Nightmare

 
Around 1 AM, I watched X about the massacres of Alawis in Syria. The Muslim rebels made the prisoners walk on four and bark like dogs. Then I heard dry shots and they were dead. The worst short was a rebel with a big knife, asking three little boys who they wanted to be slaughtered first. The boys, were terrorized, pointed at each other, and waited for death. Before waking up I felt myself in a room with other children and my mother, and many Gilette razors and knives flying around, I was terrorized as I imagined the flying razors cutting cleanly into the muscles. As far as I remember, I never had nightmares. I am changing.

Selling to China

 
Colonial Mexico's silver poured into China because the Spanish could not sell anything else there. For 300 years, the British tried to trade with China, but they too had to pay with silver, which caused a recession in all of Europe. Only by selling opium (an illegal drug) was the balance of trade established around 1800. When the Chinese government tried to stop the contraband, the British Navy attacked and conquered China. Today, China is more advanced in every industry, beating the world even in AI and quantum computers. We are, once again, the Western Barbarians. We have nothing to offer them. 

Lent

From USA Today:   Aaron Mockrish, right, receives ashes at the Florida Capitol from Rev. Bill Trexler during Ash Wednesday on March 5, 2025.

I never heard about this ceremony. I am learning new things every day.

Litigation Dismissed

Legal filings reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, allegedly responsible for the cancer risk rates in the surrounding Black neighborhoods.

The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 to curb the plant’s chloroprene emissions, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. (From The Guardian)

It reminds me of the Floyd lead in the water "national emergency", caused by incompetent operators in that Black town. That was in Barack Obama's times. 

Confidence in the principal study (NTP, 1998) is judged to be high as it was a well-designed study using two test species (rats and mice) with 50 animals per dose group.  (I am not proposing that there was absolutely no risk, but that it was extremely small. No epidemiological studies of human cancer were mentioned in the studies. The EPA only considers the risk for the more extreme cases, say for sickly newborns. The cost of protection against the probably inexistent risk was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It would have been cheaper to resettle the community.)

Fat, Healthy and Happy

Scientific American: 

Growing evidence shows that many people can be considered overweight and healthy The new medications, technically known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, are used to promote substantial weight loss, cause a host of cardiometabolic improvements, and treat type 2 diabetes. (Drugs for the latter include a form of semaglutide sold as Ozempic.) But when a person who had been taking one of these medications stops, the hunger cues it had suppressed come raging back, which causes the weight to return. Other health benefits of the drugs, such as reduced blood pressure, also tend to bounce back after stopping treatment.

Bad day

My Gan Yavne project finds resistance in the Bodek Techen engineer. He has an inferiority complex, tries to impress me, is an imbecile, disputes the Certified surveyor's plan, and semi-insults me.                                                                                                                                            Lavenganzaseraterrible.                                                                                                                                                                                                   The next morning, I mailed a detailed description of his cretinous demands to my client and his boss. It was a mistake! No one loves trouble; they want to believe that things are working out smoothly and human relations are harmonious. I may be stamped as a troublemaker to avoid.  

Yet Another Day

Had a phone meeting with Nissim of the Taagid and Avi of AMPM at 07.00 AM because of Nissim's daily schedule. I have to adjust my hours to the business hours of my environment. This change reduces my productivity. 

President Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports and suspended foreign aid, and the NASDAQ fell. The Trump administration said the tariffs were necessary to stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States. Weapon industries are thriving. I bought מנועי בית שמש that works for the Army.