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As I'm sure all of you know, on October 7th of this year, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing over 1200 people. That makes it the deadliest day in history for Jewish people since the holocaust. The situation has only degraded more in the following month. Oct 7 has been Israel's 9/11. Bibi Netanyahu, an unpopular, corrupt, right wing leader has used the tragedy to dodge criminal investigations against him and further his agenda and position in power. [NB: As much as I loath the man, I'd be doing Dubya a dirty if I directly compared him to Bibi. Shrub ain't even in the same order of magnitude of "corrupt."] The Israeli response to Oct 7th has been immense by any standard. Israel dropped more on bombs in Gaza in a week than the US dropped on Afghanistan during the most intense year of that war. Afghanistan is over a quarter of million square miles. Gaza is 139. There have been a few batshit insane calls for Israel to nuke Gaza. It's been an open secret for decades that Israel has nuclear weapons. Even the most more bloodthirsty war hawk understand why Israel would not detonate a nuke right next to their own border. With that said, Israel has effectively nuked Gaza. The combined explosive force of the conventional bombs dropped by Israel (over 25,000 tons at this point) is the equivalent to a couple tactical nuclear weapons. (Strategic nukes are an order of magnitude bigger and usually originate from missile silos or submarines.) The western media coverage of the unending clusterfuck has been a nightmare of its own. As a longtime user of reddit (my account is older than most of the site's user base at this point), I have been absolutely gobsmacked at the state of /r/worldnews. It's essentially become /r/IDF_press_releases. I generally stay out of the fray on reddit, both for my own mental health and because I know it does no good. I made one post calling out an influx of obvious bot accounts in worldnews, and was rewarded with my comment being shadowbanned. It's more than a bit scary to see such blatant astroturfing occurring online, especially as someone who clearly remembers the post-9/11, early Iraq War II era. Its is my understanding that the polar opposite of what's happening on most of reddit is taking place on Tik Tok. I have not nor will I ever use that app. I see plenty of complaining about Tik Tok and complaining about complaining about Tik Tok and ...fuck it, I'm closing the goddamn web page and looking at cat videos. With all of this said, it's almost invariably true that the best coverage of a controversial issue is done via comedy. Everyone's favorite self-deprecating British expat dedicated half an hour to the Israel-Hamas war and did a better job than most of the corporate media combined:

Maestro: Music by Leonard Bernstein (Original Soundtrack / Dolby Atmos) London Symphony Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bradley Cooper 2023 https://album.link/i/1716774772 Example: I cannot really recommend it, just because I will never go back to this to listen to. There are some really nice recordings in here, along with rich performances. And then there are works that are clearly outtakes from the movie - that I have not seen. So it becomes very disjointed. Reminding me of the Tar soundtrack. Just give me the full works as they were recorded and then if you want the other stuff stick them in as extra tracks. Anyway, I probably would still like to see the movie.

The comments tell you all you need to know. For example "Nothing screams the legacy of F1 like having Will. i. am chant "Let's go" over neon advertising for Heineken 0% at night in Las Vegas. Truly the watershed moment fans have waited 70 years for." "Artists being up for several minutes and drivers being lowered down before the presenter could finish their names tells you all you need to know about this event" "It's definitely Eurovision meets the Hunger Games F1, but I don't hate it." "Wow I was expecting it to be bad but that absolutely exceeded my expectations in every way" "The Ending part was awesome. The part where it ended." Helpful running order Here it is the rundown of performances 00:00 opening & driver line up 00:45 Thirty Seconds to Mars 03:18 Keith Urban 06:31 Andra Day 09:36 Kylie (Minogue) 12:02 Blue Man Group 12:34 Bishop Briggs 14:40 Journey 17:29 Steve Aoki 19:28 Balvin 22:12 DJ Tiesto 24:13 John Legend 26:51 Heineken Silver (Let's Go) 27:34 F1 Teams & Drivers Introduction

Cut a basic card stock jig on the laser to engrave some two sided business cards. 96b6a50a4eef43128512a1eb8c664cf8.mp4

Someone just liked a 4 year old post of mine on this thread. Time to renew my vows. I must make MattNog this weekend. *sings* It's the Matt...Noggiest time of the year... I also love that the most recent posts are on my wedding anniversary. Cheers Matt!