Blog/May 2019/May 3rd

May 3rd

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The last day of pesaḥ came and went and melted into shabbat — all in all, a very quiet and relaxing two days.

Jeremy was released from hospital, and will be doing some followups. Sarah’s started her management training (and will be a full-blown manager come Monday). We wish both of them good luck!

On Sunday, Esther and I spent the morning adjusting the kitchen back to non-pesaḥ status, putting away the pesaḥ dishes and utensils, and cleaning up. For some reason we still can’t fathom, we had two boxes left-over. We must be getting more efficient at packing…

This week I received a notice from Facebook, informing me that a post of mine from 2014 (!) “goes against our Community Standards on hate speech”. That’s interesting to me for two reasons: first, 2014, really? Who exactly is trawling through my posts from almost five years ago? Second: the post in question was derogatory towards followers of the Religion of Piss™, though it was a factual post and was very mildly worded. So if my inconsequential post of years ago can get me in trouble, it stands to reason that FB are looking for reasons to squelch any wrongthink, no matter how minor. I have a feeling I will be forced off FB soon despite having no followers to speak of. At least I have good company: a number of prominent conservative voices are currently being banned by FB and Instagram.

And this week marked “Holocaust Remembrance Day” here in Israel. In keeping with the theme, the New York Times published a despicable cartoon which would have been appropriately featured in Der Stürmer. The cartoon showed a blind, yarmulke-wearing Trump, being lead by a Netanyahu-headed guide dog, with a large “Star of David” around its neck. It wasn’t a subtle message. I guess Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic statements were just too mild, the Times felt it needed to one-up her. As Harsanyi says, “It’s getting difficult to tell the difference between the NYT and al-Jazeera”.

Things:

• Michael Knowles on “How Odd of God”.
• And Prager on why Clinton and Obama tweeted about “Easter Worshipers”
• The Washington Post’s “10,000 Trump Untruths” is about 25% fake news, itself.
• “Sports Illustrated” gets “woke”.
• Are you a white supremacist?
• Incredibly, we’ve now reached a point where serious discussion is being made as to whether or not men competing in women’s sports are at an unfair advantage.
• In good news: expect a major asteroid strike during your lifetime.

The light in my upstairs office went out this week. I heard a sizzling sound, so I was pretty sure it was the “ballast” and not the bulbs. But I checked anyway; sure enough, the fixture itself had died. So I went to the hardware store to replace the fixture (since I have spare bulbs for it). But guess what? They don’t sell T5 fluorescent fixtures anymore. I was able to get a “T5 LED fixture”, which looks almost the same — but the bulbs are not the same (the fluorescents won’t work in it for one thing). Fortunately, it wasn’t too expensive and it was easy for me to replace the burnt-out fixture with the shiny new one. Hopefully it will last more than a couple years.

Prior to pesaḥ, we removed all yeastly things from the house, including my sourdough starter. So as soon as the kitchen returned to the “normal” state, I started a new starter. In contrast to years-past, the starter bloomed immediately. After feeding it for almost a week, it’s just about ready for prime-time! Sourdough bread, next week, B”H!

We’re back to our normal shabbat schedule this week. We plan on having:
homemade ḥalla, mushroom soup, lemon garlic chicken, baked yams and potatoes, oven-roasted vegetables, various salatim, and date-nut cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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