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Airport Ceiling iPhone 6S Málaga, Spain Monday, August 28th, 2017.
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Momentum has its own momentum.
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Rauschenbike iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Tuesday, August 27th, 2024.
Lovely Rishpon iPhone SE 2020 Rishpon, Israel Tuesday, August 20th, 2024.
Late Night Kiryat Sharet iPhone SE 2020 Ra'anana, Israel Tuesday, August 13th, 2024.
Azrieli Structures iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Ladies & Matkal Tower iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Telawiwi #2! iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Near Nevei Ne’eman iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Monday, August 5th, 2024.
A Spot of Mine iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Monday, August 5th, 2024.
Friday Market Near Carlebach iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Friday, August 2nd, 2024.
Crazy New Developments iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Friday, August 2nd, 2024.
Beach Tableau iPhone SE 2020 Herzlia, Israel Wednesday, July 31st, 2024.
Eucalyptus with Dilapidation iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Tuesday, July 30th, 2024.
Kelly Maud along the River Adur iPhone SE 2020 Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England Sunday, June 16th, 2024.
Well That’s Nice iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Saturday, May 25th, 2024.
Tube View iPhone SE 2020 London, England Monday, May 6th, 2024.
Ono Yoko iPhone SE 2020 London, England Monday, May 6th, 2024.
On a nice walks iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, April 21st, 2024.
What Went Wrang #2 iPhone SE 2020 Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland Wednesday, March 20th, 2024.
That’s the Scotland iPhone SE 2020 Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland Wednesday, March 20th, 2024.
Train Station with Angles iPhone SE 2020 Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland Wednesday, March 20th, 2024.
Celtic are Turds iPhone SE 2020 Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland Wednesday, March 20th, 2024.
Glasgow’s One Giant Glass Ceiling iPhone SE 2020 Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland Tuesday, March 19th, 2024.
Goodbye Old Friends iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Thursday, February 22nd, 2024.
All Aboard iPhone SE 2020 Dieppe, France Saturday, February 17th, 2024.
Le Musée du Louvre iPhone SE 2020 Paris, France Friday, February 16th, 2024.
9:48pm UTC
Monday, October 28th, 2024
The Knesset has finally banned UNRWA, the humanitarian agency serving as strategic weapon against Israel since 1949.
Good bonkers, I’m Adam S Khan, S for Samuel.
I develop work systems at Engaging; and am founder and user-in-chief at RSSDeck, the browsing platform for the rss’d of us.
I live in Brighton, England with Irit and our kids and dog Kelly Maud.
Thanks for dropping by — it’s my pleasure to host you.
Sunday, January 5th, 2025
This New York Times (brilliantly designed) interview with Secretary Anthony Blinken cap-ends the Biden Administration. On Gaza, he says:
My goal has been to end this conflict in Gaza in a way that makes sure that Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again, that ends the suffering of people and does it in an enduring way that brings the hostages home.
I’m not happy about the order here, but okay. But in the next answer he continues:
First, you’ve got to end the conflict in Gaza.
These two positions are contradictory, and that has been the failure of the Biden Administration here. In pressing for the conflict to end NOW, regardless of victory, ensures that his previously-stated goals — ending the suffering of people, enduringly, and with hostages home — will not be met.
There is an immediacy sickness in western discourse. Wanting things NOW, Peace NOW, return the hostages NOW, is infantile and counterproductive. Disdaining plans is akin to disdaining institutions.
Yes, Davar still exists as a publication of Israel’s Histadrut. There’s a great piece by Or Paz-Ivry published in February, 2024 entitled “The Path Not Taken: Yigal Allon’s Approach to the Gaza Strip”.
Now more than ever, Israel is in need of an Allon-esque approach to security, what he referred to as “a strategy of peace.” As part of this conception, the possibility of Jordan playing the stabilizing role that Allon suggested in his plan must be reexamined, as many of the geopolitical conditions that Allon described at the time still exist today, despite the passage of time. These conditions lead to the conclusion that Jordan must be a central partner in any political solution…
I was saying this myself 20+ years ago. A pity in my ignorance I had no idea there was a strong thread of thought along these lines, articulated by a major Israeli figure whom history has regrettably sidelined. I am an Allonite.
Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
In reading what would be Yitzhak Rabin’s final speech to the Knesset, the Prime Minister reassures his colleagues regarding the Oslo Accords:
The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
He goes on to argue:
An examination of the maps and of the paragraphs of the agreement regarding the additional stages of the redeployment shows that Israel retains complete freedom of action, in order to implement its security and political objectives relating to the permanent solution, and that the division of the areas gives the IDF and the security branches complete security control in Areas B and C, except for the urban areas.
But this belies what the accords state in Annex IV: Protocol Concerning Legal Affairs, Article I.a, namely that Area C “except for the Settlements and the military locations, will be gradually transferred to the Palestinian side in accordance with this Agreement”.
It seems the idea was for Israel to leave Areas A and B, allow Israeli forces to enter Area B to protect Israelis, and leave for a future date a negotiation over how much of C will also be handed over. The text covering this is in Article XIII: Security:
Further redeployments from Area C and transfer of internal security responsibility to the Palestinian Police in Areas B and C will be carried out in three phases, each to take place after an interval of six months, to be completed 18 months after the inauguration of the Council, except for the issues of permanent status negotiations and of Israel’s overall responsibility for Israelis and borders.
That is a big “except for” yet it appears in the sentence as a kind of afterthought — “to be completed except for some important bits”
The Area C handover never happened yet the Palestinians nonetheless presume, along with pretty much all of the international community except some Americans, that it belongs to them. Israel is presented as oppressing the Palestinians by not letting them build there; theoretical dollar amounts are placed on natural resources that the Palestinians are being blocked from exploiting in Area C, like some sort of bill to Israel that is being added up.
The question now is whether it would better to clarify all this or leave it in the current limbo. I would say it does; if Israel unilaterally annexes some of Area C, as the Likud campaigned on in 2019, that does not preclude it from annexing more later. The status quo seems to be however that both sides are willing to sneak around Area C, each hoping the other will somehow eventually disappear.
At Bar Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center, Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal (recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking) is concerned that in Lebanon Israel has “launched an operation against infrastructure, not against an enemy”.
Thursday, December 19th, 2024
Sometimes one must check in with the other side, such as it is. So this is “Prof. John Mearsheimer on the Fall of Assad: Syria Will Be in CHAOS For the Forseeable Future” on Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground Vimeo channel. With Mearsheimer’s erudition, University of Chicago credentials and light New York area accent, now I understand why he is taken seriously, yet even he must politely push back against this charlatan Rattansi with the constant bitter laugh, who signs off with:
Continued condolences to those surviving UK/US/EU-armed genocide here in this region. We’ll be back on Monday with the legendary Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.
It was worth having 28 minutes on just for that. What twaddle.
Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
In The Jerusalem Post, Gil Murciano, CEO of the Mitvim Institute, pleas for Israeli engagement with the new Syria, deriding “splendid isolation” and the “village in the jungle” mentality. For one, if we don’t, the Iranians will be back in full force, willing to help out.
In retrospect, when I used to blog more, this issue was perhaps my main one outside of navel-gazing. Of course, hanging back is the lesson of Menachem Begin’s intervention in Lebanon in the early 1980s; and when he intervened, he was breaking an already-established norm.
There’s no doubt that Israel is in the center of the region, and her actions affect others. So there could be even more authority garnered by being very obviously clearly not interested in intervening in other countries, which is an unusual stance. But hasn’t that Rubicon now been crossed? Perhaps not; Israel’s shockwaves affecting others is not quite so new as it seems; regimes fall after wars with Israel — that’s how Nasser and Assad himself came to power.
I’m torn; while I tend towards the engagement direction, prudence suggests hanging back and staying out of the maelstrom of Middle Eastern affairs as much as is feasible. How much does the Powell Doctrine — you break it, you own it — apply?
Tuesday, December 10th, 2024
John Podhoretz wonders what can explain Obama-Biden policy towards Iran. Michael E. Ginsberg has an answer in American Greatness: “The Biden Administration and Iran: DEI Manifested as Foreign Policy”:
Iran is DEI catnip. For the DEI crowd, Iran today is a non-Western, Third World country, the alleged victim of Western meddling and colonialism that threw off its supposedly Western-imposed chains and established a government whose defining characteristic was hostility to the West. It was the perfect petri dish for a new foreign policy rooted in Western self-abasement, guilt, and deference to “indigenous” voices.
The resulting behavior is a vivid example of the cul-de-sac you go up when you willfully defy reality this way. And when you are responsible for the security and flourishing of the free world, it’s a scandal for the ages.
Friday, December 6th, 2024
David P. Goldman’s back! His piece in Law & Liberty, “China as It Is”, is educational and deft.
The geography of China meant that flood control could not be undertaken locally. It required the full resources of an empire across the 8,000 miles of the Yellow and Yangtse Rivers, not counting tributaries. That was China’s equivalent of Manifest Destiny.
Saturday, November 30th, 2024
Michael Beckley of Tufts gives a mind-blowingly impressive 37-minute lecture on China hitting a great wall.
Thursday, November 28th, 2024
The Reverse Shot’s review by Julien Allen of A Matter of Life & Death does the movie justice. Some 75 years after the movie was made in part apparently to bolster post-war morale and Anglo-American relations, its dive into the relative merits of the USA and the UK is a surprising delight. The visual effects too are wonderfully crafted — it must have opened the minds of viewers such as Stanley Kubrick to the standards possible if you care enough.
Friday, November 22nd, 2024
The guy with the great hair at Web Dev Simplified has made a “How To Handle Permissions Like A Senior Dev” video which addresses the issues that my Engaging OS handles. He comes to a slightly different solution, relying on a third-party setup, something I hadn’t even thought of doing, abstracting out the permissions. And I think I’ve been made to understand that attributes are not just a better and more detailed way to organize the user/role’s permissions, but liberate the user/role from primacy in handling permissions.
Friday, November 15th, 2024
Grades reveal who is persistent, self-disciplined, and compliant—but they don’t reveal much about emotional intelligence, relationship skills, passion, leadership ability, creativity, or courage.
David Brooks, How the Ivy League Broke America
Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
The turnaround had perhaps begun, not a moment too soon: beloved Boeing sheds DEI. This pernicious practice may not have been the original source of the rot at Boeing but its acceptance at an engineering firm was at very least a symptom.
Thursday, October 31st, 2024
Interesting erudition on Jews and Adventists [PDF].
Monday, October 28th, 2024
The Knesset has finally banned UNRWA, the humanitarian agency serving as strategic weapon against Israel since 1949.
Sunday, October 27th, 2024
Jordan B on Donald J. You know what, i think it’s all gonna be okay.
Friday, October 25th, 2024
The Manhattan Institute surveys American Jews. The more Jews attend synagogue, the more they support Trump. Only the Orthodox care most about Israel — and are the only Republican Jews. As a whole, American Jews are mostly sticking with the Democrats despite qualms. Conservatives most care about the economy and abortion equally. Reform Jews care most about abortion (wishing to enable it, presumably).
Sunday, October 20th, 2024
On Sky News, former Head of MI6 Sir John Sawyer disagrees with David Patraeus’s characterization of Sinwar’s takeout being more important than that of Osama Bin Laden — because as opposed to being “a global struggle against the West” Hamas is merely limited to “the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank”. I presume Sky News asked this question in order to get this answer. And it perfectly encapsulates my personal fundamental incompatibility with the established British viewpoint.
Saturday, October 19th, 2024
In Newsweek, Spengler on Orban’s European Zionism:
European nationalists look to Israel as a beacon of hope. It’s the only high-income country with a fertility rate above the 2.1 breakeven level — so far above breakeven at three children per female that its working-age population will more than double from today’s 4.5 million to 11 million by the end of this century, according to UN demographers.
As a member of a scientific advisory board to the Hungarian government, I have had the opportunity to speak to numerous high-ranking officials, and can attest that their admiration for Israel and the Jewish people is sincere, principled and deep. They view Israel as “the exemplar and paragon of a nation,” as Franz Rosenzweig put it.
Liberal American Jews cannot wrap their minds around the new philo-semitism among conservative European nationalists.
No further Ribbonfarm story of ribbonfarm has been, in a small one-of-a-million threads way, the story of civilization itself, through the 2007-24 period. Venkatesh Rao writes:
The story of ribbonfarm has been, in a small one-of-a-million threads way, the story of civilization itself, through the 2007-24 period.
There’s even wit in the laudatory comments.
The path out of loneliness is always a path of action.
Bret Stephens, If Israel Is Alone, What Do We Do About It?
By Armin Rosen in Unherd, the most important thing I’ve read about Sinwar and his passing:
A significant body of facts suggests that Sinwar believed he would succeed in destroying the state of Israel on or about October 7, 2023. A few years before the attacks, he co-sponsored a conference at a Gaza City hotel entitled “Promise of the Hereafter: Post-Liberation Palestine” in which participants discussed topics such as the enslavement of educated Jews and the mass execution of alleged Arab collaborators in the aftermath of Israel’s imminent violent destruction.
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
Great thread: To whom to send condolences on the death of Sinwar. A lot of Greta Thunberg.
Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
I keep going back to it to see if he’s reconsidered, so I guess I need a link to it. Paul Graham, startup hero, in his sharp and well exquisite style, tweeted on October 9th:
65 doctors, nurses, and paramedics told the New York Times what they saw in Gaza. What they saw was a pattern of children being shot in the head.
PG’s artful repetition of the fragment “what they saw” expresses his suppressed fury at Israel’s ongoing moral repugnance. I wonder, once this blood libel is debunked, if he will revisit this thread and more importantly his own priors. In such a sharp mind it’s difficult to imagine the thought framework required to arrive at this fury. PG presumes it’s true; wanting to believe it’s true requires a lot of scaffolding; actually believing it’s true requires still more.
[Update 2024 Oct 19:] Nope, he’s still at it, retweeting more of this kind of thing. Though the only thing he’s tweeted on the topic himself since is this on October 17th:
When I first saw this tweet I was horrified. Then I read the account name and I was relieved. This is from 1940. Then I remembered that the same things are happening right now, and I was horrified again.
He’s referring to this tweet from @RealTimeWWII:
Kennington Park rescue worker: “Whole thing’s blown to bits- heads, arms, legs, feet lying about. Only way you can tell girls from the men is their hair.”
Monday, October 14th, 2024
Tal Becker, a great thinker, on Call Me Back.
Monday, October 7th, 2024
Pretty troubling — in this interview with Hugh Hewitt, who asks repeatedly and gets the same answer again, Trump believes a deal can be made with Iran once they are sufficiently impoverished.
I would have had a deal a long time ago, because they were bust. They were totally busted. They were ready to make a deal. They would have made a deal. … I would have gotten, in my opinion, 50/50 chance, maybe more than that, Iran would have been in the Abraham Accords. They wanted to make a deal so bad until we had that phony election.
To his credit, Hewitt pushes back with: “I think they’re fanatics, and you can’t deal with them.”
The Jerusalem Post reports on Hamas Rape Tunnels of Gaza posters being put up in Tube stations. Generally I abhor the the mournful, sanctimonious, dull tone of British Jewish statements, but this is excellently acerbic. Very well done (I see in the bottom right corner they even put their names to it, that is unusual).
Unpleasant but necessary: this fellow Pataramesh provides sober intel on Iranian capabilities. He seems to think they are the good guys. He’s arguing that Iran’s missile strike was calibrated and limited and sends signals that it can do more.
On Twitter, Dan Linneaus writes (he’s pinned this one to the top of his profile):
Taking out Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities puts the cart before the horse..
He provides more detail here and here. This all makes sense to me: defang them first; this has the added benefit, apart from being smart, of doing what Biden asks: not hitting the oil nor nuclear facilities. Yet.
Israel just pulled off this snake-charming trick against Hizballah, degrading them for a year before delivering a hammering burst of coups de grâce; can it be done again. You know, I bloody think so.
Saturday, October 5th, 2024
Khamenei’s sermon translated in English at his homepage.
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
Good piece looking at things more from Iran’s perspective in Asia Times, “Iran has everything to lose in direct war with Israel” by Shahram Akbarzadeh.
Fighting Israel is very much a pillar of state identity in Iran. The Iranian political establishment is set up on the principle of challenging the United States and freeing Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. Those things are ingrained in the Iranian state identity. So, if Iran doesn’t act on this principle, there’s a serious risk of undermining its own identity.
Things have come down to the wire, as they do. Reportedly, the Israeli cabinet has decided on its response after a 4-hour meeting. Going by experience it will be shock and awe.
David Goldman often looks to demographics. “Improbable as it may seem,” he writes, “the core scenario according to present trends will make Israel the economic center of the Middle East sometime toward the end of the century.”
Goodness, Niall Ferguson on Bibismarck.
David Goldman tours the world with Caroline Glick with an emphasis on Israel and China.
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024
Here we fucking go, this didn’t take long.
“We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us (G7 nations) agree that they have a right to respond but the response but they should respond proportionally Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One.”
One advantage of striking back immediately would have been not having to deal with this bullshit.
On the other hand, Biden is reliable; if he says he does not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, then an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites it is. And they made a show of helping repel the attacks. And they may put in place more sanctions against Iran. And if they are willing to get out of the way, as they have eventually done each step of the journey, that is likely enough.
Stories like The Wall Street Journal’s “Israeli Response to Iran’s Attack to Set Course of Widening War” are faintly ridiculous in their discourse of retaliation and restraint. A typical quote:
“Israel will seek to reinforce the idea that its technological superiority and military skill allow it to strike any target in Iran,” said Norman Roule, who served as the top U.S. intelligence officer on Iran from 2008 to 2017. But Israel is likely to avoid striking targets that could spark a full-scale war with Iran, Roule said
Wrong. Israel is no longer playing the game of retaliation — and has stated so explicitly, as least vis-a-vis Hizballah — nor of message-sending. Whatever happens next is not retaliation but simply the next move in an existential conflict that is therefore indeed all-out war, albeit less visibly so than most due to the complexity of the theater. Further quotes in the article are more on track: “In the end, decision makers in Tehran settled for the idea that restraint would not help to avoid a bigger confrontation anyway,” they quote Walter Posch, a senior researcher with the National Defense Academy in Vienna.
Remember, Netanyahu gave what is in retrospect the most credible wartime speech ever at the UN, one that demands being pored over given that even while he spoke Nasrallah was being assassinated at his order. Much of that halo remains for a subsequent video Netanyahu made to the Iranian people, in which Israel’s long-serving Prime Minister tells them they’ll be free “sooner than people think”. I choose to take this not as credibility-spending bluster but rather with credibility-maintaining seriousness.
After all, Israel had spent much strategic energy on the devastating, ingenious take-out of Hizballah — We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years, was the IDF’s line — but Hizballah is merely Iran’s proxy. It strains credulity therefore that the forthcoming operations against Iran will be any less historic and gob-smacking. Israel would not have begun Operation New Order with the pager attack against Hizballah’s fighters without having in place the plan for Tehran.
Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
Netanyahu: “When Iran is finally free — and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different.”
Ohad Merlin’s Indigenous Pact:
Israel’s challenge in the next stage is to create a mirror image of [Iran’s] bloody proxy war. Everywhere Iran has sent its arms – that’s where Israel needs to forge alliances and contribute to the cutting of the regime’s arms. Following Ben-Gurion’s “Periphery Alliance” and Begin’s “Minority Alliance” policies, Israel must now forge the “Indigenous Alliance” between the Jewish people and other indigenous peoples and religious communities in the Middle East who are suffering under the oppression of Khamenei and his emissaries throughout the region: Druze, Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis, Christian denominations, anti-regime Shiites – and fight the Islamic Republic together.
Been wondering who is this Khaled Hassan on the Twitters. My pet theory: there’s gonna be a lot more converts to Judaism like him once this damn war is won. It’s gonna be like moving to the New World.
Monday, September 30th, 2024
“There’s something so dazzling about the contemporaneousness of the attacks,” articulates Abe Greenwald on this celebratory episode of the Commentary Daily Podcast.
Netanyahu speaks in English directly to the Iranian people. Portentously, given the newfound utter credibility he has after the last month of military voodoo, he says: “When Iran is finally free — and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different.” Italics mine.
One thing does give me pause: that this is really a speech for a United States President to make. Maybe though I’m thinking too small and it is actually an Israel-scale job to take on Iran while the USA focuses on the larger-power horizon. Maybe it’s actually a fine one-two posture where the USA is willing to defend Israel to the point of insisting others contribute, then is unhappy yet ultimately tolerant when Israeli goes on the offensive. But regardless, you go to war with the army and allies you have.
Thanks for this, jpod. In “Israel Rises”, at his Commentary Magazine, John Podhoretz feels compelled to give thanks by listing Israel’s military successes in the past month.
Whatever the divisions and concerns and cautions inside the corridors of power about the astonishing onslaught of Israel against the Iran Axis of Evil, the fact is Israel stared into the abyss and said, “Not today. Not this week. Not this month. Not ever.”
Saturday, September 28th, 2024
I had to search for this, Hizballah’s own statement on Nasrallah’s death.
True to form, The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board sums up the situation pithily in “Israel Sends Nasrallah to His Just Reward”. I like that they too noted the headline on the Jeremy Bowen BBC piece “Bowen: West left powerless as Israel claims its biggest victory yet against Hezbollah” (to be fair to him, he doesn’t put it this way in the text) placying Israel beyond the West. They commend Israel for its “remarkable display of intelligence, technological skill, and above all political will.”
Through perhaps gritted teeth and scripted statements and a day later, Biden/Harris nonetheless take the win. The line: “a measure of justice” has been served.
What a day, what a night. Between one thing and another this war has become epic. Yediot reports on the lead-up to the Nasrallah attack, emphasizing that Bibi approved it before his UN speech and that it is a continuation of the operation that began with the pagers [Hebrew]. I’d like to know when precisely it happened: presumably during the speech? And which countries stayed and who walked out. And how many people watched it around the world. And on which platforms.
Thursday, September 26th, 2024
What really is the point of designating an organization terrorist if they are to be accorded the respect of nationstates rather than cancers within nationstates? Under the hapless wastrelhood that passes for American leadership these days, the entire world is pushing for a ceasefire between Israel and Hizballah.
Perhaps however given that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are signatories, it’s merely a UN-esque burlesque, as these neighbors would like to see Hizballah gone almost as much as Israel does, and they know there is no danger of a ceasefire transpiring since these murderous fanatics Hizballah will never agree to it.
That said, while I deeply appreciate that Emirates has continued flying in and out of Ben-Gurion through thick and thin, it would be nice if they were brave enough to stand up and say No, actually we support the expunging of ruinous terrorist statelets.
This would give others pause — maybe not France, with her quaint delusions of Lebanese patronhood (if there were anything behind this anachronistic pose they’d be the ones enforcing Resolution 1701) — but the USA and Germany might be shamed into reconsidering.
Wednesday, September 25th, 2024
UN General Assembly speeches this week:
Tuesday, September 24th, 2024
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board skewers Biden’s legacy. It’s hard to fathom people who see things otherwise; cascading from the Afghanistan withdrawal, facts are facts.
For Those Deemed MAGA Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear...
Top French chef bans MICHELIN inspectors from his new restaurant...
3 WOMEN HOSTAGES RELEASED...
Star shocks fans with sexual touchdown celebration...
Prince and Meghan 'image poisoned'...
STOCKS UP 55% SINCE BIDEN TOOK OFFICE...
What giving up bread really does for your health...
Was whole bait-and-switch to make Don look good?
MAGA SPLITTING OVER SOLUTION...
BIBI TROUBLE
TIKTOK ON, OFF, ON...
HAMAS HOLDS PARADE
'CEASEFIRE' IN GAZA...
DRAMA: SCREAMING, SHOUTING, GUN-WIELDING FIGHTERS...
Alexandra Pelosi Blasts First Lady: 'Lady McBiden'...
On Jordan Peterson's 'We Who Wrestle with God'
David Lynch Was America's Cinematic Poet
Was OpenAI Whistleblower Balaji Murdered?
How China Dominates Global Shipbuilding
Trump Should Adopt Virginia Regulatory Model
Lessons From a Losing Campaign
In Los Angeles, DEI Went Up in Smoke
3 Israeli Hostages Freed by Hamas as Ceasefire Begins
Gabbard Should Be Confirmed ASAP
Democrats Need a New Strategy for Confirmation Hearings
Competence Under Fire Amid Partisan Hearings
National Security Calls for Trump To Impede the TikTok Ban
The Supreme Court Nailed Its Decision To Uphold TikTok Ban
How BlackRock Helped Stack Exxon's Board With Radicals
California's Disastrous Wildfire Response
Links for the intellectually curious, ranked by readers.
CollectWise (YC F24) Is Hiring
Reverse Engineering Bambu Connect
Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?
Two Hard Things (2009)
UK's hardware talent is being wasted
FrontierMath was funded by OpenAI
It's time to make computing personal again
How do interruptions impact different software engineering activities
Wildfires are erasing California's climate gains, research shows
Hacking the Yamaha DX9 to Turn It into a DX7 (2023)
All Lisp indentation schemes are ugly
Why is Git Autocorrect too fast for Formula One drivers?
Why Twitter is such a big deal (2009)
Using your Apple device as an access card in unsupported systems
TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users
“Reasonability” law passed. Police mass against protesters storming Knesset
“Reasonability” law passed. Police massed against protesters storming Knesset
Voting starts on reasonability curb for High Court after opposition nixes any compromise
Police forcibly remove protesters blocking entry to Knesset for crucial votee
Ex-Mossad chief Cohen: Israel consensus vital as Iran’s threat spirals
A pacemaker urgently implanted in prime minister’s heart
Bids to soften first legal reform bill as more military reservists join protest
Air Force dismayed by 1,142 air crew reservists’ threat to balk duty in protest over judicial overhaul
Committee nods to bill curbing High Court’s freedom to overturn government decisions
Israel denies NYT account of Biden-Netanyahu conversation
Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
A Deal that Keeps Hamas in Power Is Meaningless
Nobody Should Be Surprised When Israel Resumes Its War
The Terrorists Live to Fight On
Israel Publishes List of 735 Terrorists to Be Freed
Make No Mistake, Hamas Was Defeated in the War
Israel Faced an Impossible Choice: Destroy Hamas or Rescue the Hostages
UN Blocks Aid to Gaza to Fake a Famine
Houthis Launch Two More Missiles at Israel
U.S. Begins to Lift Restrictions on Arms to Israel
Body of Soldier Oron Shaul, Held by Hamas since 2014, Rescued from Gaza
Palestinian Terrorist Stabs Man in Tel Aviv
Israel Security Agency Director: "82 Percent of Those Released in the Gilad Shalit Deal in 2011 Returned to Terrorism"
Two Iranian Judges Who Were Involved in Mass Executions Shot to Death in Tehran
High-Profile Palestinian Terrorists to Be Released
Former IDF Prosecutor: "This Is Not a Prisoner Exchange"
AI-designed proteins tackle century-old problem — making snake antivenoms
Revealed: Why the fatal Huntington’s gene takes so long to cause harm
<b>How to trick the immune system into attacking tumours</b>
How to be a brilliant ally to your neurodivergent lab mate
Trump’s science advisers: how they could influence his second presidency
Why fires spread quickly in modern cities ― and how to slow them
RNA molecule rejuvenates ageing mice by restoring old cells
Mines for a clean-energy metal have a surprise climate effect
Championing queer scientists of colour: ‘I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface on systemic exclusion’
Trump will weaken climate action — the rest of the US must not follow suit
Brain-wide neuronal circuit connectome of human glioblastoma
A generative model for inorganic materials design
Daily briefing: AI-designed proteins offer lifeline for treating snake bites
Road trip
Ancient DNA reveals reproductive barrier despite shared Avar-period culture
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
Lost in the Funhouse
Democrats need to find a way out of their house of mirrors.The Great Gatsby at 100
Fitzgerald’s novel has lost neither its glamour nor its moral force.Will the Left Disrupt the Inauguration?
A network of progressive groups and militants is preparing for battle.How We’ll Know if New York’s Congestion Pricing Succeeds
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs to provide more data.A History of Movement in New York City
10 Blocks podcast
“Cancel culture is not abating but merely shifting from left to right as a new group of scolds gain power”
World War II was fought on the battlefields. But was it won in the libraries?
A cenotaph for Newton would be taller than the Pyramids; Paris was to have 17 extravagant tollhouses: 18th-century architecture had a flair for the dramatic
Robert Frost's poetic prerequisites: “A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever written”
Joseph Epstein: “I may very well be one of those pathetic types whose ambition is four or five times greater than his talent”
“A tissue of horrors” telling of “an intoxicating spree of universal atrocity” — 19th-century France reviled (and was hooked on) newspapers
Regency-era sex ed included such works as Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal, Every Woman’s Book, and the best seller Aristotle’s Masterpiece
Gaza ceasefire: late night tears and hugs for released Palestinian prisoners
With Donald Trump’s inauguration, US-China rivalry opens new and uncertain chapter
Trump promises ‘brand new day’, harsh immigration limits at pre-inauguration rally
UK’s Starmer congratulates Trump ahead of US inauguration
Ukraine’s Zelensky calls for more air defence after 1,000 attacks in a week
How Trump could upend South China Sea calculations all round
Heavy snow and frigid Arctic blast put 70 million across US under winter storm warnings
Biden urges Americans to ‘keep the faith’ on his final full day as president
Hamas frees hostages, Israel releases Palestinian prisoners as Gaza ceasefire begins
At least 80 killed, thousands displaced in Colombia guerilla violence
Brain candy for Happy Mutants
This $100 retro console has 70K games and emulators for consoles as far back as the NES
Walmart illegally opened high-fee bank accounts for 1m workers
Chocolate giant Cadbury loses royal warrant after 170 years
Discofoot "shakes, shimmies and twirls us further away from our society's cumbersome classifications"
My favorite holiday tradition is the Weekend Update Christmas Joke Swap
The long, perilous road to the first performance of Hamlet… in Grand Theft Auto Online
Drop this $60 Chromebook like it's hot (and it'll survive)
Your next obsession: learn more in less time with Headway
DC cop convicted for tipping off Proud Boys about police operations
Social media troll arrested for spraying bug killer on fruits and vegetables at Walmart
Soul legend Al Green brings the light to his cover of REM's "Everybody Hurts"
FBI veteran charged with stalking after allegedly terrorizing law student for over a year
Doggo so excited, she accidentally wags tail around tree — and gets stuck (video)
Czech composer's military tribute accidentally became history's most recognizable clown song
Sunday assorted links
Ezra Klein on the vibe shift
More on the AI virtual tutor
Should you be writing for the AIs?
The second attempted coup d’etat was partially successful
Saturday assorted links
A Galt’s Gulch for Talent
Ross Marchand on postal service privatization (from my email)
The AEA is making social media recommendations
Corin Wagen defends Leviticus (from my email)
Friday assorted links
Gordon Tullock was right
An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part I
Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye
Thursday assorted links
Rumors and news on everything Apple since 1997
Meta's Edits is an alternative to CapCut, as Apple forgets about Clips
How to watch the 2025 presidential inauguration on Apple devices
'Ted Lasso' star drops strong hint of filming for fourth season
TikTok has shut itself down in the US ahead of January 19 deadline.
TikTok service restored in the US after promises that ban won't be enforced
If you want to buy the 2022 iPhone SE, do it now
Newly-appointed Apple CFO denies 75% App Store profit claim in UK trial
Amazon drops 15-inch MacBook Air 512GB to $1,249 in flash sale
How to unblock websites on your iPhone with Surfshark VPN
Asus ProArt Display 5K review: 27-inch Retina for a bargain
OK Go creates manual music video visual effects with 64 iPhones
The best smart home tech at CES 2025
Opinions on corporate and brand identity work.
Announced: Brand New will Shift to Subscription Model
Spotted: New Logo for Blue Islands
Linked: Louis Vuitton Architecture
Noted: New Name and Logo for St. Louis City SC
Reviewed: Friday Likes 339: From Studio MPLS, Wade and Leta, and Unifikat Design Studio
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for Vitkus Clinic by Tandemo
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for Netgen by IDnaGroup
Linked: Biden &Harris &Decimal
Noted: New Logo and Identity for Correos de México by Carl Forsell
Reviewed: New Logo and Identity for BERA by How & How
Spotted: New Logo for Playtika
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for The 19th by Page 33 Studio
Linked: Objects may be Closer than they Ap-pear
Noted: New Logo and Identity for Zappos Adaptive by Eric&Todd
Reviewed: New Logo and Identity for Lot61 by Smörgåsbord
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Datacus extractus: Harry Potter publisher breached without resorting to magic
When food delivery apps reached Indonesia, everyone put on weight
Donald Trump proposes US government acquire half of TikTok, which thanks him and restores service
OpenAI's ChatGPT crawler can be tricked into DDoSing sites, answering your queries
Windows Insiders can now turn on Administrator Protection from settings
Got a telescope? Bid farewell to ESA's retiring Milky Way mapper
How Windows got to version 3 – an illustrated history
CISA: Wow, that election had a lot of foreign trolling. Trump's Homeland Sec pick: And that's none of your concern
Capital One two-day outage leaves customers in free-fall
FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your networks from foreign spies. Get on it
Biden signs sweeping cybersecurity order, just in time for Trump to gut it
China to probe US chip subsidies as export curbs rattle allies
experiments in refactored perception
Ribbonfarm is Retiring
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be my 50th birthday. There will be one final roundup post before […]Truth-Seeking Modes
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive at a dispositive “winning” right […]Intellectual Menopause
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny than the more familiar one we know as midlife […]
