Bad smell

Something is dead in the rafters; no doubt one or more of those noisy rats that were fraying our nerves and probably the electrical cables.

The stench permeates down, no matter the amount of agarbattis lit, or the number of hours that windows are flung open to the spring breeze. A grandson asks about the smell of broccoli in the house; others say there is an odd smell of cooking; but we know the truth. It's corruption in the higher echelons, death raining down from above, the farts of an old disgruntled god.

Son No. 1 has sold his fancy bicycle and, with the earnings, bought the thin charcoal sliver of a Macbook pro. Today he was showing me the amazing stuff he's able to accomplish on it, with AI chatbots and agents; building slick bespoke websites on the fly and launching them on Netlify; juggling assignments from international clients that he and two partners, located elsewhere on the planet, handle with professional dexterity.

Makes my own primitive efforts look like I'm still in the stone age; which I think he believes I am, ha ha. "You're so much into tech stuff", he will say, "how come you are so antagonistic to AI"? When I point out all the bad stuff it's doing, he will say that's only like electricity; i.e. amoral, capable of bad or good - and shortly to be just as ubiquitous.

As soon as his wife finishes her latest assignment for TV, they and their two small kids will leave next month for the east, renting out their beautiful recently built house for a year or more. Like many young people, they feel like they've had enough. On the other hand, as he says, this family adventure has been a long time in the making. The world is full of pockets of Israeli emigres, just as it is of Russians or other less fortunate people escaping wars or rotten regimes. Good luck to them. For now, we'll just have to live with the bad smell.