Suddenly it’s Saturday and we’re making arrangements for travelling to the airport on Monday to go home.
While I’ve been here my companions in the Italian conversation class have been organising a Christmas lunch for the group. Since the time of Covid we have been an online class. There are too few of us to make it worth while renting a room for a face to face class, which would of course be preferable, and so we do a zoom class each week. However we meet at Christmastime and at the end of each term for lunch, ideally at an Italian restaurant. This year it was agreed that we would go to a restaurant in Didsbury, the other side of Manchester from where I live. This is largely to accommodate a former member of our class, unable to continue with the class as she is really not computer literate. Neither is she very mobile for getting to a central Manchester place for lunch. But she lives close to the Didsbury restaurant and would love to get together with us.
Now, I can catch a tram from Oldham to Didsbury. It will be quite a long journey but doable. I googled the restaurant, hoping to find a route from the tram-stop. The computer threw up a map of Europe, informing me that the fastest way to the restaurant was by car and plotting out a route from Figueira da Foz, through the north of Spain, across France and finally up from the south coast of England to Manchester. How I laughed! The wonders of modern technology!
Thinking of modern technology, here is picture of a man in a tinfoil hat - a Tin Foil Hatter.
People like him believe that such hats prevent mind control by governments, spies, mobsters, corporations, extraterrestrial, or paranormal beings that employ ESP and suchlike. Most of them are probably relative harmless nutcases.
However, it is said that one of them is Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr, nominee for Health Secretary under Trump. California’s Democratic representative Robert Garcia called the nomination “f**’ing insane”, writing on X: “He’s a vaccine denier and a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist. He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.” We live in interesting times!
But will Robert Garcia be writing on X much longer. I read that people are leaving X. Here’s a link to Gaby Hinsliff writing about it in the Guardian.
My German friend is a great fan of the Hamburg football team, St Pauli. She is almost certainly relieved to discover that St Pauli have become the first major football club to leave X, describing the social media site as a “hate machine” and expressing concern that it may influence the outcome of the forthcoming German election.
Scrutiny of the role played by X in platforming hate speech, far-right conspiracy theories and racism has intensified since Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s US election. Trump was vociferously supported by Elon Musk, who bought X – then known as Twitter – in October 2022. He has now been given part-control of a new “department of government efficiency” this week.
The traditionally left-wing Bundesliga club have ceased operating their account and urged fans to switch to Bluesky, an alternative application whose user base is believed to have grown by about 750,000 in the past few days. “Musk has converted X into a hate machine,” part of the club’s statement read.
Now the writer Stephen King has announced he is quitting X after describing the platform as “too toxic”. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis is doing the same. The Guardian newspaper also said it would stop posting on X and has the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.
I doubt that it will lead to Elon Musk being impoverished but people are making gestures. Here’s a First Dog on the Moon cartoon about it.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!.
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