It rained in the night, but by the time I got up the sun was shining intermittently through the clouds. In the morning news, reports of a very public and acrimonious parting of the ways between Donald Trump and his key election finance backer billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. It's been coming for some time with Musk withdrawing from his cost-cutting advisory role in the Trump government administration and becoming more critical of some of Trump's policy edicts. Musk's interference not mandated by election to office has aroused displeasure among American consumers and impacted on Tesla car sales and the value of his businesses. It was inevitable that he would disassociate himself from Trump, indeed now necessary if he's to focus on reviving his own fortunes. Trump's game playing over import tariffs has generated economic uncertainty worldwide, and has yet to show promised benefits to the American economy.
The American backed aid charity which has taken over a small fraction of the emergency aid distribution in Gaza ceased its operations pending a security review with the Israeli military. Some of its four centres have re-opened but not all of them. No new aid convoys have entered Gaza in days. A BBC investigative reported has found out that the somewhat shadowy origins of this aid foundation are in a Zionist Christian group, not exactly mainstream, and employing private security contractors for protection, all with Israeli approval. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy working with the occupying forces. There have been disagreements, resignations and dismissals within the organisation already. All part of the chaos sown by the Netanyahu regime aimed at prolonging the war and preventing any resolution of the fundamental issue of Palestinian statehood.
Clare went to town after breakfast and I went for a circuit of Llandaff Fields before returning to make lunch, cooking a savoury veg dish with small black beans for a change. I used an entire head of the young garlic given me by green fingered Keith slicing the cloves in half and cooked into my savoury concoction, also a small spoonful of honey. An interesting experiment, not unpleasant.
I walked down Romilly crescent to the Tourotech shop to look at Davey's current display of used laptops, as I'm thinking of replacing the Honor laptop I've had for four years. Its headphone output is faulty, due to a loose connection on the motherboard, and its battery life is much reduced. Taking it apart to replace the battery and repair the faulty connection isn't impossible but in its earlier life it was dropped on one corner. The aluminium casing is pretty robust so it has worked as intended, but over the passage of time the audio output has become less reliable. There is a risk that opening the case to effect the repair might trigger hidden faults. For the total cost of repair, I can buy another used laptop just as capable of doing what I need one for.
The Honor is a lovely device to use, apart from having its camera located on its keyboard. I only use a Windows device these days for video slideshow making, using a legacy version of the Photos app which is easy and well suited for this purpose. There's nothing similar to use on Linux, Chrome OS or Android devices unfortunately, so I need to keep just one Windows device for the job I do every week. I can manage with what I've got and put up with the occasional irritation until that day when it gives up the ghost probably without warning and when it's really inconvenient. So I pondered as I continued walking as far as Sophia Gardens before returning home, indecisive.
After supper I uploaded photos taken in the past few days then watched the last of the entertaining quirky funny, laid back French murder mystery cum rom-com series 'Panda'. Just when you think the protagonist is about to die he survives, recovers and finally has a love scene of sorts which the series has been building up to. IMDB reports a second series. Quite predictably, but it's not yet available having only been aired for the first time in January this year. Something to look forward to. And now to bed.
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