Hibernating

Up until October 7, Israel’s construction industry relied heavily on Palestinian manpower. About 75,000 Palestinians in the West Bank held permits to work in Israel. There were another 12,000 in the Gaza Strip, while about 15,000 illegal entrants were employed in the industry. That amounts to about a third of the workforce in the entire sector. With the outbreak of the Swords of Iron war, the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel was stopped entirely, leading to an immediate shortfall of 100,000 workers.

According to the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel, however, the numbers are much higher. In response to the proposal by the Ministry of Finance in the revised 2024 budget, the Association wrote that even before the war there was a permanent shortage of 40,000 workers for the industry’s needs. In other words, the industry is actually now lacking 140,000 workers.

The Association adds that at present almost 50% of the building sites in the country are shut down, because of the severe shortage of manpower. Those that are active are working at 30% of normal output. The most recent survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics found that 41% of the building sites in the Tel Aviv and central regions and 58% of the sites in the Jerusalem region had been shut since the war broke out.

As for foreign construction workers, before the war there were some 23,000 of them in Israel, mainly from Moldova and China. About 3,000 were reported to have left at the beginning of the war, many of them because of the security situation. (From Globes 16-1-23).

As for me, I am sleeping and inactive. Several projects are detained but I am not pushing them. I am hibernating. 

Searching for Glitches aka Miracles

 

Somebody commented that if we think the universe is a simulation, then we must search for glitches in the program operating it. Isn't it the same as looking for miracles and other exceptional acts that may reveal God's plan? I don't think there was any believable. Therefore, the machine computing us or the universe itself must be perfect at our level. And we are left without any cue on the nature of reality, except that we have none and must continue searching.  

Computer glitches (or failures or bugs) can sometimes be very easy to fix. For example, restarting your computer is often sufficient to fix many simple glitches. Restarting your system clears your memory, shuts down running programs, and often gets rid of whatever combination of factors that may have created the glitch in the first place.

Steven Hsu and the future of everything

 Steven Hsu has studied everything and has intelligent opinions on everything. He was sacked from his post as research director with a big budget for blogging on human diversity, and now he talks carefully. Why is the population falling everywhere? Human societies, traditionally, were built on exploitation, on oppression. Females were second class everywhere, their salaries were lower than men's,  intellectually gifted women could be primary teachers or librarians, and they were expected to make homes and bring up healthy children. They were oppressed, sure. That is how humanity survived.

I add that most people were always oppressed by military classes, they had to work and give up half of their earnings. Slavery existed everywhere. This order of things was not hidden but emphasized in the laws, dress, and accents. The military - conquerors or political leaders - appropriated the rents. Rebellions were dispersed by force. Things have changed since the French Revolution, and now distinctions are not tolerated. The French ideas made Western-type societies rich, but they are dying off.  

Steven thinks that this may be reversed suddenly, like Prohibition in the drunken happy nineteen twenties. Who knows? 

(2) In the last twenty years I am not drinking alcohol. In the last two weeks, I stopped taking Valium and other tranquilizers. I am sleeping well, but working less. I find that I focus and work better with Valium in my body. I am surprised by how easily I gave up the habit. The doctor said that at my age (and I was younger then) it would make no difference to my health, and I may drink and take tranquilizers as much as I desire. But I am not. 

I don't know why. I don't like to analyze myself. All the mistakes of my life were committed under one of the two or both, like driving accidents and insulting important people, so I may be afraid. 

Klimt

Suddenly appeared on the market a Klimt painting. It had been in hiding some hundred years. It is beautiful. 

Popcorn Creativity

 For the new sequel of Dune, they are giving out special popcorn containers shaped like the mouth of a fictional sandworm.

I like the idea.

I am happy: It is worse in San Francisco

This New York Times article allows me to compare the working conditions of San Francisco California, with my own environment in Israel. There it takes 523 days on average to receive a first tentative approval and then another 605 to receive the building permit (= היתר בנייה).

On average, in Israel, it takes 50% less time,  although there are famous cases where it took ten years and the desperate architect was sent to jail on suspicion of bribing the bureaucrats to advance the project. 

War on open sea

CAIRO, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Yemen's Houthis said on Wednesday that they targeted a number of U.S. warships with ballistic missiles in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab while they were protecting two U.S. commercial vessels.

The "clash" led to a U.S. warship being directly hit and forced the two commercial vessels "to withdraw and return," the Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a statement.

This attack seems to me very important. A direct attack on an American warship in open sea.  Another war. We have entered a new era where every barefooted famished religious fanatic can provoke a world power.