Thought for the day: “Sometimes it takes me all day to get nothing done.”

And this is likely to be one of those days. I didn’t solve the Wordle today for the first time in a couple of months. May have had something to do with the inordinate number of brain cells I killed last night.

I need to reload my iPad with some new books. I’ve definitely hit some kind of limit; can’t find any new books that I think I’ll like. Maybe I’m stuck in an author rut or a recommendation engine loop. Time to ignore Amazon’s infernal recommendations and do some random exploring. But reading a book and taking a walk are my big goals for the day.

This NPR article was a real eye-opener for me. Yesterday was the beginning of Ramadan for approximately 25% of the world’s humans. 25%! I had no idea that 1/4 of all of us are Muslim. That makes the Muslim-hating part of American culture seem even more naive, more wrong. With those kinds of numbers, we would do well to understand and embrace, not demonize. Inshallah.

This is exactly the kind of thing that drove me away from my childhood religion, the Baptists. According to my “teachers” at the time, all 1.8 billion of those Muslims living today will burn in hell for all eternity. I couldn’t accept that, and it’s still a toxic and dangerous point of view held by many. It bothers me a lot that millions of innocent kids are still being taught things like that. Some of them will think their way out of the indoctrination, and some won’t.