Stav Zeitouni
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stzeitouni.bsky.social
Stav Zeitouni
@stzeitouni.bsky.social
1.7K followers 920 following 310 posts
Postdoc, Berkeley Law
NYU Law & Hebrew University alum
Writing about privacy, copyright and law & psychology (and occasionally Israel/Palestine)
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stzeitouni.bsky.social
This is the best title any copyright paper will ever have
Cover in marbled red: The Demonology of Copyright by Barbara A. Ringer R.R. Bowker Memorial Lecture New Series October 24, 1974
November 20, 2025 at 7:08 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
I turned my YouTube watch history off a few months ago and my Luddite hot take is that it's kind of nice not to be bombarded by an endless feed in at least one of my social media apps
Screenshot of YouTube app with search bar and a message below it reading "your watch history is turned off. You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you"
November 11, 2025 at 7:01 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
I always wanted to join a community of people sharing their laundry room selfies
"See how your neighbors are making laundry day easier with CSC GO. Download the app today!" accompanied by two photos of people in a laundry room
October 24, 2025 at 11:00 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Apparently the only way to find out if the constant surveillance bot around your neck is providing misinformation is to email the CEO. Just a complete abdication of any responsibility about what he's putting out into the world.
Leif also claims I can access a transcript of our conversations on the app. When I can't find it, he says, "That must be frustrating." It is. But according to Schiffmann, this is also a fabrication. "You are only able to talk to your Friend," he says. "If they suggest otherwise, it's up to them."
October 23, 2025 at 7:53 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Got this email this morning from the folks @ Berkeley Food Network. A reminder that our most vulnerable neighbors are going to be hit the hardest in the coming weeks. If you can, please donate to a local org to give them a boost this month.

BFN donation 🔗
www.berkeleyfoodnetwork.org/get-involved...
I'm reaching out with urgent news that could impact thousands of families, seniors, and community members in our community. If the federal government shutdown continues through next Monday October 27th, 5.5 million Californians — including your Berkeley neighbors — will not receive their November CalFresh or SNAP benefits. This would increase the demand for Berkeley Food Network’s services as soon as next week. No one expects the government shutdown to end by this deadline. For many in our community, this isn't a distant policy debate. It’s happening right here at home. This is a matter of where their food will come from next week and we need to be prepared. For Berkeley Food Network, this means the need at our 9th Street pantry— which already surged 33% in the last year — is about to intensify dramatically. The nearly 1,300 households we serve weekly at the 9th Street Pantry could quickly become 1,600 or even 2,000 as families lose federal assistance and have nowhere else to turn. What’s more - work requirements for SNAP benefits are going into effect November 1st, two months early, creating another barrier for community members experiencing food insecurity and further increasing demand at BFN.
October 22, 2025 at 4:59 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
ערן וולקובסקי בהארץ היום:
October 22, 2025 at 6:49 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
lol
Yariv Levin's response: "awful ungratefulness", from a ynet report
October 11, 2025 at 6:43 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Glad it's deleted, not sure about giving kudos
October 6, 2025 at 6:51 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Spotted by a friend at Ben Gurion airport today. I don't think they're going for irony.
A sign from Ben Gurion airport reading "Welcome to Israel. Your life will never be the same" with a yellow ribbon below it
September 30, 2025 at 5:16 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
והיום בתכניתנו: בחזרה לעתיד עם אברהם שלונסקי

(אני לא אפסיק להתפעל ממה שאפשר למצוא בספריות אוניברסיטאיות בארה"ב)
September 12, 2025 at 11:25 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Every few weeks I pop in to scroll twitter. Yesterday when I logged in I was hit by a stream of Grok-translated Hebrew tweets that I had to individually untranslate. I'm sure there's a way to reverse this, but I just want to note that the translations were really bad. Please don't rely on these.
Snir Klein's tweet auto-translated into: "Really, fat people are the funniest people in the world" Original Hebrew tweet: "Truly, right-wingers are the funniest people in the world"
September 3, 2025 at 2:50 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Quick note on translations of the word "starvation" from Hebrew, and on an (insidious) nuance that gets missed.

Take this statement from the IDF, translated and published in English on ynet today.

"There is no starvation in Gaza" sounds like a blatant rejection of reality, and it is...
July 26, 2025 at 10:13 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
I mean the longer statement quoted in the article:

"The IDF stresses that there is no [intentional] starvation in Gaza, this is a false campaign by Hamas. The responsibility for food distribution in Gaza rests with the UN and int'l aid orgs, and they are expected...
July 26, 2025 at 9:36 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
השיר הזה נכתב לפני שנה וחצי בערך, ופורסם בגיליון ננופואטיקה בסתיו. בין המיצרים שוב עלינו וזעקת מגילת איכה מהדהדת בכל פינה, אז אני מעלה גם לכאן. אולי אמחק בהמשך. כאב שלוב בכל והמילים מתאדות למולו.
בגב העולם סתיו זיתוני שמיים ביקשתי רחמים ונעניתי ריקם אני האישה ראיתי עני במטח מרגמות חמש פעמים ארזתי ביתי פרשתי אהלי, היגדתי לבתי: מחר יעבור זעם עירי שהייתה בצל זית עיר מקלט אימותיי שערייך חרבים, אורך הועם על שברי גגותייך מתדפקת נקמת דם ילד קטן בקרן רחוב היום נצבע אפור חללי רעב תרים אחר חללי חרב ילדתי מסיטה סדין כניסה שואלת לחם, עיניה כלות ערי רפאים, עיי חורבות ילדתי מה עוד תרצי להיות? איזה צדק תבקשי לך? מה תדרשי מגב העולם כאן בקיצו, כאן ברפיח?
July 23, 2025 at 6:27 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Really just this plus gossip
Rabbit-duck illusion illustration
July 21, 2025 at 4:05 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
מרגישה שהפכתי להיות בוט לציטוטי ארנדט
still from "What Remains" in which Hannah Arendt says "it wasn't the German language that went crazy"
July 14, 2025 at 2:46 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
יהודה עמיחי לעת צרה.

די כבר. די.

(מתוך מאחורי כל זה מסתתר אושר גדול)
קטע מתוך מאחורי כל זה מסתתר אושר גדול, יהודה עמיחי. [טו] אפילו אהבותי נמדדות בימי מלחמה, אני אומר, זה קרה אחר מלחמת העולם השניה. נפגשנו לפני מלחמת ששת הימים. לעולם לא אומר, לפני השלום 45-48 או באמצע השלום 56-67. אבל ידיעת השלום עוברת ממקום למקום, כמי משחקי ילדים שדומים כל כך בכל מקום.
June 17, 2025 at 9:50 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
שירים לקרוא ביציאה מהמקלט, בהכנה למקלט, במקלט.

הכל כאן משובש.

שבעה מאת מרים אורן מתוך הספר "אחד הדברים האלה", ספרית פועלים, 1962.
שבעה מאת מרים אורן ימים שבעה על הארץ ישבתי שבעה אחר קמתי מן הארץ. עת התור לא הגיעה הגפן לא נתנה ריחה הניצנים לא נראו בארץ ורק אזוב בקע מתוך קירות הלב ואני קמתי מן הארץ.
June 16, 2025 at 7:38 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
It will not be enough to know we served the kingdom or did what was expected of us, we will have to know for ourselves that what we supported was worth supporting. If it is not, acting with others when we can and withdrawing when we can't are always possibilities.
/9
Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be, "Why did you obey?" but "Why did you support?" This change of words is no semantic irrelevancy for those who know the strange and powerful influence mere "words" have over the minds of men who, first of all, are speaking animals. Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word "obedience" from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.
June 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
The second point is that these determinations rely on a very particular conception of "thinking", which for Arendt is about a dialogue with the self. Preconceived notions of right and wrong, laws, morality - all these will not hold up at the moment when they are most needed.
/7
The precondition for this kind of judging is not a highly developed intelligence or sophistication in moral matters, but rather the disposition to live together explicitly with oneself, to have intercourse with oneself, that is, to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself which, since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking. This kind of thinking, though at the root of all philosophical thought, is not technical and does not concern theoretical problems. The dividing line between those who want to think and therefore have to judge by themselves, and those who do not, strikes across all social and cultural or educational differences. In this respect, the total moral collapse of respectable society during the Hitler regime may teach us that under such circumstances those who cherish values and hold fast to moral norms and standards are not reliable: we now know that moral norms and standards can be changed overnight, and that all that then will be left is the mere habit of holding fast to something. Much more reliable will be the doubters and skeptics, not because skepticism is good or doubting wholesome, but because they are used to examine things and to make up their own minds. Best of all will be those who know only one thing for certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.
June 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
The core of the argument against lesser evil is about individual, moral responsibility. It is about being able to recognize your own powerlessness and choosing to withdraw because you cannot *live with yourself* if you do something.
/5
I therefore would suggest that the nonparticipants were those whose consciences did not function in this, as it were, automatic way-as though we dispose of a set of learned or innate rules which we then apply to the particular case as it arises, so that every new experience or situation is already prejudged and we need only act out whatever we learned or possessed beforehand. Their criterion, I think, was a different one: they asked themselves to what extent they would still be able to live in peace with themselves after having committed certain deeds; and they decided that it would be better to do nothing, not because the world would then be changed for the better, but simply because only on this condition could they go on living with themselves at all. Hence, they also chose to die when they were forced to participate. To put it crudely, they refused to murder, not so much because they still held fast to the command "Thou shalt not kill," but because they were unwilling to live together with a murderer-themselves.
June 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
In the political realm, acting with others is what matters, and is in fact what action actually *is*. According to Arendt, *under totalitarianism* it becomes almost impossible to act in this sense. In these circumstances, she tells us that it is reasonable not to assume political responsibility.
/4
But how is it with the reproach of irresponsibility leveled against those few who washed their hands of what was going on all around them? I think we shall have to admit that there exist extreme situations in which responsibility for the world, which is primarily political, cannot be assumed because political responsibility always presupposes at least a minimum of political power. Impotence or complete powerlessness is, I think, a valid excuse. Its validity is all the stronger as it seems to require a certain moral quality even to recognize powerlessness, the good will and good faith to face realities and not to live in illusions. Moreover, it is precisely this admission of one's own impotence that a last remnant of strength and even power can still be preserved even under desperate conditions.
June 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
If you recognize anything from it, it's probably this section, especially the first sentence. It's very strong and appealing as a rallying cry to disassociate entirely from any power in government. But there are two things that should be kept in mind when engaging with this paragraph:
/2
Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil. Since the evil of the Third Reich finally was so monstrous that by no stretch of the imagination could it be called a "lesser evil," one might have assumed that this time the argument would have collapsed once and for all, which surprisingly is not the case. Moreover, if we look at the techniques of totalitarian government, it is obvious that the argument of "lesser evil" - far from being raised only from the outside by those who do not belong to the ruling elite - is one of the mechanisms built into the machinery of terror and criminality. Acceptance of lesser evils is consciously used in conditioning the government officials as well as the population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.
June 8, 2025 at 9:22 AM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Gathered on occasion of my grandfather, Werner (later Zeev Nechushtan), leaving at 15 for Mandatory Palestine. Out of 4 siblings, only he and Alfred survived, both fleeing with Zionist youth orgs. Selma wrote desperately begging for help. Her sons risked what little they had, but couldn't do much.
Kupferschmid family, Berlin 1935. Back L-R: Alfred, Selma, Daniel. Front: Erwin, Jenny, Artur, Werner. Photo & info courtesy of Chana Shani.
April 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM
stzeitouni.bsky.social
Few words on this Yom Hashoah. So many lost that they become symbols, but loss is first and foremost personal: about who they could have been and aren't, who we could have been and can never be because they are lost to us. So, here's a family story in two pictures.

The Kupferschmids. Berlin, 1935.
Kupferschmid family, Berlin 1935: Standing L-R: David H., Jenny, Werner, Erwin, Alfred. Seated: Selma, Artur. Photo & info courtesy of Chana Shani.
April 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM