* Not much to say about what’s going on in Israel, except to affirm that this genuinely is their 9/11: a complete intelligence failure occasioned by having the worst possible person in charge, who will now politicize the tragedy for political gain and self-preservation in a country that already doesn’t think very highly of him. As someone else said, if Bibi Netanyahu is going to be turfed out soon as the war’s over, how incentivized do you think he is to conclude the war?
* You can do the wrong thing for the right reason, but that doesn’t make it the right thing, and you’d better be prepared to live with the consequences. Too few people seem to grasp this.
* Looking back over 2022’s entries, and having just come from breakfast-for-lunch at the local spot I waited months for on, I am surprised at how much of the stuff I wanted I finally got. Sure, the ID4 was always going to arrive if you waited long enough, but the local spot did eventually open for lunch, dinner, brunch, and now has outdoor dining, breakfast for lunch and takeout/delivery options. It’s going to be the Sunday pint spot before long now that it’s dark at night, which is going to be absolutely delightful.
* I also did eventually get Stories in Signal, and a Mastodon instance or two, but none of those ever got any meaningful uptake. The one thing that has launched and worked for me is Bluesky, and who even knows how long or how well it will continue to work, but it’s the most gratifying social media experience in a decade. Then again, it came pre-populated with the EDSBS Commentariat, a whole group of similar cultural and chronological sensibilities, so the failure of more IRL friends to latch on has not been a dealbreaker. It’s embarrassing how much battery life it accounts for on my phone.
* Speaking of batteries, my watch remains devoutly attached to that 81% battery capacity, which has been the rated capacity for months now. I smell a rat, but I haven’t had time to press the issue, and I definitely won’t be able to do anything with it until mid-November at the earliest. Gonna be a lot of days in low power mode, feels like, but until I can get a phone plan that will allow for cellular, replacing it altogether is foolishness.
* I don’t do well with warm weather at the best of times, but having it touch 90 degrees in October is just insulting. I know October is the summer month of record in San Francisco, but there is no reason I should ever have to deal with a 9 in the temperature during college football season, and I am entitled to a refund on my mortgage – or at least my property tax – for putting up with Alabama temperatures at California rates. Maybe going away for a week to a place with actual cold will help reset things.
* Because I need a reset. I know that 2024 is going to be hard, to the point that I’m considering asking to go back on medication – as late as possible, obviously, because I’d like to think that the holiday season, cooler weather, shorter days and the tiny village I’ve constructed around myself are enough to hold me until January or February. But if you can’t see any realistic way for things to get any better, you may as well do what is necessary to keep functioning in the face of a reasonable expectation of catastrophe.
* Next year is twenty years since My Buddy Vince first Sez something. That’s a lot to cope with. Of which.