Sunday Morning Thoughts – November 17, 2024

Should we start looking for a Planet B?

Sitting here trying to decide what I can say about the state of the world without getting all worked up. Don’t worry, I’ll move on quickly. This is just brainstorming.

How about keeping money out of politics? How about requiring our elected officials to understand primary school level science? How about those same elected people having to read and prove they have understood the Constitution? How about Bible verses not being accepted as replies to fundamental questions? How about not lecturing other countries on human rights when you’re stripping your women of basic ones? How about investing in education to give people a chance to detect false information? How about not printing and broadcasting misinformation? And we’re back to money. Anybody can have anything broadcast and printed if they have deep pockets.

Dangerous!

And B – R – E – A – T – H – E.

I only have a few things to say today. I went to the Landesmuseum at lunch time on Tuesday. I linked the English page of the Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum). Swiss readers will find more information if the change the language to one of ours.

Landesmuseum Zurich - stunning building

Oh, did I tell you that I’m now the proud holder of a Swiss Museum Pass? It gives me unlimited access to over 500 museums in Switzerland. I love it. It also means that I can go to a museum at lunch, spend like 45 minutes and go back to work. And I can do that as often as I want. There are some exceptions like special exhibits (the van Gogh/Matthew Wong one at the art museum comes to mind) where you have to pay to enter anyway. It’s a reduced price though.

Anyway, I can never go to all 500 museums but at least one a week should be possible. Or I win the lottery, quit my job and go to all of them.

The exhibit I went to see is called Colonial – Switzerland’s global entanglement. I could only spend about 30 minutes. The topic got to me. As it would. They ask you not to take pictures, so I didn’t. Here’s what they say about some of the material used “The exhibition includes objects, images and terms, which are racist and discriminatory. They are historical testimonies to the then reigning Western notion of superiority.”

You obviously can’t have an exhibition like this without having an honest look at what happened. When I read seemed pretty honest to me. There was a lot of information in there that I didn’t know. Some I did know but not the extent of it. And some I couldn’t handle on a Tuesday.

I will have to go back. The information is super dense and not easy to digest.

You know what my main problem was though? Everything was in four languages. I loved that about it initially, but then I started reading in German, continued reading the same in French and Italian and when I got to English is was like “I read that before”. Not really a time saver.

They also have everything compiled in a book – four separate books for each language. I might have to get this.

Fast forward a couple of days.

On Thursday I went to the theater. How delightful that was. The show was called Schmaz in Space and I saw it at Theater Rigiblick in Zurich. Schmaz is a gay men’s choir, and in this show they went looking for a Planet B. Humans screwed up our planet so badly that it was now impossible to live here. It was a fun musical journey, and the choreography was absolutely epic. I can totally recommend this.

There are some tickets left for January. Saying this for anybody in Switzerland. It might be worth the trip. And in true Swiss fashion we got some chocolate for the journey home. And it was my favorite. How lucky were we!

Of course, I almost missed the train because the tram got stuck in traffic and they had decided that our train would leave from a platform where we first had to pass 6 (SIX!) locked cars before we got to the part of the train that was actually running. Do you know how long it takes to walk down a platform passing six cars? Too freaking long!

Anyway, also worth a visit is the courtyard of the Landesmuseum in the evening. There are a lot of food stands and some sort of show. I was just hungry and wanted some food – I didn’t worry about the show as much. It said “next show in 33 minutes” and something about ticket. I might look it up and go back some other time. The Landesmuseum is right next to the station.

Doing a bit of digital detox but as ever, doing it my way. I kept my phone use to under an hour for the past five days. On Wednesday it was even only 19 minutes. Now, I can’t be entirely offline but on my laptop I tend to be more intentional (apart from YT rabbit holes of course) with my time. It’s been great and a real eye opener. I guess finding a middle ground is going to be key.

Priorities. Staying off any newsfeed. My own sanity. There is an analog world out there. Take your pick. They are all reasons I was doing this. And I think I will continue for a bit.

I was online more again yesterday because BlueSky is really blowing up. They are seeing a growth of about 1 million new users a day. Everybody is leaving X-Twitter – just like I did on November 6. It was nice to reconnect with old friends and find new interesting accounts to follow.

Substack is also growing it feels like. With more people using the chat function. And I really want to try some of the audio and video options. Hopefully soon.

Zurich - with the sun fighting through the fog.

I’m at about 1000 words and I have a hard out today. So, this one will have to be a bit shorter. There might be some Lucerne pictures later on.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

P.S. from the station in Aarau where they have conveniently put tables now. Yay me! I was also gonna share this picture from inside the Landesmuseum. I love museum architecture.