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? 

Legal disputes

The Argentine State is, again, being sued by a "fondo buitre" for 390 million US$ for the illegal nationalization of Aerolíneas Argentinas. Marsans, a Spanish corporation, sold its litigation rights to Burford Capital, which later transferred them to the Belgian fund Titan Consortium. In 2021, Titan filed a petition in a D.C. court to recognize and enforce the ICSID award. Burford had invested $12.8 million to fund the arbitration. Cristina Fernández, then President of Argentina, committed the error of taking over foreign assets, but American Judges accept cases like that. I think that Fidel Castro's nationalization of everything in Cuba will, some time in the future, be litigated, and the assets returned to the inheritors. Or to the fondos buitre that may have bought the rights of litigation. These processes may continue for centuries. 

The Pleitos colombinos (1508–1536). Those capitulations granted Columbus and his heirs, in perpetuity, the offices of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy and Governor of any lands he discovered, plus a tenth of the Crown's revenues from them. Once the scale of the Americas became clear, the Crown had no intention of handing a single family hereditary control over a continent. After Columbus died in 1506, his legitimate son and heir, Diego Colón, sued the Crown in 1508 to enforce those rights. The Council of the Indies finally awarded the inheritance in 1608 to Nuño Colón de Portugal, a descendant through a female line. The Columbus inheritance was in litigation for most of a century. The line of the Dukes of Veragua continues to this day. 

Antisemitism is Popular

Más de 500 autores defienden la exclusión de Ariana Harwicz del festival Cultur Alh de Granada. The Spanish cultural world has voted overwhelmingly for the exclusion of the Argentine Jewish writer - 500 writers defend her exclusion. There is absolutely no discussion about her work or her political position (Left), only that she represents genocide.

Tango: "Uno"

 Uno busca lleno de esperanzas el camino que los sueños prometieron a sus ansias... Sabe que la lucha es cruel y es mucha, pero lucha y se desangra por la fe que lo empecina... Uno va arrastrándose entre espinas y en su afán de dar su amor, sufre y se destroza hasta entender: que uno se ha quedao sin corazón... Si yo tuviera el corazón... (¡El corazón que di!...) Si yo pudiera como ayer querer sin presentir...

 La parola deriva dal latino discipulus

The kids aren't OK

 Bryan Caplan, daughter and her friend Violent. 

Kissinger on Iran

 At age 100, Henry Kissinger wrote a book on international relations. He dedicated a full chapter to Iran. 

Iran has to decide if it is a country or a cause. 

He quotes Khoumeyni: The war against Satan is eternal, because Satan is eternal. 

Kissinger suggests forming a Sunni bloc plus Israel to balance Shi'a Iran. At the time, the Houthis were still in the remote mountains. Confirming that dangerous enemies are waiting on the margins.

Working after Eighty?

More work orders are coming in; projects I can do. I received a nice dividend and invested in BAZAN. Which, naturally, immediately became cheaper. I have faith in BAZAN, the Haifa Oil Refinery, as diesel is becoming scarce and expensive all over the world. I am watching the humiliation ceremony in the United Nations General Assembly; every leader religiously voices their rejection of Israel and their love for the Palestinians. A Catholic altar was erected in the Extermination Camp of Treblinka, and it is a pilgrimage magnet for Catholic youth. After WWII, the neighbors came and turned the earth looking for gold teeth in the half-rotten bodies. It reminds me of the Cathedral built on the foundations of the Mexican Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. 

I'll sleep a bit and restart my work.

Ariana Harwicz: Persona Non Grata in Madrid

En la misma semana en la que el plantón de 28 participantes en el Festival de las Ideas de Madrid llevó a la cancelación del patrocinio de la aseguradora Allianz (acusada de financiar al Gobierno de Israel en la guerra de Gaza), la escritora argentina Ariana Harwicz ha denunciado su expulsión del Il Festival Internacional de Arte, Literatura y Humanidades Cultur-Alh que se celebrará durante toda la semana en Granada. Según Harwicz, la dirección del Festival le anunció que no podía garantizar su seguridad ante la presión de grupos de apoyo a Palestina y que, por tanto, suspendía su charla con el escritor Jesús Ortega."Desde entonces, no me han contestado las llamadas ni los mensajes", explica la autora de El ruido de una época. 

She is a celebrated Argentine writer, a fighter for freedom of expression. Local pro-Palestine groups demanded that the Granada Festival of the Arts cancel her. Because she is Jewish. 

Teheran Today

 

One look at this black regiment of witches and we surrender. 

The regime is preparing for a revolt.

Krugman eternal

 
Krugman is one of the very few economists who understood something obvious. Liquidity. I respect him. 

Quote: "Weaponized interdependence was already a well-understood phenomenon in the Sci-Fi literature. The picture at the top of this post is a still from the 2024 film Dune 2, based on the classic Frank Herbert science-fiction novel. The novel is set on the desert planet Arrakis, which is the center of conflict because it’s the sole source for “spice,” a drug crucial to the Galactic economy. In effect, Arrakis is the Strait of Hormuz with giant sandworms, and one way to think about Dune is that it’s a novel about weaponized interdependence — and how such interdependence can escalate into open warfare.

Now I am not suggesting that real-world policy should be dictated by fears inspired by works of fiction. After all, fear is the mind-killer. But the reality of weaponized interdependence is now all around us." Nothing changed; it was always so. 

Bin Salman Orphaned

"Bin Salman essentially brought this situation on himself. Today he is, more or less, an orphan in the world and in an extremely difficult position. The Saudis' capabilities today are practically nonexistent," the former senior Mossad official added. "You have to remember what the Saudi army is: it's a massive army — 260,000 soldiers, 7% of Saudi GDP, which amounts to trillions, goes to the military, they have 300 F-15 aircraft — and we see the results."

So why is this regional power being humiliated by its neighbors today? "The Saudis funded the formal Yemeni army with hundreds of millions, and they were simply lied to about the troop numbers," Eilam explained. "They paid enormous sums per head, and in practice those soldiers didn't exist. Right now, the Houthis are dictating almost everything to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has almost no options on the table against the Houthis. I estimate that bin Salman will fairly soon submit an instrument of surrender."

Eilam noted that it was Saudi Arabia itself that started this campaign. "On July 13 they struck Sanaa airport and prevented the landing of an Iranian plane carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards. Bin Salman, as usual, zigzagged, hesitated, went right and left, and the whole thing fizzled out."

And now Saudi Arabia is alone: the United States has announced that it has no intention of striking in Yemen, and the trilateral military alliance recently signed between the kingdom, Pakistan and Turkey is not proving itself either. Is this Israel's place to step into the vacuum? "Israel should definitely take advantage of this situation, but we need to take advantage of it with the bill presented immediately," he ruled. "Our condition has to be very clear: 'You join the Abraham Accords for full normalization, and you don't even mention the Palestinian issue.' Without that, not a single hair will move toward Bab el-Mandeb — and Israel has a great deal to offer."

Let's step ahead: If Saudia reverts to chaos, what will 260,000 unemployed soldiers do? Some units will try to seize power. Without oil exports, the vast peninsula is one of the poorest places on Earth.

Its Hour Has Arrived: Saudia Begging for Help

 ‎
The UK received requests from Saudi Arabia for a range of diplomatic and military support. The Saudi requests include operational support for its military to repel the Iranian-backed group's push along Yemen's Red Sea coast ‎‎toward the Bab al-Mandeb Strait‎‎, as well as assistance in defending against attacks on its oil infrastructure, according to Bloomberg.‎

The Saudi King will meet Egyptian President Al-Sisi tomorrow. The Yemenis have taken possession of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, cutting off Saudia. 

We may be their last resource, but they have rejected the Abraham Accords. Saudia is not very far, just in front of Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea.

Sidney

 Sidney Sweeney is an American model. Beautiful. Perfect. Diosa!

Poverty in Cuba

The rich tropical island of Cuba has decayed to the point that it is barely sustaining itself. I blame the French Revolution, which invented and worshipped the fake Goddess of Reason, a disaster for humanity.