To mix death into everything seen… Am Yishrael Chai.

To mix death into everything seen
and may the magic of earth smoke and rue
be as real to him as the clearest connection.
Nothing can trouble the dominance of the true image.ⁱ

So many images, too gruesome to believe,
Disinfo outlets cry “fake”, monstrous mobs cry “thief”,ⁱⁱ
Adams shows us courage, while we pray towards wholesomeness,ⁱⁱⁱ
Through the fog of war, we feel our particles divided.^iv

Even if the war was foretold, the spokes fall faster
Than the rock-solid hub of the American Sector,
So it wasn’t “mood affiliation” after all,^v
Some things really are inEVitable: dreams and prophecies.^vi

But let’s not flatter ourselves now, lest we repeat Orphée’s errors,
And vol squeeze ourselves into a pre-AI world, one Taiwan at a time,^vii
Between the cherries and the miracles lies a glimpse of the future,
More creative and brighter than mere molecules can imagine.

But first barbarian magnets are ripping iron filings into alignment,^viii
To mix death into everything seen… the dominance of the true image,
Our journey is one, since then and forever.
Am Yisrael Chai, Am Yisrael Chai, Am Yisrael Chai.^ix

1. Sonnet 6 by Rilke via the supreme Edmund de Waal from a piece of his that we first saw on display at Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris early last year:

    

   

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2. MSM saying that X/IG are “disinfo” is just the thief in the bazaar stealing your wallet and yelling “thief!” at you while he runs in the other direction. So it is that Hitlerite demonstrators paraded the streets of the western world this week denouncing the “colonisers” oppressing them, even though that’s exactly what they want.

   The *point* of terrorism is to shoot itself in the foot so bad that people feel bad for it. Half of Gazan jobs were in Israel & there was no wall, until the PLO & Hamas fomented the 1st intifada. Then Israel said fine, you’re your own country, & PLO did the 2nd intifada to say no

   — CEBK CEBK (@CEBKCEBKCEBK) October 10, 2023

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3. It’s well documented that NYC isn’t my favourite city in the world to visit, but apparently it’s the best city in North America to live in, at least while Mayor Eric Adams is there:
   

   Bravo, @NYCMayor Eric Adams. "I'm your brother." Amen to that. Everyone should watch this. pic.twitter.com/yACvjtL1RY

   — Dror Poleg (@drorpoleg) October 13, 2023

   
   This is a “How can I help?” moment for NYC, the way Suarez did for Miami in early pandemic. ↩

4. Whether you ask the Kabbalists or the Theoritical Physicists, they’ll tell you that it’s all connnected. So it is that, even though we hadn’t talked about the war with our kids yet, “Security” was the first word our Little 5-year-old Athenian asked Chat to translate to Hebrew during our mid-week session (it’s “ביטחון” or “bitachon” ftr). Is it because we were all just in Israel together 6 months ago? Hard to say for sure but it’s as good a theory as any. ↩
5. I was genuinely starting to wonder if all my “streetwear is dead” and “battleship crayola” and “war war war” type thoughts and dreams these last few years were really just some kind of “mood affiliation” to borrow a Cowen-ism and that I sub-consciously wanted the war. But no, that anxiety can now be put to bed. War is coming whether some keyboard-smashing country bumpkin wants it or not. Prophecy is divorced from desire!

   Just ask Ye about his 2022 dreams, or Carl Jung about his 1913/1914 dreams:

   

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6. Again, it’s not that I personally want bloody tribal conflict to regain its place of historical normalcy, it’s just that everyone and their uncle seems hell-bent on making capitalism decline in status, at least in the industrialist/consumerist sense, so what else is there to do but prepare for war? ↩
7. Yes, Taiwan isn’t far away now. But what will its loss to China mean for our cutting-edge digital consumer existence, especially our “game-changing” AI-powered future? Much would seem to hang in the balance for AI, I’d argue, while crypto’s more distributed (and more portable!) future seems infinitely more secure by comparison. Of course we’d ideally have both… ↩
8. Nothing overcomes a little internal dispute about “judicial reform” like savages at the gate. Nothing reveals internal hidden structures like strong external forces:
   And what a force there is right now:

   Day #3 – Second Set of Thoughts on Unfolding Situation in Israel.

   First, Noni, the son of my former entrepreneur and the former Minister of Science and Technology Izhar Shay, was killed late last night. Our hearts are broken for Izhar and his family and for other families that…

   — Michael Eisenberg (@mikeeisenberg) October 9, 2023

   Revealing perhaps a bloody rubric for 21st century states: small, smart, fierce (and ethnic?) ↩

9. “עם ישראל חי” or “Am Yisrael Chai” is a Hebrew phrase that translates to “The Nation of Israel Lives” or “The People of Israel Live.” ↩