Blog/February 2021/Feb 19th

Feb 19th

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We finally got together with family this week! After almost a year, we had a visit from my cousins who live on the other side of Jerusalem. It’s been so long (because of all the lock-down nonsense), I’d almost forgotten what they look like! It was nice to see people other than my immediate neighbors, for a change. I hope my cousins felt the same way…

Sarah’s discovering the unbridled joys of working in an office environment, and dealing with people who may or may not be effective at communicating or working with others. Part of the issue she’s having is that the person she’s replacing apparently had a telepathic bond with the boss, and knew what he wanted without him ever uttering a word. He continues his mutistic ways, but Sarah’s telepathic abilities need a lot of work.

Esther and I both regularly enjoy the thrill of engaging with people who either can’t, or won’t, read and comprehend the written word. There seems to be some sort of cognition-disabling force-field in my written manuals, which prevents otherwise intelligent beings from understanding concepts which have been explained several times, in different manners, using what I am quite certain is clear language. And just to be clear: I’m not necessarily talking about young readers. The olds seem to have the same disinclination to read and comprehend.

A case in point: one of my users who is neither a youngster nor an inexperienced programmer, exchanged emails with me over the past week in which he laboriously misunderstood literally every part of the extremely simple installation instructions for my 8th programming language. So much so, that at one point I thought he must be pulling my leg: but no, he really was cognition-impaired. Recall that I’ve a couple thousand users, and he’s the only one who’s ever had this sort of problem — so I can be fairly certain it’s a “him problem”.

Various and sundry:

• Do you recall that 25,000 National Guard troops were brought into Washington DC prior to the inauguration, to “keep the peace”? Despite there being no disturbances, some 5,000 or so might stay until the fall. Why? Rep. Ted Lieu (D, CA) said the quiet part out loud this week. It’s only costing upwards of half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, so no biggy.
• The “Parler” app — a “Twitter” alternative — has come back online after a month or so of downtime due to the — completely coincidental — simultaneous removal of access to their service by all the Big Tech companies. Parler’s still not a great alternative, but at least it’s up again. They might have benefited from reading about how to decentralize their service.
• In the US this week, a freak invasion by the forces of the Arctic brought extreme cold to most of the lower 48. Texas, which has an independent power grid, found it wasn’t quite prepared for the extreme weather event. That might put its secession plans on the back-burner for a bit.
• Verisimilitude in historical drama? That’s so passé! “Anne Boleyn” is to be played by a black actress. The director must feel that nothing quite captures the look and feel of that 16th century English queen like someone more recently out of Africa. My objection isn’t that she’s black; it’s that it’s supposed to be an historically more-or-less accurate drama. When the actor is chosen to make a political point, that irritates me.
• Believe it or not, the CDC is recommending using hosiery as well as a mask on your face. I wish that were a joke, but it’s not. Perhaps we should just invest in isolation suits?
• Scientists may have found a portal to a fifth dimension. Let’s all join together, and exile our leaders there!

The holiday of Purim will be upon us next Friday. There will apparently be a lock-down again. I am quite certain people will not abide it. Enough is enough already!

We had extremely cold — near freezing — weather this week. Jerusalem got some snow, though we didn’t. There was a whole lot of rain, and there’s more rain in the forecast for this afternoon. Then it’s supposed to turn dry and warmer but still below average temperatures. A strange winter… almost you might say, a winter of our discontent.

This week’s shabbat menu:
homemade pitot, veggie soup, pot-roast, mashed potatoes, roasted veggies, various salatim, and oatmeal cookie bars.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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