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. 

Elon Musk Quotes Cao Zhi

People are wondering what Elon Musk wanted to say by quoting this ancient Chinese poem.  I think it is obvious. 

煮豆燃豆萁，	zhǔ dòu rán dòu qí	Beanstalks are ignited to boil beans,
豆在釜中泣。	dòu zài fǔ zhōng qì	In the pot, the beans weep.
本是同根生，	běn shì tóng gēn shēng	[We are] born of the selfsame root,
相煎何太急！	xiāng jiān hé tài jí	Why in such a rush to fry me!

Consulting Engineers Hacked

 Having worked many years in the consulting engineer's area was astonished this morning that three of them had been hacked by the Israeli group Moses' Staff. They menaced to publish plans and drawing and so. There is nothing secret in the files of these companies, who cares about water pipes and wastewater treatment plants? Among the targeted is HGM of Dr. Yair Folkman. I have worked along with them. I know something about hackers' attacks against WWTPs. In my time, I was much worried about the year 2000 bug but this is ridiculous. Bad actors, as said The Donald. They are like the Arab construction workers sabotaging buildings by hiding cocacola bottles in the pipes to obstruct the flow and cause headaches to the Jews.  Always believed that there is no higher calling than planning and building water supply infrastructure, here and in Africa too, so I am amazed by the suicidal evil these Jewish hackers are committing.  On the other hand, they are harming private property, people worked very hard for years to accumulate those drawings and keep them private, they are worth money. 

Cheaper Dollars

 

The shekel continues to strengthen and the dollar has fallen to its lowest level in 25 years (April 1996). The dollar fell 0.9% to NIS 3,105, the euro lost 0.7% to NIS 3,602. The pound price drops by 0.9% to NIS 4.24. I a, going to buy a new car. The wife wants Skoda Fabia, but they are not selling it anymore.

TEVA won its first lawsuit for selling opioids in the USA. The stock jumped 10% today.

The Budapest Ashkenazium

 

The Ashkenazium is a college in Budapest centred on the history, customs, etc. of the Ashkenazi tribe in Central Europa. Interesting. I'd never imagined such a thing. Till last year I was convinced that no Jews remained in Hungary. I was wrong, maybe not completely.  

Picking Up Dollars Lying on Wall Street

Israeli Hi-Tech industry is very successful and dollars are flowing into the Treasury. So much that the sheqel is strengthening non-stop and this morning jumped to 3.1 sh/$.  Israeli tech companies have raised $20.8 billion in the first ten months of 2021, more than double the $10 billion in 2020. When I arrived here even eggs were rationed, and worried about "economic independence".