Blog/April 2019/Apr 25th

April 25th

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As I mentioned last week, the last day of pesaḥ starts on Thursday night, so the blog is being published Thursday morning.

The seder meal went well, B”H, as it always does. The notables dining with us were convivial, the food was excellent, the story a cliff-hanger. I think we’ll do it again, next year…

This week being the “intermediate days” of the holiday, we did little but “hang out”, eat, talk, drink, and be merry. Well, as merry as I get; but you understand, no doubt. Esther and I both stayed home most of the time and tried to refrain from commercial activity. That was unfortunately easier for me than it should be.

Jeremy’s being admitted to the hospital again after he was experiencing severe discomfort; hopefully he’ll get released in time to make it back to Baltimore before the holiday starts there. But if not, at least he’s in good hands at the moment.

Sarah’s returning to her former employer (as I’d mentioned before) and should be starting her managerial training next week. Right-on, Sarah!

And now for something completely different:

• I left my p**p in San Francisco…
• Another one bites the dust. As the saying now goes, “Get ‘woke’, go broke!”
• Hard-hitting piece by Vox on AOC’s astrological chart.
• Gillette is really trying hard! Trying hard to alienate its customers, that is.
• And you may not know it, but apparently “AI” (artificial intelligence) has a “white guy problem”. I wish I had made that up, but the world is bonkers.

A company is claiming it has “hacker-proof” cryptography. Their claim is that they have mathematically proven their code library is unhackable. I discussed this with some professional cryptographers, and the conclusion was that while it’s indeed possible to design code with certain mathematical guarantees, it is impossible to make any guarantees against future attack vectors, since they are by definition unknown at this point. The best one can say is that a given bit of code has been proven to be “unhackable” by current methods. That’s a powerful statement in and of itself, but it’s far from the hyperbolic claims the company is making.

Nota bene: if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

What’s not too good to be true is our fine weather! It’s been pleasantly warm this week, but not too warm. What is too good to be true is having it continue; the next several days will be hotter than usual by quite a bit! Ah, such is life!

There are no guests this time, but we have been invited out for dinner tonight. We’ll enjoy:
homemade whole-wheat soft matza, lamb and fava stew, Basmati rice, chicken schnitzel, mina de carne, roasted eggplant, various salatim, and chocolate nut-clusters.

Until next time,
ḥag pesaḥ sameaḥ and shabbat shalom!

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