Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 28th Birthday, Chris Rice!
Happy 25th Birthday, Madelana!
Future readers might be amused that we use a last name with a cousin and only a first name with one of Cassie’s best college friends, but that is simply because we have to identify the correct Chris and we only know one Madelana – so far!
We didn’t end up doing even a vid-chat with our cousin or with Madelana, but we do know that Chris is having a good day through the report from Violet; and ditto that for Madelana with the news we got from Cassie. While we’re on that thought, Cassie and Michael are still in paradise and while they may get another few showers again for their Monday forecast; the mid-nineties high will be a lot better than the fall weather we’ve gotten today. A low-forties start to our day for Tai Chi by the river was a bit of a shock, but the rain ended overnight; and we will continue to exercise by the river for as long as we can before taking it indoors for the winter. The high today only hit sixty-three, but it was sunny; so we missed out on some play time with family and friends while opting to work-play in the lab or archives from after lunch until around nine o’clock tonight.
We skipped over breakfasts with the Seagers or Drapers and I should have mentioned that Naomi and I met up with Ehlana and Aiden for that workout by the river too instead of doing our own thing. Church and Sunday school were great; and then Ehlana and I had a snack lunch with Mom and Dad before heading to the lab. We each got a lot done including with the help of some time phasing, and Ehlana had Uncle Adam and Dillon join her for a bit of play time too. Mom dropped off food for us – mostly because Ehlana wanted to stay and keep an experiment going until finished; and I was good with that plan because I probably won’t ever run out of work to do in the archives! That might not be exciting to anyone else and I’m ready for a lifetime of never-ending jokes about being a boring librarian, but it works for me; and I never get tired of learning new things – whether that is from ancient history or newly-learned knowledge!
Nine o’clock was not an imposed time limit – Ehlana just had that experiment finished and the clean-up done by then so we biked home and moved on to a short visit with Mom and Dad before it was bath or Jacuzzi time. Mom did not want to do a Magi lesson with us after some extensive time phasing that we did today; and we’re okay with not being up late tonight. Once ready for bed, Ehlana and I met up for the twin chat and computer checks; and we’ve blasted through them to help out with that plan to get to sleep soon.
There has been a lot of news this weekend, so let’s get started on that part of our report. We’re going to start with the nation-wide ‘No Kings’ protest rallies that got a lot of attention and news coverage, but we’re mostly-amused by what we’ve seen and read about; since it appears that the vast majority of the protesters are from the Boomer generation and also mostly-white seniors at that! That really has us pondering the motivation they have for protesting at all, since their demographic is certainly not at risk of anything from the government regardless of who is in charge. Could it be that they are worried about illegal migrants because they don’t want to lose the cheap labor for retired seniors use so much more than younger people do? They obviously don’t care about the effect of that cheap labor on their kids and grandkids for building comfortable lives – just as they did in the post-war decades? The demands we heard the protesters voicing yesterday would certainly lead to economic hardship for those next generations; so maybe they really don’t care about the future for their own families or anyone else! This story is just another distraction; so let’s move on to the next one – the ‘amazing’ destruction of a ‘large’ drug cartel submarine!
Honestly, we don’t know what to think about the stupidity of that story! The claim here is that the drug cartels have submarines in use for their drug trade, and if they actually do that; then we’d suggest that they are too-dumb to stay in business for long! The video is suspect too, since if the story was true, then why would the submarine have been speeding along near the surface instead of running silent and deep? We’ll call nonsense on this story and it is yet another incident meant to make our military look invincible while we think that they’ve gone rogue and are breaking a lot of laws with these extra-judicial murders and destruction that continues without a shred of actual proof being offered.
On the ‘real’ news front, most of the media is ignoring the Israeli armed forces attacks in Gaza today that broke the ceasefire; and we do not believe the military claims that they were retaliating against Hamas – possibly because they also never provide proof and expect us to accept any claim at face value. We don’t do that; since the Israeli leaders and military have a long history of lying about pretty much everything – including this latest peace deal that we should also mention was signed in Egypt without that ceremony being attended by either Israeli or Hamas leaders in attendance! The Ukraine war news is mixed this weekend, but we don’t actually see anything good happening – other than there seems to be at least a delay to the planned escalation that had been threatened on our side with the use of long-range missiles like the Tomahawk and others. Yes, that is good news, but is also likely just temporary; since there is nothing being said on either side to suggest that a negotiated settlement is actually possible. We can also report that the actual fighting on the ground continues to go badly for the Ukrainian forces, and contrary to popular western belief; the Russian army seems to be going out of its way to set up traps and cauldrons that they use to decimate the Ukraine soldiers because their goal isn’t gaining land but to destroy the Ukrainian army. The Russians are also continuing their air campaign to destroy military, energy, and transportation systems throughout Ukraine and they are using massive attacks nearly every day with hundreds of drones, missiles, and glide bombs. Ukraine only has minimal air defenses left and can’t stop the vast majority of those air attacks, and while Ukraine does counter-attack with their own drones and other weapons; they are much less-effective because Russia still retains most of their own air defenses. We really wish for peace in Ukraine, but that would require having ‘our’ side basically concede defeat; and we don’t expect that to happen so we can only hope that we don’t escalate the war into Europe or the world.
Finally, while this isn’t a good story, we are going to wrap up with a robbery story because it is a bit funny to find out that one of the most-famous museums in the world – the Louvre – was robbed in broad daylight and the thieves got away with some Napoleonic-era jewelry! How that could happen won’t likely be a story that will ever be revealed, since that would give future thieves information that could help them to rob the place again, but it is an amazing story that will be historic too – especially if the crooks get away with the heist!
Okay, that’s enough for tonight. We’re ready to get some sleep now, and we could never cover all of the news for any given day or weekend; so we’re out of here and off to dreamland soon.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
