Friday, May 29 — Day 12

Last day of the trial. Mental-math fluency, full valence review, Abraham Accords.

Math — fluency

No new technique. All the tools you have:

  • Times tables to 15 × 15.
  • (a + b)(c + d) for two-digit × two-digit.
  • GCF / LCM / fraction operations as keep-alive.

Today is about speed and confidence. If 22 × 13 takes you more than 30 seconds, drill the breakdown until it doesn't.

Science — valence across all three rows

Today's exam pulls valence from rows 1, 2, and 3. The pattern is the same in every row:

Group number (1-2, 13-18) = valence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

If you can write the elements out in their groups, you don't have to memorize valence separately — you can derive it.

History — Abraham Accords + the through-line

AccordYear
Abraham Accords2020

Today's review pulls earlier accords too — Versailles, Oslo, Westphalia.

The Abraham Accords (2020) normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, later Morocco and Sudan. Notable for what they didn't do: they didn't address the Palestinian question. The deal worked around it. Many commentators — and the Palestinians themselves — see this as the Versailles-style problem all over again: a "peace" arranged over the heads of the people whose lives are at stake.

The through-line of this week:

  • Westphalia worked because it set rules everyone bought into.
  • Versailles failed because the losers had no stake in the outcome.
  • Oslo failed because Palestinians were promised statehood and got more occupation.
  • Abraham Accords sidelined the Palestinian question entirely.

Who's at the table turns out to matter as much as what's signed.

Today's exam (20 questions)

  • 8 math (mixed mental-math drill)
  • 1 GCF + 1 LCM (or fraction-add + fraction-mul on B)
  • 3 valence (mix across rows 1-3)
  • 4 peace accords (Abraham + review)
  • 3 evolution (big arc — Big Bang to Homo sapiens)

Warm-up

  • Mental-math sprint: pick 10 random pairs of 2-digit numbers ≤ 25, solve each in your head, write only the answer.
  • Read the 12-accord timeline once, in order by year.
  • Read the evolution timeline once, in order by mya.

And: what three weeks of this added up to

Three weeks. 12 days of focused work. Started with not knowing GCF. Ending with mental-math on 17 × 25, valence-driven bonding intuition, the full evolution timeline, and a real understanding of why some peace deals work and others don't.

That is a lot.

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