My Blog Newsletter For October 2021
The first edition of my monthly Medium posting activity wrap-up for those interested in following my online musings and rantings
A few weeks ago, Medium prompted me to enable the newsletter feature for this account — and I gladly signed up.
For about the last year, I’ve been receiving signups to a newsletter hosted on my personal website (the Mailchimp collection is here). Alas, although the list continues to populate, the newsletter has never gone out. I should probably stick up a notice.
Every time I publish a post here, Medium gives me the option to send it to my list of Medium email subscribers. Generally I don’t do so because I hate the thought of flooding people with spam. But tonight I thought of what I think is a clever improvisation solution: I’ll create a monthly round-up — the one you’re reading — and send that out to my subscribers instead.
So here’s the first edition. Working backwards (just published to recently published we have):
Ireland-hating Zionists Are Self-Righteous Hypocrites
I had to rope you in with a catchy title.
Every time Ireland and Israel intersect in the news — and it happens, though not regularly — I witness a predictable slew of anti-Irish sentiment from posters who describe themselves as “pro Israel.”
While I’m not the internet’s police force, I think that this dynamic deserved to be called out. I’ve been witnessing it for as long as I’ve been witnessing anti-Israel hatred on the Irish internet (and yes, some of it explicitly anti-Jewish).
I wrote, previously about the fact that there is anti-Semitism in Ireland. But that was a thoroughly different contention than arguing that all Irish people are anti-Semitic (which is too often suggested).
Crazy But True: One Guy In California Manages The World’s Computer Time Zones
I was honored that OneZero — an official Medium technology publication — curated my wacky piece about the Time Zone King into its feed.
If you’ve ever wondered how your computer so seamlessly is able to figure out the time zone it’s located in …. then, here’s your answer.
Eggert’s relatives have gotten in touch with me to affirm that the computer scientist is bemused by his newfound fame. So far this month, the story has been viewed close on 16,000 times.
Israel’s Aliyah Day Is A Wasted Opportunity
I’ve got nothing against Aliyah Day — Israel’s annual celebration of its immigrants. But I do think that so much more could be done with it to look at the much underdiscussed issue of olim retention.
I wrote a couple of pieces here that tried to integrate a few different themes.
For one, the housing crisis which the Times of Israel so eloquently reported on recently. Additionally, the “mental health crisis” among Israel’s immigrants (one third of suicides in Israel are by olim).
I also affirmed the opinion that Israel’s longstanding practice of only collating information about its inbound immigration flow is dishonest.
Until such time as reliable statistics about olim who leave are collated and analyzed, we’re only seeing a partial picture about net migration flows and retention.
Could A Better Rental Market Be The Answer To Israel’s Housing Crisis?
The Times of Israel recently reported a series of concerning statistics about how difficult getting on the property ladder has become in Israel for immigrants.
One part of that piece that I felt deserved more exploration was the rental market. Could better regulation be the future if this generation of olim are priced out of the ownership market?
Should You Blog On Medium Or Ghost Or Your Own Site?
Today, I finally set up a self-hosted Ghost instance.
Clients frequently ask what the best approach to business blogging is and where their online web assets should be hosted.
While “don’t build your castle on somebody else’s land” seems like a truism, equally, I think there are some reasons why it actually makes sense to post on Medium — at least initially.
On a similar theme:
My Home Office: A Tour
Feel free to check out what I’ve got going on here. A weird combination of technology and prepping. Above all, a work in progress.
I Have A Linktree Now
This month, I bumped into a service called Link.tree a few times.
It struck me as a great way of compacting a whole string of commonly referred to links into one URL.
I’ve since been adding it into all my online profiles. If you’re curious what else I post online:
I Wrote About Depression
The movement to share mental health journies right now is too compelling not to participate in.
Currently, I’m working on a piece exploring how those who shared their journeys managed to do so while feeling safe about their professional futures.
It will likely take a while to produce and I’m thinking about pitching it around (typically I don’t bother anymore; I like to delineate very squarely between what I do professionally and the writing I do because I like writing).
Is it really safe to share in a world still very much filled with stigma?
If you have thoughts about that, feel free to get in touch. Those dynamics will be explored soon.
But for the moment there’s this (it’s long and any future pieces I write on the subject — if there are any — will likely be far shorter):
If you’re reading this post from an email viewer, click on ‘view story’ to see the story links on Medium.
Until next time.
