Sing a psalm

As you’re no doubt aware, the Valentine’s Day celebration of the Kansas City Chiefs’ win in last Sunday’s sporting event ended with—quelle surprise—a mass shooting. One dead and at least 21 wounded; 11 of the victims are children.

God bless the NRA.

At time of writing, three people have been arrested; it seems to have originated in some kind of "personal dispute" among the perps. Which might have ended in a fistfight except military-grade weapons for everybody! Before learning this, I posited that, this being the land of Mah Freedumb, it could well be “I hate Taylor Swift;” or “There were all those targets;” or “It’s Wednesday.” And then it turns out that it was as close to motiveless as you can get and still send people to the hospital and the morgue.

So today’s earworm is Randy Rainbow’s “Thoughts and Prayers”. He recorded it in 2022, but it is, sadly, evergreen.

 

All in one day

A nor’ easter swept across the Mid-Atlantic states earlier this week. The forecast in the District They Call Columbia was for rain Monday night, possibly turning to the dreaded wintery mix and snow.

I wouldn’t have called what we got Monday night a storm—more like a soft drizzle—but here’s what I discovered when I got up Tuesday morning:

That turned to this:

But by mid-afternoon here’s what we had (with nothing left on the ground):

And the sunset was gorgeous:

 

 

 

Romance is all around

Not sure whether this heart is connected to the declaration of like I noted earlier, but it’s only a few meters away and appeared around the same time.

Regardless, seems like an appropriate thing to post on Valentine’s Day 2024. Happy whatever to all who celebrate.

 

 

Church & state

Let me preface this post by stating that no real estate in the People’s Republic of Reston is cheap.

So some years ago I was interested in a building calling itself Reston Study Center, next to a Kinder Care on one of my walking circuits.

“What is this?” I wondered. “Is it some kind of tutorial center? What do they study?”

Well—turns out that it’s a 21,000SF facility that supports that most endangered of demographic in the United States—White Christian men. Actually, it’s devoted to the Roman Catholic teachings of Opus Dei, those lovable whackjobs who brought us Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, and his minions John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanagh and Amy Coney Barrett of SCOTUS.

The center seems to hold some kind of event every Saturday morning. And what I’ve noticed about the men who show up is that their vehicles are often covered in forced-birth stickers and they can’t be arsed to park on the street when their parking lot is full. They just line up on the clearly-marked no-parking yellow curb.

(Sorry about the video; I'm still learning this whole mobile phone thing.)

Seems like maybe they should be studying something besides Opus Dei living.

And they should be paying property taxes on that prime parcel of the People’s Republic.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Thirty minutes

Last week I reconnected with one of my recent colleagues; we had a 30-minute video call.

AS was one of the first people in the company to welcome me by introducing me to many of the basics of threat intelligence. He gave me private tutorials and translated many of the concepts so I would be able to understand at least 17% of the conversations I heard on conference calls.

He also introduced me to the daily digest emails, an aggregation of news reports of activities by threat actors, along with brief analyst takes on what was happening. Those emails became my daily devotionals, and I learned so much from reading them.

Our half hour last week whizzed by in seconds as he gave me the gouge on what it’s like as part of the software megalith that acquired our company 15 months ago. Rounds of layoffs (mostly timed for a couple of weeks before bonuses would be paid) weigh pretty heavily, and that makes it a bit of a challenge to carry on. But he’s doing okay.

And I’m grateful to have had that 30 minutes, to see him, listen to him and laugh with him. That is such a gift.