the war that should not be

off the top of my head, the only thing that's given me any sense of achievement this week is writing and publishing Some Hope Amidst The Darkness: Perspectives From The Ground. i've spent a lot of time "discussing" things with acquaintences and strangers online, it's been exhausting.

work has been pretty miserable, but as i was discussing with my mom yesterday - i'm very lucky to have a job at all, under the circumstances, and my boo-hoo "hardships" are certainly a lot less than what most israelis are going through. i've got so much to be grateful for, not least of which being that my family  is intact.

tues/wed/thurs:

who knows. who cares?

yesterday:

i wrote all through thursday night until about 3am yesterday morning, crashed, woke up about six hours later and continued editing until i felt i could publish. or, at least, until gd advised me to just push the button and get it over with. then we walked to the vegan coffee shop nearby for coffee and sandwiches, then meandered home.

...

we had an unpleasant incident on the way home, from an unexpected source. mr smear suddenly complained about the hostage pictures everywhere, and gd and i were both upset by his initial responses to ours. we were initially quite angry, but i took a breath and tried to approach him with genuine curiosity, which led to a conversation, and an opportunity to do something that i wasn't sure i should do, but ended up proving effective without any apparent trauma: i asked him to imagine if it was him, or us, if he'd want everyone to not think about him (or us) quite so much. 

...

i spent most of yesterday anxiously online. "hasbara" - explaining what israel is doing and why we're doing it - is exhausting. it's thankless. it's anxiety-inducing. it's frustrating. and ultimately, it's demoralizing. it shouldn't be necessary to work hard to convince people of the truth.

combatting disinformation in the face of social media algorithms optimized to drive engagement feels like nothing more than farting into the wind.

this link is to a moment in a video where some journalists/pundits discuss how this is the first war where PR plays a decisive role. we've reached this disturbing point in technology and history where our tools combine with our lack of experience and critical thinking to render us susceptible to whatever's meme-able and goes viral, no matter how wrong, no matter how dumb.

...

i finally - for the first time in days - found bandwidth to play some more inscryption last night. this morning, mr smear wanted me to watch him play a scene from octodad. aside from the pride of watching my boy master something really hard, i don't remember the last time i laughed so much :)