Elon Musk dixit

 

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

·

5h

Nothing else matters if birth rate is far below replacement rate

Zionist Robot

Mentibus - the first Israeli robot. Non-military. 170 cm 70 kg eyes 360 degrees. "Any customer can have a Mentibus painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." - misquoted from Henry Ford. 

Esthetically, White Optimus of TESLA is more attractive. Japanese skin-coloured sex robots seem even huggable. No one will fall in love with Mentibus.

V'ger progresses through the space-time fabric

Voyager I continues to explore the universe and is approaching 1 light day from Earth.  The universe's space-time fabric processes information at 299,388 km/s.  c in Planck space is 1. V'ger's cause-and-effect progress takes a full Earth day to reach here.

Its mission is to gather information and send it to Earth. In the sci-fi movie, while cruising the universe, it is captured by another civilization, and they add capabilities to become a massive, thinking object. V'ger comes back to Earth searching for its creator to discharge all its data.  

Why debasement and what to do

 

Debasement refers to smooth inflation, and we are all feeling its effects. In times of inflation, where should you put your savings?

As an inflation hedge, Israeli real estate has historically performed very well. Real estate requires a long time horizon and comes with liquidity constraints and transaction costs.

After all, for high-end applications, silver is the way to go. Most conductive metal, and it serves as a monetary metal

The gods loved barbecues

The Ancients believed the gods loved the aroma of burnt sacrifice.  When animals were sacrificed and burned on altars, the rising smoke was thought to carry the essence of the offering up to the gods. This created a mutually beneficial relationship between humans who ate the meat, while the gods received honor and the aromatic essence. The fragrant smoke demonstrated piety and maintained the relationship between mortals and immortals.

The site at Mt. Ebal had two occupation levels. Zertal calls the older occupation "level II" which he dates 1300 BC and the younger level I to 1250 BC.If this site is no older than 1300 BC, then none of it could be built by Joshua, because the exodus took place in 1400 BC. However this is a Hebrew altar built during the time of Deborah the Judge and underneath we believe is the actual altar of Joshua that should be dated to 1400 BC since a scarab from Tuthmosis III was found but wrongly dated to 1250 BC.

The Orthodox Jews maintain about one thousand shohatim - many of them in Argentina and Uruguay -, who sacrifice the cattle and ensure that the meat is kosher. Two thousand years have passed since the Temple's cohanim and levi'im were disbanded, but the Jewish priestly caste succeeded in maintaining its social position and extracting its divinely ordained share. Amazing!

Seers

Herodotus shows this constantly throughout the Histories:  Both Greeks and Persians were deeply reliant on seers (manteis) and omens before major decisions, especially military ones.

Xerxes regularly consults Magi (the Persian priestly caste who served as seers) and pays attention to dreams and portents. Before crossing the Hellespont, there are elaborate rituals and divination. The Greeks are even more conspicuous about it - Spartan kings like Leonidas and later Pausanias, accompanied by seers, and they won't move armies without favorable sacrifices.

A striking example: at Plataea, the Spartans under Pausanias endure Persian arrow volleys while waiting for favorable omens from sacrifice. Men are dying around them, but they won't advance until the seer Tisamenus declares the signs are good. Only then do they attack.

The Athenians, too, consult Delphi about the Persian invasion, and the oracle's ambiguous prophecies about "wooden walls" become crucial to their strategy. The Seven against Thebes were led by the seer Amphiaraus (pic), who foresaw the death of all of them. 

What's interesting is that Herodotus presents this as universal behavior - not peculiarly Greek or Persian. Croesus consults oracles, the Egyptians have their own forms of divination, and the Scythians use willow rods. For Herodotus' world, the divine constantly intervenes in human affairs, and ignoring signs or seers leads to disaster. Those who disregard prophecies (like Croesus's misunderstanding of Delphi) pay dearly.

The Hebrews had the urim and tumim, but I am unsure what they were. I'll ask Claude.

Hunting those tasty Neandertals

Numerous Neanderthal bones recovered from archaeological sites bear unmistakable marks of butchery—cut marks from defleshing and fracture patterns consistent with marrow extraction. The larger bones, particularly the femurs and tibias, exhibit characteristic notching and pitting, indicating that someone systematically cracked them open to access the nutrient-rich marrow. Some bones even display signs of "retouching"—secondary modifications indicating they were later repurposed as tools for sharpening stone implements. In other words, whoever consumed these individuals subsequently used their remains as whetstones.

The chronology is particularly striking: these butchered bones date to the period when Homo sapiens first arrived in Europe. The evidence suggests newcomers hunted young Neanderthals and processed them with stone tools using techniques identical to those used for game animals. Neanderthals disappeared rapidly after contact with our species. While various theories attempt to explain this—climate change, genetic bottlenecks, competitive exclusion—the archaeological record points toward a simpler explanation: they were hunted as food.

This interpretation finds support in ethnographic accounts. Societies that practised cannibalism consistently describe human flesh as resembling pork in taste and texture. New Guinea communities famously termed humans "long pig" and consumed them at communal feasts. The notion that such practices served purely ceremonial functions or represented symbolic absorption of an enemy's strength strikes me as a wishful reinterpretation. The more straightforward answer is that people hunted and ate Neandertals because they found the meat tasty and nutritious. Meeting Homo sapiens was very bad news for every one of God's creatures.