Sharpness and Clarity

Better than that, we now have clarity. We are no longer laboring under illusions, bidding for affection that was always going to be withheld. They were honest with us, in the end, and that honesty is its own kind of freedom. We can go our own way now: not into a ghetto (we still have real allies) but into self-determination, as individuals and as a global people. 

By Ben Freeman, in TABLET. On Antisemitism in the world.

Illustration: Mexican Black Obsidian Ceremonial Knife. Obsidian is sharper than steel. 

Fire destroys Gilead's Farm

The residents of the West Bank settlement escape the fire with the Torah scrolls. The village was burned to the ground. Today's temperature is over 35 Celsius, and the air is very dry. I feel tired, and it is difficult to work.  Clients are phoning me every hour, some are very angry, but I have no explanations to give. 

‘Do not worry’ | Ramokgopa says Koeberg radioactive contamination is safe

The Table Mountain in the background, Koeberg in the foreground, Africa's only nuclear power station. Beautiful!  

Don't worry, says Kagosientso Ramokgopa, Head of ESCOM. 

West Hollywood: Billion Dollars Failure

A large sinkhole closed down Sunset Boulevard. Utilities have been working to keep the aging water system running, but have struggled with limited funds, long project timelines, and the overwhelming length of the pipeline that needs to be replaced. “We have, in the water system, a capital improvement budget that is over a billion dollars,” Collins said.

I wonder what they will do if the San Andreas Fault snaps as it must. In the El Cajon Pass, stress has reached its maximum level. Several big companies have moved to Texas. Could it be connected? California is not what it used to be.

Crise de l'eau

 

Of course, TAHAL, the Israeli water consulting company I worked for many years, is no more. We worked mostly in Latin America and Africa. It was never able to set foot in any developed country, mostly because those countries had solved their water problems.  But now I am seeing growing difficulties, not only in France and Europe in general, but also in the USA, such as the Colorado River catchment area. The problems, at least in California, which I know personally, are the "greenness" of the regulation. A new TAHAL could find new markets in the West, as its water infrastructure and professional human capital degrade.

16% of France's waterways had dried up as of last June, compared to just 6% in June 2025. France 24

The country is experiencing its third heatwave in as many months, with wildfires further fueled by dry conditions. France 24

Broader European monitoring (EDO) shows watch-level drought conditions persisting or expanding in the Iberian Peninsula, France, southern UK, southern Germany, the Alps, and Italy, with alert-level conditions having emerged in France as well.

Ro Khanna at Zanuta

Congressman Ro Khanna staged a photo-op tour of Khirbet Zanuta ("khirbet" = ruins of a Judean village, repopulated by Beduins)) — anything to throw another accusation at Israel. Just another politician surfing the antisemitism wave to juice his presidential ambitions. And American Jews? Silent. Scared to say a word.

3 million new Europeans

 El Mundo reports that Spain is granting citizenship to three million illegals. The Sanchez government has blocked the Extranjeria (the department normally dealing with foreigners), and the police have been charged with issuing EU identity documents. Gradually, they and their families will move on to Europe's heartland. They are Hispanos from Colombia and Venezuela, others from Spain's  African former colonies. They are all sure votes for Sanchez and Europe's Socialists. 

Why they keep selling on credit to the USA?

 I am an Israeli water engineer of a curious nature. Some of my clients are not paying (yimach smam - a Hebrew curse), and I wonder if I should continue working with them. Thinking from a global perspective from my 3 m by 2 m cave, I wonder why America can keep trading with a persistent current-account deficit that reached $1.12 trillion in 2025 — 3.6% of GDP. By trading partner, the largest bilateral deficits are with China (~$270 billion), Mexico (~$157 billion), Vietnam (~$113 billion), Ireland (~$80.5 billion), and Germany (~$76.4 billion). America is more indebted year by year, yet it makes no difference. Maybe its military strength explains this kind of imbalance. Israel, fortunately, is a structurally strong country with a large savings account. We can do without foreign assistance.

Pic.: Mongol taxman collecting tribute.

Kissinger: Order above Peace

 
I am rereading Kissinger's World Order. He died at 100 on November 29, 2023, but the book was written in 2014. He was against negotiations with HAMAS for peace; he advised reaching some acceptable mechanism for co-existence. Trump is following his advice in fighting the Ayatollahs: he is not interested in peace, but in workable rules for maritime passage through the Hormuz Strait and controlling the development of nuclear power. Even these limited aims are very difficult to agree on for the Shia clerics, as they are waging a long war of vengeance for the assassination of Abu-Bakr 1600 years ago.

Growing force on the left

Being an ancient Israeli, with only a few more years to live, American politics has little relevance to me. But the Mamdani phenomenon cannot be looked over: it portends real change. Meisner writes:

This revolution kicked off last year when Zohran Mamdani was elected as the mayor of New York City. He is a Muslim Indian, born in Africa. This is notable in many ways, one obviously being racial, the other religious, since America is traditionally Christian and the historical enemy of Christians had been Islam. He will be a key figure going forward. He is already commanding great influence as he endorsed the above candidates as well as other non-White neo-liberals around the country. He is building a coalition which may well catapult him into the White House in the future.

Only years ago, America became predominantly Latino et al. Yet, against the ethnic vote, Trump took the presidency. So, American politics is fluid. 

 

The Secret Science of Biology

I used the Fable AI model to write a wastewater treatment report, and it was lying and complicating things. It made things difficult. I moved to Sonnet, which is - so they say - a less capable model, and it explained to me that sewage treatment is a biological area, which is a subject prohibited by Fable's rules. 

What is so secret and sensitive in biology? Then I remembered the question in the Senate nomination of Judge Sotomayor: What is a woman?  The fat woman answered: I don't know, I am not a biologist. Therefore, she cannot know. Science and common sense are so controversial that even the powerful Anthropic is fearful of treading on them.

I illustrate this short reflection with a picture of a woman from Google. Is she a woman? I do not know.

PS.: Why should the question of who is a woman be so sensitive? Homosexuals believe they are women and will fight to be recognized as such. Who wants to oppose hysterical people for a definition? Not Sotomayor. 

Secrets are secrets to take advantage of others, and the biggest is paternity. Human females dissimulate their fertility status (monkeys publicize it), making genetic paternity uncertain. Males will fight and kill to ensure paternity, which is not only vanity. Kingship depends on paternity; when it is in doubt, civil wars follow. King Charles III of Britain was married to Diana and had two sons. The second boy apparently is not his, and he divorced her. The secret (if true) can destroy the whole dynasty. Fable is right; biology is a taboo subject. 

Maximum Alert

 The internet warns that Israel entered a state of maximum alert, although the regular Pikud HaOref is silent. President Trump called the Iranian leadership cookoo and suspended further negotiations. 
MSN

Trump: "If we make a deal with Iran, I'm not sure that will stick because I've found them to be very dishonorable people."

“They said to us, please don't kill us during the funeral. I said I won't, and we didn't do anything then they attacked three ships.

Summer Nausea

It is the classic "natsu-bate" (夏バテ) scenario. Lack of appetite and lethargy during the hot & humid summer. There must be a word for it in Hebrew, but I don't know it. 

Argentina attacks Britain

 Those were the times! Argentina was ecstatic.

¡Las Malvinas son argentinas! 

Except that they are not.

Journal

 
Kfar Saba 33 Celsius. I ate a whole head of ice lettuce and feel sick. I lost my will to work and cannot find it. 

Pic.: A crater in Yokneam, produced by an Iranian missile. The phreatic is near the surface.

Fable or Opus?

 

Anthropic upgraded me to Fable. I asked it if it was for my benefit. It said, "No, it is twice as expensive, and you don't really need the power of Fable." These AIs are too clever for me.

Bad Ideas Never Die

 
Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), subtitled "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence" — a comprehensive position paper on AI. Its thrust is unmistakable: AI is dangerous, it will displace human work, and it will bring dislocation and pain to society. Opposing change is a bad idea, but then religion itself rests on bad ideas. Not that the alternatives have fared better — the French Revolution tried to extinguish Christianity and replace it with the cult of Reason, and failed.

The Pope is resurrecting the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi, who diagnosed the cause of India's poverty as the introduction of industrial cloth — better and cheaper than the traditional handmade cottons that had allowed every Hindu to spin at home and earn some money. Gandhi convinced the country that mill-made cloth was the source of Indian poverty, and that a return to the charkha — the hand-held spinning wheel — would magically create wealth. As part of his swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement, he obliged every member of the Indian National Congress to wear khadi, homespun cloth, and placed the charkha on the flag of the independence movement — thereby prolonging India's underdevelopment by eighty years.

Mao Tse-tung was infected by the same bad thinking. During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), he rejected industrial steelworks in favour of  "backyard furnaces," in which peasants melted down their own agricultural implements to produce worthless pig iron. The consequence was famine.

All these low-technology solutions are bad ideas, rooted in the feeling that high technology is out of reach. Now the Pope is frightening people and preaching underdevelopment.

In Israel, we are lucky: we are forced to defend ourselves against the wealthiest states in the world, which can buy the highest-technology weapons and turn them against us. This leaves us no room for "bad ideas". We are compelled — against our will — to adopt effective high technology, or perish. Necessity has spared us the luxury of romantic underdevelopment.

Discord in Iran

IRAN STATE TV CUTS OFF GHALIBAF LIVE, EXPOSING THE RIFT WITHIN ITS OWN REGIME. Iranian state TV abruptly cut off Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during a live interview as he addressed critics opposing negotiations with the United States. State TV later claimed the second part of the interview will air tomorrow. Iran’s political wing is trying to manage negotiations. The IRGC hardliners are signaling war. 

No one knows who is in charge.