M - 27 and counting

 Today is the 5th day of the 33rd week, the 15th day of the 9th month, the 228th day of 2024, and:

• Best Friends Day
• Chant at the Moon Day - today it is in the waxing gibbous phase, 78% of full
• Chauvin Day 
• Feast of the Assumption of Mary - a holy day of obligation for Catholics and a public holiday in several countries
• Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos - an Easter Orthodox holiday celebrated in several countries
• Green Data Day
• I Love Cowboys and Cowgirls Day
• Independence Day - Korea from Japan in 1945.  Known as "Independence Day" in South Korea and "Fatherland Liberation Day" in North Korea
• National Acadian Day
• National Back to School Prep Day
• National Best Friends Day
• National Check the Chip Day - have you had your pet microchipped?  Is it still working?  Ask your vet to scan it the next time you are there
• National Failures Day
• National Hazy IPA Day
• National Leathercraft Day
• National Lemon Meringue Pie Day
• National No SpongeBob Day
• National Relaxation Day
• and Voyager I is 22h 44m 00s of light travel time from Earth

Quote of the day:

"Moving on, is a simple thing; what it leaves behind is hard."

~  Dave Mustaine - American musician, co-founder, primary songwriter, and sole consistent member of the thrash metal band Megadeth

This morning is an unpleasant reminder of why I really have to move - management, who was probably inundated with service requests and phone calls, finally sent out an email at 11 AM saying that the A/C was having maintenance performed on it, and they would "provide updates" on the progress of the repairs and when we could expect it to be turned back on.  HINT:  it wasn't fixed by the end of the day.  I just hope it is fixed before the end of tomorrow or it is going to be a rough weekend. 

THIS AND THAT:  what caught my attention today.  Usually the firehose is spraying all over social media, for the second day in a row, I am confining it to here.  Why?  seemed like a good idea at the time...

Remember the movie White Knights?  It was about a ballet dancer who had defected to the West, but ended up in Russia when his plane had to make an emergency landing.  He was arrested of course.  I thought of that when I read this story about a ballerina who went to Russia for a family visit, and ended up in jail for high treason.  This is the kind of emotional blackmail that is behind these prisoner exchanges

All of us are heartily sick and tired of the long lines and the various indignities suffered by every airline passenger since 9.11 as TSA tries to do their job.  And then you see a story like this and you have to wonder, why would anyone try to smuggle a stun gun onto an airplane unless they planned to do something nefarious?  And who is making stuff like this?  

Okay, let's get the politics over with:  

• Musk created an AI chatbot called Grok, and immediately there has been a flood of fake pictures of folks doing odd things.  Just what we need during an election season, neh?  So much for "seeing is believing" and you can bet that more than one person will pontificate that "where there is smoke...."
• Not to be outdone, and during the peak US election season, it seems that Facebook finds their tool to detect security threats and misinformation is just taking up too many resources [translation: they have to pay people to monitor it], so they are discontinuing the service. 
• The book banners seem to be targeting woman authors 
• Not only does Project 2025 want to dismantle the Department of Education [too much gov't regulation] but they want every public high school student to be required to take a military entrance exam [no government intrusion there, huh].
• And Dan Rather points out that Project 2025 has had Donnie's fingerprints and blessing from the get go, and he still intends to use their playbook for hiring staff no matter what he might say now that the Project 2025 and Agenda 47 have both received so much publicity
• Just for the record, Donnie does indeed dress weird.  
• And he thinks if he keeps pointing out that he isn't happy about the conviction, then he shouldn't be sentenced, at least until after the election.  After all, if he wins, then he has a get-out-of-jail-free card!
• Today, the grammarians get the final word - just how do you indicate our VP's possession of an item?  

There, that wasn't so bad today, now was it.  And since it is isolated in its own little section, you can easily ignore it.

Joshua Hill writes regularly in the blog New Means.  I don't always agree with him, but sometimes I think he hits the nail on the head.   Homelessness is something that is uncomfortably close to all of us.  Yes, I am uneasy around them and try to void them, especially if they are aggressively panhandling, but I also look at them with the penetrating thought "there but for the grace of God, go I", and the knowledge that I am one illness, one accident, one layoff from financial disaster, one that neither my family nor my friends might be able to rescue me from.  I understand the sanitary issues of an encampment and the way they drive down property values, but like many, I am very uncomfortable with making homelessness illegal and persecuting those who are already down and out.   

I had opened this article because neither of my kids are employable at this time, both have been ravaged by cancer and left without the endurance or the concentration needed to hold down a job responsibly.   They are both so fortunate to have good support systems, people who love and care for them!  But many are not so fortunate, and after reading about the homeless, many of whom are unemployable, I had hoped to find some insight.  Instead?  We have to contend with people who seriously posit that the social safety net [Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income, food stamps, the Affordable Health Care Act, Medicare, mental health diagnosis, an education system not geared to job training, and housing subsidies] is to blame by making being unemployable an option.   The article goes on to blame the COVID lockdown and payments, the legalization of marijuana, and "as social disorder intensifies, more marginalized individuals [narrator insert:  AKA minorities], particularly male adolescents and young adults, get drawn into illegal activities...." and this makes them jail bait and unhireable.    The solution?  you can read it yourself, but basically it says the social safety net has to be dismantled and school curriculums re-tooled - Calvinism at it's bleakest 

While I still think Boeing deserves to be slapped with all kinds of negative publicity for their lack of quality control, I am actually old enough to remember that this isn't the first time someone got kinda stuck in space unexpectedly.  

Einstein was a genius and deserves credit for the Theory of Relativity.  But centuries earlier, it was work by Galileo that provided the first reasoning on the core of the principle.

Yes I am more than a little disenchanted with Disney at the moment.  Genie+ was the last straw as far as I am concerned, completing an arc that saw Imangineers laid off, park rides left abandoned all during the COVID shutdown [and now they break constantly], the lack of cleanliness in the parks [because they keep laying off cast members], and the reduction of perks for staying onsite [the main one being the Magical Express].  But I still look rather wistfully at the opportunities to live in the magic....

I am not a world-class blogger like Judd Legum, but Facebook has been automatically removing a lot of posts lately for one spurious reason or another.  Most of them have been restored upon appeal, but the backlog of appeals is building up apparently because the response time is getting longer and longer.  I have to agree that "left" posts are deleted far more often than "right" posts though

Aren't you glad that I didn't loose all that on you all throughout the day?

MOVING UPDATE:  Last night I managed to set up my utility accounts and the resident portal for payments, and finally figured out how to mark some numbers as "always ring" so that I will get the calls.  This was important for the family and emergency numbers, but also I had to make sure the number the call box to open the door can ring through when I am called at the new place.  Tonight I measured the stuff from the kitchen and foyer to compare with the spaces in the new place on Saturday.  I also went through my books - tomorrow they are coming to take about mostly non-fiction 440 books away; the empty bookcases will go elsewhere.  

Triscuit enjoyed her sunbeam this morning while I worked

And so the day winds down.

I have the fans running and as soon as the temperature moderates a bit, will open the balcony door and the windows for the night.  At least it is supposed to cool off a bit tonight, although it will be muggy.  Because I am pretty worn out today, having had some nasty nightmares last night, I will be able to ignore all the street noises and get some sleep.

Happy Friday's Eve you all!