When my mother passed away we cleaned out her house and it was amazing what she kept.  Old calendars from 20 years ago, phone books, teaching materials from when she was a special ed teacher many years ago, all kinds of other stuff.  Like an encyclopedia set from the 1970s.  Small jars of something that went solid.  Things full of memories, I'm sure.  Kind of sad.

That made me much more picky when we made our last move.  What to save, what to donate, what to trash.  We had our regular house, a vacation house (we got the vacation house fully furnished!), and a storage unit all to be compressed into one smaller house.  We set a limit of one moving truck for all our stuff including furniture.  Everything else OUT.  A couple of trucks of donations, a couple dumpsters of "who would want this?"  Actually felt pretty good to get rid of all that stuff.  Even after the move I'm ruthless in discarding old "treasures".  Like that chunk of wire that might be useful some day.  That hammer with a chipped handle.  A box of rocks that are kind of pretty.  Still slowly thinning the bins I couldn't decide on before the move.

I agree with so much of what you said that I am about to embark on an old cable-ectomy of my office.
I have dozens of VGA cables, 30 pin apple cables, RCA and Composite cables, scores of USB and Micro USB cables, computer power cords, RS232 cables, parallel printer cables, tons of cat 5 jumper cables, stereo audio cables and cables I don't even recognize any more.  Even if I were to find a use for two or three of them, I don't need hundreds of them cluttering up my drawers and shelves and boxes.

But one thing I'm not allowed to throw away.  My wife has an odd attachment to her '50s era Encyclopedia Britannica.  I counted it up and we have moved them 11 times, unless I forgot a move.

Last week I went through my file cabinets and cleaned out enough old paid bills, credit card statements, bank statements and tons of old health insurance, car insurance, house insurance, flood insurance policies along with hundreds of old warranty cards and more.  I filled up 4 old copy paper boxes and took them to the business I sold where they have a commercial shredding contract.

Several times I went to the garage to thin it out, but I can't identify more than a few pounds of stuff.  It never fails that if I throw anything out, the next week I will need it, even if I hadn't needed it in the past 20 years.  But perhaps I'll give that another try too.

a shared desire for a change in government in Israel

EXCUSE ME??  The current administration and/or the entrenched deep state is plotting to overthrow Israel’s government?  Conspiring with our open enemy to do so?  That’s what that sounds like.

And your link is broken: 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/secret-iran-us-talks-gaza-war-undermined-raisi-death

“Secret talks between Iran and the United States in Oman were making good progress, but have now been jeopardised by the sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister.”

“The talks focused on three subjects: a shared desire for a change in government in Israel; ending Israel’s war on Gaza; and preventing the conflict from spreading elsewhere in the region.”

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/secr ... aisi-death

In other news, The White House on Wednesday said it has approved $7.7 billion of student debt cancellation for 160,500 borrowers, part of its ongoing effort to provide relief after the Supreme Court last year blocked President Joe Biden's plan for broad-based college loan forgiveness.

He said this was to "free them from the burden of debt"
He didn't say that he was doing this by placing the burden on other people that had no say in taking out those loans.

And yet in other news, I heard that the DNC was "secretly" considering replacing Biden with Kamel-a.  Talk about frying pans and fires.

Go through all your stuff.  With a fine tooth comb, every drawer, every last corner of your closets, pretending you are your own children and grandchildren and you are dead.

One thing we found: A letter written in 1916 to my grandmother shortly after she married my grandfather. It was from a guy she had apparently friend zoned. He opened by expressing shock to have been informed of her marriage, then wished her all the happiness in the world. Then, he went on for several sentences about how hurt he was that she didn’t choose him, that she didn’t care anything for him while he basically worshipped her.  But still, he is thrilled she found the man of her dreams (my grandfather) and hoped to become good friends with him!  Ended with repeated wishes for all the happiness she “so justly” deserves, even though “she and fate conspired” against them being together; nevertheless he will always love her.

Imagine shortly after your wedding getting a letter like that from a guy you thought was “just a friend”.  Creepy!  And then you keep the letter!  And your son finds it after you die and he keeps it!  And then a century later your grandchildren, whom you never met, end up with it.  (She died young.)

Or imagine you’re the guy and you write that highly personal letter in a frenzy of conflicting emotion, and a century later a bunch of strangers are reading it.  But there’s one thing I got from it: Young guys then were no different than young guys today; getting a crush on some female who thinks of him like a “brother” but being too shy to do anything about it, then getting their heart broken when she gets serious with somebody else.

That’s just one of many interesting things we found. And we barely scratched the surface of all the crap in mom’s house.

John Kerry will be there at some point to tell you that climate change is the reason Hell is so hot.