1. I want to share a bit of personal news, which may hopefully help brighten your day a little.
2. One month ago, a friend of mine from Nachlaot woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of two kittens crying. Someone had left them in a cardboard box by the dumpster next to her apartment.
3. My friend sends me a message and the above and attached videos and asks if my wife and I could take them in. (Friend already has two cats, one of them being a rescue and couldn't handle more).
4. My wife and I were already interested in adopting a cat from a shelter but we weren't sure about taking in two kittens this young (vet estimated they were about 3 weeks)
We decided to take them in, at least just to get help get them going.
Day 1:
5. We took them to the vet their first night to get them checked out and on the way back we gave them names.
My wife named the black one "Ollie" and I named the tabby "Mandu."
Here they are being adorable
6. Neither my wife and I are experts in cat breeds, but as far as we can tell, Ollie is part bear cub...
7. ...part Yoda...
8. ...and part squeak toy.
9. Mandu on the other hand is some combination of meerkat, kangaroo, and prairie dog
10. Due to Corona, both my wife and I are working from home which gave us the flexibility to take care of kittens who still needed a lot of regular help.
11. Initially, we kept them in a large plastic container but as they got bigger, my amazing wife put together a corral from leftover moving boxes and we gradually expanded their space as they got bigger.
Last night we took most of it down, giving them more room to roam and play
12. But enough about that. Here are some more pictures of Ollie:
13. This one needs its own Tweet (from when they were still bottle feeding)
14. He also does this thing where if you pet him just right he'll go to sleep in adorable psoitions
15. And now for some Mandu pics...
16. Mandu also likes playing on his back
17. Having the two of them together has been super helpful bec they're able to play with each other and teach themselves how to be cats.
Like good brothers, they fight a lot but they do love each other
18. That's all for now until I can figure out how to make a video for @dodo.
We'd also like to thank @kittenxlady and @JacksonGalaxy whose YouTube videos on raising kittens and cats have been super helpful.
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2. First, here's Jason Stanley on "The End of Civic Compassion." Setting aside the laughability of the Before Time being an era of hand-holding, we've got a kicker of a paragraph in the next tweet newrepublic.com/article/181274…
3. Painting all of your political opponents as communists is fascist. Painting all your political opponents as fascists is not (and let's not even start with white-supremacy)
For those insisting on differentiating between Hamas and the Palestinian people as a whole, as recently as March 2023, 58% of those polled by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research supported armed confrontations. pcpsr.org/en/node/938
And from June 2022, "59% view armed attacks against Israelis inside Israel as serving the national interest in ending the occupation and 56% support these attacks" pcpsr.org/en/node/912
The pertinent question is not if Palestinians support the specific parties of Hamas or Fatah, but if they support murdering Jews.
1. I've made several comments about the debate over judicial reform in Israel. Due to Twitter being Twitter, criticizing one argument from one side is taken as an endorsement of the other.
For anyone who cares, here's my actual opinion 🧵
2. Checks and balances are not just a slogan, but in theory, ought to curb the potential excesses of any branch of government. The main problem is that any institution of power is susceptible to corruption.
This includes the checks and balances.
3. Rhetorical appeals to things like "will of the people", "democracy", "justice", and the like are typically empty references/appeals to vague concepts that just so coincidentally happen to correlate with one's preferences.
Today's topic: Blaming Tragedies and Suffering on Sin
2. When bad things happen in the world, e.g. natural disasters, it's not uncommon to find religious figures attributing these disasters and associated suffering to God rendering punishment for sin.
3. For one recent example, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Tzefat Israel, compared the devastating earthquakes in Turkey to God punishing the Egyptians in the Red Sea immediately after the exodus. timesofisrael.com/top-national-r…