Panic in Iran

 U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Iran is in a financial crisis, threatening prison for publishing exchange rates.

He claims no oil has been loaded at Kharg Island since August and no Iranian oil is currently headed to customers by sea.

Demonstrative Olive Harvesting

Hundreds are coming to guard the olive harvest in the Shomron. The idea is to combine nature tourism with a strong political statement. It reminds me of the sugarcane harvest in Cuba, with thousands travelling to Communist Cuba to enjoy socialism in the tropics. The difference is that cutting sugarcane is hard work, while "protecting Palestinian farmers against the colonizers" needs no physical exertion or risk. After a two-hour walk and selfies in Samaria, rented air-conditioned buses bring them back to their luxury hotels in Tel Aviv, all under the protection of ZAHAL and the American Embassy. 

BTW, world markets are flooded with olive oil; bulk olive oil is a commodity, and the price is set by mechanised Andalusian groves. A small producer on rain-fed hill terraces cannot compete at that price.  The EU limits oil imports, and the oil from Tunisia and Morocco cannot find a market. The World Bank estimated West Bank production costs at 20–30% above Jordan and 35–40% above Turkey. Palestinian olive plantations cannot compete with imported oil, and following the reduction of customs, 35% of the area planted with olive trees was uprooted in the Galilee. Total production in the Palestinian Authority was about 15,000 tons, which is half of previous years. Yields are cyclical, and one dunam yields about 400 shekels per year (in a good year), less than a day's salary as a construction worker. 

Inflation?

 "As far as I can tell, Trump doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as objective truth, there’s only what he wants to be true. Trump doesn’t have the full powers of a totalitarian ruler, but often behaves as if he did (and is enabled in that behavior by almost the entire GOP.) And Orwell wrote about the mutability of history under totalitarian regimes:If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. In this case what never happened was surging nflation."

 Paul Krugman is an unabashed liberal, and there is no crime in an economist having such persuasions. For that matter, many economists have a bit of that streak, too. ...However, the agreements end where Krugman begins to view U.S. economic history from a distorted lens, one in which all administrations run by Democrats are Good and Virtuous, and all Republican administrations are governed by Beelzebub himself. (By William L. Anderson, Senior Editor at the Mises Institute).

BAZAN is Unpredictable

 
The Haifa Refinery (BAZAN) continues to operate under wartime conditions. Given the uncertainty of global diesel supply and with BAZAN as the only significant refinery in the Eastern Mediterranean, I invested some of my savings in the stock. Yesterday, the anti-business environmental parasites published an alarming report that they found elevated concentrations of benzene in the air, so the population should stay at home with windows closed. I was sure that the share would collapse. Instead, it is rising 3%. BAZAN announced that:

 Following media reports over the past two days regarding benzene measurements in the area of the Group’s plants, the Company hereby announces that, during work carried out as part of the periodic maintenance (turnaround) of the aromatics facilities at Gadiv, elevated benzene concentrations were measured at several monitoring points in the area. Accordingly, and as a precautionary measure, the relevant work was suspended on a localized basis, and in parallel, steps are being taken to resume the work in coordination with the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

It is confusing.  

Follow-up: The Houthis destroyed Saudi Arabia's main distillery. As expected, BAZAN lifted 6%. It appears that this is just the beginning of a glorious ascent. 

The Enigma of Jujuy Demography

 
The Province of Jujuy (bordering Bolivia) had one of the highest fertility rates in Argentina. Suddenly, in less than ten years, it halved to unsustainable levels. 

• Argentina as a whole went from 777,012 births in 2014 to 413,135 in 2024, a 47% fall. Fertility is 1.3 children per woman, the lowest ever recorded in the country and far below the replacement level of 2.1.
• Jujuy’s decline is steeper than the national one. In the Universidad Austral 2026 report, Jujuy shows −55%, among the largest provincial declines. Using Health Ministry (DEIS) data, Jujuy ranked fourth nationally, behind Tierra del Fuego, Santa Cruz, and Corrientes.

• Why it fell so fast

1. The collapse of adolescent and young-adult fertility. This is the main driver. The largest declines are among women under 25, where births fell 40–60%, because unintended teenage pregnancy dropped. Nationally, adolescent fertility fell about 60% in the last decade. Jujuy, as a northern province with historically high teen fertility, simply had more of these births to lose.
2. Better access to contraception. The provincial maternity director pointed to wider access to contraceptive methods as a factor. In practice, this largely means the national teen-pregnancy prevention program (Plan ENIA, started in 2017), which pushed long-acting implants and IUDs in the NOA provinces.
• 
  
• Conclusion:  The difference between sustainable fertility (2.1 births/woman) and demographic collapse, as it is happening in Europe and Latin America, is in the unwanted pregnancies by irresponsible young girls. This group of teenagers produces the number of babies needed to maintain a vigorous population. Adult women avoid pregnancy after one child. One baby will satisfy her maternal instinct, if she has one. Money incentives are simply too weak to overcome her desire for a desirable body and an exciting social life. Nothing the State can do - education, subsidies, a big house, medals - will motivate her to reproduce. 

Descriptions of Victorian England show a fertile lumpen (proletarian) class that peopled Australia, Canada, etc. The West has eradicated that class, and there are well-organized anti-pregnancy campaigns in schools, and the pill is pushed to the young. In theory, this is progress. Actually, it disrupts the natural cycle of population maintenance and growth. 

The end of Mathemathics (and Civil Engineering) as we knew it

steve hsu

 quotes the striking remarks from Hugo Duminil-Copin’s 8 October 2026 seminar talk “Un grave défaut d’alignement de l’IA en mathématiques, 28 jours plus tard” (SMF MIAM series):

- On the scale of the damage to his own work: after noting that roughly 350 major problems had been resolved, he said he placed “several trucks” on the slide to illustrate the impact, because every problem he had cited in talks, papers, and both past and future funding applications had been solved—none left unresolved. He described himself as panicked and paralyzed in the middle of the night when the results appeared.

- On volume: looking only at the OpenAI texts that cite him directly, he counted about 3,500 pages; he has published roughly 3,700 pages in his entire career. Specific clusters included six papers totaling over 600 pages on conformal invariance aspects of percolation (a major ongoing project of his group) and a sequence of papers on self-avoiding walks that he only gradually realized totaled more than 1,000 pages. - On process and alignment: he described the approach as systematic “farming” or “mining” of open problems, in which the program itself selects targets from the existing literature, amounting to “the complete automation of mathematical discovery.” He said the community’s request not to destroy the open conjectures that orient research was “absolutely ignored,” and that the release seemed intended to show the systems could “massacre us in the deepest sense of the term.” - On the human side: he reported that his PhD students and postdocs were in “a state of total panic,” with undergraduates and master’s students also asking whether mathematics still has a future, and stressed the immediate need for collective resilience rather than delayed discussion. He added that the community must manage both its own emotions and the surrounding media reaction, while avoiding internal polarization that would weaken arguments to funders. (Meaning: they worry their work is now meaningless; who will pay their salaries?)

My take: In my humble field, the prospects are the same. Planning Engineers are slower to realize it; we may have six months to continue working as usual. I don't care much; I am after retirement. For others, it will be a shock.

Soviet AA guns in Tehran

 
This pic in Tehran shows a Soviet anti-air cannon very familiar to me. It is based on a Swedish design of the nineteen thirties, mass-produced by the Soviet Union in WWII.  The PLO in Lebanon had hundreds of them, and they were taken to Israel. A whole unit was formed with this brand-new equipment and ammunition. I was drafted and trained to use these sewing-machine-like guns and used to sit on them. When the unit was disbanded, the machines were sold to foreign armies. Perhaps to the Shah's Iran? They are still in use in Iran. The one pictured seems well maintained, artistically decorated, almost new, or with few kilometers. BTW, it has the only hand-operated computer I know of (a museum piece); therefore, immune to electronic interference. 

No hay mal que dure cien anos

"No evil lasts a hundred years," goes the Spanish saying. Pedro Sánchez's Socialist government has fallen, and new elections have been called. The moderate right is projected to win. Spain is — or perhaps was — Israel's worst enemy in Europe.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro's son won the election and is expected to be friendly toward Israel.

In my view, Israel has come through the last three years of war remarkably well. None of the calamities Ehud Barak predicted — civil war, economic collapse, and the rest — came to pass. There was not a single hour without electricity or internet; food was plentiful; the shekel strengthened; Iranian missiles fell in open areas; the pilots flew to Iran as ordered and killed Ayatollah Khamenei; and there was no conspiracy within the security services, contrary to what the contemptible rag Haaretz reported prematurely.

How to improve my cientele?

 Claude says:

Higher-paying clients pay for risk reduction and money saved, not for drawings. Your experience puts you in a good position for that. A few directions that would fit your practice:

1. Sell savings, not specifications. Many factories, dairies, and food plants pay large surcharges to water corporations for wastewater that exceeds the discharge limits (היטלי חריגה / תעריפי שפכי תעשייה). A consultant who can lower those charges, through pretreatment, process changes, or a well-argued challenge to the corporation's sampling and calculations, is selling a measurable annual saving. You can charge for that as a fixed fee or as a share of the first year's savings, and it is worth far more than a specification. Your writing on the salt penalty regime is exactly the kind of credential that opens these doors.

2. Go after chains, not single sites. One supermarket, fuel, or restaurant chain brings repeat work at every branch, renovation, and licensing renewal. You already work with this kind of client, so the next step is to pitch the chain's head office directly: a framework agreement covering all their grease separators, fuel-station drainage opinions, or business-licensing files at a set price per site. Chain procurement managers value one reliable engineer who knows the water corporations and municipalities more than they value a low price.

3. Expert opinions for disputes. Courts, insurers, and lawyers need expert opinions (חוות דעת מומחה) on flooding, drainage failures, sewage damage, and disputes with water corporations or local authorities. This work is billed at premium rates, and long experience counts heavily in its favor. Letting a few litigation lawyers and insurance loss adjusters know you take such cases can bring steady work.

4. Rescue work. Projects stuck because the water corporation, regional committee, or Ministry of Environmental Protection rejected their plans are under time pressure. The developer is losing money every week, so speed and knowing how to get approval are worth a high fee. Architects and project managers see these situations first, so they are the people to tell that you take "stuck" files.

5. Raise your visibility with decision-makers. Articles in Globes, TheMarker, or industry publications (food industry, fuel, construction) reach CEOs and CFOs, who approve bigger budgets than plant managers do. A short talk at the Manufacturers Association or a food-industry forum on how to cut wastewater charges would bring in clients who already understand the value.

6. Price by value and urgency. For routine specifications, competing on price is a race to the bottom. For urgent, high-risk, or high-savings work, quote a fixed fee based on what the problem costs the client, not on your hours.

Plato's Republic

There is a happy country where people spend their lives singing in fiestas and bullfighting, in solemn religious ceremonies, making love freely, and dancing at street festivals. They have few children and live longer than anywhere. Their land is spacious with mountains and rivers, in the best latitude on Earth. They have no enemies, so they invent imaginary invasions to feel alive. Who works? Plato already thought of this problem: "We shall have slaves". Instead, Spain has a large underclass of North African and Saharan immigrants that do the necessary work. 

However, they are not organized as gold, silver, and iron castes. They govern themselves as a democratic kingdom where most of the voting citizens are the unemployed and the pensioners. Logically, the resources are channeled to their welfare, and the economy stagnates. But life is easy and careless. Is Spain an improvement on Plato's republic?