TMoney

The U.S. and the Holocaust This is very good, despite the difficulty of the subject matter. History will never forget the crimes the German butchers perpetuated against the Jews, the Poles, and the peoples of Eastern Europe. What was less well known to me was the story of how things went down over here. A lot of us already know about the bigotry of folks like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh and his “America First” party (sound familiar?). What I did not know about was the behavior of our state department, of the immigration quotas and the pervasiveness of the anti-immigrant and anti-semite crowd. I don’t think these were all necessarily bad people so much as people who could have done way more, yet did not. They were on the wrong side of history. The stories of the survivors, as always, are the most heartbreaking of all. I’ve never understood anti-semitism beyond the fact that Jewish people usually lean to the left politically and hold themselves out as unapologetically different. It didn’t make sense back then and it doesn’t make any more sense now. Streamable on PBS here: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust/

Happy birthday, Jim! Hope you are able to get out for a nice hike as well today! Looked like an awesome one you did a few weeks back.

Shakedown hike complete. It’s kind of cool how the Apple Watch has gone from a goofy communication device with watch 1 to a full on health and fitness device today. It’s a great training companion for aspiring weekend warriors like me

If only!

Only Jerome Powell's Apple Watch has that feature.

Well this should be fun to test out on the trails this weekend! That number next to SPY on the other hand... that is not a number we like to see.

Happy birthday, tall-man!

Happy birthday, John!

Tried this. Still don't like it with Atmos in the music app. Maybe it'll be better for video content?

So this Lord of the Rings show… three episodes in and I’m very confused. Who is the show for? Is it for lore-heads, for casuals? As someone in between (read the books, loved the Jackson trilogy) so far I can’t tell. They’ve got like 4 or 5 different storylines going and so far its hard to really care about any of them. I don’t know? Anyone else watching? Are you enjoying it so far? I’ll give it another week or two before deciding whether to cut bait or not.

Happy birthday!

Yungblud - Self Titled Old school punks like Doug might be rolling over in their graves but I am a man of simpler tastes and I can't get enough of the pop-punk revival. This is a fun one.

Sourcery - Terry Pratchett As an American, it is a little hard to believe Terry Pratchett was the best selling author in the UK in the 90s given the way his work just never took off over here. That being said, I’ve always been intrigued by the Discworld series and figured I’d give one a try. I think this was a bad place to start. It felt more like a collection of witty one-liners and gags held together by a loose plot. Looking at people’s rankings of the Discworld novels, this one usually rates in the bottom 1/4-1/3, so I am up to give Discworld another chance and write this one off. I hear the City Watch line is a fan favorite so going to try those next.

Jose and Nate, I may be at a totally different level of cardio fitness than you guys but your exploits are inspiring to us mere mortals. Keep it up!

It was just one episode, but I'm excited to have Game of Thrones back. It feels like a new start for them after the last show collapsed under its own weight down the home stretch. Hope they pull this off! There is nothing like a well done big-budget epic fantasy.