Just so you know about my intensely scholarly efforts this evening: I wondered what the earliest known smiley face in the world is.

It is found on a 3, 700 year Hittite pot found in Turkey, with the classic two dots and curved line.

You are welcome! 🙂

"...NPR has learned that hundreds of sailors were evacuated back to the United States from their base in Bahrain after the base was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. In addition to the base in Bahrain, NPR has learned that there have been evacuations at other U.S. military bases in the region, though the exact details are unknown at this point..... Around 8,000 people were stationed at the base in Bahrain before the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28....Sailors have been arriving in Norfolk, Va., home to the world's biggest naval base, since at least the middle of March. Several groups that provide aid to military personnel say that the sailors arrived with very little. A call went out to community groups, asking for basic supplies like hygiene products.

"The base was asking for donations of toiletries and different things for the sailors coming back, because they were coming back with nothing,""

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5770491/evacuation-bahrain-norfolk-troops

#Iran #War #Bahrain #military

Them: “Poetry needs to be layered with meaning. If your writing describes a flower, then the flower needs to be a metaphor for something else. It can’t just describe a flower.”

Me: “Here’s my poem.”

Them: “It’s a beautiful poem, really. But it’s just about sailing. We want poems with a deeper meaning, not just poetic descriptions of life on a sailboat.”

Me: [turns to camera]. “The poem was about growing up in an abusive home with a substance’s abusing parent, and having a hobby that everyone mocked and doing it in secret because it was the only thing that kept me alive. All that was there. The sailboat was a metaphor.”

Removing the horrors, even reducing them, seems beyond our feeble powers. But we are many, and the powerful are few. If we each peck away at the system where we can, we just might get it done.

Pick your form of resistance, and resist. If your form is fun for you, so much the better.

Resist!

Anyway, setting aside the ethical concerns, it seems perfectly clear that "setting aside the ethical concerns" is *precisely* the problem.

It is what got us in to this nightmare, and it is what is keeping us in this nightmare.

Please stop pretending that "setting aside the ethical concerns" is anything but a verbal signal indicating one's unwillingness to take personal responsibility for one's actions.