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Yesterday at the college was primarily quiet. I got work done, but the items that demanded immediate attention were easily dealt with. Today I woke up to my alarm at 08:00 and only a bit after that was sitting by my desktop dealing with somewhat more pressing work issues. It's now almost 16:00, and though I haven't been working straight through I've had no problem keeping busy, and on the whole busier than yesterday. Though it might have been easier to work from the college it was also good to be here. Phil and Debbie are finalizing their plans for leaving Shabbat morning (unless planes are once again cancelled), and it's good to have someone around who can deal with the Hebrew when that's called for.
Tzippi tells me that during the night there were two preliminary alerts, one at about 02:30 and another perhaps an hour and a half later. I think I remember the first one, and draw a complete blank concerning the second. If I slept through it I certainly don't feel guilty about doing so. People in the north, however, probably didn't sleep at all. There was apparently a continual barrage of missiles. One of the topics on last night's late night news was why army intelligence, that apparently had information that it was going to be a noisy night, didn't warn the residents in advance. Some commentators explained that it was because the army didn't want to let Hezbollah know that the IDF knew of that plan. One columnist in today's HaAretz noted that (via Google Translate):
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Reading between the lines, the pretty obvious conclusion is that either the army or the government decided that placing Israeli citizens in danger was more important than letting the enemy know that we knew of their plans. I guess that's par for the course.
So far today we've had (if I remember correctly) only one preliminary alert. So other than the fact that I've spent most of my day working by the computer (instead, I guess, of reading from the screen) it's been a quiet day.
It remained quiet into the evening. Because the dining room is closed we're eating almost all of our meals at home (unless we go to a restaurant, which we've done too much for my taste of late), and there are more of us, including Eitan who's been joining us. So we've been running the dishwasher pretty much every day, and I've been washing considerably more dishes than usual. Luckily it's a job I generally enjoy.
We had one preliminary alert in the mid afternoon, and then only one again this evening. We didn't have to visit our safe room at all. Does that mean the war is winding down? Probably not. It does, however, mean that even if we're not exactly getting used to this abnormal situation, it's still becoming business as usual. As I've previously noted, because Phil and Debbie are here we're not catching much of the news, though we have clicked into CNN for them. Am I missing something? I think so. And it's not only that I'm a news junkie. It's also a feeling of taking part in a collective activity, and perhaps even something a bit ritualistic. I certainly don't believe everything my government is telling me, and I suppose that my opinions and understandings are very different from the vast majority of those taking part in our never ending discussion programs. But for some reason it feels like an obligation. On the other hand, obligation or not, I didn't finish washing the dishes until the end of the news so we didn't watch them, and then instead of watching the next semi-news broadcast we put on a movie. And again, I don't feel guilty. One thing I did catch on the news was a collection of what I guess were snippets of speeches by Trump, Netanyahu and the Shah's son, apparently calling on the Iranian people to throw off the yoke of the Ayatoullas. I'm not against it, but they all seem to think that the Iranians are desperate for their help. And Trump is probably also losing his patience. Soon we might hear him say that if they don't rise up soon he's going to lose his patience and abandon them.
I hear that Tzippi has shut off the shower, so I'm on my way now, and I'll finish and send this while drying off.
Now I'm pretty dried off, and I wasn't surprised by an alert while showering so I don't think there's anything pressing that needs to be added here. I am, however, including here a paragraph I've prepared throughout the day relating to Libbe's request of the article on the desirability of difficulty in learning that I mentioned.
Here's the link: Difficulty Is the Point. It's by Carlo Iacono, an academic librarian in Australia whose Substack I've been reading for perhaps half a year. He primarily writes about AI from a very convincing perspective. His basic approach is that the fact that LLMs can write what they do means that we have to figure out what we can do that they can't. Frankly I was a bit surprised when he posted this latest post a couple of days ago. He certainly makes the point better (and from a wider perspective) than I do. I'm also attaching here two of my latest blogposts (there was one in between these) that dealt pretty much with the same subject. They were written in Hebrew and I've translated them via Google Translate with minimum changes. Had I written them in English they'd be different, even if the content is pretty much the same.
For now ...
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