ticket so I had to pay some outrageous price to the motherfuckers, which wasn't nice.

The message on my IM was there on Sunday night. It was from someone I hadn't spoken to in years. It said: "hello". The hour tag on the message was 03.34am; I saw it at about 5am. I ignored it and went back to the con Monday afternoon.

When I got back someone else on my facebook had a status update about the death of a certain guy called Assaf Rozenrot.

I didn't really know the guy in question, but his name was familiar to me from Ultinet, an Israeli FTN-based network I used to be a member of once (FTN-based=works on the same principle as Fidonet); it used to be popular in the days of BBSes, but still had been operating over the internet until the beginning of 2008 I think).

(the "hello" message that I got was from someone else from that network whom I had known)

He fell from a cliff to his death during a trip. He was 26 years old.

Like I said, didn't really know him, but this sucks.

And today was friggin' hot. I hate this weather.

It is my hope things are going to be getting better soon.

So since last night I had this feeling in the right ear, like when you're taking off in a plane, yeah? Didn't really hurt, but didn't feel quite right. Didn't go to a doctor immediately, decided to wait one night to see if it would pass. It hurt mildly during the night, but seemed to pass in the morning and during the day there seemed to be only the clotted feeling. Decided to wait and see if it worsens or gets better prior to going to a doctor.

So during the day I was in the local pharmacy on an unrelated matter. This pharmacy is actually considered the health fund pharmacy, yeah? So while paying for something else, I'm casually asking the pharmacist if they have some drops for the ear they can give without prescription. She replies that most of the stuff they have contains antibiotics, however they do have a "great homeopathic remedy" she can give me.

Mind it, homeopathic. Now if you don't know what homeopathy is, please read this article. Short summary: homeopathy consists of serial dilutions of an active ingridient in water until you have no molecules left and have just water (you would need something like 30000000000 times the volume of water in all the earth's oceans to get just one molecule of the ingredient). this pure water is then sold as remedy; this is probably the most expensive water ever. No scientifically rigorous reproducible double blind randomized controlled tests have ever shown any effect of this stuff beyond placebo effect, but for some odd reason many people claim it actually helps them.

Anyway, I tell the pharmacist I don't believe in this stuff. So she goes on and tries to convince me for a good few minutes that homepathy works and I should take the remedy. I say I won't argue with her, pay for the other stuff and go.

Later during the night my ear starts to hurt again. So I go to the hospital. In the hospital I am quickly diagnosed with an ear inflammation. So the doctor pours some ear drops with antibiotic into my ear, then gives me the prescription for this stuff and says: "don't let the ear come in contact with water. this will worsen the inflammation

See above what that bitch of a pharmacist tried to give me? Water.

I am so pissed off.

By what right do regular pharmacies (and this bitch in particular) to which I'm going to buy regular medicine try to give me stuff which does nothing in the best case, or might actually don harm, like in my case-- as "remedy"-- when its actual effects are unproven?! If I will want an alternative medicine treatment I will go to an alternative medicine outlet. And those too should in the best case have much more regulation than they do now.

And this pharmacist, I am so going to write complaints about her to the health ministry or something. I hope I can get her license revoked.

Bitch.

(That snake oil like homepathic treatments will not be sold in regular pharmacies is probably too much to hope for in this day and age. Sadly I do not have the time, energy or money to bring a representative lawsuit about that like this deserves).

Ah and my ear is better of course. Much better. Like it should, naturally be, when one trusts proper medicine and properly trained medics rather than some idiots and their quackery. Which, as this case illustrates, might sometimes have dire consequences.

Been to the exellent concert of khatul yesterday. Also got his book signed:
(( cut for scan of the signed book )

This is public now.
About a week and a half ago I got a call from some other recruitment agency; they offered me the same relocation job to Nigeria that I had already been offered, as they apparently couldn't find anyone. It seemed funny back in February, but due to the financial situation and lack of other decent propositions recently, I agreed to go to the interview with them.

The news from today is that, having got a call about my acceptance yesterday, I signed the contract with them ("them" being a certain outsourcing company in Israel which has the contract with the actual Nigerian ISP I am about to work at) and so starting from next month and for the next two years I am going to be positioned in Lagos.

Because of this I am organizing a going-away party sometime within the next two or three weeks. I will announce the date separately.

Please reply here if you intend to come.

"This northbound train to Kanyakumari
is last tonight. The platform is to sink
with all the land. And lost beneath the sea
all of its stories. Severed the railway links
of stainless steel. The sleepers between them broken."
I sleep to the beat of wheels. This is what they have spoken
One to another. I wake. The train calls at "Deva" station.
This is my destination. I disembark. I shake
the feeling off with some effort. I let the mundane overtake.

Spring is here, take 3, seasonal paranoia in computer communities (rus). Also had some egoboo (what?) in there (link, link).

People, please trust me when I talk about computer related shit.

This place was just around the corner of Tavistock place in London, where I stayed.
( cut for pic )

Spring is here #2: Live minesweeper is not fun anymore, let's jump to the Niagara falls.

Spring is here, spring is here. A great time to play live minesweeper.

Didn't really know about this shit until yesterday; what I want to say is Iran is here. WTF?!?!

Гамлетище-- трагедия у. шекспира в переводе к. чуковского

(via mme_n_b)

(had a dream that involved them all tonight, but do not remember much)

Адвокатская контора "Дышло" (my legal defence in several dreams; very good lawyers)

"Umbrella Organization."-- A London-based shop that specializes in umbrellas. The owner has been telling me a lot of stuff about umbrellas in my dreams, at length. Unfortunately I do not remember much of what he's been telling. The shop, in fact, is, of course an umbrella organization for sme kind of worldwide conspiracy.

"Kim@Puck-- Бюро по сыску пропавших собак"-- two Korean dudes who introduced themselves with a song that went like this:

"Мы рады ппредставиться вам-- Kim@Puck
Бюро мы по сыску пропавших собак
(Немало на этом мы съели собак!)
Мы знаем где ваша зарыта собак!"

and it went on for some time.

I celebrate the butterfly effect.

Can't stop laughing today all day.
Some people called me and offered a job with relocation to Nigeria.
Yup, right, to Nigeria. And what position? Network monitoring. I wanted to ask them whether their spamming activities make the network crash often, but didn't as upon hearing the name of the place I declined outright.

can't say I haven't been forewarned though.

and thanks to my parents for reading me the right literature from very young age.

UPD: It was outlined to me that I had probably missed a wonderful opportunity to start my own Nigerian scam with the offer that I refused. I wonder if I could get away with something like this:

"Dear Sir!
I am the network technician of such and such nigerian isp and we used to route packets for the recently deceased [insert name of dictator]. could you please store the packets for me on your system for a fee of 20% of the bytes?"

A package with more books has arrived from the states. Here's the listing of its contents:

belarus / lee hogan
warchild / karin lowachee
bridge of birds / barry hughart
richard dawkins / the blind watchmaker
avinash dixit / thinking strategically
michael chabon / the yiddish policemen's union
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions / Thomas Kuhn
Peter woit / Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the search for unity in physical law
Richard Dawkins: the god delusion
The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications / david deutsch
Neverness / david zindell
broken god / david zindell
the wild / david zindell
war in heaven/ david zindell
richard dawkins / the selfish gene
peter straub / lost boy lost girl
Negotiating with Giants / Peter Johnston
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions / Dan Ariely
Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive / Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

and also my ipod has been fixed and arrived in that package. yay.

Things that have so far been read from the previous batch:

quarantine / greg egan (actually i have read this one before in an excellent hebrew translation by Itamar Parann, but I have really enjoyed re-reading this one again)
the demolished man / bester
little brother / doctorow
overclocked / doctorow
the graveyard book / gaiman
and am midway through "the stars my destination" by bester and am kinda bored by it.

left to read from the previous bunch: incandescence / egan, someone comes to town, someone leaves town / doctorow, last and first men / stapledon, blood music / greg bear, inversions and matter by banks.

also a book i ordered from Australia arrived while I was in London ("A venomous life"-- which is the autobiography of Struan Sutherland, a famous Australian toxicology professor).

Yum!

Wikipedia article of the day: Ingvar the Far-Travelled and from there the link to the saga.

1. Everything can be filed under "uncategorized"
2. What is not filed under "uncategorized" may be found in "miscellaneous".
3. What is not filed under either "uncategorized" or "miscellaneous" in drive E, may be still filed as "uncategorized" or "miscellaneous" in drive F.
4. The fundamental difference between uncategorized and miscellaneous in drive E and uncategorized and miscellaneous in drive F is that drive F holds downloads I still haven't looked at while E holds downloads that I looked at and categorized under "uncategorized" or "miscellaneous".
5. however, it is more likely to find uncategorized downloads which I haven't looked at in one of the download directories, which are sorted by method of download (emule, bittorrent, download manager from rapidshare)
6. There is a fundamental difference between "uncategorized" and "miscellaneous" but it too complicated to explain
7. In addition to "uncategorized" and "miscellaneous" there is a directory in drive F called F:\downlolads\temp
8. The above directory holds stuff that when downloading I think I might not be needing anymore
9. Theoretically everything that is there should probably be safe to erase
10. In practice things end up lying there forever
11. Sometimes I look at the things lying there with the intent to erase some
12. It always ends up with something fascinating me and stopping mid-way
13. Sometimes stuff from there gets relocated elsewhere, but this happens rarely
14. Once in a while I try to optimize the layout of my hard-drive. Sometimes I end up deleting tens of gigabytes of data.
15. Nevertheless it does not help
16. It does not help because the entrophy on my hard-drives always tends to iuncrease
17. Some time ago, when I filled up my internal 320GB hard-drive (F), I tried to clean some stuff up.I found that I'm not able to
18. Therefore I bought and added an external 500GB hard-drive to my system
19. I then proceeded to relocate some stuff to the new hard-drive from the old and ended up deleting over 200GB
20. Sometimes I am not able to find something I think I had downloaded or should have been downloaded
21. Google desktop and other programs like it did not help my situation and did, in fact more to annoy me than actually help
22. When I am not able to find something, the method to find it is to try and download the thing again. When I will be asked where to save the file, I will usually specify the directory where it had already been saved.
23. I like the fact that at least I am self-consistent in my mess
24. There is a deeply-nested directory in my hard-drive called "pr0n"
25. Was. I just deleted it.
26. The full path was F:\Michael\work\flash\pr0n. It had some reports about bugs in porn websites I found on my old job. Not relevant anymore.
27. I do not, as a rule, store actual porn on my hard-drive.

How would different songs sound if they were made by microsoft songsmith. link. OMG.

( in hebrew )

by E.A.Poe. definitely one of my all-time favorites.

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!— they hold a treasure
Divine— a talisman— an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure—
The words— the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets— as the name is a poet's, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto— Mendez Ferdinando—
Still form a synonym for Truth— Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle,
though you do the best you can do.

( What I've been journaling about )

Just got an automated spam call from Meretz with robot voice agitating me to vote for them. Meretz, you suck. I had no intention to vote for you, and you have further ensured that. Furthermore, would each and every one of you please die?

Some time ago I already argued about biometric id and why I don't hurry to join groups that protest it or go to demonstrations against it.

I am receiving continious invitations on facebook and elsewhere to join groups and/or go to demonstrations against this law.

What I haven't heard is any sort of a convincing argument against the case, which is not made of paranoia, bullshit and FUD.

I am not a fan of this law, but this is a gut feeling and is not based on a clear and logical argument.

Will someone please try to convince me why should I be against this law?

Thank you.

Why is it that throughout this trip I was consistently being hit on predominantly by French girls¹, none of whom spoke English well enough to have a conversation in it and the only things I know how to say in French are Bonjour, je ne mangez pas six jour and voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir.

¹ and some Argentinian and Brazilian. They didn't speak English either. In fact at times I was wondering whether I am, in fact, in London when at that hostel.

one, two, three.