HE COVID-19 pandemic made people sceptical of pandemics and vaccines. I cannot blame them. 7 years ago COVID-19 broke out and it was mishandled by media, governments, medical professionals, and corporations that only saw “dollar signs”. People were meant to comply and agree with almost anything told to them, except the “bad things”.

Right now there’s media “chatter” regarding illnesses and deaths in Russia. Some people rush to compare that to 2019, asserting there’s some biological warfare in the mix. Whose? Russia’s? Against Russia? Evidence related to this is thin, but uncritical media rushes to exploit the uncertainty or drama, clicks, Putin bashing etc.

I don’t miss anything about the pandemic. It did, however, give me more “computer time”. I still wear a mask in crowded places.

am a fairly normal individual, even if my views on technology (that area in particular) diverge somewhat from “the average” (or “norm”) because I am opinionated about Software Freedom. Nothing wrong with diverse perspectives in the planet.

If that sort of divergence is because it is my professional area, then it’s somewhat expected that my views will differ from “unwashed (bombarded by commercial propaganda) masses”.

Last October I spoke to a judge who later said I was courteous. I cannot recall saying anything rude or impolite. I didn’t shout, didn’t curse. I didn’t make “funny faces”.

This was the first time and the last time I saw someone who had sued me. He would no longer show up, even when he was just around the corner (from the courtroom).

Absent an explanation, I’m left to deduce he’s just afraid of facing me or seeing me. That was never my intention.

he season has resumed and ManCity will receive a lot of heckling in Anfield tomorrow. Can Enzo maintain the winning steak in spite of the negative media barrage?

Can ManUtd ever see the Fergie glory days again? Each time there’s a permanent appointment of some coach things go south, and fast!

Well, such is the United spirit. Temps work better.

oday Peanut entered the room. Edwin did the same some weeks ago. They seem to have found the confidence needed to walk around me and search for food, maybe also warmth and companionship.

This afternoon Peanut found the courage to sit on the doorknob. By the evening Peanut also stayed there to bottle-feed. Before it became dark I managed to feed Peanut and Durian from the same jar at the same time. They began to argue and howl.

The progress with Peanut and Durian is fast. They grew up with us. If they live for 20 years to come, we’ll be in our 60s.

Peanut has just begun making bird noises like Durian.

Birds raised (and fed) by humans do not act like wild birds.

I wished we had began birding decades earlier.

HIS year I began blogging a lot more in here – in a blog which I started 22 years ago. The site was not “dead” at any point, it always attracted some traffic.

When it comes to statistics, one lingering issue is that there are many subdomains and AWstats already measures HTTP separately from HTTPS.

This is HTTPS for schestowitz.com alone:

HTTP for schestowitz.com alone:

Combining the two, so far this month it’s about 350,000 visitors. Many are bots. AWStats isn’t good at detecting these.

But of course a respect quotient/metric matters more than traffic, as being a troll or showing nudes gets one traffic, and the hourly rates of escorts is high too (seems like some sites are de facto “online” escort sites).

My goal is not traffic but positive impact.

ut of both interest and necessity (not mere curiosity), lately I’ve been studying how the Court of Appeal operates, seeing it is split into just two areas. For the Court of Appeal Civil Division there is not a long queue of cases (compared to courts below it) and on Monday, for instance, only one Judgment will be issued (Osei-Bonsu v Secretary of State for the Home Department) with no hearings or any of the ordinary things. Three judges will be present: Lord Justice Males, Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing and Lady Justice Whipple.

From what I have seen, there are typically if not always 3 judges in such cases. In the past I covered cases where 7 judges issued a ruling. It was about the EPO. The EPO’s management lost.

One upside of the legal system here (despite the considerable cost) is that reporters do not get killed with impunity, people aren’t incarcerated without proper due process and access to justice, sites/papers/articles don’t get deplatformed just because of certified lunatics who try to blackmail webhosts.

I study the law (and protocols) as a Litigant in Person who needs to know how to manage oneself, as lawyers are very expensive. The knowledge gained does help me compose future articles.

oday I heard about US elections. It turned out that voting had gotten harder. There’s an active effort to suppress voters, especially those who wish to vote against dictatorship.

“Anyway,” a friend said, “to sum up “The Nerd Reich” in an overly short sentence: the US cannot have both billionaires (or trillionaires) and democracy. But I’ll add that the billionaires are mostly paper tigers and only appear rich through accounting tricks involving massive debts. Any government with a backbone could force them to blink. However, the Citizens United case means that bribery is legal in the US for now and thus no backbone will be present.”

This new report shows the allegedly richest person in the world borrowing money. To quote:

SpaceX reportedly intends to borrow $40 billion to procure 360,000 Nvidia Rubin Hey Hi (AI) accelerators, infrastructure.

Why would a billionaire (or trillionaire) borrow so much money?

There’s a clue somewhere in there.

His companies mostly lose money, so how can billionaires (or trillionaires) exist on top of debt? MElon is on drugs, he’s no business genius. He cheats everywhere, all the time.

I was reminded of this verse: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.”

Another is Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

I’m nonreligious, but this is about greed in general.

oday Durian stayed here until 6:40PM. It was already dark, but Durian is very young so his instincts are different. He eventually left as I had given him everything he wanted. I managed to curate many links today. I also published many articles and I’ll try do do the same tomorrow. Feeding the birds gives me almost 50 breaks per day. That seems like a good form of exercise, with occasional nags to force me to have recess.

I’m quite pleased to see audience size has grown a lot this month. I can see what sort of topics interest more people and research these more.

Tomorrow I shall publish “Production Freeze at the European Patent Office (Opposing Monarchy, Institutional Maladministration and Corruption)”.

It’s an epic scandal it’s a disgrace that media does not cover it.

HE soaking rain is causing the birds to lose their dryness, even in spite of their body emitting some protective oil. Some of them park here, some begs for seeds (birds that don’t typically nest here), and I find myself feeding some birds I don’t know.

This coming Sunday when ManCity goes to Liverpool for a match (away game, kickoff at 4:30) we plan to revisit the park (went there yesterday afternoon), but it’ll be cold (no more t-shirt).

Winter feels like it came early. Some European countries are already in subzero temperatures.

he blogger Ruben Schade, who says he’s an “aspiring human” that’s “into retrocomputing”, has had bouts of depression. He was being trolled online. I spoke to him about this in past years and I think it made him feel better. He regularly blogs about his everyday life, not just about Tech (or tech), and he promotes BSD and GNU/Linux.

“I think I’m done with the Raspberry Pi,” he wrote some days ago. I can relate. My wife sold her Raspberry Pi some years ago and I stopped using mine 2 years ago. To me, the main issue was the storage; not the cost of it… but the reliability. Running a Raspberry Pi system on a microSD card is a mistake. Even with a high-reputation card maker, the card would barely last a year. I tried about 4 times. Always the same outcome.

I, like Schade, am done with Raspberry Pi.