Digital weapons and defences

Intriguing news this morning that a senior Kremlin figure who had been a patron of Putin's leadership  has broken with him over the war in Ukraine and left the country. A small sign of hope. All we need now is several more to do likewise publicly, and that could trigger a change that will result in an end to the war. Putin cannot survive unless he has united support, methinks. Meanwhile this terribly cruel conflict continues. The Russians are said to have lost about fifteen thousand soldiers. There are no comparable figures for Ukrainiansoldiers or civilians killed.

I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning, with ten others, then fetched this week's veggie bag before lunch. When I got home there was a small package in the post for me from my sister June. It's a small protective wallet to house bank cards with a safety lining that prevents anyone with the right device from reading the data on one's cards and using the information to steal from your bank account. Up until now my card wallet has had an aluminium foil lining, which also works, but wears had needs to be replaced regularly to serve its purpose.

I made a draft of next Sunday's sermon, then worked on next week's Morning Prayer upload and recorded the audio in the afternoon, with a break while the tuner worked on Clare's piano. Rachel has sent us a lovely video of Jasmine playing jazz piano at a school concert. We knew she plays saxophone, but I wasn't aware that she's been learning the piano as well. Amazing!

When Clare went shopping for some vegan products at Beanfreaks, she found out the shop had suffered an expensive loss of fresh stock due to a fridge breakdown or power outage, not sure which, so she asked me to go over to the Tesco supermarket on Western Avenue and see what suitable products I could find there. It wasn't easy to locate what I needed, but I was successful in finding all she wanted.

After supper, I watched more episodes of the Finnish crimmie 'All the sins', which did turn out just be be a prequel to series one. It turned out to be quite a complex essay on the turn of the new millennium, as a moment of change challenging traditional religious and social values, and the impact of the emergence of female leadership on community life in a remote rural area. It made me realise how much has changed in the past twenty one years and how much we've become accustomed to since the rise of the internet and the smartphone. Who could have thought back then that they'd become weapons of war in the struggle to control the information required to rule the world?