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This week was far too long, I gotta say!

I had to run around to renew a license, and after all of the running around still didn’t get it properly taken care of. Esther had to make a special trip to get her fingerprints taken for the IRS. We took Mom to the orthopedic surgeon for ongoing treatment of her bad toe. There the good doctor removed some of her toe bone (''phalange'') so the wound would heal… but since it was a one-minute procedure, he didn’t give her any anesthetic. That was fun.

Two months ago, I had gone to the dentist. He had to make a big filling, and gave me a long lecture on the difference between “discomfort” and “pain”, telling me that if I had “pain” he would have to do a root-canal procedure. Well, I was in excruciating “pain” this week, so I went back and he did indeed inflict a root-canal procedure on me. He drilled out the nerves without having killed them first. It was fun, even though he doped me up with lots of Novocaine (shades of [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077269/ “The Boys From Brazil”]).

In other news: the USA election is still not over, and may not be for yet awhile. Two states are doing mandatory recounts, and there are a number of lawsuits being heard. But here’s the thing:

The “social media” and the legacy media have both taken on the rôle of “gate-keepers”, which means they decide what is suitable for you to hear and see. On Twitter, for instance, any tweet which even mentions that the election is still in play displays a notice: “This claim about election fraud is disputed” (even if the tweet doesn’t mention fraud). Facebook does the same, YouTube removes videos.

On the other hand, there’s no comparable notice when posts mention “President-Elect Biden”, even though as a matter of ''law'' (and fact) he is not yet “President-Elect”, and won’t be until the states certify, the electors vote, and he is indeed elected. Right now, nobody knows what the end result will be, but the media don’t care; they just want to control what you perceive. And they do.

Therefore I’ve been ignoring all headlines (''especially'' from CNN and FOX) having to do with the election, since they’re boringly repetitive, partisan, and almost completely devoid of factual content. Sorry to have bored you all…

In techie news: if you recall, I recently got a new laptop, which came with “Pop!_OS” installed (a Linux distribution). I had some problems which I originally thought might be the hardware, but which turned out to be software, fortunately. This week I gave up on Pop! and installed [https://linuxmint.com Linux Mint], which is what I’ve been using on my desktop machine for years. Haven’t had a single problem since, and probably won’t have any in future. Better the devil you know…

The weather has been delightful, finally! We’re supposed to have nice weather for ''shabbat'', with rain expected Saturday night and perhaps through Monday. Great timing!

This ''shabbat'' we’re going basic, with:<br>
homemade ''ḥalla'',
split-pea soup,
''pastel de papa'',
''ratatouille'',
beet salad,
various other ''salatim'',
and chocolate-chip cookies.

Until next time,<br>
''shabbat shalom''!


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