Should the Chief Rabbi be fired?

 
In the Galut, the Rabbi was hired by the community and fired if disliked.

 Here, Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party called for Rabbi Lau to be fired from the position of Chief Rabbi in response to a letter.

"This attempt to hold converts hostage to the haredi establishment which has seized control of the Chief Rabbinate - like the threats from the Chief Rabbi against the minister appointed over him - crosses a red line and contravenes all accepted practice.

"We call on the Religious Affairs Minister to fire the Chief Rabbi immediately and to summon him to a disciplinary hearing, just like any other state official." Pic.: The first Rabbi of Sadigura.

Population Replacement in Europe

 

There is no doubt that Europe is changing, a non-European majority is already obvious. France and other large countries are camouflaging this unsettling near future, but here and there we can see what is happening. The majority of the babies being born in Belgique are of foreign origin (left: an official planning report). But it is not like the right-wing racists think, the foreigners are not having six or eight children, they cannot even be said to have large families. The average seems to be 1.9 children/foreign mother. And not all of them are Congo Bantus, most are from Eastern Europe. The replacement is by differential fertility, the native Belges almost stopped having children. Exploited, famished rural peasants and urban proletarians replenished in the past diminishing populations, but today those classes are non-existent.  

Chinese Poison-Speak

I used to quote Der Spiegel for their venomous articles about American society and President  Donald Trump. Now it is the turn of the Chinese: Below is a quote from Global Times.

"If the US could put aside political discord for one day of the year, then Christmas should be that day. But the fact is, even a Christmas call to express holiday wishes and gratitude for US military service members around the world is still used to express extreme political sentiment. American citizens may even abuse the president with euphemistic and insulting language on the phone. Such an abnormal situation shows the morbid division in US society and an inability to resolve social problems.

"Let's Go Brandon," a father and former police officer Jared Schmeck said on the phone when US President Joe Biden and the first lady were taking calls into the North American Aerospace defense Command Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve on Friday.

"Let's Go Brandon" is a vulgar anti-Biden slogan - a sanitized version of "Fxxx Joe Biden." The slogan has become an internet sensation in the US and is especially popular among supporters of former US president Donald Trump. 

"Let's Go Brandon" shows the US' morbid division, which has almost become an incurable disease in the country. What will the country become when half of the American people's wishes oppose the other half? The current division makes the country seem as if it is heading toward an inevitable decline. In a society that is so divided, almost no problem can be resolved, nor can anything be changed."

They seem to faintly dislike America and Biden. 

Two days of NADA

 
Sunday mostly slept. Today was spent waiting for an auto part for the annual road test. 

Antigone à Quebec

Yesterday we went to celebrate birthdays in a vegetarian restaurant, and then the Cinematec Tel Aviv.  Something about an Algerian refugee family: two brothers involved in the Habibi drug gang and the pure, virginal sister, Antigone. She had to take a decision to betray her brothers or be expelled. She decided that family loyalty beats loyalty to Canada's laws. In French: 

Vivant à Montréal avec sa grand-mère, sa soeur et ses deux frères, elle est une première de classe, une jeune fille comme une autre, à l'âge des premiers amours. Mais un jour, son frère aîné, Étéocle, est abattu gratuitement par un policier trop nerveux – et le cadet, Polynice, est arrêté et menacé d'expulsion du territoire. Antigone décide alors de tout risquer pour l'aider à s'évader.

I didn't like it. 

POTASH

 

I started to make real profits on the Stock Exchange with POTASH, when the magical CEO Mr.Doyle created a worldwide monopoly and the price went up to 1000 $/ton. I speculate that we are at the beginning of a similar cycle, as the company that ruined the cartel, Uralkali is being restrained by American sanctions. Belaruskali (Bielorussian potash - 20% of world production) is being punished for political reasons (siding with Putin). I think the conjuncture is so good that is safe to take out a loan to buy ICL. 

The State of Palestine (2022)

 

The Hyksos (Hebrews) of Avaris (Tel Yehudiya)

One has only to look at Ancient Egyptian monuments to understand how monstrous a people they were. Leons with human faces, humans with jackal faces, enormous pyramidal tombs for mummified cats, etc. Their religion was an absurd mix of crocodile gods, and so. Their king married their sisters, ensuring their progressive mental and physical decline. Their myths were pornographic like Kamutef, the sun god who every night inseminated Nut, the goddess of heaven. Every morning, she gave birth to him again in a process of daily renewal. Nut is therefore both the mother and wife of the sun. In royal mythology, the pharaoh hoped to achieve renewal in a similar way to the myth, in which mother and wife were conceptualized identically. The only sensible kings were the Hyksos, immigrant Hebrew pastoralists, who believed in one god and built no grandiose tombs. The natives were absolutely humiliated by being dominated by this small foreign, light-skinned tribe and after 150 years they expelled the Hyksos to their original country in Israel. 

Haz esta noche perpetua...

Is the new Chinese generation lactase tolerant?

 

How the market overcomes the obstacle of lactose intolerance in China?

It is true that Asian people are genetically predisposed to lactase-deficiency (around 85% of people suffer from lactose intolerance in China). Older generations of Chinese who were not used to consuming dairy products in their diets are also mostly lactose intolerant.

But this lactose intolerance in China will not slow down the market. First, because to create new generations of milk drinkers, society and government have taken several measures. Today Chinese babies are born with the ability to make lactase, which is the enzyme needed to digest the milk vector and which is lost as they grow older. Moreover, children do not stop drinking milk as they grow up and therefore continue to produce this enzyme.  Source: A market research consulting

The Israeli model farm near Beijing created this market in China. I was skeptical but Dr Moshe Mizrahi was right - the Chinese will learn to drink milk.  Curiously, the architecture of the ad looks Mediterrranean, Greek maybe. 

Lu Xun, The True Story of Ah-Q

 

Study the revolutionary spirit of Lu Xun, become a pathbreaker in the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucius, 1974

I am reading the complete works of Lu Yun, a radical Chinese writer of the 1920s who became the hero of the Cultural Revolution. His story The Diary of a Madman is rather impressive. The Chinese imperial society was really very bad, but the Maoist was not a paradise. I think they are regaining the balance now.  

Nothing works

Mussolini's Battle for Births was a failure. Marriage rates stayed virtually the same during Mussolini's reign, and birth rates decreased until 1936, after which there was a modest increase. The birth rate of 112 per 1000 in 1936 was below that of pre-World War I levels (1911: 147 per 1000). Mussolini felt that the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Italian nation had cost him 15 army divisions in World War II.

From Angela Mitropoulos : For fascists, population theory means the organization of a racial welfare state and the realization of a fascist demos that both displaces (and limits) the franchise as a mechanism of political legitimacy and structures population policy as a more or less explicit racial demography.

In his self-titled “Speech of the Ascension,” Benito Mussolini, declared that while “[s]tatistics has expanded its jurisdiction over all phenomena of life,” the aim of the National Fascist Party was to “take great care of the future of the race.” By his view, that meant investing the simple aggregate of a population with racial properties, the resurrection of a conscious, singular people. Indeed, Mussolini delivered this speech on the day of the Catholic feast day of the Ascension in 1926. To that end, he announced the fascist demographic policy of increasing the size of the population through an increase in the birth rate.

For the famous Italian statistician Corrado Gini, best known for his statistical formula measuring the wealth distribution within a national population (the ‘Gini coefficient’), and who was undoubtedly the most prominent government statistician of the Italian fascist government between 1926 and 1932, that argument was more than explicit.

In his 1927 essay “The Scientific Basis of Fascism,” Gini contrasted a liberal understanding of society as “an aggregate of individuals” with a “nationalistic theory,” for which society is “a true and distinct organism of a rank superior to that of the individuals who compose it, an organism endowed with a life … and vital interests of its own,” in which welfare policy meant the “coordination of the desires of the current generation with the with the interests of all the future generations which are to constitute the future life of the nation.”

No more hungry ghosts

Am reading Lu Xun's The Real Story of Ah-Q about a village idiot's life that ends as a dead rebel. Lu Xun is a Chinese literary hero for his short membership in the Shanghai Circle of Communist writers in the early 1920s. I remember reading the same story, probably in Hungarian, under the Stalinist regime. That or a similar story set in the Hungarian countryside. Lu Xun makes fun of traditional Chinese civilization. He hates Chinese Opera, with its noisy gongs and choreographed fights. Mao's Cultural Revolution roots may be found in Ah-Q.  

A nun said to Ah-Q : "May you die without descendants!" If I die without descendants, Ah-Q said to himself, I'll have no one to offer a bowl of rice at my grave... and then "There are three ways of betraying your parents, of which dying without descendants is the most serious".  They become hungry ghosts. 

The Chinese were always a most prolific civilization, how is it that today, the Chinese are not marrying and have no children? The Communist government thinks that the cause is Western influence and contra-Mao's Cultural Revolution, has adopted a pro-children traditionalist attitude. If they follow to the very end of this new tendency, Party cadres - the new mandarines - will have two-three wives and concubines, and clan tombs will be visited yearly to feed a steaming bowl of rice to the ancestors. Illustration: The Hungry Ghosts Festival refers to the opening of hell's gate for one month allowing all the ghosts full liberty to make trouble in the human world of existence. After the one-month period, the ghosts return to hell and the gate is shut for another year.

Horrible Mutations

 Ehlers-Danlos  Autosomal  recessive

Extreme  fragility  of  the  skin,  other  symptoms  include  blue sclerae  and  soft,  velvety,  hyperextensible  skin.  Marked  bruising  and  open  wounds following  minor  trauma,  the  excised  skin  can  be  torn  by  hand.   Epidemiology: The  disease  has  been  diagnosed  among  in  several  Ashkenazi  Jewish  families  In  one family  in  which  the  origin  was  determined  the  grand  parents  were  from  Belarus Molecular  genetics: ADAMTS2    gene  (chromosomal  locus  5q23)   Homozygozity  for  the  same  mutation  [Q225X]  was  found  in  all  the  Ashkenazi  Jewish patients.  Wiki says life expectancy is normal. Pic.: The wiki, from Premalatha S, Sarveswari et al. 

Fragile  X  syndrome 

94 X linked  dominant FMR1 gene  (chromosomal  locus  Xq27)   The  disorder  is  caused  by  the  absence  of  the  FMR1  product,  almost  always  as  a  result of  a  CGG  repeat  unit  amplification  (>  200  repeats),  rarely  because  of  a  mutation  in  the gene.   Epidemiology: Among    the  cases  of  fragile  X  syndrome  in  Israel  published  in  1997  it  was  apparent that  the  disorder  is  relatively  frequent  among  Jews  of  Tunisian  origin.  In  the  136 pedigrees  surveyed  at  the  time,  36  (26.4%)  were  of  Tunisian  Jewish  origin.  In  a  Tunisian  Jewish  control  group  4  were  carriers  of  the  fragile  X  mutation (3  premutation,  one  full  mutation).  Studying  the  Tunisian  Jewish  chromosomes  with the  mutation,  there  was  an  unusually  high  proportion  (20%)  that  completely  devoid AGG interruption.  The  largest  of  these  uninterrupted  alleles  was  found  on  a  unique haplotypes  suggesting  a  founder  effect  that  may  be  originating  from  the  Island  of Djerba. In  several  screening  programs  performed  among  Jews  in  Israel  the  incidence  of  the disorder  was  found  to  be  1:3000.  The  carrier  frequency  (more  55  repeats)  was approximately  1:150.  

From the wiki: Fragile X syndrome has traditionally been considered an X-linked recessive condition with variable expressivity and possibly reduced penetrance.^[12] However, due to genetic anticipation and X-inactivation in females, the inheritance of Fragile X syndrome does not follow the usual pattern of X-linked dominant inheritance, and some scholars have suggested discontinuing labeling X-linked disorders as dominant or recessive.^[40] Females with full FMR1 mutations may have a milder phenotype than males due to variability in X-inactivation.^{[citation needed]}

Before the FMR1 gene was discovered, analysis of pedigrees showed the presence of male carriers who were asymptomatic, with their grandchildren affected by the condition at a higher rate than their siblings suggesting that genetic anticipation was occurring.^[13] This tendency for future generations to be affected at a higher frequency became known as the Sherman paradox after its description in 1985.^[13][41] Due to this, male children often have a greater degree of symptoms than their mothers.^[42]

The explanation for this phenomenon is that male carriers pass on their premutation to all of their daughters, with the length of the FMR1 CGG repeat typically not increasing during meiosis, the cell division that is required to produce sperm.^[13][29] Incidentally, males with a full mutation only pass on premutations to their daughters.^[29] However, females with a full mutation are able to pass this full mutation on, so theoretically there is a 50% chance that a child will be affected.^[29][36] In addition, the length of the CGG repeat frequently does increase during meiosis in female premutation carriers due to instability and so, depending on the length of their premutation, they may pass on a full mutation to their children who will then be affected. Repeat expansion is considered to be a consequence of strand slippage either during DNA replication or DNA repair synthesis.^[43]

 Samaritan  myopathy

 Autosomal  recessive. In  contrast  to  other  congenital  myopathies  where  muscle  weakness  is  progressive  or stable  the  benign  Samaritan  congenital  myopathy  is  characterized  by  an  ‘‘inverse’’ course  of  disease.  The  patients  are  severely  affected  at  birth  and  improve  progressively being  minimally  affected  at  adult  stage.   Epidemiology  and  Molecular  genetics: RYR1  gene  (chromosomal  locus  19q13.1) The  diaese  was  reported  in  one  Samaritan  family  in  which  the  patients  were homozygous  for  c.3263A>G  (p.Tyr1088Cys).    The  Samaritans  are  an  ethno-religious group  of  741  people  living  in  Israel  and  Nablus.  Ancestrally,  they  consider  themselves as  descendants  of  the  10  lost  tribes  that  formed  the  Kingdom  of  Israel.  The  Samaritan population  has  the  highest  recorded  inbreeding  coefficient  in  human  populations  due to  almost  exclusive  intra-lineage  marriages.  

I am doomed

I have to reduce my weight by some 30 kg to survive a little more. I did it more than once but always gained back the fat loss and some more. Mood: Fakir-esque. Depressed. 

"Bassa"

 

Bassa means swamp or just depression in the Hebrew/Arabic lingo we speak here. I am a bit depressed because it was discovered that I suffer from BP.

Dear Wife is angry. She says that I don't see her. That no one sees her. She has chronic backache. I am trying to be nice to her. 

Persia

TAHAL worked in Iran till the fall of the Shah and I remember that in the general assembly of that year, the employees that escaped were celebrated. I talked with the agricultural - irrigation experts and they had a rather poor opinion of the local farmers. Iran, then, was considered underdeveloped. 

Now they are saying they will burn Tel Aviv and Haifa. One paper even published a map with the targets - it includes Hebron and Ramallah. It is part of the negotiations in Vienna, which seem to go well. The Brits, this time, are with us: 

 "This is the last chance for Iran to come to the negotiating table with a serious resolution to this issue, which has to be agreeing to the terms of the JCPOA," said Truss, adding, "This is their last chance and it is vital that they do so. We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon."

A line in the sand

 I bought Barr's book and I painfully am reading it. It is long, detailed, and complicated. It tells the seventy years of English (and French) conflict in the Middle East to divide the Turkish possessions after WWI. The English intelligence officer, the faintly feminine T.E. Lawrence created the Arab national movement (paying off lots of gold) which twenty years later the Brits had to put down (more gold and 100,000 "rations" = soldiers). They still subsidize the Kingdom of Jordan, to keep Lawrence's promise of a kingdom for Faisal and Abdullah. 

It is rather surprising the difficulties of the British (and French) armies in eliminating irregular Arab forces in Syria, Lebanon, and of course Palestine. Israel, once established, fought against the same forces and, apparently without too much effort, Ariel Sharon (*) conquered Beirut in two days and we ruled South Lebanon for a decade. I don't know the secret but we are different.     

(*) and moi. I was there. 

Commenter TIM in Amazon resumes: None of the actors come out of this well. The squabbling, fading empires of France and Britain are at the heart of it all, both obsessed with maintaining their place in the world at the expense of the Arabs. The Arabs themselves come across as bumbling and incompetent, except for perhaps the Druze and Bedu, but they are all riven by petty infighting that allows the "great powers" to maintain control of their lands. The Zionists come later to the story as ruthless killers and extremists - founding a country, etc.  

Amira's Honor

 سبحان الله !....الشعب الفلسطيني المسكين المحتل المهجر المشرد المتآمر عليه دوليا و إقليميا و حتى عربيا من طرف بعض الأنظمة العربية المطبعة الخائنة ، وصلت بهم الدرجة التشكيك في "شرف و عرض " الشعب الفلسطيني ! تحياتي لكل شريف فلسطيني  و شريفة

Glory be to God!...the miserable, occupied, displaced Palestinian people, that were conspired against internationally, regionally, and even in the Arab world, by the treacherous media, have reached the low point that its very honor is being questioned! Greetings to every honest and honorable Palestinian! 

The reactions to the Egyptian film Amira have been very emotional. Above is one comment. (The translation is mine). The story is about a prisoner's sperm being smuggled out by a guard, who substitutes the sperm with his own. Since hundreds of children were born this way, the film undermines the honor and the morale of the Palestinians. 

Rotten tomatoes writes:

Amira is a highly contrived, ridiculous melodrama seeping with endless implausible details that rob the story of any credibility it may have had. The biggest crime of the film though is its portrayal of Palestinian society.

The community of Amira - essentially a microcosm of Palestine as the film implies - is a band of freaks: a company of sexist brutes with not an ounce of empathy in their souls. The Palestine of Amira is a conservative, hypocritical place populated by merciless patriarchs only concerned with preserving their honor rather than safeguarding the daughter who grew with them and among them; a daughter who had no hand in the great shame they plaster her with.

This is an insultingly regressive, bafflingly over-simplified, imprudently outdated treatment of a Palestine clearly concocted by an outsider. Its take on identity is shallow and largely underexplored; its depiction of the downgraded status of women in middle-class families is Victorian in essence. At a time when the evolving discourse around women's rights across the region has shifted towards body integrity and equal rights, Diab is still stuck on honor and virginity.

Cultural Origins of Demographic Transition

 

The mystery is perfectly explained in this research paper by Guillaume Blanc, Brown University. It is secularization. Everywhere. Always. 

Dollar Inflation > 7% p.a.

 

Much of the world's gold is in India. Unfortunately, we use the dollar, which in 2021 lost 7% of its worth. One could even say that the American Government expropriated 7% of the world's dollar income to spend it on public programs, such as food stamps. Also in keeping open and safe sea and air routes. Next year the dollar interest rate will jump from zero to 10-15%. Many will lose their savings. 

Expecting Something

 The American government established a task force dedicated to discovering what are those unidentified (1) flying phenomena UFOs, (2) transmedium objects or devices, and (3) submerged objects or devices. The last point means that they have "seeings" of submerged phenomena that need to be investigated, that were never published. It is probable that they have palpable things in hand, and are preparing the world for some event, say contact.  

Solemnizing Nvidia's 500%

 

Not long ago I bought Nvidia shares. I told everybody to put their savings in it. They thought it was already expensive and no one followed me. Today, I see that my original investment has multiplied by five. Today I bought Kenon. One of the Ofer brothers owns it: his auto factory in China failed but Kenon still holds ZIM, which rocketed 5% yesterday on NYSE while on TASE Kenon rose only 1%. Are Israelis .. slow? 

Flint gets $626 million for incompetence

After Benton Harbor—a city of nearly 10,000 people, over 80% of them black—made headlines for its water crisis this year, Michigan promised to replace all the town’s lead service lines within 18 months. (It is being done on schedule). That did not stop its residents from filing a class-action lawsuit in November alleging deliberate government indifference (against the local Municipality and the State government). The same day a judge approved a $626m settlement for people affected by a water crisis across the state in Flint, which caused a similar media frenzy after residents complained about tainted water in 2014. Getting national attention, it seems, pays off. 

Source: The Economist. In America, baseless accusations of systemic racism get you compensated even if the water is turbid because of your own stupidity and incompetence. In America 2021, you can blame the government for indifference and get paid for it. This way lies madness ... 

Babysitting

 
Ayala feels unwell and asked us to spend the whole day babysitting Shakadudu aged two. Took the computer but produced nothing all day. It is raining. Nahal Raba was wet. At sunset, I could see the lights of Dir Balut or Zawiya, Palestinian settlements in the Shomron. Newe Afek is a nice clean, quiet neighborhood. I like it. 

Suze Orman says Buy Banks

 Suze Orman is a Lesbian from Chicago who produces sound financial advice. She is a fantastic self-promoter. About inflation, she says buy banks. 

"With soaring inflation no longer "transitory," according to the Fed, Americans are preparing for their purchasing power to take another hit.

But whether inflation is coming out of hibernation or we’re heading towards a bear market, Suze Orman, personal finance expert, says you should still lean on stocks for the long haul.

“Over the long-term stocks have produced the best gains after factoring in inflation,” wrote Orman in a blog post this past summer. “Bonds and cash struggle to keep pace with inflation; only stocks have a track record of earning more than inflation.”

Some areas of the stock market perform better than others during periods of high inflation. A bear market offers the chance to snap up more top-shelf stocks at bargain-bin prices. When the next pullback happens (and it will happen), there’s one place investors might want to look to first: banks.

Unlike the vast majority of other industries, banks actually fare well when the Fed tightens up because of their asset-sensitive nature. When interest rates rise, bank assets like bonds and loans tend to climb higher than their liabilities such as deposits.

Rising rates also mean that banks can earn a wider spread between what they pay out in savings account interest and what they earn from Treasuries.

P.S.: I don't really understand her reasoning. I think natural resources rise more. 

Terror in Beverly Hills

How times have changed! Beverly Hills was the world's most elegant neighborhood, where very rich and famous people had their residences. TV police series were made on that glamorous place and its blonde millionaire residents. See pic. Not these days: a famous woman - Jacqueline Avant - "was shot and killed early Wednesday by an intruder at her home in Beverly Hills. The police chief confirmed that a security guard was at the home at the time of the incident, and was unhurt. Police received a call at 2:23 a.m. Wednesday indicating that someone had been shot in the 1100 block of Maytor Place, in the Trousdale Estates area." From Variety.

Hanukka

 Today the grandkids came for candle lighting and singing. Six energetic, noisy little savages. I took the day off. 

Indoctrination

 

Hanuka, November 2021. Ella and a boy with long hair. 

Tel Aviv has been ranked the world’s most expensive city to live in

Yet people are dying to live in Tel Aviv. It is difficult to find a place to rent or to buy. I always wonder why things are so cheap in London, etc. Illustration: Brain density in Tel Aviv. 

KABALAT SHABAT

 

ELLA gets religion. The boy seems more interested in the cake. 

Incurable Idiot (me)

 

An important Client asked me to prepare a submittal plan for the Municipality. It is the house of his brother-in-law. The contractor did not follow the instructions and the sewage pipes are all UNDER the building, without any protection. PE pipes expand and contract, so it is sure to break in a few years at most. Somebody made a big mistake. I prepared a sensible plan hoping that it will be approved and the "broch" will be kicked into the foggy future. I said I'll do it for free, cannot charge this young couple and the even less the Client. 

I know. I am a sucker!

Pacing myself

 I worked three nights and days on the Hachsharat Hayishuv, Bnei Brak, project. I mailed the design yesterday night. This morning at 0630, changes were waiting for me on Whatsapp, but I let them be. The service center I'm working on for the last three years was finally signed by Valery of the Ministry of Health. I wasted more time on Twitter, hypnotized by interesting sex-hungry girls. I took the day off.  

Broch (=Trouble) with China

Twenty years ago The Economist had an article pondering if it would be clever to help China to feed itself (that was in doubt in those times) and to allow it to export and develop its economy. China was a very poor country then. The conclusion was that it would be immoral to let a quarter of humanity starve and condemn them to misery. There was also something about opening new markets. I went to China at those times and was received very nicely, and got the impression that China was freer and richer than imagined. I was convinced that it would be sinful (and unthinkable) to re-colonize and enslave these friendly, good-willing, intelligent people, as the cruel British imperialists did with the opium wars. (see caricature).

Now Prof. Mearsheimer writes in Foreign Affairs that this liberal policy was a fatal mistake, realism should have dictated a hard policy, and now America has got itself into difficult rivalry with China, a big broch. He predicts war.

These conflicts would be fought mainly in open waters between rival air and naval forces, and in those instances in which control of an island was at play, small-scale ground forces would likely take part. Even a fight over Taiwan, which might draw in Chinese amphibious forces, would not involve huge nuclear-equipped armies crashing into each other.

 

Jewish blood in Jerusalem

 

Another young Jew sacrificed his life for Israel. 

Early morning in Jerusalem

A HAMAS fanatic shot a pair of Jews on their way to the Wailing Wall. He used a "Carlo" submachine gun (pic), which is the Palestinian copy of the Karl Gustav model. The Arab inhabitants of the passage ran to the roofs and recorded all, including the calls of  "Help". The Muslim criminal was a teacher employed by the Ministry of Education of Israel. 

Riots in Rotterdam

 

Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb described the riots as an "orgy of violence". "The police have felt the need to draw a police weapon in the end to defend themselves." Winter is no time for street riots, yet Europe and the USA are burning. I hate disorder and violence.  

BTW, stopped following Twitter. I was fascinated by the internal life of problematic girls and decided to stop it. The rest of the content, football, and intrigues are of no interest to me. 

Post-Quantum Cryptography

 

Mayorkas is warning of the coming world where quantum computing will read encrypted messages - disrupting commerce and finances. His agency is running a search for encrypting methods that would be resistant to the coming quantum computing. Quantum solving works - will work, maybe - by what I call the "water method", filling up containers and flowing - without explicit calculations. How could this method be cheated?  Unfortunately, I am old and have no time even for thinking about this. Quantum solving could be slowed down by dividing the container into many small spaces and making it difficult and time-consuming the transit between them.  I was born 70 years late. That man looks like Ralph Laniado, zichrono le-bracha.  

Setting the Infrastructure for the State (Palestine)

Al-Istiqlal University inaugurates coexistence with nature training for graduate students

2021-06-28

This is a new University for security training - army, police, international relations, etc.  There is no doubt that the Palestinians are a serious people intent on building a State to replace Israel. 

It is good to have a competitor. It will make us sharper. I think. 
 

The Effective Way of Reasoning

 98 y.o. Kissinger published a new book on international politics (warfare) based on AI and not conventional intelligence.  Based, as they are, on correlations and elaborate statistics, rather than on a sense of causality, ai’s decisions may seem otherworldly; when the stakes are high, they must be diligently validated. It means that asking "Why?" is not a sign of intelligence, but on the contrary, of low intelligence. AI is uninterested in causality, it just calculates correlation. It is an inhuman way of thinking and reasoning. It is superior, as shown in chess and go matches, it always wins. The pic is from 1950.

Too Many Projects

Yesterday had to participate in the meeting of a new project. Arrived late and missed half the meeting. They are expecting today the plan for the perforations for the piping. I did nothing, the day was spent chauffeuring around my dear wife and grandchildren (to the Funky-Monkey playground). Driving in Kfar Saba is starting to be more difficult than in Mexico City.   

My Many Names

In Hungary, Jewish children received an echte Hungarian name, like Atilla or Bela, and a Jewish Hebrew name. I have my original Hungarian name, Tibor, just like a Mongol chieftain, and in addition, 3 or 4 Hebrew names, like Jacob- Itzhak, etc. Among the Ashkenazim, it is common to grant another life to the souls of the dead by giving their names to newborn babies. In my town, I was the first baby born after the war. I was one baby while the dead were very many, so I had to give life to many uncles and relatives that did not come back from Auschwitz. As the years went by, I succeeded in doing my part in this magical chore.  My dear uncle Moyshi Abelesz was always asking my mother to remember the names of the family's dead, saying that he had run out of the names he remembered. The souls of the killed had been all metaphorically re-incarnated in young Jewboys studying Gemara in the Batey Ungarin of Jerusalem. 

In my case, the doctor in charge of the brisz had no experience with Jewish customs or whatever, and I was in danger of bleeding to death. Since it was well known that the Moylech HaMoyves, the Angel of Death, is not the sharpest pencil of the celestial drawer and is always confusing names and addresses, my parents cheated the Angel by giving me another name, Hayim, meaning Life. 

ZEBRAS

 Medical students have been taught for decades that, “When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra.” In other words, look for the more common and usual, not the surprising, diagnosis.

People with rare and chronic diseases spend years searching for answers:

“But you look normal”

“You’re too young to have so many problems”

“You’re too old”

“You can’t have that, it’s too rare”

“No one knows what that is”

The zebra became our symbol because those with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and hypermobility spectrum disorder are the unexpected. “Sometimes when you hear hoofbeats, it really is a zebra.”

A group of zebras is called a dazzle. 

I never heard of this EDS and now, because of twitter, cannot stop thinking of it. Am I a misanthrope? I am not. But now, I imagine hearing the voice of my Uncle Ivor:  BASTA DE BOLUDEAR  - Fang jetzt an zu arbeiten!

Beating inflation

 Over the long-term stocks have produced the best gains after factoring in inflation, wrote Suze Orman. Bonds and cash struggle to keep pace with inflation; only stocks have a track record of earning more than inflation. Buying bank shares gives exposure to higher interest rates. She adds agriculture. 

I think real estate and art are also good. Stock gains are taxed 20-25%. Real estate gains and rent are not taxed. The minus of real estate is that it is illiquid. Maintenance and dealing with tenants are disagreeable.  

Garrulus or the Blue Bird of Happiness

 

This bluebird appeared this morning in my window. It is a good omen. It augurs happiness and success. 

For one, we have a new doctor and first thing she sent us to a complete blood test. All the parameters are normal, except low Vitamin D. I am taking daily drops. I am in remarkably good health for my age. 

If I control my blood pressure I may work five years more, till 2026. I shall focus on work, which will keep me alert and entertained. 

Those who know believe in Israel

 Those who know what is going in the world are the internet giants like Google, Microsoft, etc. The world's information passes through their computers, could be that they open letters and they make the connections, and extract conclusions. The fact that Google is investing and building server farms in Israel and laying a 500 million dollar optic fiber cable to Europe means that they believe in the long-term strength of this country and its civil order. It seems to me that they compared alternative sites, like Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Lybia, etc., and decided on Israel. Good. 

P.S.: On the above map, we are non-existent. Yet there are more Israeli unicorn startups than in all of Europe. We Jews are amazing.

Delek

Delek is an Israeli oil company that was not long ago valued as almost worthless. Now its subsidiary Ithaka bought the Japanese Marubeni and suddenly the stock is rocketing. Marubeni is a complex trading corporation, it is much involved in coal. Israelis are incredibly courageous and fear not the blackening of their hands with fossil fuels.  People are pumping money into Tel Aviv (and Wall Street. London is decaying). Today I bought TEVA. 

Potash at 800 $/ton

 The Israeli potash manufacturer produced its quarterly results (see transcript) and I was happy that they were selling to Brazil at 800 $ per ton. That is a very good price. Yet the share price in TASE Tel Aviv fell about 1%. The market appears to feel a slowing down in this quarter. I bought a lot, I have confidence in this product and this company. 

Discovering a new world

 

The world of Twitter. It makes me difficult to focus on my work. A girl posts almost naked pictures and writes "Please somebody fuck me". Somebody answers I shall be glad to be at your service". The girl answers "ichs"=pfuiia. Down Oded Kramer explains that an open desire does not mean that she is looking for a stranger. This world is new to me, I am from another era. I am a "boomer". 

I assume these are all kosher girls, they are studying and working, fast reaching their "sell-by date". What they want is a husband or at least a stable partner. They are offering easy sex only to attract candidates. They are constantly depressed and crying after each "date". It is rather hard for these girls in the current society. I pity them. 

I"ll stop reading their messages on Twitter, I cannot do anything for these girls nor with them, and certainly cannot change Tel Aviv's free culture, but they distract me from work. These days I start my day in front of the computer early in the morning and after answering business correspondence and phones, I am tempted to give a look at social media, and voila! it is lunchtime. And the projects on the table start to accumulate and with it the pressure. 

More Distraction

 I completed the design of the industrial catering plant and a proposal for a meat factory in Rishon. The owner asked me please help me, no other planning engineer is willing to take up the project. They all fear the Municipality, the Water Corporation, and the Health Ministry, and the other 17 regulators that have to approve the project. My "friendly inquisitor" Bluma retired and her sidekick Alexandra is in charge. Israeli bureaucracy is impossible, the Chinese manager of the Haifa port project (already finished) complained that it is worse than under Mao, when the Party obstructed all projects. 

I have much to do but I am distracted by twitter. One twitterist Awkwshira or whatever posted a beautiful picture (see here), after some work I found her regular look (she is tall). 

I also learned that the profession of shadchan (matchmaker) very much exists and it takes 1500 dollars to get a match ending in marriage. The HABAD religious organization offers 5000 dollars to anyone finding a husband to a girl of their community (if she is older than 25 years). The religious marry at 18 or 20, and at 25 they are practically unmarriable. That is the background of the twitter activity by these girls - they approach 25 and start having crying attacks and collapse in nervous breakdowns.  

All the above is totally irrelevant for me, it is a distraction, it makes me waste time. I have been married to the same woman forty plus years and my libido is irresponsive. My focus is on the priests of Har Bracha waiting for my plan. The original plan for the Yemeni Synagogue had been approved four years ago - the synagogue was duly built and the Yemeni settler public is using it daily -  but my plan was retroactively rejected because a recent topographic map showed that the original map was incorrect by a few centimeters or maybe, the topography has changed. It is a "Dilbert"-esque job that serves no useful objective. Yet I have to do a new plan, to cover the "Occupation" pedants' bureaucratic ass holes.