Jon F

Born in the 60s. Living on the South coast of NSW Australia. Former journalist, now full time carer for my disabled son. Music maker, dreamer of dreams.

Enamoured with:
Electronic (and all) music, science fiction/fantasy. Rollerskating, swimming, bushwalking.
Degrowth, post-doom, neo-Luddism; peace, love & anarchy!

I deleted my big tech accounts, I'm now pure fedi. Windows, Android, Apple etc., are all expunged from my life, replaced by Linux et. al.

Posts auto-delete after 1 week.

web: https://drongo.day
bookwyrm: [@AvonVilla@ramblingreaders.org](https://ramblingreaders.org/user/AvonVilla )
peertube: https://dalek.zone/a/avon_villa/video-channels
funkwhale: https://tanukitunes.com/@avonvilla https://open.audio/@AvonVilla

Last Notes

2025-09-21 21:04:20 UTC

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Hearing of experiences like yours makes me glad I have opted out of quoting in my settings.
Not that I'm expecting any disasters... I also doubt it would happen here. But I generally think making it DIFFERENT here from the commercial/big tech/autocratic platforms is a priority. We especially don't want automated amplification of arseholery.
Also, the concept of arsehole journalists initiating a pile-on of bullying makes me wonder if the journalistic code of ethics is out of date.... just one of many problems legacy media is grappling with now. But that's a whole new rabbit hole.

2025-09-21 07:57:20 UTC

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It took a long time for me to even work out what a quote tweet even is. I think I'll just try to ignore it.

2025-09-20 22:23:26 UTC

I've started volunteering at a community recycling centre. They have a room full of old computers rescued from landfill/e-waste. My main contribution was to work out how to revive the password-protected ones, ready to donate to deserving recipients. It's pretty basic hacking by the standards of many fedi geeks, but immensely satisfying for me.

2025-08-06 05:57:09 UTC

Scona beer gloria sty to die.
#strine
https://mediacdn.aus.social/media_attachments/files/114/980/258/081/967/366/original/08edf640c6c0fdce.jpeg

2025-08-05 04:19:30 UTC

1/2
I feel a bit raw because I just entered a verbal fracas at a local cafe. Two boomer blokes sat down next to me, and one of them started ranting about things he was reading on his phone: an activist had called for the Sydney Harbour Bridge to be removed as a symbol of colonialism; someone had burned the Australian flag; there were too many immigrants. But mostly he was angry about Sunday's march for Palestine. It cost too much, the judge who approved was paid too much, the people who took part were idiots because they support Palestine.
In summary, he was an off-the-scale meme-fueled right-wing geriatric clown.

2025-07-26 07:39:47 UTC

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I feel Cattle and Cane, Wide Open Road and Friday on my Mind MUST be coming up. And surely Dead Eyes Opened... or has Australia become too boring for that nowadays?

2025-06-25 06:23:03 UTC

The most Wuthering Heights Day Ever... I've been a spectator at this event twice, and I vowed that next time I would participate. My costume is ready. It's a trouser version, I don't look good in a frock.
https://www.givenow.com.au/cr/canberrawuthering2025

2024-12-15 06:57:43 UTC

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Beautiful. The best shin hanga has a kind of universal language, it's immediately powerful even if you have no clue about its context and history.

2024-11-21 04:58:24 UTC

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We are good, Droppie, we are GOOD.

2024-11-21 04:45:54 UTC

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Thanks for saying that, it is a balm to read because I am smarting a bit after getting into a couple of rows over various issues today, and a lot of people seem to be pissed off with me even though we are broadly on the same side. I blame the polarising effect of decades of online echo chambers, but me being an old fart also comes into it.

2024-11-21 03:57:15 UTC

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I acknowledge the big problems in this area, exemplified by the Amsterdam incident which was very well explored by Mediawatch this week, where Israeli hooligans were erroneously described as an anti-semitic mob. Terrible.
I think my main point is that if it actually IS anti-semitism, it's very important to call it that. And it looks very much like it actually is in this case. If it's "automatic" on the part of the ABC, at least it's not wrong on this occasion.
Likewise, if a thing is NOT anti-semitism, it should not be called that... and of course we hear Netanyahu describing legitimate criticism of his appalling actions as anti-semitism all the time.
But I can't forget the ugly images of Charlottesville, or the various Nazi marches in Australia, or the neo-Nazi opportunists with their "TJQ" playbook during anti-lockdown protests. They are out there.
Anyway, I hope the above post is nuanced and not provoking culture war in any way. It has been my policy to strenuously avoid that, by not going there in the fraught medium of social media, and here I am doing it, fool that I am.

2024-11-21 01:55:33 UTC

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Was it about the incident in Woollhara? I don't have all the info, but initial indications are that without using the actual words, "Fuk Jews" is part of the message in this particular case. It just looks indiscriminate, spraying cars in a suburb that just happens to have a large Jewish population. Unless they checked whether the owners of the cars were supporters of Netanyahu, and passed over the cars owned by members of the "Peace Now" movement??? If they didn't do that, it looks like they were happy to go after any cars that were Jewish or even Jew-adjacent.

2024-11-16 21:19:59 UTC

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I switched off the TV before it started. I presume they didn't dwell too much on the large proportion of the audience who hated Countdown. It was part of an industry machine which promoted trash at a time when popular culture was teeming with inventiveness and breaking out of its creative confines. Rock Arena with Suzanne Dowling was the best.

2024-10-02 06:03:32 UTC

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This reminds me of music writer Johnny Rogan, who describes living in a flat with no bathroom or toilet and no electricity in the 1960s, when postwar austerity was STILL not over. They had gas lighting, and they used a shared bathroom and a chamber pot at night, rather than making the trek to the shared loo.
He lived a stone's throw from the glamorous haunts of Swinging London, whose luminaries he would later chronicle.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/johnny-rogan-obituary-one-of-the-most-well-regarded-music-biographers-of-his-generation-1.4489427

2024-09-17 10:08:01 UTC

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I think a partial answer to the question (why is it OK?) is that boomers are in a similar category to white people, i.e. privileged, so boomer bashing is more like "fuck off whites" than "fuck off blacks".
As a boomer myself, I don't mind the brickbats. On a conceptual level (for want of a better word) I am an unwavering devotee to the boomer creations of 1967 and 1977 et. al., but I think boomerdom generally bears a greater responsibilty for the betrayal of those ideas.

2024-09-14 07:03:09 UTC

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I went to the Moruya sustainability expo and swapped some nasty invasive weeds for five nice natives. Planted three of them before the rain started here.