Pirates of Barbary

 The pirates of Barbary (Algeria) kidnapped and enslaved millions of Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nothing was done; they paid the ransoms in gold. Till they made a mistake: they kidnapped a few Americans. President Adams sent the new republic's marines, and the whole Barbarian business ended quickly. 

Today, Iran and Yemen are trying to tax maritime traffic. Europe is impotent and will pay, as always. All are looking at President Trump to send in the Marines.

"Hostia, hostia, ¡a tomar por culo! "

 Today, a missile was intercepted over my head, and pieces fell in the neighborhood. I don't know what this thing is; maybe it is part of a missile from Iran. It caused some damage to an apartment, while the people were safe in the basement. I downloaded the pic from the media. The Gov asks not to publish anything, but this has already been published. 

Iran is attacking left and right, frightening half the universe. The Spanish have the ugliest attitude, their President announced: "Why should we be suffering? We did nothing. It's all because of the Jews." This resonates with Europeans as they will pay more for gas, spend on re-arming, and their chronic stagnation will turn into a full recession. 

From La Vanguardia, a progressive Spanish paper, today:

 "Hostia, hostia, ¡a tomar por culo! Nos estamos desconectando": así reaccionaron en el centro del control de Red Eléctrica (REE). Si España no existiera, habría que inventarla.

Status and Prole

The political consequences of low elite fertility among the Roman elites were highly unstable succession to the Roman throne and frequent internal conflicts. Hereditary succession was acceptable to the senate, "but the main problem was that from the time of Augustus to the mid-third century (almost three centuries), only three emperors – Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, and Septimius Severus – had sons who could inherit."

The Changing Middle East

Syria's former and current ruling couple. 

Western values are not winning. 

 

Crabtree's Prediction

 
From Wikipedia:   In 2013, Crabtree published "Our Fragile Intellect" in Trends in Genetics, The prediction that our intellectual abilities are genetically fragile was based on the determined rate of human de novo mutations (those mutations that appear in each generation). This rate has been determined in several human populations to be about 1.20 x10^-8 per nucleotide per generation with an average father's age of 29.7 years. This rate doubles every 16.5 years with the father's age and ascribes most of the new mutations to the father during the production of reproductive cells.  Thus about 45 to 60 new mutations occur per generation per human genome with each new generation.  The conclusion that the accumulation of these new mutations over the generations would lead to intellectual fragility was based on the estimate of the fraction of genes necessary for normal development of the nervous system, which is thought to be several thousand. The nervous system is unique in that an extraordinarily large number of genes are required for the development and function of the brain, representing perhaps 10–20% of all human genes. The simple combination of the number of genes required for normal brain development (>1000) and the fact that each human generation has 45-60 new mutations per genome led Crabtree to suggest that our intellectual abilities are particularly genetically fragile over many generations.

His thesis: Each generation, humans accumulate ~50–60 new mutations. Most are harmless. But some are slightly harmful and aren’t removed. They stack. Over ~3,000 years, humans may have accumulated multiple mutations affecting cognition. In the past, natural selection filtered out harmful traits. Today, modern society buffers survival, meaning that those mutations may persist rather than be removed.

I think that natural selection is active no less than before, and intelligent people do reproduce themselves. Today, that is unclear because of the general mixing that takes place. 

Half of TASE's trade is by foreigners

TASE, Tel Aviv's stock exchange, is gaining popularity among financial circles. TASE is not only the best market in the world, but also the inflow of foreign currency has strengthened the Israeli shekel tremendously. Personally, it means that the modest profits from my savings allowed me to help my daughter buy a nice kitchen. 

From Globes: "The scale of foreign trading activity has increased, among other things, following the transition to a Monday-Friday trading format, which contributes to deepening liquidity in the market."

TASE data also show that foreign investors have deepened their trading activity in Tel Aviv throughout the war. The share of foreign investors in daily trading on the TASE jumped from 35% before the war to 41% of trading during the war. The boom in trading in dual-traded stocks is important to the TASE for another reason. Following the recent listing of US cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks in Tel Aviv TASE VP economic department Ron Klein explains, "We are seeing a very significant increase in companies contacting us regarding dual listing. I estimate that we will see a significant number of new dual listing companies."

The illustration is unrelated to the kitchen mentioned above. 

Iranian Rial and its worth

I think the Rial originally was the Spanish Real made from Mexican silver, which was the currency accepted all over the world in the 16th Century.  

Each silver real weighed 3.433 grams at a fineness of 93.1% silver. Today's silver price (March 23, 2026): $70.78 per troy ounce (31.1035 g). One Spanish real would be equivalent to $7.28 USD. Ten Million Iranian Rials would be worth... not much.