mastodon 4.7.3Library technician working in an accessibility library in Vancouver BC. admin of klezmor.im. MA UBC History 2019. YIVO fellow 2025. Independent researcher interested in klezmer musicians, migration, Yiddish literary world, Dutch East Indies political & journalism history, Indonesian anticolonial movement. Sporadic Wikipedia editor. He/him.📜😯🌈🎻 Current projects about New York City klezmer musicians & their milieu (1890–1945), klezmer copyright manuscripts in the US Library of Congress.
salute to Avi for winning the federal NDP leadership. NDP is in a tough state right now due to people voting for Carney out of fear of Trump (understandable in many ridings) but Canada needs left-wing criticism and advocacy as part of our national politics. it can't just be technocrats, right and far right dominating everything.
fuck me, this is what Meta is advertising its official AI app with on instagram nowadays..?
"The governing Liberals will obviously accept whichever warm body comes its way on its slow march to a majority. But accepting someone like Ms. Gladu into its caucus perpetuates the Liberals’ reputation as a party without foundational principles: as one where the desire to govern is, in fact, its primary ideological driver."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-marilyn-gladu-what-does-liberal-party-actually-stand-for/
sometime after my current projects I was thinking I should research & write a #wikipedia article about the 1926 communist uprising in the Dutch East Indies. for some reason, despite significantly changing the course of politics there for decades, it doesn't have an article in EN or ID wikipedia🤔
me at 44
also the rare time I drink beer in my 40s
niche post but if you know someone in #Vancouver with kids 6 and under who would be interested in a progressive Jewish storytime, this is the first time we're doing it, run by librarian friends from the community. mostly in English but also some #Yiddish
https://www.peretz-centre.org/event-details-registration/kindervelt-jewish-storytime-for-kids-at-the-peretz-centre-2026-04-12-13-00-1
lol the MLA and AHA are posting the full depositions of the DOGE guys who cut NEH funding on their youtube channels. I don't know if I'm going to laugh or cry or both while listening to these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22tvt2-IvmU
good writeup of this shitshow by one of the journalists targeted in it @llebrun@mastodon.social
https://pressprogress.ca/jesse-brown-insists-hes-done-nothing-wrong/
My periodic sharing of my favourite John Donne poem lol🫣
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/48688/pg48688-images.html#pagei.77
good luck to them / to us lol. we need to be rid of Ken Sim
a lot of people have complained about the quality of pronunciation in the audiobook version of Molly Crabapple's Here Where We Live is Our Country😬 to the point she announced she is going to re-record it herself. (I have a paper copy, so haven't experienced Chaia as "Tshaya" and so on)
https://bsky.app/profile/mollycrabapple.bsky.social/post/3mlqwd6vcws2k
if you know someone who is artsy, likes working with kids, into progressive Jewish culture & wants to work in Vancouver for two weeks in August .. feel free to pass it along to them. don't have to be Jewish of course.
(I volunteer with this centre but not involved with the job posting)
https://www.peretz-centre.org/post/job-posting-peretz-zumershule-camp-counsellor-artistic-advisor-2026
At this point I generally find Piker to be a blowhard, but liking him is not relevant in this excellent points being made here.
"This echoes a problem that arose during last year’s New York City mayoral race. Some Jewish groups discounted now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s substantial efforts at Jewish outreach, instead focusing wholly on his criticism of Israel." [...]
https://forward.com/opinion/821020/hasan-piker-anti-zionism-antisemitism/
😪 "At the University of Washington, a group of faculty who felt the campus had grown too “anti-Israel” set out to build a new academic center to tackle what they view as antisemitism.
[...] The center is led by a co-chair of a university antisemitism task force – but she is a public health professor, not a scholar of Jewish studies. Other members come from the university’s law and business schools. The center is not formally affiliated with the University of Washington"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/24/antisemitism-university-spikes-worry-jewish-scholars
My MLA. hope things turn around for her soon
https://globalnews.ca/news/11813137/bc-premier-mla-joan-phillip-very-ill-prayers/
I've realized some of the corners of reddit I've been reading the last few years have become much worse over the last 6 months. not only r/canadaland became nonstop flame wars and is currently locked due to mod chicanery, but a lot of the Canadian political/regional ones have a lot more crap being left to linger than before, and JewsOfConscience which I used to read a lot for Israel news and Jewish community discussion has honestly become full of insane contrarians & bigots. I need a break!
rare time I agree with VPD lol
they want the Dubai/Monaco level treatment but this is not a Dubai/Monaco level city
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/fifa-gianni-infantino-motorcade-vancouver-world-cup-b2966376.html
this is rough. my neighborhood community college too. I wonder if it's a cry for help to a province that so far does not seem to give a shit that everything outside of UBC and SFU are being burned to the ground
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/very-short-sighted-vancouver-college-cancels-fall-nursing-program-amid-health-care-staffing-crisis/
this is demented even for him
threatening genocide is part of the crime of genocide, it's not just military bluster
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/u-s-israel-iran-war-trump-deadline-9.7154523
so much for my plan of mild-manneredly looking at ducks at piper spit tomorrow on my birthday 🫣🦆
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/strong-winds-b-c-9.7153739
Shameful that our city is passing the buck on this to score political points with the worst of the worst
https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/04/02/Vancouver-Keeps-New-Supportive-Housing-Pause/
one of my family members worked at this campus for a semester in the late 2010s. provincial and federal government are just gonna let higher ed outside of cities wither and die eh?
https://www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Kamloops/605657/TRU-proposes-closing-Williams-Lake-campus-to-save-up-to-4-million-annually
"It is just so obvious, and it so obviously violates the standards of, just, basic humanism. There's no need for a Palestinian exception here, you know. You just have to be a humanist."
https://www.thekeymagazine.com/p/ta-nehisi-coates-palestine-israel-the-message-election-interview
Good interview
“Rejecting the self-determination of the Jewish people on the Palestinian land in itself is not antisemitism, you are denying other people’s rights in the land.”
https://forward.com/news/817276/mahmoud-khalil-hamas-zionism-antisemitism-israel/
still one of the biggest stains on Vancouver's reputation. the people can just murder someone in broad daylight and lie about it. #ACAB
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/04/27/news/vpd-officers-have-yet-testify-myles-gray-death-hearing-heres-what-exhibits-say
