28 January 2020

♂

 28 January 12020 is Data Privacy Day. It’s also Army Day in Armenia. The saint of the day is Thomas Aquinas. And it’s the anniversary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice (1813). In the news I see that former hedge-fund manager and mental munchkin Steven Mnuchin suggests that Greta Thunberg study economics, as if immersion into a fantasy world is somehow a cure for the ongoing real-world disaster. Now he claims he was only joking, but I doubt that the fire and flood victims find it particularly amusing. (I don’t; there was nothing remotely funny about his deranged comment.) If you confuse the economic world with the real world you need a crash course in sanity.

And speaking of fantasy worlds, I see that Mars, in Sagittarius, is ninety degrees from Neptune, in Pisces (♂□♆), which is a harbinger of lies, suspicion, and indecision—things that sap the will. Not a fun place to be at all. Best to avoid all interactions with the outside world, maybe. Not that the interior world is likely to be much better. Best to avoid things in general—other people, demanding situations, online interactions…. Something like that, anyway.

On this day in history (in 1986) the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, with supposedly seventeen percent of the American people watching via television. (I was one of them.) A definite setback to the space program, the disaster grounded planned satellite launches and destroyed research projects, as well as killing the seven members of its crew: Michael J. Smith (captain), Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Dick Scobee.