Looking to the sky

It is official: We are expecting Iranian rockets in the next hour. That was half an hour ago. 

Deported to Bangui, CAR

The USA is deporting illegal immigrants to African countries. Among those deported Thursday to Bangui were people from Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, and Afghanistan.

Pic from "What to do in Bangui".

On Musk's juggernaut

Paul Krugman, a sagacious observer, came out against Elon Musk's "juggernaut". He has arguments. 

 "The immense human Ponzi scheme that is Elon Musk will eventually collapse. But traditional Ponzi schemes only exploit investors who choose to participate. This time much of the money propping up Musk’s scam will come from ordinary Americans who have in effect been forced to buy in. Approximately 52% of mutual fund assets are now invested in index or index-based funds, and over 50% of American households are invested in mutual funds. Thanks to the collusion between Musk and Wall Street, enabled by the perception that the Trump administration has Musk’s back, many if not most of these small investors will be dragged, willy-nilly, into fueling the Musk juggernaut."

BTW,   Juggernaut is the rendering in English of Jagannath, a deity in the Hindu tradition. The first European description of this festival is found in a thirteenth-century account by the Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone, who describes Hindus offering themselves in a religious sacrifice, jumping under the wheels of these huge chariots, and being crushed to death. Pic: A Jaganath cart in the Ulsoor temple complex in Bangalore, India, around 1870.

Answer quickly

 When determining whom to hire, employers care about how quickly they receive replies from the job seekers and service providers they contact. Across transaction data from a large real-world marketplace (N = ∼11.66 million) and experiments (three main studies (total n = 3,603) and five supplemental studies (total n = 5,039)), we show that providers benefit from responding to employers’ messages quickly. First, we document substantial real-world consequences of reply speed in Fiverr marketplace transaction data (Study 1), finding a strong negative relationship between the length of delay in replying to a service request and the likelihood of securing a contract. Even delays of just 5–10 minutes dramatically reduce providers’ likelihood of being hired.

Gulf Countries in War

The German press notes the disappointment of the Gulf countries, which suffered heavy losses in the war. The Europeans are deeply resentful of America. Always were. 

Satellite image of a Saudi oil facility in Abqaiq damaged by an Iranian attack on April 8. “Although our governments publicly condemned the war, the Gulf was attacked with around 7,000 missiles and drones.” (Photo: European Union / Copernicus Sentinel-2 / REUTERS)

Live long and Prosper

 For an 80-year-old in Israel today, the remaining life expectancy from the latest mortality tables is about 9.2 years for men and 10.4 years for women - so the average 80-year-old man reaches roughly 89, and a woman about 90. Put another way, total life expectancy at age 80 in Israel is about 89.9 years, well above the figure calculated from birth, precisely because you've already survived all the earlier mortality risks.

Rising Power

Russia, China, and North Korea leaders are meeting in Peking. These are disciplined people, the wives standing firm in the background.  Impressive. North Korea is selling weapons and prospering. 

NBA

 

New York won the NBA championship. 

Hawara

Hawara is an Arab village in Northern Samaria. The main road passed in the middle. I felt uneasy each time I travelled to Alon Moreh. Two acquaintances were murdered in that village. The government built a bypass road, a "solution". Now, a group of Jewish youngsters made their presence felt in that place of evil. 

In the Bible, "places of evil" encompass both actual historical cities associated with extreme wickedness and symbolic, spiritual realms representing cosmic darkness.

Origins

My mother's grandfather. I don't know for sure if the younger man is his son or what. They were a very religious family.

The grandfather of my father was also very religious, but no picture remains.

The Bund

 
The shit-wipe New York Times is resurrecting the BUND, a Jewish anti-Zionist party in Russia and Poland that was totally wiped out in the Holocaust. It was a national-communist mass movement, based on the idea that Jews had lived for centuries in those lands and would continue to do so in the future. The problem was that non-Jewish communists rejected all contact with the Bund, and Joseph Stalin wrote a booklet on the correct Bolshevik nationality policy, dedicating many pages to the analysis of the Bund. When Lenin and his faction took over Russia, they erased the Bund as counter-revolutionary. But in Poland, it survived till the Nazi conquest, which ended all illusions of worker-class solidarity, of common ground with the host nation's workers against the invader.

History demonstrated that the sole viable solution to the Jewish masses in Poland was emigration. To Palestine of the Turkish Sultanate, to America, to South Africa, to Shanghai, to anywhere. Which about half did. The optimist, Bundist half, did not and was killed in situ. 

Now, the NYT is promoting the long-dead Bundist ideology.   

Tel Aviv Stocks Oscillating

 
TEVA and TOWER are heavy stocks in the local market, and, surprisingly, they are rising 5% one day and falling 5% the next day. Smaller stocks oscillate even more. Something is happening. 

The AI impurity

 The Szatmar Csodarabbi too is against AI. 

He delivered an emergency address broadcast live to all Satmar institutions around the world, harshly attacking artificial intelligence.

In his remarks, the Rebbe called on his hasidim to distance themselves from any device that enables access to AI - including "kosher" phones approved for use by haredim.

"On every phone in the home, even on a kosher phone, one can connect to this impurity in a single moment," he said. "There are many victims - young boys, girls, and even married yeshiva students. They are falling and descending directly into hell.

Hungarian hasidim were always the most fanatically obscurantist. They are persistently restricting knowledge. 300 years of rejecting change. 

Wiki: The obscurantist believes that religion serves the social control of the populace. To that effect, the obscurantist limits the publication, extension, and dissemination of knowledge, of evidence countering the common-belief status quo with which the nation is ruled—the local variety of “the necessary” Noble Lie concept introduced to political discourse by Plato, in 380 BC.

Beirut evacuating

The Golani Battalion is crossing the Zahrani River and advancing towards Beirut's Southern neighborhood. Katz said it clearly: If there is no quiet in Israel, there will be no quiet in Lebanon. The Ayatollah Jr., from the Persian Bazaar, threatens to stop bargaining. 

Magnifica Humanitas

 
The Pope's essay in response to Artificial Intelligence (aka Claude) is long and argues that we humans are unique and magnificent. We are god incarnate or something. He starts and ends with the image of Nehemiah, rebuilding Jerusalem while standing on guard. 

As we look to the future, I would like to recall the image of Nehemiah whom we chose as our companion and guide at the outset. Nehemiah heard the cry of a devastated city, brought that pain to prayer, discerned before God, asked for help, received permission to return, organized the work, confronted internal and external resistance and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem with the assistance of the people, brick by brick. 

Who is rebuilding Jerusalem if not we, Israeli Jews? For us, Jerusalem is a real thing, and I, personally, am involved in building its infrastructure. 

The Pope also debates the AI revolution and warns the Church about its potentially anti-human nature. Nice feelings, but we need AI for mere survival in this cruel world. We need more of it, much more of it. So we may meet next year in rebuilt Jerusalem.   

 P.D.: Satmar miracle rabbi also proclaimed the sinful nature of AI and forbade its use. What a coincidence.

In the Top Tier

Bibi's figure of $70,000 GNP per capita is a bit optimistic for now, but Israel is solidly in the upper tier of wealthy nations, ranked as an advanced, high-income economy, and the trend is clearly upward.

The currency, the shekel, is worth 25% more today than a year ago.  Buying Chinese goodies on AliExpress and Temu is very convenient. European vacations are accessible to everybody.

In my sleepless nights, I compare today to the country when I decided to stay in Israel. General Moshe Dayan, the one with the eye patch, was envious of another mini-country (Switzerland) with its million-strong militia. People still spoke of the fear of the last existential war with Egypt.  TAHAL, the company I worked for, operated exclusive grocery stores, where unavailable products (like eggs) were sold for the ration books we were given. I was amazed by middle-class people investing in land, surprised by their faith in Israel's stability and future. Foreign papers unanimously said Israel could not last.   

In the Cow Shed

He grew cow ears, too. 

Is Pentecost - שבועות?

"Pentecost marks when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles of Jesus, Mary, and other followers of Christ, 50 days after Easter — hence the name, which comes from a Hellenistic Greek word meaning "50th." The followers of Christ had gathered in Jerusalem to observe the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot in Hebrew), the harvest festival held seven weeks and one day after the first day of Passover.

"The disciples were lost after the death of Jesus. They didn't know what to do next. Then the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they felt its vitality and strength. They went out to the streets and started preaching. They inspired 3,000 people to become baptized." From DW

I had to reach 80 to learn what they mean by the Holy Spirit. Now it makes sense. 

Unexplained Infertility

 

“Follicular fluid from one female was better at attracting sperm from one male, while follicular fluid from another female was better at attracting sperm from a different male,” said Professor Fitzpatrick. This shows that interactions between human eggs and sperm depend on the specific identity of the women and men involved.”

The egg does not always agree with the woman’s choice of partner. The researchers found that eggs did not always attract more sperm from their partner than from another male.

Is this egg or sperm choice? Professor Fitzpatrick explained that sperm have only one job – to fertilise eggs – so it doesn’t make sense for them to be choosy. Eggs, on the other hand, can benefit by picking high-quality or genetically compatible sperm.

“The idea that eggs are choosing sperm is really novel in human fertility,” said Professor Daniel Brison, “Research on the way eggs and sperm interact will advance fertility treatments and may eventually help us understand some of the currently ‘unexplained’ causes of infertility in couples.

Don Segundo Sombra

 

En los pagos de Areco. Segundo Ramírez, del libro de Ricardo Guiraldes. Mi libro favorito. 

Heritage Center of Cochin Jewry

 What am I working on today? It is a Heritage Center of the Indian (Cochin) Jewry in a Moshav near my home city. They are brown-skinned, nice people, proud of their ethnic traditions as all the other 120 "edot" (tribes?) of Israel. They have a 2000-year history on the Malabar Coast. Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, settled among them and converted many, forming the  Saint Thomas Christian population of India. 

Sabiduria criolla

Inodoro toro, Mendieta perro.

4 Billion US$ Startup

In less than one year, these two boys, Din Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev (pic), founded a business called Decart, which attracted investments from Nvidia and Amazon, now worth 4 billion US dollars. It was a year of war, bombardment, and fear. 

Magic!

Internet swamp

 A post on X claims there are 100,000 articles on Hantavirus, suggesting it is a Moderna campaign to frighten the world. The reason given is that Moderna has many vaccines in store that need to be sold.

The internet has turned into a psychological battleground; it is difficult to make sense of it. Anyway, for me, the whole thing is irrelevant. 

The Coming Plague

 The Spanish passenger of the Antarctic voyage suspected of contact with the Hantavirus was put off on an isolated islet in the Canaries.  After the Regina Coeli Sunday morning prayer, Pope Leo XIV thanked the people of the Canary Islands for allowing the arrival of the MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak. 

The British passenger was landed on Tristan da Cunha. 

Tristan da Cunha — the world's most remote inhabited island.

It sits in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, roughly halfway between South Africa and South America. It's a British Overseas Territory with only about 200 residents, no airstrip, and normally accessible only by a six-day boat journey.

A British Army specialist team of 8 people — six paratroopers and two military clinicians — parachuted from an RAF A400M aircraft onto the island after a suspected Hantavirus case was confirmed in a British national who had been a passenger on a cruise ship hit by an outbreak.

The logistics were extraordinary: The A400M flew 6,788 km from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, refuelling mid-flight from a RAF Voyager tanker aircraft, before reaching the island. Haaretz

Pandemic on the making

 Hantavirus causes respiratory disease. The cruise ship cluster is grabbing attention because of the person-to-person transmission via the Andes strain, and because passengers from many countries disembarked before the outbreak was detected.   The colalarga rat transmitted the mutated Hantavirus to a passenger of the cruise ship, killing several other passengers. Now they are trying to localize those who came into contact with an infected persons. One woman who flew in the same plane has been identified, and she is dead. They are trying to stop the epidemic before it endangers the whole world. 

My Alma Mater

From the La Plata El Dia, Argentina:

"Our faculty has an enormous pending debt with the educational system, since more than 70% of the students who enter do not go to the second year," Marín warned in one of the strongest passages of his message; "the graduation rate is lower compared to that observed 10 years ago." In that sense, he compared that before it reached 67% while today it is around 18%"

I don't believe that in 2016, 67% graduated, because in my time, graduating classes were no more than 10% of the entrants. I don't know exactly how many graduated in my class because I was the first to finish and left La Plata the day I passed the last exam. 

The Ebal Mountain

 

Har Ebal, the Samaritan Jews' sacred mountain. Taken in 2012.

In the Book of Joshua, after the Battle of Ai, Joshua built an altar of unhewn stones there, the Israelites then made peace offerings on it, the Law of Moses was written onto the stones, and the Israelites split into two groups and pronounced blessings and curses as instructed there.

In February 2021 a portion of the site was destroyed by the Palestinian Authority and the stones were ground up and used to pave the road.

President Trump Negotiating

 
US President Donald Trump told Fox News that Iran would be "blown off the face of the earth' if it attacks the US naval vessels escorting merchant vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

Thinking out of the box

 
        Thinking

https://x.com/i/status/1939933166354972760

Who is Who in British Politics

Zack Polanski is a latecomer to electoral politics. He grew up in Manchester in a Jewish family, came out as gay as a teenager and spent two decades as an actor, boosting his income with odd jobs including hypnotherapist. In 2013 he told a reporter that he could enlarge her breasts using “the unconscious” (he has since apologised). Two years later he joined the centrist Liberal Democrats but failed to mesmerise voters, standing unsuccessfully to be a councillor in London. He switched to the Greens in 2017. Eventually he was elected to the London Assembly, where he still sits.

The Economist’s poll tracker puts the Greens just three points behind Labour and the Conservatives, Britain’s two traditional parties of government.  Polanski is the leader of the Green Party. (from The Economist).

Nous? Puissance régionale dominante?

Arab states fear Israel as a disruptive regional power, even a dominant one; the UAE still wants to do deals with it. (From The Economist)

They are starting to take us seriously. Good.

Tachos

 

The late Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza loved shiny decorations (a popular hobby among generals - see pic from North Korea). The people nicknamed him "Tacho Somoza" (In Nicaragua, "tacho" meant metallic waste, like the Coca-Cola bottle cap). His son was called Tachito.                                             

 

The World of Yesterday

 Finished reading Stefan Zweig's memoir (he and his wife killed themselves after the completion of the book). Five hundred pages, but only one is dedicated to the greatest tragedy of Europe - the elimination of the Jews. Zweig tried all his life to become a "generic" European, an Austrian, and never something particular like a Jew. I found that many of the expressions and ideas of my family and their circle of friends originated from Zweig, or maybe he captured precisely the spirit of the times. My uncle called his business "Europlast" to emphasize its Europeanness (vs. those lazy criollos). Zweig, like his generation, believed that his ethnic origin was an unimportant detail, but it was exactly what condemned him to desperate exile. I dislike cosmopolitan Jews; I am a Zionist. 

Israeli Photonics Startups

 
Within weeks in April 2026:

• DustPhotonics → Credo Technology — $1.3 billion
• Teramount → Molex — $430 million

Two Israeli photonics startups acquired for a combined $1.73 billion — both solving different but complementary problems in the same AI data center photonics stack. Israel's silicon photonics ecosystem has just been significantly absorbed into the global supply chain.

The remaining independent Israeli photonics player of note is NewPhotonics — worth watching as the next potential acquisition target.

Interesting. And April 2026 is not yet over!

Roof collapsed - engineer (91) jailed

 

A decade after the Iron parking garage collapse disaster in Tel Aviv, the court sentenced engineer Hanoch Tzahar (91 years old) to imprisonment and a fine, after he was convicted of causing the deaths of 6 workers through negligence and the injury of 23 additional workers.

Engineering is a high-risk profession, especially after 90.