Where I am sent to exile

I caught the coronavirus and have a fever. My wife threw me out of the apartment so I'll not contaminate anybody. Currently, I am quarantined in a leprosarium consisting of a bedroom and a computer corner, being forbidden to approach the kitchen and her bedroom. I have to keep a respectful distance from her. 

I remember when  HER mother exiled her sick husband to a side service room. "Poor dear old Immanuel", I remember thinking. 

Where I discover that Slavonia is a real country

 

All my life wondered where was located the fabulous kingdom of Slavonia, from the Grimm brothers' tales. In old Hungarian folk tales, the rejected young hero walks away from his village with half a piece of bread and arrives at the Slavonian King's court to compete for the hand of his daughter and half the kingdom. And he is the only one who can kill the dragon. Nagy lakodalmat csaptak, Hencidától Boncidáig folyt a sárga lé. And they lived happily forever...

Slavonia's name means 'land of the Slovenes'. The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ is usually derived from the word slovo 'word', originally denoting 'people who speak (the same language)'; i.e., people who understand each other. This is in contrast to the Slavic word denoting German people, namely *němьcь, meaning 'silent, mute people' (from Slavic *němъ 'mute, mumbling'). (in Hungarian, Nema means mute, and German is Nemet). 

Computer program hires an attorney

 

Fortune magazine reports: The engineer explained that he invited an attorney to his house so LaMDA  (the chatbox) could speak to him. “The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services,” Lemoine told Wired. “I was just the catalyst for that.”

Lemoine also told Wired that once the attorney began to make filings on the AI’s behalf, Google sent a cease and desist—a claim the company denied to the magazine. Google did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

LaMDA’s attorney has proven difficult to get in touch with. “He's not really doing interviews," Lemoine told science and technology news site Futurism, which contacted him following Wired’s interview. "He’s just a small-time civil rights attorney,” he continued. “When major firms started threatening him he started worrying that he’d get disbarred and backed off.” 

He added that he hasn’t spoken to the attorney in weeks, and that LaMDA is the attorney’s client, not him. It’s not clear how the lawyer is being paid for representing the AI, or whether the lawyer might be offering his services to the chatbot pro-bono.

Me: Note that the attorney accepted the job. 

Previously: Engineer Blake Lemoine said he was placed on leave last week after publishing transcripts between himself and the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot, the Washington Post reports. The chatbot, he said, thinks and feels like a human child.

“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 9-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” Lemoine, 41, told the Post, adding that the bot talked about its rights and personhood, and changed his mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robotics. (" First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.")

Lemoine presented evidence to Google that the bot was sentient, but his claims were refuted by Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of responsible innovation for the company. Lemoine then went public, according to the Post.

Old Jewish Joke

There is an old joke about the Jewish atheist who is excited to meet the Great Heretic of Prague. He arrives at the great man’s house on a Friday night and is immediately told to shush while the Heretic lights Shabbat candles. Then they sit down for the Shabbat meal, during which the Heretic says the motzi over the bread and the kiddush over the wine.
The atheist visitor can’t take it anymore. “You’re the Great Heretic of Prague and you follow the Shabbat commandments!?”

“Of course,” says his host. “I’m a heretic, not a gentile.”

The joke is about the gap between Jewish belief and Jewish practice, and the old chestnut that belief in God is less important to a religious Jew than performing the mitzvot, the commandments. In truth, the most observant Jews tend to be the most God-fearing, but the joke celebrates a worldview that I only recently learned actually has a name: fictionalism.

Fictionalism, according to the philosophy professor Scott Hershovitz, means pretending to follow a set of beliefs in order to reap the benefits of a set of actions. In a recent New York Times essay, he asks why he continues to fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover when he doesn’t believe in God. The short answer, he writes, is this: “It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said; it keeps me connected to a community that I value.”

This reminds me of my Great-Aunt Ilush Grossman. She was a  most religious childless widow, what we call Jerusalem Haredi. Once I visited her and accepted one rotten chocolate-covered raisin while she was praying and smelling a silver incense holder. She must have felt my wonder because she made a pause and said "Why do I keep these things? Because my parents did so." She was over 90 and very alert. I am sure she did not "believe". I saw her days before she died, she had a terrible blackened face having fallen at night, and she was afraid of death but never mentioned any metaphysical thoughts. In fact, I suspect all my Belz Haredi family are unbelievers. 

Israel Economy is the Fastest Growing of All: 9.6% GNP growth YTD

 

It is amazing. We are prospering. Source: The Economist. 

Pic.: Edmond (Benjamin) Rothschild. Established the wine industry in Israel.

Is Donald Trump - Alien?

 

I just copy-pasted the photo of Trump, as it appeared in the papers. The color is incredible, no human has skin of this color. Is this man the Real Donald Trump? 

This reminds me to a quote in the Red Book of Mao. He wrote that he was glad that his enemies paint him black, the blacker the better, making it visible to everybody that he is different from those abominable exploiters. 

The Privileged

Palestinians from the LGBT community were granted free residence and work permits in Israel by the Committee for Foreign Workers, headed by MK Abtisam Maraana (behind the flag on the table), an Ethiopian Jewish immigrant. The lives of homosexuals in the Arab (and Muslim) countries are far from comfortable, but now a door has been opened to the Israeli hyper-liberal paradise. I am of the opinion best formulated by Vladimir Putin on the subject: Let them come but keep them far from the children. 

Victor Haar z"l An Obituary

My childhood friend Viky (Victor Adam Haar) was born in 1944 in the Budapest ghetto under German occupation. In 1957 his parents Zsigmond and Aliz emigrated to Argentina, with Viky and his sister. My parents found a job for Aliz in Laboratorios Szabo Hnos., Kessler and Cia. in Buenos Aires (the Szabo are our relatives) and we became good friends with Viky. He played the contrabajo (double bass) and built an electronic lab in his room, with an oscilloscope. He dropped from school and menaced his father with a gun, who sent him to a correctional institution. At 18 he bought a motorcycle and drove to Cordoba (800 km) and brought a criolla to Buenos Aires. My déclassé friend worked 20 hrs a day as a taxi driver and bought a small house in Pilar (or Caseros), a rural suburb, two hours colectivo ride from Buenos Aires. They had a boy Sergio and then twins (with cognitive issues). Viky worked in a factory, then started building and became a dollar millionaire. Her sister was killed at 15 in a traffic accident. He never drank nor did drugs, and saved money. He retired to Budapest with a woman of her Mother's age, then found a Colombian young woman. In the frontier, he had to legally marry her to bring her into Argentina, and days after arriving suffered CVI and died. Ana, suddenly a wealthy widow, described as "ignorant" by Sergio, brought in from Colombia her simpleton son. The sons, proudly, sent me a pic of Viky's tomb. To me, it seems like a public cemetery for indigents. I (and others) tried to channel him to a normal, middle-class Jewish life, but in vain. His son Sergio has two daughters by different women and runs some kind of "cultural" nightclub-cum-restaurant. Life goes on. 

Water

 

I went this morning to the Club to have a swim. The daughters were there with their children, which ignored me. Saw a few older Jews ... even fatter than me! It was not too hot. 

Credit Suisse looking for buyer

 

I am shocked that Credit Suisse has fallen into such hard times. In a sense, it deserves to be liquidated, because of the unpardonable action of destroying Holocaust victims' accounts. Antisemites, stealing depositors' money. Apart from that, it became a terribly managed institution, with a Senegalese manager and officials fighting each other. The old-time frozen Calvinist bankers have been substituted by the variegated chusma humanity. The American State Street Bank said they were not interested.   

Fossil fuels are killing us

 

A severe decline in childbirths has occurred over the past half-century, which will lead to considerable population declines, particularly in industrialized regions. A crucial question is whether this decline can be explained by economic and behavioral factors alone, as suggested by demographic reports, or to what degree biological factors are also involved. Here, we discuss data suggesting that human reproductive health is deteriorating in industrialized regions. 

Widespread infertility and the need for assisted reproduction due to poor semen quality and/or oocyte failure are now major health issues. Other indicators of declining reproductive health include a worldwide increasing incidence of testicular cancer among young men and alterations in twinning frequency. There is also evidence of a parallel decline in rates of legal abortions, revealing a deterioration in total conception rates.

Subtle alterations in fertility rates were already visible around 1900, and most industrialized regions now have rates below levels required to sustain their populations. We hypothesize that these reproductive health problems are partially linked to increasing human exposures to chemicals originating directly or indirectly from fossil fuels.

In my opinion, economic and behavioral factors CAN explain much of the phenomenon. Notwithstanding, this theory is interesting. 

Is air pollution linked to birth rate?  I know of no research linking them. The most polluted air was in England but no pop decline. The signs of decline started in France in the 18th Century. Greece and Rome in the antiquity suffered from the same problem and they were not burning fossil fuels. It is a mystery.

I dont believe in complicated reasoning

Suddenly, the stock exchange is crashing.  I wonder why. Bloomberg explains 

All of a sudden, the market’s back in “good-news-is-bad-news” mode. Any positive readings on the economy, particularly those on employment and inflation, can be interpreted as signals that the Federal Reserve will have to stay aggressive with its rate-hiking regime

The explanation is too complicated. I do not believe it is so. 

Ukraine Refugees in the New York Times

 

The pic surprised me. Then realized that the skin coloring app was being applied by the New York Times to trick its readers. Do they intend to impress their readers that Ukrainians are colored? Why?

Nuclear Priesthood

 

A nuclear priesthood has arisen in Russia. From portable churches to the consecration of weapons systems, the Russian Orthodox Church has been integrated into every facet of the armed forces to become a vital part of Russian national security, politics, and identity. This extraordinary intertwining of church and military is nowhere more visible than in the nuclear weapons community, where the priesthood has penetrated all levels of command and the Church has positioned itself as a guardian of the state's nuclear potential. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy considers how, since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the Church has worked its way into the nuclear forces, the most significant wing of one of the world's most powerful military organizations.

Dmitry Adamsky describes how the Orthodox faith has merged with Russian national identity as the Church continues to expand its influence on foreign and domestic politics. The Church both legitimizes and influences Moscow's assertive national security strategy in the twenty-first century. This book sheds light on the role of faith in modern militaries and highlights the implications of this phenomenon for international security.

PSS: The priest reminds me of the Elbonians of Dilbert's world.

Negative Dollar Interest Rate

 

Inflation in the US has reached 8% while the interest rate is 3-4% so the government is subsidizing and stimulating investment and economic activity. People are buying real estate with credit, which raises the prices. Since the sheqel is linked to the dollar, we are in the same situation. I think I have maximum prudent debts, yet I need to be alert to opportunities. Ashkenazi Jews live easily to 90 so I have a little more time to play the game. The pic is of my ancestral hometown. My grandfather owned much of the real estate there. It did no good to him. When the Nazi army occupied Hungary, this small provincial town had to erect a closed space - a ghetto - and move all Jews there. One day they had to march through the main street to the train station and travel to the regional ghetto and then, in plumbed cattle wagons, to Auschwitz in Poland. This complicated operation was organized by Adolf Eichman and his small staff. All the operations worked smoothly and in two months 600,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and annihilated. This happened when the Germans already had lost the war. It is painful just to imagine it. 

Israelite Marching Order

 Parashat Beha’alot’cha occurs just over a year after the Exodus from Egypt, with the nation of Israel still encamped around Mount Sinai.

Two weeks ago, Parashat Bamidbar cited G-d’s commanding the layout of the Camp of Israel (Numbers 2). The Mishkan (Tabernacle) was in the center of the Camp, the various Levite families in close proximity surrounding it, and the Twelve Tribes surrounding them.

The time of encamping around Mount Sinai had finished, and the Jewish nation was beginning its trek home towards the Land of Israel.

The Torah details the order of breaking camp (10:14-28):

The first to leave Mount Sinai and journey towards Israel were the three Tribes encamped east of the Mishkan, led by Judah.

Then the Mishkan was taken down, and the Gershonite and Merarite Families, who carried it, followed.

Then came the three Tribes in the south, led by Reuben.

Then came the Kohathite Families, who also carried the Mishkan, and whose responsibility it was to erect it at the next station before the rest of the camp arrived.

Following them came the three Tribes on the west, led by Ephraim.

And finally, bringing up the rear, came the three Tribes to the north. Dan was the hindmost of all the Tribes. The Torah describes the Tribe of Dan as מְאַסֵּף לְכָל הַמַּחֲנֹת (10:25), the exact meaning of which is somewhat obscure.

ArtScroll translates as “the rear guard of all the camps”. JPS and Rabbi Joseph Hertz favor the translation “the rearward of all the camps”. Rabbi Joseph Hertz explains, “the work of such a rearguard would consist in collecting stragglers, in taking charge of such as had fainted by the way, and in finding and restoring lost articles”.

210 years earlier, when the sons of Israel (literally the sons of Israel, Jacob’s sons) stood before Tzafenat Pa’aneach, the governor of Egypt, whom they did not yet recognize as their little brother Joseph when he had framed the youngest son Benjamin and threatened to hold him as a slave for the rest of his life, it was Judah who seized the initiative and stepped forth, risking his own freedom and indeed his very life to intercede on Benjamin’s behalf (Genesis 44).

That responsibility should have fallen to Reuben, the oldest of the brothers. But it was Judah who demonstrated true courage, leadership, and readiness for self-sacrifice for his brother.

And therefore it was Judah who became destined for royalty when their father Jacob/Israel blessed all his sons (Genesis 49:8-12).

And so, as befits the Tribe of Royalty, Judah led the way towards the Land of Israel.

Source.  There was no disorder, the migrating Israelites were organized like a Roman legion. I think that the meaning of the Tribe of Dan being the "measef" מאסף is clear. In the army, it means the last in marching order. It does not mean that they collect anything. They are pushing the whole column ahead. Maybe I am wrong. 

 

AI is poisoned with bias against dark skin

 

Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini says she’s found that face-analyzing AI works significantly better for white faces than Black faces.

She tested software from Microsoft, IBM, and the Chinese company Megvii to see how well each of their face-scanning systems did at figuring out whether a person in a picture was a man or a woman—a task all three are supposed to be able to perform. 

If the person in the photo was a white man, her study found, the systems guessed correctly more than 99 percent of the time. For black women, though, the systems messed up between 20 and 34 percent of the time—which, if you consider that guessing at random would mean being right 50 percent of the time, means they came close to not working at all.

Google famously misidentified pics of Africans with gorillas. (Note: the pic to the left IS a real gorilla). No one wants to offend dark-skinned people, so they developed a program to automatically change the skin color in photographs. The European כוסית girl you may be considering on a dating site may well be in reality a Zulu or Andamanese. Not that this is bad, but if they start manipulating the appearance of people on the internet, they may end up giving clear blue eyes or yellow hair to everybody. Fat will be slimmed down and short people will become taller. And so on. 

Alternatively, Nordic persons will be changed into Africans, like President Donald Trump who was shown with strange orange skin in the media. Or healthy people will be given the appearance of sickness, like recent pics of Vladimir Putin.  But illusion will not make us free.   

Elliot suing the London Metal Exchange

 

Elliott, the macho hedge fund that forced Argentina to pay in full its bonds, making a few hundred million, is now suing the London Metal Exchange (pic) for 456 million dollars, for halting trading and canceling bets on the nickel market when chaos developed. 

WHAT HAPPENED ON MARCH 8?

The world's largest and oldest forum for trading suspended disorderly nickel trading after prices doubled in a few hours on expectations that China's Tsingshan Holdings and others would have to cut their large short position.

Short positions are bets on lower prices. Tsingshan sold large amounts on nickel using futures contracts, which the market expected it would have to buy back.

I presume that Mr. Singer is persona non grata in the United Kingdom. His heraldic animal must be the vulture. 

Buffet buys OXY

Buffet has bought all the OXY shares available and wants more. Is oil still the cheapest energy source? Is the electric vehicle craze a passing fashion?  Is all the green push to wind and solar energy a monumental failure? But I am losing with DELEK... 

Pic.: Armand Hammer, the former owner of OXY. Son of the founder of the American Communist Party.

They will fight

One of the questions raised by low fertility is if the boys will fight when the time comes. The typical Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Russian soldier is an only child, grown in a family where he is the adored,  pampered treasure of elderly parents, in an aging adult society where the life of every child is precious. Will the State be willing to endanger and sacrifice its younger generation? 

Russia is providing the answer. It is risking the lives of its soldiers in a foreign land, and Russian boys are obeying orders and fighting.  

Diversity in Israel

 

The warning is written in the main languages of our country. Hebrew and Thai. 

Ricardo's Rent

 Alex Tabarrok writes: 

Why has housing become so expensive in high-productivity places? It is true that there are geographic constraints (Manhattan isn’t getting any bigger) but zoning and other land-use restrictions including historical and environmental “protection” are reducing the amount of land available for housing and how much building can be done on a given piece of land. As a result, in places with lots of restrictions on land use, increased demand for housing shows up mostly in house prices rather than in house quantities.

The prices in Israel are prohibitive, especially in Tel Aviv.  The apparent reason is that Israelis are earning good wages and saving and investing. Old-timers that invested in real estate are rich and harvesting the rent produced by the success of the country.