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Through the Park Olympus Mu2/Stylus Tel Aviv, Israel Wednesday, June 9th, 1999.
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Calling something evil is to say that it is one’s duty to eradicate it.
ASK
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.
1:00pm UTC
Thursday, October 19th, 2023
To paraphrase: “What do you all think sovereignty means? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
Good bonkers, I’m Adam S Khan, S for Samuel.
I develop operations systems at Engaging; and am founder and user-in-chief at RSS Deck, 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.
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
What’s nice, impressive and persuasive in this Jerusalem Post analysis by Yonah Jeremy Bob laying out the case that war with Lebanon is now closer, is that it’s due to eminently sensible rather than the media’s usual ludicrously cynical motivations. For instance:
Despite Netanyahu’s publicly threatening words and tone, another major reason that war has not broken out is that the prime minister was privately terrified of how many Israelis might die from an estimated Hezbollah onslaught of 6,000-8,000 rockets per day.
While “terrified” seems an unnecessarily disparaging choice of word, nonetheless the meaning is clear: Netanyahu is adjusting to the fluid situation that is war. What he deemed reckless and premature 10 months ago may be the obvious and inevitable now.
On August 25, the IDF did not just beat Hezbollah – it cleaned house … The military blew up the vast majority of the rockets and drones with which Hezbollah had intended to attack Israel before these threats could even be launched.
In this particular attack, Hezbollah neither killed nor damaged anyone or anything of significance, while the IDF destroyed thousands of rockets.
Suddenly, Netanyahu has a newfound confidence: that he actually can afford a major operation against Hezbollah – with much fewer losses to the home front than he had expected.
Bob’s editors might not like it, but there’s a way to describe this in two words: responsible leadership.
Monday, September 16th, 2024
Think about MSNBC and CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, etcetera as a set of instructions for how to keep your job.
Eric Weinstein, Modern Wisdom podcast, Episode #833
What if the USA acted like the USA?
But of course, the US and all decent people worldwide condemned the Hamas murders. The Biden-Harris administration was “pained” by the murders (not outraged) and toothlessly jabbered that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” But this was not followed up by any moves against the genocidal terrorist group and its regional backers: anything concrete that would impose “full accountability” on Hamas.
Rather, the Hamas execution of Israeli hostages was followed up by pressure on Israel to make concessions to the perpetrators and essentially concede defeat to them. President Biden took to the microphone to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “not doing enough” to secure a hostage deal.
Another scathing piece on Biden.
Monday, September 9th, 2024
Showing interest is a tremendous thing in the human arsenal.
Esa Saarinen, “Magnificent Life” lecture
Thursday, September 5th, 2024
By the UK Government’s own admission and statement regarding its prominently-stated suspension of some 30 export licenses to Israel, this is not about the actual items being sent nor even their past or future use. Rather it is a knuckle-rapping for Israel’s policies on humanitarian aid — “Israel could reasonably do more to facilitate humanitarian access and distribution” — and detainee conditions — “Israel continues to deny access to places of detention for the International Committee of the Red Cross”. Both of these are contentious. There’s a reasonable argument for allowing no humanitarian aid in at all as siege warfare is a complicated thing in international law and by the looks of it beyond simple legal interpretation, but to punish Israel because it could be doing more seems unreasonable. Second, Israel is under no obligation to allow Red Cross visits as Palestinian terrorists do not qualify as POWs. British government lawyers must know these things — is this the best they can do? What is going on here really?
Sunday, September 1st, 2024
Factoring the constraint into its own method allows us to give it an intention-revealing name that makes the constraint explicit in our design. It is now a named thing we can discuss.
Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design
Friday, August 30th, 2024
Ha ha! The Guardian reports that some special relationships are more special than others. Ok that’s not quite right. He’s saying to Starmer’s Britain: don’t be assholes. Knowing The Guardian, they probably view an arms boycott of Israel as a happy two-fer: boycott Israel, get disengagement from the US for free! Little Satan, Big Satan.
Thursday, August 29th, 2024
Versatility, simplicity, and explanatory power come from a model that is truly in tune with the domain.
Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design
Once again Herb Keinon is proving his worth as veteran Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent. For the first time I’m seeing argued that the October 7th invasion has changed Israeli doctrine: threats must no longer be allowed to metastasize but instead must be nipped in the bud, unpleasantness and opprobriation notwithstanding. So Israel has made the most powerful incursion since Sharon ordered Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
Just for shits and giggles, here is The Guardian addressing the same topic. Holding my nose, I quote two hall-of-mirrors sentences:
The world’s powers must ask why they seem incapable of finding an agreement to end the current bloodshed. Without a deal, faith in the global institutions risks withering away.
What does the first sentence even mean? Which powers? The implications here are multi-fold: 1) it is outside forces who must impose an agreement, rather than an attacked nationstate defeating the terror army that attacked it. 2) Such powers are actually able to impose this agreement but are just pretending they can’t due to certain reasons — presumably Jewish influence on them. 3) In the real world, global institutions are being eroded not by Israel fighting for its survival but by the cynical lawfare campaign being waged against it, with total disregard for the long-term viability of such institutions by submerging them in, yes, genocidal politicized mendacity.
I am annoyed with myself I even looked at this twisted stuff.
Friday, August 23rd, 2024
Efraim Inbar recaps the obvious: stand firm.
According to Gabi Siboni, the main reason why it’s taking such a long time to destroy Hamas is “the IDF’s unwillingness to take over the distribution of humanitarian aid, as required by international law.”
Tuesday, August 20th, 2024
Biden enabled this infamy too: in The Telegraph, Richard Kemp skewers the ICC on Israel.
Our assessment was that the IDF was complying with international law. We pointed out that they have been making greater efforts and employing more sophisticated procedures than any other armies to mitigate harm to civilians.
I am grateful that The Telegraph at least is promoting such common sense views to the great British public and beyond.
Thursday, August 15th, 2024
$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No
Alex Hormozi
I think I came across Alex Hormozi in my YouTube side recommended feed and he came across as impassioned and systematic about marketing and selling. And that is what I have enjoyed about his $100m Offers book: it is very schematic, which makes it easy for someone to whom perhaps marketing does not come naturally. I believe I will be relying on this book to formulate my own offer — so high praise indeed surely.
Thursday, August 8th, 2024
Haviv Rettig-Gur rants [Hebrew] about how Betzalel Smotrich’s statements are undermining support for Israel. While Rettig-Gur is impressive, nobody elected him; indeed it sounds to me like has a case of burnout over business class and should take a break from jetsetting on Israelis’ behalf.
Wednesday, August 7th, 2024
What a grim and ghastly tale of the Jew as the Jonah. The Israeli team has been booted out of an international youth frisbee competition in Ghent, Belgium due to safety concerns after the Israelis were threatened. My nephew is in this team. Is it fear or fetish or both, this surrender to islamothugs.
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024
Former Labour (then Kadima) minister Chaim Ramon points out the Likud’s folly in tacitly supporting Hamas, partially in an effort not to interfere against Palestinian violent splintering. I admit guilty in supporting this in-retrospect-too-clever-by-half approach. The Right was guilty of supporting religious Palestinians just as before them the Left was guilty of supporting secular ones, misguided by the notion that they just want what we want, ie, to just get on with it, building things and having as good a time as possible.
The very special Mike Doran hints at why he votes based on a candidate’s Israel policy (in response to Elon Musk’s enumeration of why he will vote for Trump):
I vote on Israel. The Israel test is the simplest and most elegant. The candidate that is best on Israel will be best on all the other things. I guarantee it. There are profound political and cultural reasons for this fact.
Someone asked him to explicate this. Here’s one quick stab at a vector: Supporting Israel demonstrates both powerful intelligence and strength of character: to be able to power down through overloaded linguistic chimeras, ie, towers of lies big and small, then have the intellectual integrity to choose not to look away but digest the (many) resulting conclusions, and finally have the courage to express support despite local social disapproval, with the faith that it’ll be ok to do so.
Sunday, August 4th, 2024
“Too battle-minded” — Josh Shapiro seemed not only an insightful but also a polite 20-year-old. I hope therefore he will have a stab of conscience and not agree to make Harris any more palatable to reasonable Americans than she is suddenly becoming.
Saturday, August 3rd, 2024
A review of the new documentary How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer (A Cautionary Tale), this Atlantic staff writer cannot help in the end but laud Mailer. Though I find unforgivable Mailer’s asinine comments regarding the Twin Towers (“like two bunny teeth” or somesuch) after they were taken down on 9/11.
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024
As I awaken here in Hod Hasharon to the news of Ismael Haniye’s assassination — in Teheran, and with a rocket! [Update 2024 Aug 3: Apparently not a rocket but a pre-planted bomb] — I’m almost weepy with glee at this humiliation of the mullahs. As I survey media reactions, I see the BBC’s take by their “diplomatic correspondent” in Jerusalem:
While details of the attack slowly emerge, its political consequences are also coming into focus. The most obvious is the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. … American officials had recently suggested that ceasefire negotiations might soon succeed, although a meeting in Rome last weekend did not result in a breakthrough. But it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake of the assassination of Haniyeh. All of which begs the question: if this was, as everyone assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out? Beyond the desire to exact revenge on anyone associated with Hamas, what was Israel hoping to achieve? Turkey’s foreign ministry has already summed up the likely reaction of many in the region — accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no intention of achieving peace”.
While this hack does qualify his analysis with “it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake…”, grudgingly alluding to the fact that the opposite is more likely true: that putting the leaders themselves in danger is likely to make them pressure Sinwar to indeed come to a deal in order to preserve themselves, the tone and subtext nonetheless remains true to BBC form: if only Israel could control its murderous inclinations, they’d be alright.
Fuck the BBC — though even as I write that, I recall the profound love I had for that word growing up, seeing it on the credits of Camberwick Green and whatnot.
It’s also of note that he chooses Turkey’s government as the voice of authority, even while disdaining to bother with their requested name change to Türkiye. The Turks were so deluded thinking the Anglosphere would bother with umlauts — about as typographically likely as not serving beer down the local.
Friday, July 26th, 2024
It is important to constrain relationships as much as possible.
Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design
Israel is the pivot, the axis, the litmus, the trial.
George Gilder
Friday, July 19th, 2024
Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lined Up to Do Business with You
Daniel Priestley
Having enjoyed Daniel Priestley on a podcast, I resolved to read his book on sales. For the first time I listened to rather than read a book, taking advantage of a 3-month free Audible offer, and I’m sure that my recollection is even crappier when listening than reading. At any rate, I took few notes and now that it’s been 6 weeks or so since I read it, I remember nothing explicit I’m afraid except his nice Australian accent. I think though that he led me to Alex Hormozi, whose message is similar but more granular and recipe-like. At any rate, the experience was spoiled by the book being too blatantly a promotional device for Priestley’s impressive SaaS offering which I tried out, the name of which I also forget — ah yes, quiz marketing! Quiz marketing is his thing. ScoreApp. Daft — though I’m sure it works and the joke is on me. And I intend to use a toned-down version of it as the contact form on my new site.
Tuesday, July 9th, 2024
Thank you Rusto Reno, editor of Feisty Things, for this articulation towards the end of this podcast episode:
The liberation project is a utopian project that doesn’t have any limits. And moreover, if you can redefine husband and wife, why can’t you redefine men and women? I mean, if we can redefine marriage, the primordial institution of society that is more fundamental than any particular form of government, it’s universal across all cultures, then if you can redefine that, then I don’t see how you can object to people redefining what it means to be a man and a woman, or for that matter, to redefine anything.
Thursday, July 4th, 2024
Enterprise Ontology
Jan L. G. Dietz
Well well, since reading this book I see that 18 years after the 1st edition, a 2nd edition was released in June 2024 — priced at £175, no less! I guess the topic is hot. Given that my work is now heavily engaged with modeling enterprises, and that I’m therefore quite fascinated by, well, enterprise ontology, I was eager to pick this up. One discouraging and prophetic moment came however in the Prologue, wherein author Jan Dietz writes:
I could have waited for another couple of years before having this book published, while continually adding and improving things. Instead I decided to do it now, for several reasons, of which the most important one is that I wanted to finish something.
Too much sharing perhaps — and perhaps unkind of me to quote this. We do start off nice and strong, with quotable sentences and some nice definitions and some philosophical care for humanity, but the book starts getting pretty esoteric, using Greek characters and a diagramming method familiar I think only to the author, and things seem to peter out.
There’s also more emphasis than there would be today about being a document management system — I wonder if the 2nd edition deemphasizes this. I like that he considers there to be two kinds of acts: production and coordination. But writ large, the theory seems to corroborate my own practice: the preeminence of roles. As I review the first few pages that preview the rest of the book, it does jibe a lot with my own thinking and perhaps a reread could serve to deepen things.
There is not one UK political party that expresses the main stances I value:
Theoretically the party closest to all this are the Conservatives, but in practice not so much; moreover they are the cause of the top mess with their Brexit business — Britain is a European nation, not a semi-continent unto itself like a USA or an India, and now that the Britain-led industrial revolution and resulting empire is long gone, it’s folly to presume and proceed otherwise.
Saturday, June 29th, 2024
Archly-written summary of the Trump-Biden debate by Jenny Holland in Spiked:
Call me naïve, but I don’t think sister-on-sister rape – and the resulting offspring – is the national problem that Biden seems to think it is.
But she concludes more darkly:
The media’s complicity in the disaster that America now finds itself in must never be forgotten. Or forgiven.
Sunday, June 23rd, 2024
1948
Benny Morris
First bought and read a dozen years ago, and mostly forgotten, I returned to Benny Morris’s 1948 now during the post-October 7th Israel-Gaza conflict, for which 1948’s War of Independence serves in a number of ways as a distant mirror. Although 1967’s Six Day War seems to loom larger in consciousness, 1948 was the big one, the epoch-definer.
Even back then, Israel labored under a diplomatic situation where it was held back from victory. This time around the Palestinians have different weapons: no Arab armies, but lopsided savagery, projectile warfare, a dedicated sponsor and participant in Tehran, Western cultural cognitive decline, and lawfare from a corrupted globalist establishment. The book, with its encyclopedic ambitions, suffers from one sin of history: it does not elicit mental images of many of the events it describes, such as the battles around Gaza between Israel and Egypt. That said, it’s a vital primer.
Saturday, June 22nd, 2024
I used to be an intellectual but now I’m a conservative.
Mike Doran
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024
Niall Ferguson’s inaugural Free Press column: Are We the Soviets?
Monday, June 17th, 2024
“I, for one, have had my fill of the old Bard of Stratford on Avon,” writes Joseph Epstein in Commentary. In the piece he relies on Tolstoy’s complaints of Shakespearean nullity — this as counterpoint to his quasi-review and ultimate dismissal as parlor game of a recent book comparing current political figures to Shakespearean monarchs.
I too have struggled to read such plays as The Tempest. But Shakespeare does two things: 1) what Tolstoy accuses him off, yet thereby solidifying the epoch-making shucking off of medieval piety and heralding modernity, taking his place among in the pantheon of modernity’s fathers along with Machiavelli and Hobbes and others; and 2) making us step back a little in admiration of and delight in the very method — language, our language — that we use in order to have all the ideas that Tolstoy accused him of lacking.
Sunday, June 16th, 2024
At a meeting between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and a group of senior Arab officials about a month ago, a shouting match reportedly ensued between the UAE and Palestinian delegates. I find it so encouraging that there is a body in the Arab world that seems insistent on calling a spade a spade and treating people equally and with respect no matter who they are, and not instrumentalizing the Palestinians to some nonsensical end, nor fatally coddling them no matter their viciousness. The UAE’s path-beating instills me with hope.
Tuesday, June 11th, 2024
MacRumors summarizes Apple’s announcements at WWDC 2024 in 9 minutes. Onboard AI and ChatGPT integration. More configuration and multiple screens in Control Center. Sending even regular messages via satellite. And so much more, for real. A huge raft of announcements!
Maybe the single killer feature of the Apple Vision Pro: entire home not desk as office:
Walking around my entire apartment with Vision Pro on my head, strolling between large windows that cover different walls in each space, with specific rooms dedicated to certain kinds of work activities, felt like a radical extension of the standing desk.
Especially useful for those who work at home and have it to themselves for the workday.
I’ve heard people such as Dan Senor not understand the electoral logic behind President Biden’s pandering to Hamas supporters in Michigan. Like others, Senor cannot even imagine the only logical conclusion: it comes not from cynicism and expedience but rather ideology and belief (as much as this ethics-challenged pol can muster at any rate). In a devastating list-like article akin to a mordant Victor Davis Hanson column, Morton Klein reminds that Biden is not an Israel-friendly president. If he is not the architect of our current woes he is at least the midwife.
Biden has been hostile to Israel since day one of his administration before Michigan was a twinkle in his eye. Moreover, Biden stands to lose more Jewish and pro-Israel votes than he gains from anti-Israel communities, as 80% of Americans support Israel over Hamas. I thus believe that the real reason for Biden’s anti-Israel policies is Biden’s longstanding and sinister hostility to Israel.
In the last few days John Podhoretz has been coming to this conclusion, but sees it as the ranting of a senile old man, rather than long-held tendencies.
Thursday, June 6th, 2024
Salem Alketbi in The Jerusalem Post on Arab do-nothing-ism vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s great to hear this pragmatic, humanist voice coming from the UAE.
What remains unspoken about the Arab role in Gaza is the lack of a collective political vision for a solution to the crisis, despite the fact that it has been ongoing for over seven months. Instead, they have settled for official face-saving statements, while refraining from calling a spade a spade and without playing any real role in saving the Palestinian people from the ruthlessness of the Iran-backed Hamas faction.
Gaymen and ladies in San Francisco, your true colors shining through…
Gadi Taub hosts Gabi Siboni [Hebrew]. Total common sense that seems in short supply. With the North empty and on fire, an invasion of South Lebanon is very overdue. I think the country understands that. I am long along the road of losing faith in Netanyahu, who pays way too much mind to the Biden Administration’s inanity.
Monday, June 3rd, 2024
Only now, after calling an election, do the Conservatives say a woman is a woman. And that is why they will lose: because they have not been governing as conservatives. The only caveat to this prediction is that they are the worst except for all the rest. Or, as Allistair Heath writes in “Nigel Farage has driven the Tories to a state of near-total psychological collapse”, also in The Telegraph:
Aending out strong Right-wing vibes at one minute to midnight in a desperate bid to deflect the oncoming Nigel Farage tsunami isn’t enough: after 14 years of talking as conservatives but governing as social-democrats, the Tories have run out of excuses. They broke their promises on migration, legal and illegal, and never had the guts to pull out of the ECHR. They increased taxes, and are planning to do so again as a share of GDP.
This is why I blame the Tory wets, in charge for almost all of the past 14 years, for the Starmer-ite calamity that is about to befall Britain.
It is the wets who jettisoned free-market economics, deregulation, tax cuts and supply-side reforms, who crippled the City, who increased immigration, who ignored the collapse of community and family and the baby-bust, who failed to fix the Civil Service, who refused to scrap the BBC licence fee, who had no interest in properly reforming the public sector, including the NHS (and who promoted even more cultish reverence for a failing system), who vetoed prison building and a real crackdown on crime, who embraced net zero and the neo-Blairite quangocracy, and who wanted to surrender to the woke stormtroopers.
Tuesday, May 28th, 2024
Anything with eggplant, you can’t lose, ok?
Mark Wolters, Tel Aviv: The Don’ts of Visiting Tel Aviv, Israel
Sunday, May 26th, 2024
Friday, May 24th, 2024
Yossi Klein-Halevi: We have to own the strangeness of our story. I’ve been having similar thoughts; there is no comparable nation to Israel. Right from the get go we endemically punch way above our weight — this small nation sandwiched between bigger empires declared its god to be the only one, negating everyone else’s! It’s a world religion that — unlike any other world religion — doesn’t proselytize because it’s the religion of a nation, so grows through the womb not the meme. Always being small in one’s arena means always being a target.
Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board cuts through the miasma:
Though Israeli liberals won’t like to hear it, Israel probably will need to fill the vacuum in Gaza for a time. Though Israeli right-wingers won’t like to hear it, the purpose would be to make way for local governance. The politics, there and here, explain why it has been easier to pretend there’s no plan at all.
Monday, May 20th, 2024
“Helikopter, Helikopter”. As someone says in the comments, it’s the new Iranian anthem.
Saturday, May 18th, 2024
Sense from John Spencer as reported by CNN of all outlets.
By going slowly, I can argue through history and through metrics, it gives your enemy more time to defend, more time to prevent your plans, more time to prevent you from achieving surprise. We, as in the world, are also responsible for some of the destruction that’s happened in Gaza.
Friday, May 17th, 2024
We are at a moment where what’s morally indefensible is becoming socially acceptable.
Tal Becker, “Call Me Back”, May 16th
Classy Abe Greenwald’s “Woke Jihad” in Commentary makes no bones about the commonality of social justice and Islamist movements: they both want to tear it all down. There are many quotable bits, here’s one paragraph:
The love between the two camps, however, is not reciprocal. Leftists love the jihadists. They love them for their ferocity and exoticism as much as for their bottomless self-pity. Those are the constituent elements of social justice. It’s why we see protesters trying to shape-shift into war-ravaged Palestinians, asking for humanitarian aid, claiming chemical attacks on students, grasping to bask in the reflective glow of the nobly oppressed. But no properly chauvinistic jihadist could feel anything but disgust for the unchecked females, sexual libertines, heathens, and even Jews he’s been forced to instrumentalize in the cause of Islamist domination.
It also dives into the source of their money, which I’m less interested in though it’s very important. Does Bill Gates actually support any of this? Why is he helping fund it if not?
A revolutionary cannot live on microaggressions alone.
Abe Greenwald, “Woke Jihad” in Commentary Magazine
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
David Wurmser at the Center for Security Policy, the first I’ve come across to synthesize Israel’s Eurovision popular vote win:
Israel seems to be casting some light that is shining onto populations and peoples far away, triggering in them a rediscovery of themselves and what made those distant lands and cultures great.
He notes the dichotomy between the popular vote and the judges:
Many of the nations in which Israel won the popular vote by wide margins had their judges award Israel zero points. Western European elites led the trend: the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, San Marino, Spain, Finland, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Andorra, Belgium, and Sweden all had been won by Israel with 12 points on the popular vote, but all had the judged award Israel zero points. Four of the five UK judges had ranked Israel as the worst song of the 35.
Why banks still unhappy...
Chinese hacking 'typhoons' threaten U.S. infrastructure...
Savage reviews for Katy Perry's new album are here, and they're worse than anyone imagined...
Dozens of women accuse late HARRODS boss Al Fayed of sex assault...
MCDONALD's touchscreen kiosks feared as job killers. Instead, something surprising happened...
Porn-making former college campus leader argues for keeping his teaching job...
'Doomsday' glacier set to melt faster, swell seas?
TESLA Plant at Center of Controversy in German State Vote...
Scientist says human consciousness comes from another dimension...
Surge in Breast Reductions...
Women's soccer players, muscled and sweaty, are a new kind of influencer...
SHOCK POLL: Cruz Losing to Allred for First Time...
Michael Jordan sparks health fears as worrying photo emerges...
Men may be biggest victims of 'loneliness epidemic'...
Golfing for Dollars: PGA Tour's Saudi Deal Leaves 9/11 Families Out in Cold...
Swing State Deep Dive: Michigan
An Electoral College Tie Would Be a Win for Trump
On State Department Censorship and Blacklisting
The Election Will Be Decided Here
How a Circle of Spies, Blinken Covered Up Biden Scandal
Society Would Be at 10x Threat If Musk Hadn't Bought Twitter
A National Debt Crisis Is Coming
Just Another Frivolous Climate Lawsuit
The Return of the One-Room Schoolhouse
When Warriors Come Home
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Musk Eyes Tech Triumph in Free-Speech Wars
Elon Musk Has Reached a New Low
Biden-Harris Admin Instructed Me To Cover Up Border Crisis
For More Civics in Schools, Dial Down the Controversy
Links for the intellectually curious, ranked by readers.
Show HN: Open-source text classification CLI – train models with no labeled data
Discord Reduced WebSocket Traffic by 40%
Docker Desktop Alternative
Show HN: Inngest 1.0 – Open-source durable workflows on every platform
Mitosis in the Gray-Scott model: writing shader-based chemical simulations
Show HN: Put this touch sensor on a robot and learn super precise tasks
Trellis (YC W24) is hiring eng to build AI workflows for unstructured data
Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition
Visualizing Weather Forecasts Through Landscape Imagery
MemoRAG – Enhance RAG with memory-based knowledge discovery for long contexts
Reactive Relational Algebra
CuPy: NumPy and SciPy for GPU
Tō Reo – A Māori Spellchecker
Linux/4004: booting Linux on Intel 4004 for fun, art, and no profit
Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning
“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
Exploding Pagers: a Modern-Day Trojan Horse
Israel Must Consider Washington's Opposition to Escalating War
Inside the Abandoned Homes Israel Wants Back since Hizbullah Began Daily Attacks in October
Israel Pushed Up Lebanon Pager Attack amid Hizbullah Suspicions
Washington's View of Gaza Truce Does Not Align with Israel's Security Interests
Why Is Hamas So Confident that It's Winning?
Pager Attack Decimates Elite Hizbullah Radwan Force Commanders
Palestinian Poll: Support for Oct. 7 Attack Falls in Gaza
Israel Condemns UN General Assembly Vote
Finland's President Defends Decisions to Buy Israeli Arms, Not Recognize Palestinian State
UN General Assembly Widely Supports Nonbinding Palestinian Resolution Demanding Israel Leave West Bank and Gaza within a Year
Hizbullah Hit by Second Wave of Explosive Device Attacks
Hizbullah Walkie-Talkies Explode in Lebanon in Second Day of Blasts
In Lebanon, an Ingenious Operation that Combined Cyberwar with Sabotage
Report: Pager Explosions Killed 19 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria, Wounded 150
Do AI models produce more original ideas than researchers?
Bad dog
Harassed? Intimidated? Guidebook offers help to scientists under attack
COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market animals after all, suggests latest study
Mathematicians discover new class of shape seen throughout nature
Author Correction: <i>Drosophila</i> immune cells transport oxygen through PPO2 protein phase transition
Author Correction: Possible shift in controls of the tropical Pacific surface warming pattern
Is bird flu spreading among people? Data gaps leave researchers in the dark
Tackling the reality of noma
Daily briefing: Thick, sticky ‘brain goo’ might drive obesity
What does peak emissions mean for China — and the world?
Obesity-drug pioneers win prestigious Lasker Award for medical science
How studying octopus nurseries can shape the future of our oceans
Pathogenic hypothalamic extracellular matrix promotes metabolic disease
Dynamic transition and Galilean relativity of current-driven skyrmions
Israeli security services arrest Israeli man over alleged Iranian-backed assassination plot
Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
Hezbollah says 20 members dead, hours after walkie-talkie blasts
Relentless fighting is devastating Sudan and escalating in Darfur’s capital, UN says
Bulgaria probes firm’s possible link to Hezbollah pagers
Turkiye reviews security of communication devices after Lebanon blasts, official says
Lebanon bans pagers, walkie-talkies from flights
37 killed in two days of Lebanon exploding devices: new toll
Sudanese refugees in Egypt caught between conflict and crackdown
Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
How Public Housing Fueled Boston’s Busing Riots
City-imposed residential segregation contributed to the infamous episode.HHS Has Misled on Gender Medicine
The Department of Health and Human Services’ documented failures to hold gender medicine to scientific standards have happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations.Right Diagnosis, Wrong Medicine
Mario Draghi’s report on Europe’s sluggish economy is a needed wake-up call, but his prescription—more government spending—can only worsen the problem.Rethinking the VHA
The agency’s hospitals have failed to move with America’s veteran population.A Supremely Bad Idea
The proposed “ethics code” for the justices is a misguided solution to a nonexistent problem.
“Violence as <strong>Fanon</strong> conceived it, then, was a cure for the almost incurable. It was a weapon in the hands of non-beings, a way out of nothingness”
At 88, <strong>Robert Caro</strong> is still toiling away on his LBJ biography. He aims for 900 words a day
You know Francis Fukuyama’s “<strong>end of history</strong>” thesis. Do you know its bizarre backstory?
<strong>Leonard Cohen</strong> was the quintessential anti-rock star, distrusting everything about the role. Especially his own charisma
<strong>Anchovies</strong>, a dish of frugality, has represented excess — both “food for the poor” and “the famous meat of drunkards,” circa 1600
On <strong>knowing and not knowing</strong>. Benign self-ignorance and willful self-delusion. Mark Lilla on self-evasion and self-confrontation
<strong>Understanding capitalism</strong> means grasping its world-making and world-destroying capacities. Marx’s task was enormous
US Secret Service admits multiple failures over Donald Trump assassination attempt
On the trail of the mystery woman linked to exploding pagers in Lebanon
Israel kills a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, in new blow after Lebanon pager blasts
Malaysian king tells Xi Jinping it will work with China to keep peace in South China Sea
Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border after pager, walkie-talkie blasts
Why Spain’s efforts to stop tariffs on Chinese EVs will fall short
Coffee, tea or rodent: inflight meal mouse grounds Scandinavian Airlines flight
Filipino book lover turns home into communal library
Footage shows Israeli soldier pushing body off roof in West Bank raid
Is Israel pressuring Hezbollah to withdraw from Lebanon’s border with pager attack?
Brain candy for Happy Mutants
A laptop for less than your next dinner out — $80 Chromebooks are here
This ultimate streaming bundle has an iPad and Beats wireless headphones
Outlaws has the best sidekick in Star Wars
ReMarkable Paper Pro tablet feels more like the real thing—and is full-color
Do not mistake Elon Musk's capitulation for compliance
Pinnacle Man, found dead in cave 47 years ago, finally identified as Nicholas Paul Grubb
YouTuber believes squirrels are his friends
Microwaves that are too high up
Trump Media sinks to $18 a share, its lowest ebb yet
It's time to let this SEO tool improve your search rankings!
Trump stumbles through conspiracy-laden Fridman interview
1 in 50 Democrats and 1 in 5 Republicans think Biden made wrong decision dropping out
The aerodynamics of Star Wars starfighters
Pence says he won't vote for Trump, not because he wanted Pence hanged, but because Trump's not conservative enough
Sweden fact of the day
Friday assorted links
The US Has Low Prices for Most Prescription Drugs
*Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success*
Exciting economics is often misguided economics
Thursday assorted links
Mercor
My Conversation with the excellent Tobi Lütke
USA fact of the day
Why do workers dislike inflation?
Wednesday assorted links
What Fusion Energy Can Learn From Biotechnology
Scholars in support of the Moraes Brazil decision against X
Ungated audio of my American dream debate
Mexico political challenge of the day
Rumors and news on everything Apple since 1997
iPhone 17 may gain ProMotion on all models, no under-display Face ID on Pro
iPhone 16 Pro hands on: All the new titanium colors
Anker recalls two popular MagSafe clone power banks over fire risk
Apple designers shed light on the new iPhone 16 Camera Control button
iPhone 16 Pro metal-wrapped battery & better cooling confirmed by teardown
Europe demands Apple open up iOS for better accessory compatibility
Preorder demand for iPhone 16 rises in Russia despite high import prices
Tim Cook opens Fifth Avenue store as iPhone 16 sales begin
Diving in to iPhone 16 and Apple Watch on the AppleInsider Podcast
Unboxing the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Apple Watch Series 10
Samsung is now ripping off Apple design in a painfully awkward ad
Customers try out the iPhone 16 in Apple Stores around the world
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
Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant
US indicts two over socially engineered $230M+ crypto heist
Majority of Redis users considering alternatives after less permissive licensing move
Ivanti patches exploited admin command execution flaw
Microsoft on a roll for terrible rebranding with Windows App
Datacenters bleed watts and cash – all because they're afraid to flip a switch
Europe's largest city council: Oracle ERP allocated £2B in transactions to wrong year
Disney kicks Slack to the curb, looks to Microsoft Teams for a happily ever after
While HashiCorp plays license roulette, Virter rolls out to rescue FOSS VM testing
Cybercrooks strut away with haute couture Harvey Nichols data
Green recycling goals? Pending EU directive could hammer used mobile market
Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: blisteringly inappropriate insults
experiments in refactored perception
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 […]Imagination vs. Creativity
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two form a continuous spectrum of regimes in simple cases, […]
