Adamkhan.net
Friday, May 3rd, 2024
In The Telegraph, Allister Heath spells it out:
Bq. West-hating pro-Palestinian protests are a harbinger of much worse to come.
Israel must stop faffing.
Wednesday, May 1st, 2024
So heartwarming, this exchange between Hugh Hewitt and Yossi Klein-Halevi. Who better to thank HH for his steadfastness and engagement since Oct 7. And HH’s response!
Tuesday, April 30th, 2024
This is how the Associated Press presents the US intifada encampments:
The outcry is forcing colleges to reckon with their financial ties to Israel, as well as their support for free speech. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
What a topsy-turvy whitewash.
There is also:
The protests have even spread to Europe
What’s interesting is why they haven’t mainly been in Europe.
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
In contrast with the Jonathan Freedland piece I linked to earlier, Armin Rosen’s survey “The Israel-Gaza war has changed everything: The norms of war are being rewritten in real-time” in Unherd is simultaneously more detailed yet more humble.
Much of what’s happened since October 7 is without any real precedent … we are deep into the unknown, and were there long before this past week. The sides have notched accomplishments that are both novel and gruesome enough to demand real analytic humility…
I just used the term “midwit” in a post, I’m pretty sure for the first time, but some tendril of editorial integrity made me look it up and it is discomfiting. One nice definition:
An internet term that ironically, is something only an actual midwit would try to use on in the internet to look vErY sMaRt.
Yes — there should be a term for a derogatory term the very use of which classifies you as an instance of it. At any rate, since I had to hold back from using it myself, I am inclined to think I am indeed a midwit, or if not one, only slightly not one.
Someone who is around average intelligence but is so opinionated and full of themselves that they think they’re some kind of genius.
And:
Generally found in the 105-120 IQ range. These are the people who are considered “gifted” in primary school and perhaps “honors” in high school.
I notice myself trying to think but cannot; I can merely react.
Jonathan Freedman, a Jewish columnist for The Guardian, which in itself tells a tale, pens a column “In this shadow war between Iran and Israel, the outline of a different future is visible”. I can understand Palestinians’ disgusting murderous thuggery better than I can understand such sickly magpies within the nest. And he may not even be wrong in his conclusions! It’s the myriad of little things that bug me, the Olympian chin-rubbing despite being Jewish himself. First, the subtitle, which perhaps he didn’t write, but nonetheless reflects his conclusion:
Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership
Israel is required to change its government! (No need for any change in Iran.)
It doesn’t help that the leaderships in both Iran and Israel are under constant pressure from elements that are even more bellicose.
Some insane and insulting parallels are being drawn here.
The hitherto crypto-alliance of Israel and those Sunni states that fear Tehran more than they fear Tel Aviv has stepped into the light.
Fear Tel Aviv? Firstly, that’s Jerusalem to you bub, though given that The Guardian is a British publication, which still shamefully does not recognize Israel as Jerusalem’s capital — I mean Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — no doubt “Tel Aviv” is editorial policy, but you are complicit in this policy, your name is in the byline. Secondly: fear? Hate I would say is more accurate; the Arabs never feared that Israel was going to invade or overthrow them.
Israel would have to do what the US and others are asking: offer the Palestinians a political horizon, one that holds out the prospect of an eventual Palestinian state.
Which others are these? Westerners project their desire for a Palestinian state onto Middle Easterners, who only pay lip service to this notion, because they are close enough to know that Palestinians are part of the problem not the solution. Resolving to being just like the Ayatollahs where it matters, Palestinians’ modus operandi is mass murder and the destabilization and overthrow of any polity they can, so that responsible Middle Easterners prefer to see them contained not empowered.
Normally I would just skip over such pap as this, especially if in The Guardian, which I only look at occasionally for movie reviews and design inspiration. But Israel’s Channel 12 hosts the Unholy podcast with Freedland to which people I know listen to devotedly, and who know him personally slightly as he sends his kids to the same Jewish school in northwest London. Why oh why does he not know better.
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
Every paragraph with its little bombshell: Edward Luttwak is in full elegant force in “Iran is weaker than we think” in Unherd. The opening paragraph:
It is only now, almost 16 years since Obama first entered the White House with the private determination to end Iran’s “death to America” hostility at all costs, that his Iran policy has achieved the exact opposite of what he had wanted: direct warfare, with US fighters intercepting Iran’s bombardment drones. All along, it was a policy that had two different faces: one perfectly reasonable, and the other perfectly delusional.
Such casual rhythm before the zing at paragraph’s end! Later we get a Luttwakian paradox of strategy:
The [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards finally failed strategically because their Arab recruitment policy was so successful that it overshot the culminating point of success: seeing the historic Sunni capital of Damascus under Shia domination, and Baghdad the very seat of the Sunni Arab Caliphate ruled by Iran’s agents, Sunni Arab states from Morocco to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which had repeatedly fought Israel from 1948, moved to abandon their hostility, openly or discreetly.
And we end with striking, real-world evidence that demonstrates the strategic theories posited within. I won’t quote this evidence so as not to spoil the end of this masterful op-ed.
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
In The Wall Street Journal, this geopolitical news article on Finland is the first one I can recall reading anywhere. Swimming into focus are renewed tensions with the new Russia. Th
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Finland has ramped up its military spending, boosting its defense budget to above 2% and snapping up U.S. rocket systems, as well as Israeli antitank and air-defense systems. The country is preparing to base F-35 jet fighters it will receive from the U.S. just over 100 miles from its border with Russia.
I wish for Finland and Israel to explore each other much more.
Sunday, April 21st, 2024
War and warming. What are the chances this bonkers piece is a hoax designed to embarrass its publisher The Nation. People took time and effort to ensure it is written in full sentences and well copy-edited.
Friday, April 19th, 2024
Great lengthy interview with Giora Eiland, always with cogent orthogonal ideas on important Israeli geopolitical realities.
The Israeli story was, Hamas is like ISIS, and ISIS is like Hamas. No! That’s not the case. ISIS was a bunch of crazies from Baghdad who, unopposed, gained control of western Iraq and those who lived there. But it didn’t represent the people, not in Mosul or elsewhere. Gaza more resembles 1930s Germany, where an extremist party won elections, with the support of most of the people, and quickly unified the military and civil government into one entity. What happened on October 7 is that the State of Gaza went to war against the State of Israel. State against state. Now, the state of Gaza does have vulnerabilities. It doesn’t have sufficient fuel, food and water of its own. You can impose a legitimate boycott on that state until the state returns all of your hostages. Humanitarian for humanitarian.
I’m not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved that Eiland is granted the levers of power.
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
Cool, calm, collected, and with casually brilliant staging. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi provides the official Israeli miltary speech in response to the massive Iranian missile attack.
Amidst all this it’s a happy thought that Germany sold Israel a doomsday device (Dolphin subs) and a couple of decades later Israel is selling Germany an anti-doomsday device. Ben-Gurion and Adenhauer.
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
OK I need to stop reading the news, but one more, this diatribe in Arutz7:
To me, the word “State” has demeaning connotations in the English speaking world. What other country on this planet is referred to and refers to itself as the State of…….? To be referred to as a “State” implies a not quite equal status with other nations, implying some benevolent authority has graciously bestowed a degree of autonomy to Israel. It is time that Israelis and Diaspora Jews refer to Israel as Israel, period.
I see no need to take issue with the term “state”; we are in good company with the United States of America. Like them we explicitly acknowledge the legalistic framework within which the American and Israeli peoples live at liberty. There may even be some positive connotations; we live now in a state of Israel, as opposed to the previous state. At any rate, many nationstates have political prefixes that are ignored and shortened to their national names: République française is just France, for example, and the State of Israel is usually referred to as just Israel.
Giora Eiland’s commentary on Channel 12 last night warranted its own story this morning on Arutz7, with him arguing that the response to Iran’s attack should be to focus on Lebanon.
Israel does not need to attack in Iran. There is no reason for it, and it has the potential to become complicated militarily, as well as regionally and with all of our friends – and the achievement will not be significant, regardless. If you want to put Iranians in their place and maybe even test them – there are two other arenas: One is in Syria.
There is merit here, though I think his suggested mechanism, to announce Israel’s return to the North for the school year, is fatuous. Both the low- and the high-level attacks from Hamas and Iran respectively point to a response aginst the mid-level main threat from Lebanon. Even if it doesn’t happen visibly — Bibi’s response seems to be to keep things simple and retaliate against actual perpetrators — it does feel like the appropriate true focus.
Kudos to Britain’s Daily Mail for publishing the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ piece “Why Israel’s failure to strike back at Iran could lead to NUCLEAR WAR” by FDD’s chief exec Mark Dubowitz and senior fellow Jacob Nagel.
Israel was acting well within the rules of its dangerous neighborhood by taking out [Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon]. But the Ayatollah responded with a potentially catastrophic barrage on Israeli civilians, military bases and government facilities. If Iran walks away from this moment without paying a severe price, Tehran may be emboldened to deploy its weapons again. And the next time, these drones and missiles may be armed with nuclear or chemical payloads.
Their conclusion is indisputable and anything else is either appeasement or overthinking.
Monday, April 15th, 2024
Wonderful piece in Commentary by Seth Cropsey (I jumped to the family name and he is indeed the son of University of Chicago scion Joseph Cropsey) ““American Strategy on the Brink” that really gets to the heart of the matter”: The United States is shirking its responsibilities on the world stage:
All three instances of ongoing violence [Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan] stem fundamentally from a crisis in American power. These theaters are afire because Washington refuses to recognize what it is—the center of a loosely democratic system that spans Eurasia and the Americas. Culturally and strategically, the Rimland is being punished for the blindness at its core.
From “Israel’s Splendid Isolation” by John Podhoretz in Commentary:
Jews literally did not have the means or the ability to defend themselves for more than two millennia. Now we do. And when we do, we become unnerving. The very phrase “Jewish army” was, since 70 C.E.., the definition of an oxymoron. Now it conjures up something powerful, and the fact that it’s powerful at all means for many that it’s far too powerful. When Israel acts in its own defense, it alienates these people and these nations. And thereby “isolates” itself.
I can say it with confidence: I love you jpod.
Writing brief essays now on X, Victor Davis Hanson lists Ten Ways to Guarantee a Theater-wide War:
Vapid “Don’t!” … Abruptly pull out of Afghanistan … Chinese spy balloon … [okay a] “minor” invasion [of Ukraine] … Seem eager to resume the Iran Deal …
Etc.
Monday, April 8th, 2024
This Dearborn crowd musters up a “Death to America” chant (though the speaker to his credit doesn’t say it). Stupid fucks.
Rice cultures around the world do tend to exhibit similar cultural characteristics, including less focus on self, more relational or holistic thinking and greater in-group favoritism than wheat cultures.
The last time I came across this sort of diet-based sociology was in Nietzsche, where it struck me as both significant and true while feeling outlandish and ridiculous when repeated. So it’s nice to see it treated academically. Here’s one bit in Nietzsche, Aphorism #134 in La Gaya Scienza (he probably mentions it elsewhere too):
Pessimists as Victims. When a profound dislike of existence gets the upper hand, the after-effect of a great error in diet of which a people has been long guilty comes to light. The spread of Buddhism (not its origin) is thus to a considerable extent dependent on the excessive and almost exclusive rice-fare of the Indians, and on the universal enervation that results therefrom.
I enjoyed this very nice primer on editing by Eva Parish. Of her 9 recommendations, the one I fall down on most in my own occasional scribblings is “Be aware of your tone”, which is actually quite an expansive, non-technical problem. I guess I try to mix up the high and low due to insecurity that I’m a bore and aim to jolt and amuse the reader awake — but Eva argues that the mix is confusing and distracting.
I think however she is wrong to restore commas after prefixing subordinate clauses. Her examples:
Example: If you’re looking for me I’ll be in my office.
Revision: If you’re looking for me, I’ll be in my office.
Example: Due to the fog our flight was delayed.
Revision: Due to the fog, our flight was delayed.
My take instead: if the sentence is unambiguous without the comma then lean towards omitting it. Especially with the second example, with the clause being only four syllables long, the comma slows down the reader so much that the music of the sentence is broken. “Fog our flight” cannot be misinterpreted — nobody thinks of fogging a flight. Indeed the lack of a comma foretells to the reader they can confidently plow ahead through a well-tended sentence.
Her admonition to avoid the vague “this” — is new to me or else I’d forgotten it from The Little Red Schoolhouse, even though it fits very much into the Schoolhouse’s insistence of chaining sentences together nicely, and I will keep it in mind.
Via Hacker News, this Chrome for Developers post dives into browser colors beyond RGB.
Saturday, April 6th, 2024
He’s very good, is Brendan O’Neill, and I’m glad The Spectator is publishing him. “The Truth About Friendly Fire”:
Across social media, the cry goes up: Israel did this on purpose. It seems Israel is the only state not allowed to make mistakes. Where us decent Westerners kill friends in error, Israel does it intentionally, with malice at its heart.
Who would have thought this would be published in such a well-known British magazine. There is hope.
It seems that some in the West are seeking to launder their reputations through attacking Israel. From Cameron to Biden, powerful men who have been involved in wars far more horrific and far less justified than Israel’s war on Hamas, are now pontificating against the Jewish State.
But their finger-wagging attempt at rehabilitating their own reputations by slighting others’ — and hang the risk even unto civilization itself — does burnish at least one aspect of their respective reputations, ie being a sleazeball.
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
How gratifying, the plethora of common-sense comments reacting to this rather less-than-sensible Telegraph story “How international law could force Britain to stop arms sales to Israel” which furthers the tradition of latching on to that weird and mealy-mouthed “plausible” ruling by the ICJ.
Was this the Court’s intent, to say something with plausible deniability so that the very many people who want it to have said a thing can act as if it did? I in turn am latching on to that possibility to accuse it all of being quite transparent, truly despicable, and dangerously corrosive.
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2024
In Mosaic Magazine, a sweeping history of Israel v. Lebanon by Raphael BenLevi.
Israel’s geography currently provides it with reasonably defensible borders on three sides: the Mediterranean to the west, the Sinai Desert to the south, and the Jordan Valley to the east. Israel’s northern border, however, is not defined by a sea, a vast desert, or even a major river. Rather it is a man-made line that cuts through mountains, valleys, farms, and forests. This has been the case since antiquity, making the northern border of ancient Israel the hardest to defend.
The article mirrors one that I linked to from exactly three months ago on Gaza by Jean-Pierre Filiu in Foreign Affairs.
We all know that if these tattooed trustafarians who think men can breastfeed went anywhere near Gaza their pronouns would be was / were quicker than you could say ‘Free Palestine!’.
Brendan O’Neill, “The unbearable sanctimony of the ‘pro-Palestine’ set”
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
In an interview with Israeli radio station 103fm, Yarden Pivko, daughter of Hamas hostage Itzik Gelertner, denounces the Kaplanistas hijacking the hostage crisis. Kudos to 103fm for airing this despite their and all media-luvvy institutional sympathy for Kaplanism.
Sunday, March 31st, 2024
Good ep of Mike Doran and Gadi Taub’s allcaps ISRAEL UPDATE podcast “Is the US Stabbing Israel in the Back?”
It’s in The Guardian so you know what’s coming in this restaurant review of Freddie’s, a New York-style non-kosher Jewish deli, plus they telegraph it in the title, so that in falling for the clickbait I skip the whole salt-beef bit to the predictable meat of the thing:
For all my lack of faith or observance these dishes, kept alive by a vestigial memory of the shtetl, root me. Then I hesitated. Could I really write about a Jewish restaurant given the current political turmoil? Would I get abuse for doing so? Surely better to keep shtum. At which point I knew I had no choice: I had to write about it. The horrendous campaign of the government and armed forces of Israel in Gaza cannot be allowed to make being Jewish a source of shame. When Hamas mounted their 7 October attack on Israel, they committed both an atrocity and a provocation. With so many hostages taken, there were no good options for the Israeli government. Nevertheless, they managed to choose the very worst one. They have killed thousands, starved many more, destroyed homes and turned their country into a pariah. As it happens, they have also made life for Jews who live outside Israel and have no responsibility for the decisions its government takes, so very much harder. I deplore what Israel is doing. But that doesn’t mean I can “refute” my Jewishness. That is a surrender to antisemitism. And so I sit here with my terrific salt beef sandwich and my chocolate mousse, indulging that bit of my Jewish identity which makes sense to me. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.
As a British Israeli my reaction to this sort of thing is always a multi-level “ugh”. But having returned recently to my native Glasgow for a Jewish funeral, I was reminded of what I would likely have been if my parents hadn’t made Aliyah to Israel when I was a child — and moreover since I have now lived in the UK again for a long time is arguably what I have reverted back to being. (Noooooo!)
Nonetheless it’s hard for me to feel anything but contempt for people who stroke the tiger in the hope it will eat them last.
And yet I must understand that as people who are primarily Britons their prism is the BBC, and as right-thinking people it’s likely The Guardian and its ilk, so this is what they may actually believe. But is the reviewer truly speaking in good faith? He says Israel chose the very worst course of action but does not articulate what other better ones might have been. Write a very stroppy letter?
Also, if a sandwich is the extent of his Jewish identity, he’d probably do better shucking it off altogether and embracing something else more all-encompassingly. I don’t mean that disparagingly, but men are meaning machines and if he’s not getting much out of Judaism then it is occupying a space in his soul that could perhaps otherwise be more fruitfully filled.
Levantine Israel is such a monumental and cosmic gift — especially for the rain-soaked British Jew who must otherwise seek any anthropological depth in Druidism and sun in other countries such as Spain (a pretty fabulous alternative it’s true). So I think it is folly for a British Jew to not embrace that mainline connection to Israel; Britons have a passion for the Middle East and now Jewish Britons have their own ancient piece of it again.
But that is all very well when it was done for you as a child or if you are wealthy enough to maintain an additional home and travel frequently. But for most of us, as I was reminded at the funeral, we grow up and get up and go to work, lifelong dalliances with distant exotic countries way beyond reach. And even for those who have the means to have additional homes, the center of gravity of their psyche and viewpoint is British. I need to understand that about British Jews who did not make Aliyah, which is most of them.
On one hand, I can see how the current war unites Jews in their fate, while on the other I can see how the cleavage in the West between appeasement and struggle runs right down the middle of Diaspora Jewry.
With this return to protests the Kaplanistas have chosen to learn nothing, to refuse to acknowledge their part in contributing to the machdal of Oct 7. They think they are melach ha-aretz, the salt of the earth, but in fact serve as perhaps-not-so-unwitting secular neturei karta [Update 2024 April 6: via Gadi Taub, they’ve been dubbed Neturei Kaplan!], prepared like their nihilistic sociological counterparts the BLM supporters to try to blow up their own societies just to see what happens next. As such they are the very opposite of the responsible and the educated that they fancy themselves to be, and undermine the mamlachtiut they ostensibly are out to promote. They give succor and encouragement to the enemy whom they presume, in their relapse back to provincial Orientalism, has no agency. And there is the minor issue of giving the gleeful foreign media an easy way to further bash Israel. As they air their internal grievances to Sky News I hope for the sake of their souls they each feel a sickly yet potentially redemptive wonder of: “What the hell am I doing”.
As reported by The Telegraph, a handbook by and for Palestine Action! Absolutely mental.
Saturday, March 30th, 2024
Eichler’s personal Eichler in Silicon Valley is on sale. It’s great, like mid-level Wright and perhaps a bit of Neutra combined.
Friday, March 29th, 2024
Good to see Amos Atza-El, Mr Middle Israel as he self-declares, still at it, this time on Russia and how Putin’s romance with the Jihadis echoes Stalin’s with the Nazis.
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
The most awesome new pic of Fallingwater I’ve perhaps ever seen beyond the standard 3/4 view. This is by Andrew Pielage, who was an official Artist-In-Residence at the time. The viewpoint and the lighting give us each step’s full floating horizontality and their cumulative effect. I can imagine Mr Wright commending the image.
Wednesday, March 27th, 2024
One of the principal functions of a modern university is to provide… masses of human material capable of exercising the responsibilities while accepting the limitations of a bureaucratic career.
Walter Russell Mead, Twilight of the Wonks
Friday, March 22nd, 2024
Culture is cultural appropriation is culture.
ASK
Tuesday, March 19th, 2024
Bibi to AIPAC and Bibi with John Spencer, urban warfare historian. What a high-octane human.
Sunday, March 17th, 2024
From what looks like his regular chair in his cluttered leafy office, Dan Schueftan — or should we call him Dr Dugri — provides a primer on Israel (dugri meaning something like English’s plainspokenness or brass tacks).
Reading up on Schueftan however, despite all the sagacity he seems the intellectual architect of much of the present misery, having advocating for unilateral withdrawals.
In retrospect one might be able to guess that this would be the general thrust of his advice, given his mercurial impatient demeanor; and that he gets the listener’s acquiescence — perhaps in Ariel Sharon’s case against their better judgment — with his many “ok?”s.
Saturday, March 16th, 2024
What a splendid piece by Charles Moore in The Telegraph on Israel.
Britain (with other powers) claims that Israel has been, in international law, the “occupying power” in Gaza even after it left the place in 2005. This is a strange idea, since the definition of occupation is “effective control”, which Israel even now does not have over the whole of Gaza.
If their subscription department was a bit less shady I’d totally resubscribe.
The official rejoinder to Chuck Schumer’s “Lost His Way” speech, given within days of Nathan Glazer’s statement at the Oscars:
We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.
comes not from the Israeli government but from the Likud Party, thereby demonstrating the very content of its statement: that Israel is indeed “an independent and proud democracy” complete with political parties proud of their heritage.
Benny Gantz made a commendable statement condemning the speech to which Arutz Sheva commendably dedicated a story. While the Likud’s statement is exquisitely-crafted English, Gantz’s is more Israeli — less catty, more direct: first unabashed fulsome praise, then: “but he made a mistake.” Blunt yet surgical. Lapid meanwhile chose to harness the speech to rail on Netanyahu.
We make such a fuss of all these bloviations even as the situation rages. I like the take by Danny Cohen, a producer on Glazer’s movie, who, as reported by The Hill, said on the Unholy podcast:
My support for Israel is unwavering. Listen, it’s his film. He can stand up there and choose his own words.”
Thursday, March 14th, 2024
The worst news I’ve seen in a while [Hebrew]: The head of a Gaza clan has been assassinated by Hamas for collaborating with Israel. We need to not be fuckups in this crucial endeavor: empowering, enabling and ensuring acceptable alternatives to Hamas is the capstone to victory; all the battlefield victories come to naught without it and we are back to square one alongside some demolished buildings and bereaved locals.
Wednesday, March 13th, 2024
Anti-Israel Jews are not a political but a clinical sub-category.
Edward Luttwak
Howard Jacobson, I didn’t know you had it in you. So there is such a thing as a well-known public intellectual British Jew with at least half a bollock.
Wednesday, March 6th, 2024
Campy? It’s bloody rocket fuel darling. Happy 50th, Queens White and Black.
Thank you, past and likely future Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in particular for this Twitter post in memoriam for Dennis Yekimov, killed in action in Gaza. That big wide intelligent friendly face, and in the biographical notes:
He would hike dozens of kilometers in streams and in the hills of Jerusalem and the whole country.
Younger, betters versions of myself, that is how I see these heroic guys, who have so much to lose and are willing to lose it, and are doing so in the hundreds.
Monday, February 26th, 2024
My impression is that R2-D2 and C-3PO were the Laurel and Hardy, the comedy relief, with one being the superior intellect and dominant personality, pushing around a more innocent friend.
Mark Hamill
Monday, February 19th, 2024
Forget a 2-state solution: emulate the Emirates! In English, Mordechai Kedar explains a political horizon to Arutz Sheva. Update: In the wake of Bibi’s outline for post-war Gaza announced just a few days later, Kedar seems prescient, so much so that either he has the Cabinet’s ear or was tasked to float the notion.
As Rumsfeld say, if you can’t fix problem, make it bigger. So what we’re going for is not a 2-state nor even a 3-state but an 8+ statelets solution! I wonder if the Biden Administration will grudgingly go along with this. You know what, I’m guessing they will. Viva la chamulot!
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Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed receives Saudi envoy in Abu Dhabi
UN denounces ‘more serious’ Iran crackdown on women without veils
US military starts pier construction off Gaza
UN seeks to deescalate Sudan tensions amid reports of possible attack
Israeli army says missile fire kills civilian near Lebanon
Gaza baby rescued from dead mother’s womb dies
EU commits $73 million more for Gaza aid
Egyptian delegation in Israel for talks on Gaza hostages
Shawarma restaurant in Cairo brings taste of home for displaced Palestinians
Hamas official says Israel ‘will not achieve’ goals in Rafah
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
Let Jews Carry Guns
New York and other states have tried to prevent gun possession by religious observers, but there is both a physical and psychological demand for self-sufficient personal security.Surrender and Its Costs
Northwestern capitulates to a mob of anti-Israel students.Chaos at UCLA
An anti-Israel demonstration prompted a melee on the quad.Title IX vs. Pope Francis
How Catholic higher ed should respond to the Biden administration’s new regulations on gender identityKeep Congregations Safe
Houses of worship can take several steps to harden their facilities against attack—but ultimately, security cannot be left solely to the professionals.<strong>Walter Kirn</strong>, the conspiratorially minded counter-elite journalist, tries a new way of sticking it to the ruling classes: founding a literary magazine
It’s hard to get good at one art form. Harder still to get good at another. <strong>Nicholson Baker</strong> is a cautionary tale, whether he realizes it or not
<p>A paradox of <strong>modern political life</strong>: the more times feel unprecedented, the more we reach for past parallels</p>
<strong>The dictionary people</strong>. These tweedy, eccentric amateur lexicographers made the Oxford English Dictionary possible
Conservative writers once <strong>pilloried the left</strong> with patrician gravitas. Their stylistic assurance has devolved into a flat hackishness
The passing of <strong>Marjorie Perloff and Helen Vendler</strong> feels like the definitive end of a poetic era that has been slowly dying for years
Since 1739, 130 <strong>Roman dodecahedrons</strong> have been discovered by archaeologists. But a mystery endures: What were they used for?
Sleep is a booming business. Here’s why that’s a problem
Hamas says Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu trying to derail Gaza ceasefire deal
Ex-Donald Trump aide Hope Hicks testifies ex-president told her to deny Stormy Daniels affair
Israel-Gaza war: long, hot summer set to add to Palestinians’ suffering amid 39 degree heat: ‘It’s going to be very dangerous’
Canada police arrest ‘hit squad’ suspects linked to Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder
Chinese businessman Guo Wengui’s chief of staff pleads guilty weeks before US fraud trial
Human rights group begins legal action over UK’s Rwanda migrant policy, before PM Sunak can launch plan
Israel-Gaza war: Hamas sending delegation to Egypt for truce talks in sign of progress
Singapore, Malaysia to get visit from US treasury official to discuss sanctions on Iran, and Russian oil
How greater EU autonomy can boost relations with China
Brain candy for Happy Mutants
Noem's heartless puppy-slaying was a job audition for the cruelest U.S. President in history
Full length color movie cartridges for the original Atari 2600
Kansas City cop allegedly stole $320,000 from anti-crime charity
Magenta is the color of danger in new climate change heat risk chart
Owner of exploded building arrested getting ready to board one-way flight out the country
"Mad inventor" Tim Hunkin explains how electro-mechanical games are made
These frogs look like something from Studio Ghibli
House drifts across San Francisco Bay
1957 school dress code video for students
Moulin Rouge goes "topless" as blades fall off famed Parisian windmill
Utah kitty plays in a box, then accidentally gets shipped off as return package to Amazon in California (video)
Is it healthier to sleep on your left side or your right side?
Not again! Boeing plane makes emergency landing in New York when emergency slide flies off mid-flight
This trailer for Jim Henson Idea Man made me cry
Edge Esmerelda
The world of labor shortages, the culture that is alcohol
Friday assorted links
Northern Virginia fact of the day
Migrants at Sea: Unintended Consequences of Search and Rescue Operations
What is the problem in Australia? (from my email)
Thursday assorted links
Ryan Bourne on the British growth deterioration
My Conversation with the excellent Coleman Hughes
What should I ask Philip Ball?
Are Hungarian pro-fertility policies failing?
Wednesday assorted links
Trump and the Fed
What I’ve been reading
Will Japan have a financial crisis anytime soon?
Rumors and news on everything Apple since 1997
Apple resellers are in a MacBook Air price war, driving M2 & M3 models down to as low as $849
How to install Steam using Whisky on Apple Silicon Macs
Fingers crossed: Spotify might actually launch lossless audio in 2024
iPhone 15 Find My shows Mandalorians the way in latest Apple ad
Analysis paralysis - hot takes from investment firms in the wake of Apple earnings
MagSafe could get a makeover in iPhone 16
Morgan Stanley hikes Apple stock target after unexpectedly positive earnings
Apple said to be stealing tech from expensive suppliers to give to cheaper ones
Macs, iPad mini, and big AI announcements are not coming at Apple's iPad event
New iPads are close, EU App Store rules, and Apple ID's new bug on the AppleInsider Podcast
Siri for iOS 18 to gain massive AI upgrade via Apple's Ajax LLM
Apple blows away Wall Street earnings estimates, even with weak China iPhone sales
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
Oracle's database family gets trendy AI makeover
Relax, Google's drop in search market share in April was just an illusion
RHEL stays fresh with 9.4 while CentOS 7 gets a Rocky retirement plan
Kaspersky hits back at claims its AI helped Russia develop military drone systems
AI Catholic 'priest' defrocked after recommending Gatorade baptism
BASICally still alive: Classic language celebrates 60 years with new code and old quirks
AWS promotes itself as alternative to its own VMware service
It may take decade to shore up software supply chain security, says infosec CEO
Apple confirms iPadOS will fall under its Alternative Business Terms in the EU
China 'the most competitive market in the world' for the iPhone says Tim Cook
Windows users left to fend for themselves after BitLocker patch bungle
Irish government hands Intel millions to offset energy price hikes
experiments in refactored perception
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War,
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2, 2011). It compiles, codes and analyzes […]There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from […]The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet put together by Yancey Strickler (whom you may have heard of as the cofounder of Kickstarter). Yancey’s essay, The Dark Forest […]