Blog/August 2018/Aug 3rd

August 3rd

This week, a baby update: they’re completely beautiful!

Actually, Esther was going through old pictures to find ones of Daniela when she was a baby. Mom, Esther, and I all thought that Naomi looks just like Daniela; Sarah thinks we’re wrong. I won’t post pictures of Daniela so as not to embarrass her, but you know we’re right…

Esther and I were busy working as usual, but we did take one evening off to attend the “Jerusalem Wine Festival”. Last year we missed it for various reasons, and were looking forward to it. We went with friends, on one of the less busy evenings.

So: when we first attended the event a number of years ago, many vineyards were represented. This time, there was a much smaller group of them. When we first attended, the vineyards each brought at least one or two bottles of “something special” — that is, not the ordinary wine one would find in any store. This year, for the most part, it was all ordinary wine. The food kiosks offered only desserts or fast-food, nothing like real food. At least the “non-kosher” wines were marked clearly, unlike the last time we attended.

I was quite disappointed with the event; not to mention that the price is now double what it was when we first attended. I’m not keen to go back next year, which is a shame — I always looked forward to the event.

“Fake” news!

• Socialism is “in” amongst young Americans. The election of the extraordinarily unqualified Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY is just one manifestation. The support for fiscally irresponsible and untenable policies is another. I guess they’re too busy demanding free stuff to take a look at literally every place where socialism has been in effect. Like Cuba, Venezuela, much of Africa, China, the USSR, Nazi Germany…
• Oh, and don’t say, “But Sweden!”. Sweden (and Norway/Denmark/ etc.) are not socialist countries. They are capitalist countries which have decided to squander the fortune amassed over centuries for a comfortable life in the short-term. They’re backing-off from their social programs even now, since they’re not sustainable.
• “Progressive” Socialist policies in action: San Francisco has just introduced a new ordinance mandating that companies may not offer employees a free lunch. So the workers have to spend their salaries supporting the extremely overpriced eateries around them (or brown-bag it, like I always did).
• “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is real and it’s getting worse: the Washington Post’s “fact checking” is just wrong and clearly partisan. Who can you trust? I don’t care much for Trump, but he isn’t always wrong.
• On the other hand, he is wrong about the threat of 3D guns. The panic over people using expensive machines and printer goop to produce mediocre weapons is causing officials to act imprudently and possibly un-Constitutionally. I suppose they didn’t notice how people fail to use regular printers before panicking about 3D printers. Honestly: any competent mechanic with ordinary metalworking tools can produce better guns than what these “3D” plastic printers can produce. And it’s much cheaper to just buy an illegal gun, if that’s what you’re after.

I spent a significant amount of time this week wrapping my head around Automotive Grade Linux, since it’s the next platform I want 8th to support. Getting their development environment up and running and functioning properly has been a bigger challenge than one would expect given their documentation. But I was able to contact people at the heart of their development team, and get some help getting set-up. I was even told by their CTO that 8th is a “great project”! So maybe they’ll give me even more help…

The weather was oddly cool for the season this week; I would even say it’s been about as cool a summer’s week as I can remember in the past 11 years since we moved here. Yes, we celebrated our 11th “aliyaversary” this week (Gregorian date; the Hebrew date was last week). In any event, the weather is supposed to warm back up to normal summer temps over shabbat and then cool off a bit in the coming week. Lovely, and unexpected in August!

This shabbat we’ve got some lovely guests. They’ll be fed:
homemade ḥalla, chicken cacciatore, orzo, baked salmon, oven-roasted potatoes and yams, other things which haven’t yet occurred to us, various salatim, and banana bread.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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