Ehlana and Ethan:
Cassie and Michael are in Uganda tonight and work-drove their way all the way to the Capital – Kampala. They continue to get a lot done, but we don’t have any specific details from today because we’ve been busy with our usual Wednesday school and practices. We can report that they are still getting the mix of rain and sun every day – though it is a bit cooler for them in Uganda with the high near to what we’re getting here at home today.
We had some showers this morning, but that didn’t get in the way of Tai Chi by the river; and had moved out of the area long before our afternoon cheer squad or football practices. Those workouts went well; Sophia hosted our dinner and study session; and then the teen praise team practice lasted for nearly two hours as we went through all of the music we will be sharing with our congregation at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We had a lot of fun with the music and our friends; took Silkie for a bedtime walk while seeing Naomi and Aiden to their homes; and our dog got more hugs and kisses than Ethan or I did – though to be fair; Moms and siblings were involved in sharing that affection! Bath or Jacuzzi time followed after we got home; and now we’re winding down fast to nap time.
On the world news front, peace is supposedly on-again for Ukraine with those talks in China and others with the United States, Russia, and Ukraine; and we still doubt that anything will change on the ground unless and until the Ukrainian and western leaders agree to most of Russia’s demands that include a believable path to security and NATO backing off from their war-mongering belligerence directed at Russia. The situation on the ground continues to go badly; and Russian targeting is now very focused on degrading dual-use infrastructure. They are hitting bridges every day; Kiev is regularly left in the dark with power outages; and there aren’t many places left in many parts of Ukraine that can be used at all for warehousing or manufacturing. The situation in the country gets uglier every day; and we still have no idea how long that can continue before something breaks that can’t be recovered from – for their government and military.
In the Middle East, news stories include no change or deal yet for the Israeli election – so no new government formed yet; the Houthis are attacking Saudi refineries and other infrastructure again; and war talk for Iran includes rumors of American forces being pulled back out of Iranian missile range to get ready for the next round of attacks on Iran. Majority guesses continue to expect that to happen after the midterm election, but that if we were advising Iranian military leaders; we would tell them not to let their guard down and be ready for anything at any time.
Finally, for tonight, while there are always other stories that we don’t cover in our journals, we want to mention a high-speed train crash that happened in Spain that had more than sixty fatalities and hundreds of injuries. Details are still sparse, but there have been several train crashes in Spain; and there appears to be a serious logistics problem that they need to fix; since trains should never crash into other trains on the same tracks – especially when it comes to the high-speed trains. We’re choosing to mention that story because everyone should pay attention to that kind of tech news because we should make sure that we use advances in what our machines and tech can do but also remember that humans still have many advantages over machines and computers – especially when it comes to things like discernment and being able to tell the difference between true and false data. Maybe that idea isn’t really applicable to that accident, but we are seeing more reliance on autonomous and A.I. systems; and we don’t want to see a future that is anything like Hollywood often depicts!
Maybe the future will be all about cute little dancing robots or robotic athletes instead of terminator robots. Yeah, that’s too-much to hope for when militaries are certainly working toward robotic armies.
That’s not a happy note to end on, but that’s all we have; and now we’re going to wrap this up and get some sleep right now.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
