Dear Peter,
I am in no position to give much advise to you, but I’ll do it anyway: even though you may feel unfit to travel, I’d suggest to do it anyway. Let’s skip discussing reasons.
Whereto?
Thailand is a good place to start. The weather/climate is more of a factor for northerly lodged europeans like me, but the outstanding cuisine alone is totally worth the visit. People there are exceptionally friendly and welcoming to whitey western visitors, of which they get many, so a well-rounded infrastructure is in place to deal with all issues that might befall them. The country has never been really colonized, the prices are solidly moderate, the quality of all things is good enough, and the only warning I can give about potentially being ripped off are the green cabs in Bangkok. Once you’ve arrived at the airport and slept a night in a nearby hotel to cure out the jet lag, you’ll be able to have lodging and food for less than 20$ daily. All this pertaining not much has changed there over the past 15 years since I visited there.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 27 2024 10:06 utc | 204

So checking in with the Daily Mail. There’s actually an open Jared Kushner story. About his company wanting to develop a luxury property in Serbia overtop a building that was bombed. And – he made an offer to Albania as well, to build a luxury resort. There are two JK stories, the one about Serbia and another about some democrats asking to investigate the guy for his foreign investments – while his dad campaigns to become POTUS.
Disturbingly, as reported by TASS, Vucic sees dark clouds gathering over Serbia:
https://tass.com/world/1766471
“ “Difficult days are ahead for Serbia. At this moment, it’s not easy for me to say what news we have received in the past 48 hours… [The news poses] direct threats to the vital interests of both Serbia and Republika Srpska (one of the entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina – TASS),” Vucic wrote on Instagram…”
Here is something juicy. If I’ve read this right.
“Rihanna the blonde bombshell! Billionaire opts for smoldering sex kitten look for charity event in LA after brief fashion foray into the ‘rich grandma aesthetic’ “
I propose we are talking about US Ambassador to UK, Jane D. Hartley here. Check the article and her X/Twitter feed and see what you think. By the way, according to Wikipedia, “Hartley began working as the executive director for the Democratic Mayors’ Conference for the Democratic National Committee from 1974 until 1977.” That’s where she got her start in politics, I guess.
There’s a cute story from last night’s CBC’s The National’s The Moment about an island in Scotland.
https://youtu.be/wQM5aa1kKws
I wondered if it might have something to do with this Daily Mail article:
“Podcasting health guru and Stanford doc Andrew Huberman is accused of being a womanizer who had affair with five women at once and gave one an STI – but he insisted he was just a ‘love addict’ “
I won’t post a quote.

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Mar 27 2024 11:31 utc | 206

S | Mar 27 2024 10:16 utc | 205 ” it’s that people (in this case, Greek communists) have organized and successfully blocked that movement.”
I see that S but in the grand scheme of the anglo American empire, it is a small component. A partisan movement. It is good to see.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 27 2024 11:41 utc | 208

Justpassinby | Mar 27 2024 11:44 utc | 209
No idea where you are from but I suspect that this lying, destruction and hypocrisy gets to a lot of us that comment here.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 27 2024 11:49 utc | 210

Today I was thinking about open source software.
There are writers who put their novels on the internet, so everyone can read them for free. This way these writers don’t get money, but they do get readers.
Open source is the same, but with computer programmers instead of writers of novels. There are programmers who write software and, instead of selling this software, they put the software on the internet, so everyone can download it. This is called open software. Perhaps the most famous is Linus, who wrote linux.
Today, the US and EUrope are putting sanctions against Russia, China, Iran, and others. The list is long. very long.
We are not selling these countries, companies and persons certain chips and software. So they make their own chips and write their own software. This means electronics hardware is splitting in “their” and “our” chips. If the chips are different, a few years down the line the software will be different, too.
Today it is taken for granted open source software has comments in english, and you can run it on your computer. Imagine a few years from now coming across open source software with comments in a language you can’t read, that runs on hardware you don’t have. That’s sanctions for you.

Posted by: Passerby | Mar 27 2024 14:33 utc | 212

@ Passerby | Mar 27 2024 14:33 utc | 212
if we are ever to get off this narcissistic corporate driven approach, we will have to go open source.. yes… the powers that be will fight it tooth and nail..

Posted by: james | Mar 27 2024 15:18 utc | 214

@Passerby | Mar 27 2024 14:33 utc | 212
Open source software means much more than ‘put the software on the internet, so everyone can download it’. Open source means attaching a special license to the software, such as GNU GPL

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program–to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.
… read the rest in the link above

The opposite of open source is closed source, copyright-controlled by corporations. In a multipolar world it is essential to move away from closed source software as much as possible. That means leaving Microsoft and Apple platforms behind, and also their software.
Today, this is not only possible but it is quite easy to do. Install one of the many popular and open source Linux distributions that come with tons of easily accessible open source software, including office suites such as LibreOffice and much more (If you don’t want to go straight to Linux, you can use software like LibreOffice on Windows first).
The nice thing about Linux is installing software is much easier than under Windows, because each distro is connected to a repository of easily accessible (and free) software. When you ask for some software to be installed, it is hassle free and it works.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 27 2024 15:44 utc | 216

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 27 2024 11:33 utc | 207
Fuck. A knarly looking prick. Took a bit with hand signals to settle that down. Dumb as dogshit daughter didn’t have a clue to what had happened. I should have clicked at the time as to how woke she was.
Never travel the world with the woke.

HA HA HA!!
GREAT LINE!!

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 27 2024 16:07 utc | 218

In a venture to decode the language of fungi, researchers from the University of West England (UWE) Bristol, led by Professor Andrew Adamatzky, examined the electrical signals of mushrooms, proposing it was a language. Then this speculative language of fungi was characterized according to “word” length and “sentence” complexity.
While the researchers admit this emission of electrical spiking “could just be phenomenological,” they say the changing patterns and modulating characteristics produced by mushrooms resemble those made by the nervous system of vertebrates.
In their endeavor, which will continue along “a pathway towards ‘the de-objectification of plants and the recognition of their subjectivity and inherent worth and dignity,’” the researchers state, they stand on the shoulders of an emerging body of studies showing the “languages of creatures without a nervous system and invertebrates.”
Karl von Frisch, winner of the Nobel Prize for his investigation into the language of bees, provided evidence to form the basis for “chemical words” in the insect world, while similar studies have been conducted to analyze the languages of plants.
“Plant communication processes are seen as a primary sign-mediated interaction and not simply an exchange of information,” the authors of the 2022 study wrote.

In the seventies, I lived in a studio apartment on W46th St off Times Square above the laboratory of a man who made ‘The Secret Life of Plants’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxWrMtmL2qs
In the Buddhist cosmology, our experience is described as comprising ‘Body, Speech and Mind’.** These three are always present in all life manifestations including plants and possibly even rocks. Of course there are many different types of language beyond human. The simplest refutation of Darwin’s over-simplification is the existence of DNA, which is clearly a highly complex language following rules derived from the need to communicate meaningfully so that organisms will grow according to its templated commands. Such meaningful intelligence cannot possibly be the result of random, mechanical bottom-up happenstance, as Darwinian dogmatists insist. (Indeed, Darwin would no longer accept his own theory in the light of subsequent discoveries in the microscopic realms, plus the lack of fossil evidence after almost two centuries and counting).
There is a type of flower my wife will plant soon; a local lady says it’s very tricky: if you even think about it wrong, she says, even when miles away, it won’t grow for you. It sounds silly, but plants are deeply sensitive in ways few understand. I believe that all living creatures help create the reality we participate in. The speech principle is the interchange between self and other, parts and the whole. Put another way: if all the insects and birds stopped singing, so also might the world they sing into.
** https://baronbrasdor.art/2024/03/13/layers-levels-chapter-eight-body-speech-and-mind/

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 27 2024 16:51 utc | 220

Am surprised more aren’t using it.
Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 27 2024 17:32 utc | 221
Yes me too. I had it installed on my office computer in 1999 in Stockholm by Gunnar the uber geek who was super friendly and kindly took the time to show me a lot of cool things. Since then I had it on my home laptops as well and never anything else except when some office dished me out a corporate locked down useless machine. It’s been years since I have the Lubuntu flavour with Gnome and I got used to it. I shall have a look at the Manjaro distribution that you mention.

Posted by: Stephane | Mar 27 2024 18:30 utc | 222