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Journal 2025-05-30 Friday: Work - The Emperor's new suit.

Omar came in to work around mid-morning wearing a suit. "Dressed up for the mosque?" I asked, knowing he wasn't. (For that, he normally wears his dark-blue jalabiya, which always reminds me of the gown worn by the Emperor in the Apple Video production of 'Foundation'.)

"No, an interview!" he said, confirming my unspoken suspicion. After last week's revelation about the future of Ken's job and mine, there was a good deal of talk among the four of us in the IT shop, and Omar revealed that he has been dissatisfied with his position for a while, and has been looking. Today he shared that he was one of three candidates short-listed for a position he's interested in, and that he will find out on Monday whether he is the successful candidate. I am optimistic for Omar's chances, because he's very knowledgeable and good at his job, really smart, professional, and just a super nice guy.

If he does get the job, that will be bad news for the Portland IT shop, because he'll be a big loss. But it could also potentially be good news for me, because somebody will have to fill Omar's position. (At least, until that position is eliminated too.) I've had my share of gripes about the job and the company, but if I were offered the chance to apply for Omar's position, I would definitely go for it.

In the IT field, as in any other profession that requires a specific body of knowledge and skills, there's the part that is inherent in the job itself - the basics of how to do the various basic functions that make up the job. That's the part you can learn in trade school, or college, or even from books.

But the other part is the part that's specific to the environment - the structure of the company and its policies, the particular way things are set up and configured in the company and on the site, and most especially the people you work with, in your department, and throughout the company, and people you do business with outside of the company. All of those things are unique to your company, your office, and your particular job; and no amount of schooling or self-study can prepare you for that.

So, having invested six months learning the ropes at my current gig, it does seem a damn waste to throw that all away. I won't know until next week (and I'm off Monday and Tuesday for the Jewish holiday) how Omar's interview went, or how the company will decide to proceed after that. But at the moment, it looks like there might be a possibility for me to stay on. [450]

Numbers - Parashath Bemidbar: Human terrain.

THIRD ALIYAH. Adin Steinsaltz writes: 'Toward the end of the previous section, the Torah stated in general terms: "The Children of Israel shall encamp, each in his camp, and each at his barrier, according to their hosts" (1:52). The following chapter [Chapter 2] details their encampment based on the four directions of the compass, which signals a change in their style of encampment. Until this point, the camp had traveled in a haphazard fashion. It can be assumed that the members of each tribe stayed close to each other, and would travel and encamp together, though there may have been exceptions. However, once the Tabernacle, situated in the heart of the camp, is constructed, the arrangement of the encampments of all the tribes in relation to each other becomes fixed.' (p. 736)

In the Book of Numbers, the Israelites will spend many years wandering in the wilderness, guided by God. No doubt they will encounter many different kinds of landscapes and terrain in that time, and will have to negotiate the disposition of various resources and obstacles - water, grazing land, rocky areas, and so on. What will remain fixed is their relationship to one another.

In a changing and often hostile external world, the community's greatest resource is its unity - the relationships among its people. Building relationships takes time and consistency. By following a fixed arrangement of the camps, the same people are assured of living close to the same people, and will have the chance to bond with their neighbors over time. The natural landscape may change from month to month and year to year, but the people and families are assured of knowing their place amongst one another - and before the presence of God. [287]

Computers and mind viruses.

I was one of those kids who scored really well on aptitude tests - the kind of tests where you have to pick the next shape or symbol in a series, and that kind of thing. If having a high IQ automatically translated to good grades in school, I ought to have been a straight-A student; but it doesn't, and I wasn't. The things you need to be successful in school - or in life - have very little to do with having the kind of intelligence that's measured by those tests.

I graduated high school with B's and C's on my report card, and joined the military, where I spent a total of 10 years active duty in two branches (USAF and USMC) as an enlisted man. The things I learned in the military helped me far more than any college or university would have. I took college courses throughout my adult life, mostly in subjects that interested me, but never earned a degree.

Eventually I went to tech school and earned an entry-level IT certification, and these days I work in IT. Sure it would have been cool to become an astronaut, or win the Nobel Prize, or discover the cure for cancer, but I'm OK with where I am now.

Now I work providing technical support to engineers. Part of my job is setting up laptop computers - regular laptops for the admin workers, and high-performance computers for the engineers. Suppose a new engineer who's just joined the company comes to the IT department, and I set him up with an engineering laptop. It's going to be a brand-new, top-of-the line, high-end machine with one or two terabytes of storage, maybe 64 or 128 gig of RAM, fastest processor and graphics card, and all the latest engineering software, Matlab and AutoCAD and so on. And that engineer can go and do amazing things with that computer.

But now suppose that computer gets a virus - or malware, or even just a bad driver update. Now there's a million garbage processes running on that computer, tying up all the resources so that the computer takes 20 minutes just to open Outlook. Now that laptop won't even perform as well as an ordinary admin laptop, and the engineer can't get anything done.

Your mind can get viruses too. If you are dealing with traumas, anxieties, dysfunctions, or any of the millions of issues that can mess with your mind, then it doesn't matter how high your IQ is - you're not going to be able to accomplish much in life, not until you get rid of the mental malware and debug your brain.

Fortunately, a human being is not a computer, and as individuals we have reason and free will to make our own choices in life. And as members of the human community, we can draw on the experience and wisdom of the past, and we can plan and create a better future. [489]

Linkage 2025-05-25: Occupied London.

UK: JEWISH MAN ARRESTED FOR SHOUTING AM YISRAEL CHAI.
https://x.com/NoaMagid/status/1926655422913552474

UK: JEWISH MAN ARRESTED, CHARGED FOR OFFENDING HEZBOLLAH.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-855230
'In recordings of the police interrogation seen by the Telegraph, officers asked the man: “Do you think that showing this image to persons protesting who are clearly pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel that by doing so would stir up racial hatred further than it is already?”'

So "stirring up racial hatred" is a problem, but only one side gets arrested for it. And the liberals, the intellectuals, the technocrats, the elite cliques - all of them will fall all over themselves to defend the jihadis against "islamophobia" and congratulate themselves on their great courage.

PS - Meanwhile in Toronto, Ezra Levant reports on a pro-Israel demo:
https://x.com/ezralevant/status/1926660966244143116

Linkage: Murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

COUPLE SHOT DEAD OUTSIDE WEDNESDAY NIGHT OUTSIDE OF CAPITAL JEWISH MUSEUM.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408769
'Initial reports indicated that one of the victims was a staffer of the Israeli embassy in Washington. Later reports clarified that both were employed by the embassy. Eyewitnesses said the shooter shouted "Free Palestine" before carrying out the attack. The suspect has been named as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago.'

ISRAELI EMBASSY EMPLOYEE AND INTENDED FIANCEE NAMED AS VICTIMS IN SHOOTING ATTACK.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408781
'Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli Embassy employee in the US, and his girlfriend Sara Milgram, have been named as the victims of a Thursday night shooting attack in Washington, DC. Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring and planned to propose next week.'

EMBASSY SHOOTER'S MANIFESTO.
https://toniairaksinen.substack.com/p/shooter-manifesto-why-two-israeli
Reproduced at Toni Airaksinen's Substack blog. More here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/purported-manifesto-of-dc-shooting-suspect-appears-online/
The shooter's view that the Western world should have acted more firmly against Israel is widely shared by the intelligentsia and technocrats of the Wesst, and was recently enunciated by the leaders of the UK, France, and Canada:
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/uk-government-take-concrete-actions-israel-stop-war
'The UK, France and Canada have jointly promised to take "further concrete actions" if Israel does not stop its renewed military operations in Gaza and fails to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid reaching the strip.'

EUROVISION POPULAR WINNER YUVAL RAPHAEL PERFORMS 'NEW DAY WILL RISE' AT HOSTAGES SQUARE.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408819

Pioneer Urth

The Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland is missing a few letters. Gene Wolfe would approve.

Entry tags:

books,
psb

Reading: A fine and private place - Peter S. Beagle.

'A Fine and Private Place' is the first published book, and first novel, by Peter S. Beagle. Written and set in 1958, it is a love story set in a graveyard. The main characters are Jonathan Rebeck, who left his career as a pharmacist and now dwells, with no living companions, in Yorkchester Cemetery; the recently widowed Mrs. Klapper, who meets Jonathan in the cemetery and strikes up a friendship with him; Michael Morgan, a recently deceased professor; and Laura Durand, also recently departed. Other characters include a cynical raven, who brings Jonathan food and news of the outside world; and Campos, the guard, who works from midnight to eight (literally the graveyard shift) and who plays an important role in the ending of the story.

In the world of 'Fine and Private Place', the ghosts of the deceased linger on the earth - confined to the limits of the cemetery - for about a month or two before they finally transition to wherever it is that their spirits go next. (Jonathan Rebeck is one of the few living people able to see and converse with the ghosts.) What stays on, temporarily, after death is the person's own memory of who he or she was - the body, the clothing, the experiences, the feelings. And it is during this short-lived period after death that the ghosts of Michael and Laura meet and fall in love.

FPP is a love story, but it's also a bit of a mystery. There are questions around the circumstances of Michael's death: Michael says he was poisoned by his wife, but the widow and her lawyer insist it was suicide. And the future of Michael's romance with Laura depends on the outcome of the widow's trial, because if she is found innocent, Michael will be judged a suicide, his body will be exhumed from the Catholic cemetery, and his relationship with Laura will be sundered forever.

I loved the book, and it kept my attention to the end, although I found the pace uneven at times. Chapters 11 and 12 should have been the pivotal chapters: the couple finally confess their love for one another (over and over, in fact), and Michael's killer finally confesses to the crime. But I found the writing and the dialog longwinded and tedious here, and the characters started to lose my sympathy. But the final chapters, 13 and 14, rescued the story for me and made it a very memorable and worthwhile book.

Peter S. Beagle is probably best known for his third book (and second novel), 'The Last Unicorn'. His grandfather was the Hebrew writer Abraham Soyer, and his uncles were the painters Moses, Raphael, and Isaac Soyer. You can hear the writer's native ear for Jewish dialect in the heavily Yiddish-inflected dialog of Mrs. Klapper (with generous use of the subjunctive "should", as in "you want I should ... ?").

Also less well-known is that he is a folk musician/singer, which plays an important role in his second book (an account of his cross-country trip with his good friend, artist and fellow musician Phil Sigunick). His love of folk music will be very much in evidence in 'The Last Unicorn'.

Now 86 years old, Beagle is, thankfully, still very much in the world of the living. Following a long legal dispute, he finally regained creative control of his works. Most of his books are now available in print, e-book, and audiobook. You can visit Peter Beagle's homepage Beagleverse [https://beagleverse.com/] for the latest on the writer.

I'm now working on Beagle's second book, 'I See by My Outfit', and enjoying it greatly.

Reading.

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE. I'm about halfway through 'A Fine and Private Place', the second book and first novel by Peter S. Beagle, who is best known for his next book, 'The Last Unicorn'. 'A Fine and Private Place' - written when Beagle was 19 years old - is a love story involving ghosts and humans. I first read the book as a young person, so long ago that I've almost entirely forgotten the story, so it is like reading it for the first time. And I think I'm able to appreciate it much better now.

The main characters are Mr. Rebeck, a middle-aged man who haunts (as it were) the cemetery; Michael and Laura, two recently deceased individuals interred there; and Mrs. Klapper, the widow who visits the cemetery to visit her departed husband Morris, and who strikes up a friendship with Mr. Rebeck. Oh, and there's the cynical but compassionate raven, who brings Mr. Rebeck food and news from the outside.

The story is a love story, but it's also a bit of a mystery, because there are two possible suspects in Michael's death. I am a little surprised that Mr. Rebeck, himself a (now non-practicing) pharmacist, does not express more professional interest in the details of Michael's poisoning.

I'm planning to give this book a decent write-up when I've finished it. But for now, back to the book!

Journal 2025-04-29 Tuesday night: Work - a ghost town no more.

I started at my present job in Portland last December. The commute from where I live in Hillsboro is about an hour by public transit, and when I started the job I was going to work in a nearly empty office building. The upper management had also decreed a full remodeling of our office space, so the four of us in the IT shop found ourselves transplanted a couple of times in the ensuing weeks.

Now, with the game of musical chairs ended and the remodeling nearly finished, the bosses have ordered a return-to-office for the workforce. (Future lexicographers will no doubt document that the initialism "RTO" entered the mainstream vocabulary around the early-to-mid 2020s.) In practice, I think most of the staff are going to be allowed to work from home 1 or 2 days a week, but the leadership have been very clear that the expectation is for in-office work to be the norm once again.

The IT crew supervisor (i.e. my immediate boss) is an extroverted, talkative dude about 10 years younger than me, with longish hair and (seasonally) either a short beard or a mustache; I believe he moonlights as a jazz guitarist, and he certainly looks the part. He has a family that he's very devoted to. He's very knowledgeable about the IT field, obviously, but he is the antithesis of the stereotypical introverted IT geek. So with the rush of people back into the office, he divides his time between IT troubleshooting and supervisory duties, and chatting with buddies in the office that he hasn't seen for 3 to 5 years.

I'm not quite as outgoing as this guy is, but I am definitely welcoming the return of living, breathing humanity to the workplace. I've always been a bit of a loner by habit and temperament, but the past five years have brought home to me how much I value being around other people.

Journal 2025-03-20 Thursday night.

It's been a little while since I've posted!

WORK. I have been busy busy busy. Work has been demanding my attention, energy, and time. The daily commute to Portland has been an adjustment after my last job, where I had the luxury of a 5-minute drive from my front door. But the job is going well, and I asked Nate, my supervisor, to put me down for the additional duty of keeping up with the inventory of laptops in the server room. I'm a big fan of on-site work, as opposed to remote, and even though the commute (an hour by public transit) is a demand on my time, I still prefer it over working fully remote or even hybrid. As long as I gotta go to Portland for my job, I'll do it every day. So, that makes me the obvious candidate for the things that can't be done remotely, like physically tracking the IT assets.

LEARNING. I've committed to renewing my CompTIA A+ certification (that's the entry-level cert for IT work) this year. That means keeping up with a disciplined program of study, taking some of the official training courses, and passing two exams (Core 1 and Core 2) to earn the certification. My old cert is from 2015, and it's the one and only professional credential I have to my credit at the moment. I aim to fix that.

SOCIETY. I've been busy with the local Party chapter and the conservative meetups. A minor shakeup in our local leadership means that we have a new communications chair, and I'll be working with her to recruit volunteers for our participation in local community events, most of which occur during the summer months.

PLANS. Finances are still tight, but if FDR's legacy comes through as expected, I should see my first Social Security check next week, which will make life a lot easier. In particular, it'll help me finance the training and certification I mentioned above, as an investment in being more profitably employed in my later working years. [340]

Linkage.

USA: ARMY HITS 15-YEAR RECORD RECRUITMENT.
https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2025/02/05/army-hits-best-recruitment-month-15-years-president-donald-trump/
'Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that the Army had its best recruitment month in 15 years in January 2025 under President Donald Trump.'

NORTH AMERICA: MEXICAN TROOPS MOVE TO BORDER.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/mexican-troops-begin-moving-to-border-with-us-what-we-know-so-far-5804008
'Troops have already begun to move following Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Feb. 3 announcement that her country will deploy about 10,000 National Guard troops to Mexico’s shared border with the United States, to help stem cross-border smuggling and narcotics-trafficking operations.'

NORTH AMERICA: TRUMP, TRUDEAU ANNOUNCE BORDER PLAN.
https://www.rebelnews.com/trump_trudeau_announce_border_plan_but_who_blinked_first
'“Trudeau can rightly say that Trump sort of blinked,” acknowledged Ezra Levant. “But on the other hand, I think Trump succeeded in getting Canada's full attention and making our country take border control seriously for the first time.”'

Circles of love.

We can best help those people whose needs we know best, which is to say the people closest to us. This is the deep meaning of "charity begins at home" and it is the rational basis for the idea of loyalty. Your duty to those closest to you is greater, not because they are more precious in G-d's sight than the stranger, but because they are the ones you know best how to help, and they are the ones who will hold you accountable if you fail.

And because people are complicated, "helping" often means more than just giving them stuff and doing stuff for them. People need respect, dignity, self-determination. If you watch a mother teaching a small child to walk - the mother wants to help the child, but she knows that she has to let the child learn to walk unaided, even if that means falling down once or twice. And that's really the paradigm for all of parenting - and, broadly, for love, because that mother would sacrifice anything for the child, even as the child must learn to stand on its own two feet.

If you have a family member who struggles with alcohol, or drug addiction, or mental illness, it may be difficult to know how to help, or even if you can help at all. JD Vance - the author of 'Hillbilly Elegy' - certainly knows this. (And I speak from some amount of experience here myself.)

It's good to want to help people, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to feel good about helping people. But sometimes we get stuck pursuing the feeling of "doing good" just so we can feel good about ourselves. That's narcissism.

If you really care about doing something, you care about results. If you care about another person, you care about making that person's life better. That means that you are making sure the help you're giving is really helping them. And if you're not doing that, then I say it's questionable how good your intentions were in the first place.

The left's strategy is to get us to outsource our moral decision-making, and to devote all our energy and all our caring to the service of some Great Cause that is dictated to us by our masters. If the object of your "caring" is far away and unknown to you, so much the better - your moral sense can be more easily manipulated, untroubled by questions of "is this actually making people's lives better?"

Vice President JD Vance spoke age-old wisdom when he said: "... You love your family; and then you love your neighbor; and then you love your community; and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country; and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world." When we start with our inner circles of family and community, we develop the strength and judgement to put our care and love into sound practice. This is exactly what the left seeks to destroy, to further its own grandiose schemes. We must not let this happen.

Journal 2025-01-26 Sunday afternoon.

The worst of the winter weather is usually over in these parts by mid-January, but it's not unusual for one last blast to hit us around the end of January (between my birthday and Groundhog Day). From the forecast, it looks like this year will not disappoint. But I'm not complaining, as we've had generally fair (though chilly) weather the past couple of weeks.

This coming week will mark eight weeks at my new job. The commute to Portland is longer than I'd prefer, but it's not bad and I've gotten used to it. After the first week or two of parking in the company garage to the tune of 14$ a day, I've taken to commuting by MAX (the local light rail) and it's slower but much cheaper and more relaxing. I'd rather spend 45 minutes reading a book than 20 minutes staring at tail lights.

I've been keeping up the music practice on a daily basis. I find that it's already changing the way I listen to music - I pay more careful attention to the sounds of the chords, the melody, and the tempo, now that I'm actively engaged in practicing music as well as listening to it. I think it'll also be a good way to keep my brain and nervous system in shape.

I finished the final book in the Harry Potter series last weekend. I loved the books, and it's a very satisfying end. People who had read the books told me that the HP books get progressively darker towards the end, and it's true. Particularly the final chapters of HP7 - Deathly Hallows, with Fred's death, and the revelations about Dumbledore, and Harry confronting his own mortality. The description in Chapter 34 of Harry's internal world as he walks toward certain death is stunning. The series treats of that greatest of great themes, mortality: the whole plot hinges on Voldemort's fear of death and obsession with immortality, and constantly returns to the ways we imagine, or wish to feel, the presence of the departed in our lives: the Mirror of Erised, the ghosts, the animated (literally) figures in the pictures, and Harry summoning the dead with the Resurrection Stone. Jo (JK) Rowling has stated that the series drew much of its inspiration from the death of her mother, Anne, at the end of 1990.

I'm hoping to get back into creative writing of my own before long. Meanwhile, I'm continuing the weekly Torah summaries at least into Exodus, because I want to get myself firmly grounded in this most foundational of all literary works. [430]

Exodus - Parashath Shemoth - Aliyoth 2 - 7.

ALIYAH 2 [Exodus 1:18 - 2:10] - MOSES IS RESCUED.

"Despairing of cooperation from the Hebrew midwives in his genocidal project, Pharaoh now enlists the entire Egyptian population in a search-and-destroy operation." (Robert Alter on 1:22, p. 216.) Moses' mother, Yokheved, places the infant Moses in a wicker ark (the Hebrew word for "ark" [tevah] is the same word used for Noah's vessel) and floats him down the Nile, where he is rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. Moses' older sister Miriam, looking on, approaches the Egyptian princess and asks to have Moses nursed by his own mother. Yokheved nurses Moses until he is weaned.

ALIYAH 3 [Exodus 2:11-25] - MOSES TURNS VIGILANTE, AND FLEES EGYPT.

Moses witnesses an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, and, believing himself unobserved, kills the Egyptian. The next day, seeing two Hebrews fighting, he challenges the aggressor, who retorts "Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" He flees to Midian, where he marries Tzipporah, daughter of Jethro; they have a son, Gershom. Meanwhile, the Hebrews in Egypt call out to G-d.

We can picture Moses' state of mind on that fateful second day. He has just killed a man - has killed a master, one of his ostensible countrymen, in defense of a slave. He can't have slept well that night. Now he sees two of his unacknowledged kinsmen fighting, and he snaps. And then he learns that his secret is out.

ALIYAH 4 [Exodus 3:1-15] - THE BURNING BUSH.

At his new day job, shepherding for his father-in-law, Moses sees a bush that is burning yet is not consumed by the fire. G-d speaks to Moses, and declares that He will deliver the Israelites.

ALIYAH 5 [Exodus 3:16 - 4:17] - MOSES' MISSION, AND HIS DOUBTS.

G-d commands Moses to convene the Israelites and tell them the hour of their deliverance is at hand; then to approach Pharaoh to demand permission to travel a three days' journey into the wilderness, backed up by miraculous signs from the Creator. When Moses epresses doubt that Pharaoh will listen, G-d demonstrates His power by turning Moses' staff into a snake, and by afflicting Moses' hand with whiteness (or "leprosy" in some translations).

Still reluctant, Moses protests that he is "heavy-mouthed and heavy-tongued" (Alter's translation of 4:10). To this, the Creator retorts (4:11): "Who gave man a mouth, or who makes him mute or deaf or sighted or blind?" Further, G-d promises to send Moses' brother Aaron (who hasn't been mentioned until this point, 4:14) and that "he will be a mouth for you".

What's interesting about this passage is that it seems we've got one problem, but two solutions. If the solution to the problem (Moses' difficulty with speaking) is in the hands of the One Who " gave man a mouth, or who makes him mute or deaf or sighted or blind", then why bring Aaron into this at all?

ALIYAH 6 [Exodus 4:18-31] - MOSES SETS OUT FOR EGYPT.

Moses takes his wife, Tzipporah, and their two sons, and they set out for Egypt. On the way, there is a mysterious incident involving an angel, Tzipporah, and Moses' son. Moses and Aaron meet up, and together they address the Israelite elders.

ALIYAH 7 [Exodus 5:1 - 6:1] - REQUEST DENIED.

Moses and Aaron meet Pharaoh and present their demands. The Egyptian king scornfully rejects the request, and instead increases the workload on the Hebrews. Moses cries out to G-d, and G-d promises: "Now will you see what I shall do to Pharaoh, for through a strong hand will he send them off and through a strong hand will he drive them from his land." [612]

The make-believe battle against made-up nazis.

Everybody wants to be a hero. Everybody wants to be that one guy in the picture who's not giving the nazi salute.

Most recently, we've seen this in the case of the literal nazi salute that was supposedly given by Elon Musk.

And that's the appeal of modern left-liberalism. It's an appeal to vanity. If you convince yourself that the other guy is a nazi, then you only have to be one percent better than a nazi to be the good guy. If the other guy is Hitler, then you can be Stalin.

The left only pretends to care about anti-Semitism when it wants to smear its enemies as anti-Semites. They will make great noises of outrage, and pose and posture and portray themselves as "fighting nazis", just so long as those "nazis" can be connected to the people they don't like anyway - conservative, largely Christian and European-descended people.

The enlightened intelligentsia, the laptop liberals and timid technocrats who form the governing class and who deem themselves our moral and intellectual superiors, fancy themselves akin to the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy; when in fact they are fighting imaginary nazis in a fantasy battle that is about as dangerous as playing Call Of Duty.

Ask these folks to stand up for Israel - or stand against the keffiyeh-clad nazis who stage rallies daily in Europe, Britain, and North America, extolling Hamas and Hezbollah and calling for the massacre of Jews and the conquest of the West - and they'll pee their panties and bleat about "islamophobia".

The same people who cheered the global lockdowns and the forced medical experimentation on billions of humans; who praised censorship of social media and called for mass surveillance and suppression of dissenters; who support the jackbooted black-shirts of antifa and the islamo-fascists of Hezbollah and Hamas; who look forward to the glorious day when the world will bend the knee to the dictatorship of the UN and the WEF - these are the people who want to tell me who I'm supposed to be scared of because they're a "nazi"? Yeah, no. [353]

Linkage.

USA: KRISTI NOEM CONFIRMED AS DHS SECRETARY.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-kristi-noem-confirmed-as-department-of-homeland-security-secretary
Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem was confirmed as President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary on Saturday morning with a vote of 59 to 34 in the Senate.

LOS ANGELES: PALISADES RESIDENTS VISIT HOMES AFTER TRUMP VISIT.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/25/trump-effect-some-palisades-residents-visit-homes-for-first-time-since-fire-after-presidents-visit/
Residents of the Pacific Palisades flocked home on Saturday after President Donald Trump’s visit the day before, with many gaining access to their property for the first time since the Palisades Fire more than two weeks ago.

ISRAEL: LIRI, NAAMA, DANIELA, AND KARINA RETURN HOME.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402842
Four of the five IDF lookouts kidnapped from the Nahal Oz military post during the October 7 massacre are returned to Israel.

ISRAEL: HOSTAGES RETURN HOME (VIDEO).
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402843
Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag, Naama Levy, and Karina Ariev are re-united with their parents.

TIM BLACK AT SPIKED: THE SINISTER RISE OF THE ISLAMO-LEFT.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/19/the-sinister-rise-of-the-islamo-left/
How the Western Left allied with the islamo-fascists.

Jeremy Corbyn's reluctance to denounce Hamas is only the latest manifestation of a process that has been in the works at least since the 1990s, when the collapse of Communism forced the Western Left to find new allies. While Tim Black's article deals mainly with events in Britain, the same dynamics were at work in Europe and North America.

Entry tags:

news

Linkage.

ISRAEL: IDF LAUNCHES OPERATION IN JENIN.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402640
'"The operation has clear objectives: continue to maintain the IDF's freedom of operation in all of Judea and Samaria and to destroy and neutralize terrorist infrastructure and 'ticking time bombs,'" the IDF stated.'

USA: DONALD TRUMP TAKES OFFICE AS 47TH PRESIDENT, REVERSES 78 BIDEN EO'S.
https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2025/01/20/trump-rescinds-78-bidens-executive-actions/
'Trump’s executive order covers an array of actions Biden took throughout his term, ranging from nixing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies to the southern border and the climate.'

USA: TRUMP DAY ONE EO'S LISTED - POST MILLENNIAL.
https://thepostmillennial.com/here-are-all-the-executive-orders-trump-signed-on-day-1
'He rescinded the 78 orders that Biden signed that rescinded his orders. He instituted a regulatory freeze to stop government bureaucrats from issuing any new regulations until his administration has control of government and freeze on federal hiring. All federal workers have on Monday been ordered back to work in person in an office building in DC. ...'

--

Among President Trump's first official acts of his second term is a pardon for 1500 January 6 protesters arrested and held under the Biden regime. "This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation," the proclamation reads. Among those held is a man who served on the Washington County (Oregon) Republican party when I first joined the chapter in 2018. I am eagerly awaiting word of my friend's release and his return to Oregon. [92]

Journal 2025-01-20 Monday evening: Inauguration party.

Today wasn't an official off-day at my company, despite it being MLK Day, but I took the day off because I work in Portland and didn't want to have to worry about dealing with a bunch of rent-a-riot idiots. Besides which, it would give me a chance to stay home and watch the inauguration, and then rest up before heading out to the party that our local chapter was throwing tonight.

There is a small chance that my face might end up on local TV; I saw a camera crew from the local news station there. I spotted my friend Kim as she came in, and I raised my right hand to wave at her; "I gotta be careful when I do that," I quipped, "'cuz we've got the media here!" Kim got the joke and laughed.

(In case you somehow missed it, Elon Musk gave a speech and said "my heart goes out to all of you!" - putting his right hand over his heart, then extending it into the air - and now the media are falling all over themselves pretending to think he was giving a Nazi salute. I tend to agree with Stephen Green at Instapundit [ https://instapundit.com/697456/ ]: "This was bait so Elon can sue a lot of people for libel and bankrupt them. But hey, you’d have to be super rich and super smart to set a trap like that. . ." The media, who are not super smart, literally did nazi that coming.)

This episode will likely be another entry under the column of anti-Semitism vs. "anti-Semitism" which I've written about previously.

Anti-Semites and "anti-Semites"
https://asher63.livejournal.com/841995.html

Elon Musk and "anti-Semitism"
https://asher63.livejournal.com/870277.html

Anyway, I didn't stay late, but the party was fun. It was a sold-out house and I saw most of my friends from the political community. There was the obligatory playing of "YMCA" with pantomimed letters and fist-pump Trump dances. I sampled the vegetable platter and chatted with some of my buddies, and headed home. I've got an early workday tomorrow - plus the conservative meetup later this week. [353]

Entry tags:

notes on man and society

On culture.

ON CULTURE

'Cultures are particular ways of accomplishing the things that make life possible - the perpetuation of the species, the transmission of knowledge, and the absorption of the shocks of change and death, among other things. Cultures differ in the relative significance they attach to time, noise, safety, cleanliness, violence, thrift, intellect, sex, and art. These differences in turn imply differences in social choices, economic efficiency, and political stability.'
- Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures

There are a lot of factors that influence a person's chances of being successful in school, in the professional world, or in life. Much of it starts with culture. A stable home and family life probably helps you more in school than (say) having a high IQ. And for having a healthy, fulfilling life, a high IQ is irrelevant.

I was one of those kids who scored high on aptitude tests, but performed poorly in school, and it certainly wasn't because I spent too much time playing sports. (In retrospect, sports probably would have helped me.)

Most of what we know about the world, we learn from other people. This includes not only declarative knowledge (information about things like mathematics, geography, practical skills, whatever) but also the knowledge of how to interact with other people. We use the feedback of other people's reactions to help keep us sane; we learn how to think, speak, and act by observing others.

We also learn the values and the habits of the people we associate with, and whose continued acceptance and approval we seek. If you choose friends who have high standards and expectations of themselves and of you, it will have an effect on you. If you hang out with people who make excuses for failure, or who regard themselves as too "special" to be troubled with conventional notions of work, discipline, and accomplishment, it will have a different effect.

Knowledge is the most valuable commodity that we exchange on a daily basis. We rely on both technical knowledge (the "how to build a bridge" kind) and social knowledge (the "how to win friends and influence people" kind) to get through life. You might possess great technical knowledge (as, say, an engineer), but you need social knowledge to capitalize on it (by building a rewarding career, relationships with your colleagues, and family life). It is not an either/or choice between jocks and prom queens on the one hand, or math champs and engineers on the other.

Culture is the body of social knowledge, built up and evolved over generations, that makes it possible for people to support one another and negotiate with one another, without having to re-invent the metaphorical wheels that keep society running. [374]

Linkage.

SYRIA: ASSAD REGIME FALLS.

Jonathan Spyer: Iran revealed as paper tiger.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/assad-falls-thanks-to-a-weak-tehran-iran-proxy-network-paper-tigers-more-defeats-will-follow-36d1d3fe?st=HXg6fz
'By removing the Assad regime, the insurgents—known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—have cut off Tehran’s main proxy militia, Hezbollah, from its supply lines. This was possible because of Israel’s mauling of Hezbollah in November, prompting the terror group to accept a cease-fire with the Jewish state. The decision was in direct contrast with Hezbollah’s goal when it entered the war on Oct. 8, 2023. As Hassan Nasrallah, its now-deceased leader, expressed at the time: “The Lebanon front will not stop before the aggression on Gaza stops. The resistance in Lebanon won’t stop supporting and assisting the people of Gaza, the West Bank and the oppressed people in these holy lands.” By the time both parties agreed to a cease-fire, Nasrallah was dead. Hezbollah decided that sticking by its junior ally in Gaza was no longer worth the price. The dramatic events in Syria rapidly followed.'

Arutz Sheva: IDF 20 km from Damascus.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/400490
'In the wake of the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Israel has struck more than 250 targets across Syria. Reports say the IDF has taken control of nine villages in the southern suburbs of Damascus.

Long War Journal: IDF strikes former regime sites.
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2024/12/idf-strikes-former-syrian-regime-military-sites.php
'The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out strikes on more than 300 targets in Syria over several days in the wake of the Assad regime’s fall on December 8. The strikes aimed at key military sites, such as warplanes the Syrian regime abandoned as its troops fled their posts during the opposition’s rapid advance across the country between December 1 and December 8. The strikes, combined with a naval operation that destroyed the Syrian Navy’s missile boats, are part of Israel’s multi-pronged attempt to respond to the crisis.'

Rebel News: Ezra Levant on Syria. [with video]
https://www.rebelnews.com/radical_islamist_terrorists_topple_syrian_dictator_assad_what_s_next_in_the_middle_east
'"Israel has taken Mount Hermon inside Syria to stop any terrorist from setting up too close to the border. I don't know how long that will be able to continue for Israel to have a presence in a buffer zone in Syria," added Ezra. The Rebel News publisher went on: "I don't know the outcome here. I put it to you that Netanyahu's exhilaration is premature and will not be long lasting."'
In the video, Ezra remarks that tyrants such as Saddam, Qaddafi, and the Assads "did have something to offer, I suppose, which is that they were a gate barred against the sheer chaos of brutality that was to come."