sobbing over my phone because I couldn’t stop a friend from pairing full-bodied red wine with lobster

Although it would explain why Israel is suddenly arranging to get dozens of jets from the US in the last month or so.

Forgive what feels like a nitpick, but we should take a moment for wider historical scorn. WaPo at the end of March:

Last week, the State Department authorized the transfer of 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth roughly $2.5 billion, U.S. officials said. The case was approved by Congress in 2008, so the department was not required to provide a new notification to lawmakers.

Biden owns the fuckup, but it comes after all the shit Israel put the administrations of Dubya, Obama, and Individual 1 through, and after all the atrocities upon the Great March of Return and the other surges of conflict. The planes could fill another allies’ order, the MIC could get their warbucks, and Joey could have kicked the can down the road, but here we are.

Important legal context: the origin of this Geneva ban is not only that gas weapons are atrocious, but that your foe might doesn’t know what gas has been fired and may reply to CS with gnarlier chemical weapons. The treaty also names the issue that the offending forces may, inadvertently or perfidiously, not know or mix up what gas they’re sending downrange.

This is a big fuckin’ deal in the current conflict. Russia uses a near-identical gas grenade for both CS and nerve gas, in Soviet era crates and stockpiles handled by the hard-luck HIMARS catchers in their logistics chain. If they fuck that up or a pissed off Buryat conscript wants vengeance via sabotage, a whiff of bad-boy gas on the wrong wind could make things extremely spicy.

Twist your elbow to Channel 3

which will be collateral to their longstanding policy of waiting to hit the aid drop until all the food is unpacked so they maximize damage

To educate downvoters: Yes, “essential oil” health advice is a common bullshit indicator! But! They’re the standard pharmaceutical for this task, found in kits like this one used to train food and beverage scientists. Any diverse set of strong familiar smells can work.

I worked in a related field and got my ass kicked by long COVID shortly after the start of the pandemic. This is a good starter on the biology involved, a journal article from Nature, unpaywalled: https://web.archive.org/web/20220623072436/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01628-9

Treating anosmia from brain damage is the same for post-COVID as for a car accident or getting gassed in WWI: you diligently breathe in the olfactory training kit and try to vividly remember those smells.

Pull quote: “Sometimes, the sense of smell recovers spontaneously after injury. The olfactory nerve is the only cranial nerve that can repair itself when damaged, and olfactory sensory neurons — cells in the upper part of the nose that recognize different odorant molecules — renew themselves periodically throughout life.“

edit to add, extreme sympathies to anyone who has found themselves experiencing this!

e2: corrected link

don't think gaben deserves any more protection from covid than the general public

I think gaben deserves the world’s sickest powered respirator with RGB lights and holographic Team Fortress 2 unusual hat visual effects.

Glad to hear the court will require N95s at least.

[retort]

Any latecomers to the thread are heartily encouraged to skip this comment section, stretch, relax their neck and shoulders, and drink some water.

🚨ℙ𝕚𝕤𝕤 𝕋𝕒𝕡𝕖 𝕚𝕤 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕝🚨

Note also that in the only gospel where the whip is mentioned, the construction of the weapon is premeditated. He didn’t just grab some leather strips off a table and start swinging; the action in John 2:15 starts specifically when he has made a φραγέλλιον, phrageillon in Greek, more famous in Latin as the flagellum.

φραγέλλιον phragéllion, frag-el'-le-on … a whip, i.e. Roman lash as a public punishment:—scourge. source

A different Greek word is used for ‘whip’ elsewhere in the New Testament; this one only occurs here in John, and in Matthew and Mark to describe the particularly Roman whipping Jesus receives later on.

Anyway, a flagellum is basically a cat o’ nine tails, and has either a braided leather handle or a heavy stick attached to cords with knots. Making one takes a while, and one worth using to drive out the cattle is going to take some chunks out of a moneychanger. Fancy Roman flagella that feature later on in the scripture had hooks and chains, and were sometimes gladiatorial weapons. Castlevania shit.

This has been your regularly scheduled moment of the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. There you go.

GET IN THE DAMN FEDIVERSE, SHINJI