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Living on the Island Nokia 6630 Manhattan, New York City, New York Tuesday, October 9th, 2007.
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Life is not a burden, but we make it one when we refuse to accept things as they are.
Baba Hari Dass
HaShalom iPhone 13 Mini Tel Aviv, Israel Thursday, October 30th, 2025.
Plot of Gold iPhone 13 Mini St Ives, Cornwall, England Sunday, August 24th, 2025.
A Light Unto the Hillocks iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Thursday, August 7th, 2025.
A Simple Dog One iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Thursday, July 10th, 2025.
Fresh Circle iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Monday, July 7th, 2025.
Heavy Port Fence iPhone 13 Mini Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England Sunday, July 6th, 2025.
Gentle Stairway at Hove Lagoon iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 22nd, 2025.
Cauliflower on Wood iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Seaside Rounded View iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Exercise in Textures iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Saturday, May 10th, 2025.
New Dog Frolicking Brighton, East Sussex, England Monday, March 31st, 2025.
Remember the Good Old 1980s Arad, Israel Wednesday, February 5th, 2025.
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.
2:55am UTC
Monday, December 29th, 2025
Light unto the nations: Israel launches the national Iron Beam laser defence system.
Good bonkers, I’m Adam S Khan, S for Samuel.
As a web architect I produce Engaging OS, a work system platform for organizations; and RSSDeck, the browsing platform for the rss’d of us. I build using Nuxt, Apollo and Directus.
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.
Monday, December 29th, 2025
Light unto the nations: Israel launches the national Iron Beam laser defence system.
Thursday, December 25th, 2025
Domain-Driven Design
Eric Evans
Emerson introduced one of his essays noting how sometimes you read an idea that is disturbing because it’one you yourself that you ignored. Eric Evans’s book, now an acronym in the industry, DDD, is such on steroids; I’m sure many like me have felt the correctness of this instinct to build software according to a model of the reality where it will be used, but Evans picks and picks at it. His insistence on the power of language seemed slightly outlandish, but given the power and ubiquity of LLMs today, proves eerily prescient.
As I recall, it’s marred by diving too deep into specific examples in the final parts of the book, and I stopped reading.
Wednesday, December 24th, 2025
An important timely piece: “The Return of the Jewish Question” by David Azerrad in Compact Magazine. All of this should be obvious but perhaps that is why it’s important.
That the average Fox News watcher is utterly oblivious to the JQ only enhances its appeal. The JQ is a kind of gnosis, a secret knowledge that allows the enlightened few to pierce through the illusions of ordinary politics and grasp the ultimate reality.
Thursday, December 18th, 2025
Call it Jewsonia: the week that Norman Podhoretz passes on, I’m sure he’d be pleased that Commentary Magazine published “The New American Jews: A manifesto for change, survival, and national flourishing” by Tal Fortgang and Ella Fortgang.
> More [Jews] should also consider affordable, growing cities with small Jewish populations such as Omaha and Reno. This is an economic issue with a significant political dimension: We will continue to be taken for granted as constituents as long as we remain clustered…
It’s a kick-ass—not to mention world-saving—manifesto.
Monday, December 1st, 2025
Alchemy
Rory Sutherland
Read by the mellifluous, or at least fabulously raconteur author, Alchemy serves to me as the contemporary vital yin to J. Storrs Hall’s Where is My Flying Car yang. Yes, we must overcome our engineering slump and get back on track towards the Jetsons, but at the same time, Sutherland pretty conclusively persuades, we leave a lot of psycho-physics on the table.
After all, what matters to living creatures is not facts but our perception of those facts, and we must stop neglecting this aspect of societal (and any other) improvement and progress. But because physical improvements are easier to measure than psychological ones, and psychological ones are not obvious and often counter-intuitive, we lean towards faster trains rather than other improvements around a journey that could shorten the entire journey. It’s basically a manifesto for bringing marketers and advertisers into decision-making usually reserved for accounts and lawyers.
One choice sentence:
Sometimes I have a £3.29 headache rather than a 79p one.
This is not merely fatuous; Rory backs it up with an ingenious defence of the placebo effect, pointing out that sometimes we don’t get ill until we’ve finished a big task, that we have a healing mode that focuses energies there.
Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Demonstrating the relative seriousness of Israeli versus British media discourse, The Independent vs The Jerusalem Post on Trump’s UN speech. The former characterized it as “an extraordinary tirade” and “a spectacular outburst” and worried that “the speech risked all of the goodwill from last week’s historic state visit.” The latter:
Trump held up a mirror to the world. He did not seek to please, did not seek to appear enlightened, but exposed what other leaders try to hide. For him, leadership is not the art of compromise but the courage to tell the truth.
Friday, April 18th, 2025
At JCPA, Oded Ailam pens “Why Israel Should Embrace its Role as a Regional Power”.
A country that acts like a leader attracts others. Countries prefer to affiliate with a strong, stable power that leads with purpose and confidence. By projecting strength, not just militarily but diplomatically and economically, Israel can become a pole of attraction in the Middle East – for states, investments, and influence.
I’d like to see stronger initiatives to partner with similar countries. Finland to me seems a great target for seduction. About the same size, also fiercely independent, innovative, threatened — as liberals they lean pro-Palestinian but with better engagement I think they could be shown where true liberalism lies.
Thursday, March 6th, 2025
As a young advisor to then-Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Madrid Conference in 1991, Dore brought his policy and national security expertise. Dore was a firm believer in the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, and the possibility of a federal-confederal, security-based approach to the Palestinian issue. Dore’s profound strategic concern about preventing future attacks from the East led him to pioneer a revival of General Yigal Alon’s defensible borders concept, which he advanced following the 1967 war.
On Montaigne by Jared Marcel Pollen in The Point.
Montaigne’s depiction of his mind “from day to day, from minute to minute” is sometimes regarded as his method (i.e. his intellectual process), but it is also and equally the formation of a literary style: in letting his mind wander freely in the act of writing, he spontaneously creates a form that allows him to depict that wandering.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025
In Mosaic, A pair of important lengthy pieces of where we’re at in Israel: The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7 by Shany Mor, and To Save Itself from International Isolation, Israel Must Hold On to the West Bank by Rafi DeMogge. While both are problematic — DeMogge drums in a two-step argument that territorial withdrawals are actually harmful to Israel diplomatically but is thin on other points, and Mor throat-clears by it seems to me unfairly presenting the settler movement as irrational before focusing on the failure of peace-processing — together they touch on each other to paint a developed picture of the situation.
The idea that a Palestinian living in Palestinian territory under a Palestinian government is somehow a refugee from Palestine is a deadly contrivance, the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Shany Mor, The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7
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.
Record turnout in Hungary pivotal vote...
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The $50,000 puppy: Pet debt crisis reaching breaking point...
What happens to your health if you stop having sex?
Machete-wielding maniac stabs 3 elderly straphangers at Grand Central Terminal...
The Airbnb 'sex dungeons' disturbing America's sleepy suburbs...
Accuser Speaks Out in Harrowing Interview...
Scandal threatens cascade of House expulsion votes...
Multiple injured in shooting as group of masked men storms CHICK-FIL-A...
Swalwell exits California gov's race after assault allegations...
Sings along stream of own songs on laptop in bizarre set...
Stage closes after light falls on attendee...
We Had a Nuclear Deal with Iran--Until Trump Tore it Up
To NATO Free-Riders: Expect a Brutal Reality Check
Trump's Suez Crisis or Just a Passing Thunderstorm?
Trump Shouldn't Get Away With Threats of Annihilation
Trump Is Not Free to Do What He Thnks Is Best on Iran/Israel
I Want to Iran Defeated, But What if it Boosts Trump and Bibi?
After Forty Years of 'Death to America,' I Say One Thing?
Dems Seek To Punish Voters Leaving Struggling States
Democrats Abruptly Revive the Idea of Impeaching Trump
Nuke the Filibuster, Pass the Save America Act
Anti-American Sentiment On the Rise in Europe
Can the Democrats Get Religion?
How Swalwell's Implosion Changes the Race for CA Gov
The New York Times' Hate-Filled Agenda Drags On
Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy
Links for the intellectually curious, ranked by readers.
The Economics of Software Teams: Why Most Engineering Orgs Are Flying Blind
X Randomly Banning Users for "Inauthentic Behavior"
A Canonical Generalization of OBDD
Haunt, the 70s text adventure game, is now playable on a website
Apple's accidental moat: How the "AI Loser" may end up winning
All elementary functions from a single binary operator
State of Homelab 2026
Taking on CUDA with ROCm: 'One Step After Another'
A perfectable programming language
I ran Gemma 4 as a local model in Codex CLI
Uncharted island soon to appear on nautical charts
Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play
The peril of laziness lost
Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
DIY Soft Drinks
Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
Former CENTCOM Chief: U.S. and Israel Need to Monitor Iran's Missiles and Enriched Uranium
How the Iran War Is Reordering the World - Second and Third-Order Effects
Trump Floats Hormuz Naval Blockade after U.S.-Iran Talks Fail
The "Now or Never" Rationale for the Iran War
The 2026 Palestinian Constitution Reveals the True Intentions of a Palestinian State
Defending Israel in an Age of Madness
Israel's Iron Dome Logs 10,000 Combat Intercepts
Israel Today Faces Far Fewer Threats than It Did Before
Netanyahu: Israel, Lebanon to Begin Direct Talks on Hizbullah Disarmament and Peace
Hizbullah Rocket Hits School in Northern Israel Arab Town
U.S. Forces Start Mine Clearance Mission in Strait of Hormuz
Iran Unable to Find Mines It Planted in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says
Israeli Assessment: Gaps in U.S.-Iran Talks "Are Very Large"
Military Success Is Real but It Is Not Permanent
How Trump Is Rewriting the Rules of American Power
The middle years of my life and career: balancing two experiments at once
Homelessness of the heart
Behind the scenes with Artemis II’s scientists during the historic Moon fly-by
How the butterfly got its name: Books in brief
Author Correction: Multi-omic profiling reveals age-related immune dynamics in healthy adults
I was with Artemis II’s scientists during the Moon fly-by. Here’s what I saw
How to thrive in science when you move abroad
Should academic misconduct be catalogued? Proposed US database sparks debate
Female mice grow testes after this single DNA tweak
One woman, three autoimmune diseases: CAR-T therapy vanquishes ultra-rare disease trio
Daily briefing: A treatment to reverse cellular ageing is about to be tested in people
Your nose contains multitudes — of long-lived immune cells
Liquid or solid? Oobleck droplets are both
Electric vehicles can ride to the grid’s rescue
Microbial hockey: bacteria can spin a ‘puck’ just by swimming
What do we know about planned Lebanon/Israel talks in Washington?
Turkiye’s opposition under pressure as Istanbul mayor trial drags on
Hormuz at near standstill as Iran warns ships to keep to its waters
US-Iran ceasefire deal shows strain ahead of talks with oil flows squeezed
Vance warns Iran not to ‘play’ the US as he departs for talks aimed at ending war
Israel approves 34 new West Bank settlements: media, NGO
Hezbollah calls on Lebanon government to stop giving ‘free concessions’ to Israel
World Food Programme warns Lebanon facing food security crisis due to Iran war
Aid convoy heads from Turkiye to Iran
GCC Secretary General welcomes Lebanese cabinet’s decision for full state control over Beirut
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
The Phantom Base
Ginned up by social-media influencers, the so-called right-wing civil war has little connection to MAGA voters’ concerns.Cops Are Cool Again
A pro-policing vibe is creeping back into popular culture.Chicago’s Anti-Tourism Hotel Tax
Raising the cost of accommodations will undermine the city’s competitiveness, making the city less attractive for businesses and visitors.Regulating the Sex Robot Revolution
Policymakers must be proactive before it’s too late.Ideology Over Workers
California unions are focused on left-wing priorities.
Jamaica Kincaid: “I find England ugly…I hate England; the weather is like a jail sentence…the food in England is like a jail sentence”
Making it in a non-existent profession. The economics of the writing life are grim, mercurial, and infrequently discussed
"Most historians would rather go out naked in public than prune their copious footnotes." Not Albert O. Hirschman
Are do-gooders an inferior class, consigned to drudgery? Elizabeth Anderson traces the contours of the progressive work ethic
In early-19th-century Britain, body snatchers were such a problem that lead-lined coffins, metal cages, and other hardware were used to protect the dead
Heart palpitations, stomach lurches, sweaty palms: What it's like to spend a year inside the Stephen King archive
The book review flourished in tandem with the Enlightenment. Now both are in decline, leaving a great deal at stake. David Bell explains
China, the Iran war and the chemical suddenly stoking global supply fears
Hormuz oil crisis hits China; a family of dentists: 5 weekend reads you missed
Swalwell suspends California governor bid amid sexual assault allegations
‘Not a fan’: Trump launches extraordinary attack on Pope Leo as rift deepens over war
Geopolitical tensions may bolster Hong Kong office demand as Gulf capital looks east
Japan to welcome 30 Nato envoys as Trump rattles US allies
Peru presidential run-off looms as Fujimori leads troubled vote
On education equality, Hong Kong policymakers must do their homework
At least 200 feared dead after Nigerian air strike hits busy village market
Easter truce between Ukraine and Russia ends after thousands of violations
Brain candy for Happy Mutants
This $80 Chromebook is built for low-stakes computing
This AI-powered office bundle is the answer to your productivity problem
Unrot your brain with 88% off this interactive learning app
Artemis crew safely splashes down off California coast
Jim Woodring's Frank finally speaks in a 3.5-inch Big Little Book
This $60 bundle pairs coding courses with real developer software
AMOLED writer deck has adorable bees on it
Girl mice grew balls after a one-letter DNA change
UK bans "stepfamily" porn by one vote, sets 5-year prison term
John Deere settles right-to-repair lawsuit for $99 million
NYT investigation names Adam Back as Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto
A.J. Jacobs beat a weeks-long writing block with a two-minute timer
This dashboard tracks everything going on with Artemis' Orion capsule as it returns to Earth
Clothing tags from the 80s hid jokes, messages, and mischief
My South Africa dialogue with Ann Bernstein
Self-driving vehicles and the cross-country drive
Orbán concedes
My dialogue with Jonathan Zittrain
Sunday assorted links
Staged homes sell for more than empty homes
Another possible cyberequilibrium? (from my email)
The wisdom of Roon
Saturday assorted links
Struan Moffett on South Africa (from my email)
Driving cross-country
What should I ask Bob Spitz?
Friday assorted links
A market-based solution to NBA draft tanking?
Cape Town estimate of the day
Rumors and news on everything Apple since 1997
Sunday Reboot: MacBook Neo upgrades, masses of Mac minis, and iPhone re-entry
Apple's future smart glasses plan is just part of a larger computer vision play
Eight years later, Apple quietly shuts the door on AI chief John Giannandrea
Apple chiefs welcome Artemis II back to Earth after the best Shot on iPhone campaign ever
Today only: Grab AirPods Max USB-C for $399.95 ($150 off)
RAM pinch: More Mac Studio & some Mac mini configs not available from Apple online
QiDi Max 4 review: The FDM multicolor printer that you want
Game development diary: TestFlight, trial by fire, and a trophy
Century City will be hosting an immersive fan experience for Apple TV shows
Folding iPhone unveiling & shipment date rumors are all over the place
Grab Apple's M5 MacBook Air for $949 this weekend, record low price
14-inch MacBook Pro M5 vs Asus Zenbook A16: $2,000 shootout
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
AI went viral among attorneys. We have the numbers on what happened next
France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead
IT manager approved downtime over lunch, but made a meal of it
China wants AI to prepare school lessons and mark homework
Linux 7.0 debuts as Linus Torvalds ponders AI's bug-finding powers and their impact on release process
Anthropic's mysterious Mythos AI threatens to upend the infosec world
I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable
Growing void between enterprise and frontier AI puts open weights models in the spotlight
Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user
How Salesforce and ServiceNow are squaring off in the battle for the helpdesk
Two different attackers poisoned popular open source tools - and showed us the future of supply chain compromise
Hungarian government creds left in the safe hands of 'FrankLampard'
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 […]
