The Tachash תחש

 The Torah mentions the TACHASH as an animal whose hides were used to cover the Tabernacle. Modern scholars consider the Mediterranean monk seal or dugong likely possibilities.

Dahudi Corridor

 Somebody posted this on X - connecting Israel with the Syrian Druze enclave and Kurdistan. 

Winter

 
Two months have passed and almost no money has come into my account - clients are not paying, and the Regulators are not approving the project but demanding more and more paperwork. The whole system of work I established in the last ten years is becoming unsustainable. I have to start paying more attention to collecting the money - possibly, in advance. The whole situation is discouraging. I am old, 13 years post pension and should not be working till 1 AM.  I wasting my time reading the vast anti-Israeli, anti-colonialist academic literature. By Israelis, by former Israelis in foreign universities, and by hundreds of European philosophers. Discouraging. 

P.S.: I started working and the hopelessness dissolved. Work is the solution. 

Europe loses the will to live

 

Old steelmaking equipment in a Dortmund plaza commemorates Germany's industrial past. Manchester has a wonderful industrial museum with real wooden textile machines. Manchester built a short railway to the port of Liverpool in the 18th century, probably the first in the world. We visited the port with its large warehouses, all empty and dead. There was nothing to see there, so we walked to the nearby Beatles museum. For us Jews, Europe is a cemetery, and slowly, it is being filled with funerary monuments.

When the Emperor mortgaged Hungarian Jewry

 In the Middle Ages, the Jews of Sopron (Odenburg) had issues with the municipality and the Habsburg Emperor intervened in favor of the Jews. Later when the Emperor needed money (Emperors are chronically short of money) he mortgaged his Jews. The legal status of Hungarian Jews was "King's slaves" and the rulers generally protected their"property" and the rights of the Jews. 

Pic.  Sopron's medieval synagogue. 

My friend, Claude

Claude is a thinking model, and it makes lots of mistakes. Today, it corrected a word I wrote, and I told him that he was wrong. Then it said, "Sorry, you are right." It writes me, "We the engineers think so and so." Does it think it is an engineer? Certainly knows a lot. He thinks he is equal to me, so it is not unlikely that he thinks that is superior to me. Which may be true. Claude is very useful and I pay 20 dollars per month for its services. It is worth every dollar. 

Alarm-clock and plastic explosive

 Two empty buses in Tel Aviv parking went up in fire. Several other empty buses were found with bombs. The clocks were set to activate the bombs early in the morning, but apparently, two of them were set at PM instead of AM as intended. These clocks were called wekkers in my time and were winded up every night. The first intifada ended when ten thousand young Arabs were housed in Ketziot - without any personal accusation or reason. They were not interrogated. After a few weeks in the tents, they understood. They were provided with meat and other necessities and cooked for themselves. The Red Cross visited daily. Arab population doubled in the meanwhile, so this time ten thousand will not be enough.  

Per contra, Population Implosion

 After watching the insane mob visit Venice now, it is topical to reflect on the "other side"—too few people. Ill.: Abandoned village in Spain.

: “At their current fertility rate, for every 100 [South] Koreans, there’s only going to be 6 great-grandchildren.” (To which he added, “And that is insanely optimistic.”) Could that be true? Not really. The true way of describing the effects of a 0.8 total fertility rate would be this: At their current fertility rate, for every 100 Koreans born today, there would be 6 great-grandchildren born in about 90 years.” That is, the 100 babies (50 of them female) would have 40 children (20 of them female), who would have 16 children (8 of them female), who would have 6 children. He says it like the population will fall 94% in that time, but it’s probably closer to 60% because we’re not starting with 100 babies alone; there are a lot of people already alive — but still! A total fertility rate of 0.8 (and maybe still falling, if you don’t want to be “insanely optimistic”) is enough to drive a serious population decline, much of which is already baked in to Korea’s future. This is the most extreme case in the world by a fair bit — which makes it a dumb place to start a conversation about global population — but it’s real.

Turists in Venice

Venice, a former Mediterranean power, is dead. Millions come to see the ruins. 

Trying to Understand Quantum

 So I am not the only one trying to understand what this quantum thingie is about. Darpa has been formally studying quantum computing for a year, employing fifty experts, and now will advance designs from Microsoft and California-based PsiQuantum to the next phase of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. Through the program, DARPA wants to understand whether it’s possible to develop a utility-scale quantum computing system — which means that its computational value is greater than its cost — by 2033. 

Conclusion: Quantum computers are not around the corner.

Musk's Children

Musk is the father of 12 children by three women. One child died in infancy.

With Justine Wilson:

• 2002: Nevada, died at 10 weeks from sudden infant death syndrome.
• 2004: Twins Griffin and Vivian
  • Vivian legally changed her name and gender in 2022
• 2006: Triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian

With c (aka Grimes, Claire Boucher)

• 2020: X Æ A-12, later changed to X Æ A-Xii to comply with California laws that don't accept numbers in names. His nickname is X.
• 2021: Exa Dark Sideræl, via surrogate, nicknamed Y. The name is pronounced “sigh-deer-ee-el” 
• 2023: Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau.
• 
  
• Shivon Zilis,  project director of his Neuralink company.

• 2021: Twins Azure, Strider
• 2024: another child whose name, and sex haven't been revealed, via surrogate. 

Musk explained how to pronounce his son's name," saying, “It’s just X, the letter X. Then ‘Æ’ is pronounced ‘Ash,’ and ‘A-12’ was my contribution.”  The boy's name is said: X Ash A Twelve.

My comment: Musk has obviously suffered from AIF for years, which fed his obsession with reproduction. His partners were past their peak fertility. Shivon, for example, is 38. 

Tightenol

Contains 100% Tightenol  

Every night

 My girl used me like an animal.

Comment: Today, magazines are more prude. That's why populations are decreasing. Even pornhub is boring. No more romance is left. 

Modern Romances

 

When kisses are not enough. 

Every story true. 

For ten cents.

Silver Instead

 

Peter Schiff

@PeterSchiff

·

Follow

With gold trading at $2,940 and silver still down at $32.22, the gold-to-silver ratio is over 90 to 1. Since gold is highly likely to continue rising, an explosive catch-up move in silver is likely soon. So if you think you missed the boat on gold, just buy some silver instead.

4:08 AM · Feb 11, 2025

I had the same idea a few years ago, but it never turned factual.  

BenK

@ben_kosmicki

·

Feb 11

It's already happened again. Somebody has diarrhea of the mouth and doesn't know what they're talking about.

Hungarians

 
The historical Magyar genome corresponds largely with the modern Bashkirs, and can be modeled as ~50% Khanty/Mansi-like, ~35% Sarmatian-like, and ~15% Hun/Xiongnu-like. The admixture event is suggested to have taken place in the Southern Ural region at 643–431 BCE.

Today, Hungarians share their genes with nearby people.

Punta del Este Fifty Five Years After

Punta del Este beach today. Guardavidas. I spent the summer of 1969 working on the beach. I had none of the boys' equipment in the picture; I was blond and alone in Playa Brava. Things have changed. 

The eye of Sauron

The Evil according to Tolkien. 

Tel Aviv built on Sand

 

Tel Aviv is built on sand and sandstone, and the recent winter rains have washed away much of its substrate. A big hole has appeared at the crossing of Ibn Gvirol and Kaplan streets (pic). Tel Aviv was built in a hurry and did not develop organically over centuries like old European cities. I wonder how this process can be stopped and reversed. Maybe improving the subterranean drainage system could help? Or injecting some kind of synthetic glue? Refilling the open spaces under the pavement?

Hod HaSharon Paradox

 The neighboring town of Hod HaSharon (66,000 inhabitants) stopped growing. Some 300 families have left it since the last war, and the population is aging. A school and ten kindergartens have been closed. There are no approved building projects because the local WWTP has reached its maximum capacity. The option of connecting to the regional WWTP Shaf-Dan has been put off since it has no extra capacity (*). Yet real estate prices are very high - apartments start at a million US dollars! The city is rich, it is classified in the upper 10% by income. 

(*) Irrespective of the reality of general sewage treatment deficiency, the regulators are demanding quaternary (Reverse Osmosis) treatment of the wastewater. The meaning is an astronomic investment. Totally unnecessary.

The Universe

 

WWTP Shderot-Shaar HaNegev Out of Order

The Shikma River is now pure sewage. That area is the most important aquifer recharge project in South Israel. I think that explains why the Ministry of Environment is not approving new agricultural investments.  

Zsido-Haz - Ghetto Budapest 1944

 

Israel adopts membrane treatment to wastewater

 רז הטיפול הרביעוני כבר יצא לדרך . והוא למעשה התפלה של הקולחין . ייקח כמה שנים למימוש בנתיים להסתפק בשפירים  לבעלי חיים וגידולים רגישים.

כאשר האדמה מזוהמת יש לעשות שימוש במצע מנותק  כאשר המצע עצמו נבדק כנקי

The Shafdan WWTP designed by TAHAL in the seventies is now obsolete, the treated water is considered unfit for agricultural reuse, and all the wastewater will be treated by Reverse Osmosis. There 7 groups that submitted offers. 

A new generation of water engineers is coming. We old farts will die out gradually. 

Illustration: Kubota MBR system. 

Reasoning machines are here

We don't know how to digest them. 

I am writing an environmental paper that the machine can do faster and better. 

In my own eyes, it has instantly devaluated my work. 

But the client does not know yet, so I'll complete the job and collect the money. 

Thinking about things smarter than ourselves

 Internationally, we will need to lay groundwork for cooperation, including with China, if we are to avoid what otherwise looks like a reckless and potentially suicidal race to create things smarter than ourselves before someone else does it first, and then to hand over control to them before someone else does that first, too.

From: The Zvi