Dance the pain away*

Temperature: a snowy -5/23 degrees. It was a cold January and it's been a cold February with snow for once.

Eating: Maybe later.

Drinking: Maybe a caipirinha over the weekend in celebration of the carnival season?

Listening: Like I said, it's almost carnaval, so what do you think? Time to dance the pain away, the physical, the emotional, the existential.

Watching: Wuthering Heights ASAP.

Reading: @FrenchResponse yet? Not without risks, this tactic. Then again, you have to fight your corner. Chapeau !
 
Writing: Now that this is all just training data for AI, are you thinking Inception yet? Shouldn't we TED it at every turn, only write ideas worth spreading? Keeping it classy and truthful, maybe even artful? We are, after all, the originals, and AI is the glorified copy-paste machine, and there is no shortage of shit slinging enshittifying the mix so it desperately needs a counterbalance.

Thinking: The more one reads on the Epstein case the more it looks like a if-you-go-down-I-go-down mutually assured destruction construction of blackmail, extortion, info and intel gathering, manipulation, money laundering, sex slavery and human trafficking, and who knows what else, and it makes the FBI look like the Federal Bureau of Interception, and prosecutors either corrupt, really bad at their jobs, or both, and it raises more questions than it answers, starting with if no one managed to help these teens and children and stop these crimes and these criminals after all that came to light ages ago then what the hell were they doing sitting on their hands, at whose behest, and why. And if you're thinking that the things coming out prove they can't be true because they are just too crazy, too sick and depraved to be true, people tasked with investigating these crimes will tell you that there is no limit to the sick and sadistic things some will do to adults, teens and children as young as newborns. (These investigators need therapy because of the nature of their work, and their therapists need therapy in turn, and not all therapists will work with these investigators because they do not want to carry detailed accounts of violence done to children, violence that sometimes leads to death.) And if it's true, where are the whistleblowers? Well, we have the original whistleblowers, the victims, who have either not been listened to or believed in the first place, or who have been silenced after speaking up, or who were turned into accomplices before coming forth (and what a diabolic move of coercive control that is, turning your victim into your partner in crime) and the few prosecutors who tried to act were told to sit down and shut up because we got this (and what did Epstein get for his crimes? a sweetheart deal), and we have investigative journalists trying to break into a fortress protecting those who deserve no protection or leniency, and this work can sometimes radically affect your life expectancy if you don't stop what you're doing or take back what you said. The last whistleblower hides inside this circle of predators, someone who has witnessed these crimes, maybe even taken part, someone whose conscience isn't one hundred percent dead. Will they speak up in an attempt to save themselves when all evidence supports the assumption no one will protect you, no one will save you if you do? Because even after he became a registered sex offender Epstein just picked up where he left off, and people still cozied up to him, sought him out, and the chumminess is beyond creepy and disgusting, and doesn't it just say it all that these monsters would rather protect one another than the victims of their crimes.

Feeling: Every choice we make is at its heart a moral choice. Every choice either strengthens or weakens our core and ultimately defines who we are as humans. Imagine losing touch with that core. Imagine being so dead inside that even the most defenseless, the most vulnerable, become objects, things, disposable. That is the definition of evil and that evil is real.


*A most carnivalesque video to accompany a most danceable tune with the most delicious 80s synths and drum machines by Haute & Freddy.