the world at war

the war on the west is in full swing. i participated in a psyops webinar on thursday evening, and it was horrifying to have all the pieces of the puzzle come together to draw a picture of what we are - and have been for decades - actually up against. it's a massive, coordinated campaign not just against israel, but against the west in general, and it's far more insidious than quatar funding western universities.

it's the BRICS countries working together, specifically iran, russian and china, to subvert western values and ideologies. it's the tools they're using - students, social media, and filling roles in western institutions with ideologues (like the UN, and the ICJ). the noise from the past week or two in the news is directly due to this.

it's distressing, mostly because it's hard to come up with ways to combat it. the speaker was quite pessimistic, and i personally can't abide by that.

...

thursday:

a pretty good morning, feeling less stuffy/allergic (i'm still not 100%, but i'm not feeling sick at all)

frontend magic, but with some concerning findings. leaving work with less enthusiasm following an argument with the boss

the psyops webinar, and all the while working towards proving my boss wrong (and, in my opinion, succeeding)

friday:

after three days of sticking to the fasting regimen, i broke and had breakfast early...

comics shopping, learning (again) not to ask mr smear his opinion. we picked up the second bone volume in hebrew, a miles morales comic in hebrew (although it doesn't have nikud), and הילד הכחל, which so far seems to be a winner.

picking up vegan cholent, being proved wrong about the plastic bag leaking but fortunately not losing any clothing over it.

intervening to prevent a fight on the bus (gd called out a woman with tacky facial tattoos for being rough with her dog, who in turn responded with a curse)

forgetting i was on-call, fortunately the incident that occurred wasn't too severe. spending a couple of hours investigating and putting together a runbook, but ultimately my boss had a few additional tricks up his sleeve that were needed.

joining a pre-shabbat call on antisemitism that turned out to be not very interesting, particularly after the previous psyops talk

watching the rest of ice age 5 (i've skipped a few). at this point, the characters are clearly a vehicle for a story that doesn't have anything to do with them or their world. it's a fun movie if you watch it fore-armed with the knowledge that it's just an animated series of irreverant and random jarring or subtley (sometimes not-so-subtley) age-inappropriate gags that doesn't care about making sense.

reporting a neighbor's dog stuck on the balcony

passing out quickly on the couch