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A Micronesia appreciation episode

This episode is brought to you by the Federated States of Micronesia. No, they aren't paying us for sponsorship, but they *are* the only country that still loves us, so this one's on us! In case of emergency, we’re all moving there. Then again we want them to still like us, so maybe best to admire from afar.

This week we discuss the Hezbollah pager explosions, the list of countries that can no longer sit with us, Hassan Nasrallah's glow-up, decolonized pizza at MIT, tips on how to focus, and more.

If you haven’t been following the news out of the UN, here is an updated list of countries to complain about. Please select your vacations and cuisine choices accordingly (Pizza = out, Asado = in!)

We also discuss Hassan Nasrallah’s apparent glow-up (we like to combine current affairs and style as much as we can on AAJ), as you can see in this tweet from the lone survivor himself, now with a newly dyed beard. People have pointed out that it may be an old photo, what I think happened is that his social media guy disappeared, so now Hassan has to run his own Twitter, and that’s never a good thing:

Speaking of content creation, i’ve been trying to help the Ayatollah with his motivational tweets, giving him just a touch of flare for brand recognition:

Update on the pizzas that were decolonized from Jewish MIT students during a talk by an Israeli professor - Thanks to some friends over at

The Fifth Column

chat who chipped in, the poor kids were able to treat themselves to another round of pies! Hopefully they ate them quickly. Don’t stand between jewish students and their snacks!

Lastly, here is the beautiful song Chaya Leah spoke about when I asked how we should think about celebrating Simchat Torah this year. Sadly, there always seems to be a previous tragedy we can learn from. You can find the lyrics here, here’s a taste:

Turning to the eastern wall, we looked on in despair
there’d be no scrolls to dance with, the holy ark was bare.
Then we heard two children crying, a boy and girl whom no one knew
and we realized that no children were among us but those two.

We danced round and round in circles as if the world had done no wrong
from evening until morning, filling up the Shul with song.
Though we had no Sifrei Torah to gather in our arms
in their place we held those children, the Jewish people would live on.