@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Alon

@Alon@mastodon.social

I write about public transport and do research for NYU's Marron Institute. I've previously lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris.

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Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Al-Jazeera is reporting that Hamas says it accepts the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, and showing celebrations in Gaza in response to this announcement. Now it's entirely on Bibi 🙃 .

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Ynet is quoting Israeli sources as saying that what Hamas said it accepted was not what the Egyptian proposal had discussed with Israel. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rjpautlm0#autoplay

ablueview, to Israel
@ablueview@mastodon.social avatar

"Netanyahu Must Go" - a recent editorial in Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper: https://tinyurl.com/2w759h4f (free)

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Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jens @ablueview No, Israel is not going to ban Haaretz. Haaretz has been anti-Netanyahu for decades and is a mainstay of Israeli society going back to when it was reporting negatively on the state of civil liberties in the Ben Gurion era (that's how what began as a bourgeois liberal paper ended up drifting to the left so much).

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Both Germany and the US are repressing pro-Palestinian speech on anti-Semitism grounds; in Germany what is done is far more in line with what the Jews want (e.g. gagging people who say "7.10 was great"), whereas in the US it's bullshit demands for anti-Semitism hall monitors at elite universities.

grvsmth, to random
@grvsmth@lingo.lol avatar

ABBA's song "Waterloo" (1975), using Napoleon's defeat as a metaphor for giving in to courtship, remains one of their enduring hits.

Their follow-up songs, "The Congress of Vienna," "Internal Bleeding" and "The 18th Brumaire" were less successful.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@grvsmth Speaking of big Swedish pop bands, yesterday I saw on Bluesky that the leader of Ace of Base used to be a neo-Nazi and the song I Saw the Sign was about what the modern-day alt-right calls redpilling :-/.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@grvsmth I thought pop fan consensus was that it really was a nonnative usage and "baby" in this context was a boyfriend, not an actual baby?

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Ah

Integrated public transport, don’t you just love it

I need to take a train at 06:03 from La Ciotat to Toulon tomorrow

First bus from town to the station: arrives 06:27, which also misses the train to Marseille as well by 2 minutes 👏

Google Maps bus timetables showing first bus to station arriving 06:27
Departures tomorrow morning from La Ciotat

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin @pony Yeah, same, I once fucked up my sleep after a trip from Stockholm, in a no-jetlag situation, just because sitting in the back of a car driving over these roads put me to sleep.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@pony @DiegoBeghin I've been on cars for long enough that I rarely feel nauseous on a train, but also I don't think I've been on tilting trains?

failedLyndonLaRouchite, to random

Recently , there was a by election (local seats ) in the UK
and if you ask google for results, you get a bunch of hits that are not very useful, or full of BS (IMO) graphics from the UK news giants like BBC

now this could be cause google knows I am in teh US and there fore Google is showing highly skewed results

but the wikipedia article is so much better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_London_mayoral_election#Results_2

LOL

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite The London mayoral election was just weird, in that it took atypically long to count and there were some rumors it might be close or even a flip, so there was lots of speculation about what to infer from turnout in specific neighborhoods. Then, as the link shows, Khan won by a larger margin than in 2021.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Are there good histories of the origin of the social democrat/green split? Because these days those parties are extremely similar throughout Europe (and in the Netherlands they just merged), and generally they prefer to govern with each other when possible.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit Yeah, I guess my question is how come this activism turned into a party split, whereas (say) feminism didn't.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin @BenRossTransit Yeah, the Greens only transitioned to having one leader in advance of the 2021 election, when it looked like they might get the chancellorship. Then they didn't and Habeck elbowed his way into a co-leadership, on a specious "I would have won" platform (he wouldn't have).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker @DiegoBeghin @BenRossTransit CDU/CSU ran a negative campaign focused on Baerbock herself, so people switched away from the Greens, and SPD, as the party that was not subject to such negative campaigning, gained. Habeck pretends they wouldn't have done the same to him; judging by how he got turned into Public Enemy #1 last year, his pretense is not based on reality.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker @DiegoBeghin @BenRossTransit SPD and the Greens are so ideologically similar that there's a large number of voters who are SPD/Green undecided; I'm one and I'm on the record that I'd be voting SPD in Berlin elections if it had a leader who didn't personally suck.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit @Transportist FWIW, there are some exceptions in Germany; on net SPD is YIMBY and the Greens are NIMBY, but there are some inversions, e.g. on the Y-trasse high-speed rail line. Then, because the two parties are used to governing together, the Greens are used to making deals to allow more housing but just opposing some specific high-rises or redevelopment projects. Die Linke is way NIMBYer here.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker @DiegoBeghin @BenRossTransit It's the Berlin SPD leader, the one whose degree was revoked for plagiarism and whose personal politics is tough on crime shit.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Wasn't there supposed to be a deal agreed to within hours yesterday? Or is it one of these situations in which Egypt/Qatar/the US says there's a deal hoping that this gets Hamas or Israel or both to say yes and then it doesn't?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@ia42 היתה גם טענה שהחמאס יקבל את ההצעה תוך שעות, ומאז הוא לא אמר מילה.

MissingThePt, to random
@MissingThePt@mastodon.social avatar

Breaking: Uvalde police concede that they would have entered the school if it had been to arrest the students.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@MissingThePt Maybe Candy Crush should introduce a system of free powerups for rescuing civilians from mass shooters...

skinnylatte, to transit
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

18 years old: listening to music with headphones in the train

38 years old: putting ear plugs in my ears to take the train (BART is too loud)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte BART is atypically bad, especially the Transbay Tube, and I don't know why. Now I'm curious to ask...

Alon, (edited ) to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Stone Mountain, Georgia should be reused as

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@starrwulfe "We celebrate both slavery and civil rights leaders" is an awful message. Just blow up the rock; people will get over it, same way nobody's agitating to bring back the Lee statues that have been removed.

alanferrier, to random
@alanferrier@mastodon.scot avatar

The Rector of the University of Glasgow, a Palestinian witness to war crimes, is now banned from entering both Germany and France and, it would seem, the whole of Europe.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Aliceenligne @alanferrier https://www.thejc.com/news/gaza-surgeon-used-as-pundit-by-bbc-sky-and-cnn-wept-as-he-praised-terror-leader-eo6hdpb2

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Aliceenligne @alanferrier The part where Ghassan Abu Sitta blames Germany for not being allowed into France is especially disgusting, to the point of anti-Semitism. Gérald Darmanin, the guy who is shocked by ethnic food aisles at supermarkets, doesn't need Germany as an excuse not to let an Arab Muslim enter France. The complaints about Germany are just complaints that anti-Semitic violence is not normalized here.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Wynter @Aliceenligne @alanferrier An Israeli who is this effusive about Kahane does not get invited to the BBC to comment on the war as a reliable witness.

Shamir did a lot of things in the decades after he was a terrorist. For the same reason, Obama's ties to Bill Ayers after Ayers stopped doing terrorism didn't doom his presidential campaign and were only a minor scandal. (Among the Palestinians, the equivalent is Arafat, who transitioned out of terrorism into civilian leadership.)

nevo, to random
@nevo@babka.social avatar

Anybody on babka have thoughts about standing together / עומדים ביחד?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=koST63QsTY8

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@nevo They're very based. They do anti-racist activism in Israel, and direct action including their own aid convoy to the Gaza crossings to get past settlers who are blocking (some) aid. They also protest for prioritizing a hostage deal over whatever bullshit Bibi wants.

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