Blog/June 2017/Jun 23rd

June 23rd

The week was long, and tiring, and not exciting in any way.

Well, except for Esther’s birthday. Sarah and I put together a celebratory meal of: honey-soy glazed Sea Bream fillets, chickpea patties, broccolini in lemon-garlic butter, oven-roasted potatoes, and a dessert of bourbon-butterscotch pudding. It was an excellent effort by the two of us, and Esther was duly appreciative. Shout-out to Fred and Isser, who helped us on the supply-side!

We were working, as usual. I spent a ridiculous amount of time sending out feelers for new contacts and fielding responses from those who chose to respond. Esther put in lots of hours covering for her maternity-leave-taking work-mate. Sarah put in lots of hours dealing with customers and co-workers. The week was long, and tiring, and (mostly) not exciting in any way. As I believe I’ve already mentioned.

Notes for my American (friends & family & !(friends|family)):

<rant mode on>
You need to tone down the rhetoric. Whether you’re on the Left, the Right, the Middle, or staunchly None Of The Above — you need to chill. Militant and extreme rhetoric is not helpful.

Disagreeing with someone, or with a political party, or with what-have-you is perfectly fine. It’s not perfectly fine to continually speak of the Other as a sub-human or as the worst enemy since Hitler. Or literally worse than Hitler.

It’s not perfectly fine, because when you demonize the Other in such a manner, you do three things. First, you make it acceptable (and perhaps mandatory) to act violently against them. After all, they’re literally worse than Hitler! How can you stand by and do nothing?

Second, you make it impossible to resolve differences because you will not listen to the Other. After all, they’re barely even human, clearly of sub-standard intellect, not worthy of serious consideration. Their ideas don’t matter, so you won’t entertain them.

Finally, you encourage people with a less stable mental state to seize upon your words as a “call to arms”. Think about the potential consequences before you mouth-off in public.

People who disagree with you are not (automatically) racists, sexists, xenophobes, or any other pejorative category of-the-day. They just disagree with you. Don’t be disagreeable about it.

You are destroying all that is good in Western Civilization. Please just stop, and crank the knob on the rhetoric back to a sane and healthy level. And remember: the Other is as human as you are, and made in God’s image (even if you don’t believe in Him; which is, perhaps, itself one of the roots of the problem), and therefore worthy of respect for that reason, if for no other.
<rant mode off>

Between-times, between my intense search for more contracts and contacts, and my work for current clients, I’ve started working on my Big Project. The one for which I originally designed and built 8th. The one which may have market-appeal, unlike 8th.

Whether or not it is successful commercially, it’s something I need and something I want, so I’m working on it in the interstices between paying gigs. You know, when the brain has had too much of one particular thing and needs a change of scenery. Progress will therefore be slow, but steady (I hope). I’ll update you as it progresses.

The weather is on the pleasantly cool (for Israel’s summer) side, but will heat up after shabbat.

This shabbat, the Triumvirate will have:
homemade ḥalla, Lancashire hot-pot, mushroom-barley soup, fish, roasted veggies, stir-fried tofu and vegetables with noodles, various salatim, fruit, perhaps chocolate-chip cookies, and banana cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥodesh tov!

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