Blog/June 2018/Jun 29th

June 29th

Another week without Esther; fortunately, she’s coming back on Monday, B”H!

In the meantime, Mom and I kept ourselves busy with the usual work and errands. Nothing exciting to report on that front. Although I did convert one of the lamps she’d shipped from US to Israeli standards. No, that’s not exciting, I know.

A new study from Oxford suggests what I’ve said in the past: that is quite likely we are alone in the observable universe. The actual paper is interesting if you’ve a scientific bent, in particular if you are interested in observational bias. TL;DR: there’s a very good chance we are alone, so Fermi’s Paradox is not a paradox. Pace, “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” and all SciFi fans (myself included).

Of interest:

• The “Barkan” winery in Israel made a bad decision when it chose to accommodate the “Eida HaHaredit” hekhsher and not allow Ethiopian (Jewish) workers in parts of the processing. They’ve since rescinded that decision, but not before reaping a whirlwind of protest.
• “Keybase” now offers “exploding” messages, which means they “self-destruct” after a certain time. Not sure how all that works, since I didn’t delve into it much.
• A spin-off of Israeli terror-tunnel-detection technology: safer and cheaper colonoscopies. In the meantime, the Arabs’ contributions to a better world are… ???

The past couple years has seen increasing radicalization and incivility in discourse, primarily (but not exclusively) on the “left” of the political spectrum. It’s become so bad in the US, that people on the far-Left actively wish for disaster, to justify their hatred of Trump. Doesn’t matter that his policies so far have been more in line with the Left than the Right, he’s Evil Incarnate for now. Of course, you might recall that just a few short years ago, G. W. Bush was Evil Incarnate — but mirabile dictu! — he’s now praised as “thoughtful” and “reasonable” by the same ones who had previously delegated him to Dante’s seventh level.

The Mainstream Media (MSM) don’t help when they publish blatant lies as if they’re fact, and then post a retraction in a back-page somewhere. And they wonder why the meme “fake news” has caught-on? Do they not understand that anyone can fact-check them with a few queries on the internet?

In formerly Great Britain, the situation is really bad for free-speech and general freedoms. People are being arrested and serving jail-time for jokes. That’s not funny, at all.

In South Africa, the situation is dire. You won’t hear about it in the MSM, because whites being slaughtered by blacks doesn’t fit with the whole “Rainbow Coalition” narrative. But white Afrikaners are in danger of genocide, and South Africa is poised for a race-based civil war. And nobody cares except for the Afrikaners.

Travel tip: don’t go to Britain or South Africa any time soon.

One of my 8th users asked a question about how to do something. When I tried to follow his instructions I found that my newest code (pre-release) didn’t work… so I had to spend some mental effort figuring that out. Then another person found a bug in 8th on Windows 64-bit. So I spent more mental effort on that. And then I found a “buglet” on Windows using an alternative terminal (MSys2 or Cygwin). So now I’m trying to figure that out. My users are getting anxious for a new release, but I have to try to get these issues properly resolved first.

It’s been fun, being alone with Mom for a month and a half, but I think both of us are looking forward to Esther’s Return!

Mom and I are alone once more, for the last time (hopefully), this shabbat. I’m preparing:
homemade onion-rye-sourdough rolls, baked salmon, baked potatoes, onion pashtida, mushroom pashtida, green salad, egg salad, cinnamon rolls, and homemade berry ice-cream.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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