Your Midweek Post

Good morning, reader(s) of Stroock's Books. 

We await morning rain, which may well prevent us from mowing our lawn today. On the plus side, New Jersey's reservoirs are almost entirely replenished after the fall dry period, except for Newark. What's up with Newark? And so the rain is here...

The Israelis are preparing to strike Iran, they say. Who knows? In the meantime, Operation Gideon's Chariot continues apace in Gaza. Finish it, Bibi. Via Open Source Intel, 77% of Americans support Israel. Open Source worries that only 54% of young people support Israel. This is a great number actually, for a generation being bombarded by pro-Hamas prop on the Tik-Tok. Will those 46% who support Hamas still do so in 20 years? Do you reader(s) believe the things you believed when you were 21? We doubt it. Politics change and so do people. 

Third Andor thought of the week: We had one fear about Luthen Rael, Andor's opaque and brilliant Rebel spy master. Rich Evans at Red Letter Media speculated that Luthen was a Jedi in hiding. The script gave us plenty of evidence pointing in that direction. 'Oh, fuck no', we thought. When Dedra confronted Luthen at his shop (a brilliant scene, by the way), we kept waiting for him to brandish a light saber. The geeks would have screamed, but no. It turns out Luthen had a different backstory. 'He's no Jedi', thank the Force. 

The great Mark Judge tells us he's leaving journalism. Judge makes some interesting points, 'Journalism doesn’t pay anymore—especially as an outsider, which is where I’ve spent most of my career.'  We know how he feels. And, 'I wouldn’t get much of an advance for the book—the major publishers would never touch me...' We urge reader(s) to click on through and read on about Judge's travails and the problems all modern writers face. There's a reason we don't write magazine articles anymore, though like Judge there are still a few pieces in the pipeline. Sometimes we miss Maxim. 

World War 1990: the Managua Campaign. We up and forgot to do a para on MC yesterday. Sorry. Anywho, we had envisioned a Contra campaign originating in the Los Vegas Salient, the bit of Honduras jutting into northern Nicaragua where the Contras made their headquarters. Then we looked at a map. An invasion of Nicaragua is much more feasible on the west coast which is flat for the most part with roads that lead right to Managua. There are also better roads leading back to the Contra logistics hub at Tegucigalpa in Honduras.  

DOGE report: we wrote two very rough scenes in the South Armagh chapter. We know which two scenes we're writing today.