alejandro moncada 🥑

Crooner

[Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald]

Neil, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed

[Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald]

At times, the joy that life attacks me with is unbearable and leads to gasping hysterical laughter. I find myself completely out of control and wonder how could life could surprise me again and again and again, so completely. How could a man be a cynic? It is a sin.

[Ama @ama_underated]

PROTECT THE REAL DATA CENTERS

[Rich Toronto @rich_toronto]

So people keep going back to “Israel invaded the land” and “Israel stole the land” and “Nakba-this” and “Nakba-that” and all sorts of other stories about why they justify Oct 7 and why Israel is in the wrong.

Let’s clear a few things up.

The land that is now Israel was lived in by both Muslims and Jews for a long time. If you want to get technical about who was there first, it was the Jews. How do we know this for a fact? Well, first of all, Jews have been around for about 2000 years longer than Muslims.

Not enough for you?

OK. How about the fact that the word “Israel” is mentioned in the Quran about 43 times. Palestine? Never once.

Jewish people have been around longer than Muslim people have – fact.

Jewish people were living in the place where Israel is much longer than Arabs have – also fact.

In about 1250 BCE, the Jewish people went to what was then called Canaan – where Israel sits today. This is when they escaped slavery in Egypt, and wandered the dessert for 40 years. 1250BCE. About 1860 years before the founding of Islam.

Fast forward to modern times. 1940s. Yes, there were both Arab-Muslims and Jews living on the land that is now called Israel. And yeah, there was fighting. On both sides.

After the Holocaust, the push for the Jewish people to have their own country intensified. During WWII, too many countries turned their backs on Jews. A Jewish homeland would ensure that Jews always had somewhere to go. There could never be another Holocaust, another ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Additionally, the UK was tired of dealing with all the fighting in the British Mandate of Palestine (what Israel was called before it was Israel), and wanted to wash their hands of it.

So what did they do?

They offered to split the land amongst the two groups living there. The Arab-Muslims and the Jews. Sounds fair, right? Each could have their own State, completely autonomous. Pretty good deal, wouldn’t you think?

I think it was a good deal. The Jews thought it was a good deal. Do you know who didn’t think it was a good deal? The Arab-Muslims. Do you know why? Because they didn’t want the Jews to have anything.

So the day after Israel became a nation, the Arabs attacked. 5 Arab nations attacked, in what would be known as the Arab-Israeli war.

Do you know what else it became known as? The Nakba. Nakba for catastrophe. Because they lost. The Arab world says it’s because Arabs were displaced. But they chose to be displaced. Because they chose not to accept their own nation. They left. They ran away. Because they thought the Jews would lose and they'd be able to go back.

The Arabs have been fighting ever since. At some point in time in the 1960s, the Arab-Muslims who were trying to claim Israel as theirs, started to refer to themselves as Palestinians.

Land has been offered. A Palestinian state has been offered. All that the Palestinians had to do, was accept Israel’s right to exist. To stop attacking and trying to destroy them.

Why don’t the Palestinians have their own State?

Because they refuse to. They refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

Muslim nations in this world, take up 29.13 million square km.

Israel is 21,671 square km.

Jews have 0.1% of the land that Muslims have.

And according to the Radicalized Muslims, that’s too much.

This isn’t about the land.

This is about Radicalized Muslims not wanting Jews to exist.

[Daron Acemoglu @DAcemogluMIT]

First question on AI.

Is the problem superintelligence or distorted intelligence?

This is a question I tried to address in this piece. I can add the following additional comment here.

I believe the debate is being obfuscated by equating goal-driven, autonomous behavior with intelligence. Plants and insects have goal-driven, largely autonomous behaviour. But this isn’t what we mean by intelligence in general.

Intelligence is general-purpose and holistic, and is typically well-adapted to its environment.

There is no doubt that current AI models have impressive capabilities. But in attempting to achieve these capabilities, AI labs may be creating distorted intelligence rather than superintelligence, as I explain in this article.

This matters because the dangers we should watch out for, the kinds of policies and regulations we should adopt, and the hope we should hold depend on the answer to this question.

[Frédéric Schwilden @totalreporter]

Die Lage:

CDU-Abgeordneter, der auf Drogen einen Unfall gebaut hat, behält sein Mandat.

Linken-Abgeordneter, der mit Terror-Fans und Clans chillt, behält sein Mandat.

CDU-Abgeordneter, der immer gegen Leihmutterschaft war, aber durch Leihmutter Vater wurde, der sich mutmaßlich krank meldete, aber dann nach Sardinien flog, behält sein Mandat.

Linken-Abgeordnete, die Bürgermeisterin von Berlin werden will, war jahrelang Mitglied in einem vom Verfassungsschutz beobachteten Verein, macht einfach weiter.

[GOŁƊ @vidxn_]

NAOMI KLIEIN to SAM ALTMAN:

"...you ingested the entire written output of human civilization without consent, without compensation and without credit to build a system whose primary commercial application is eliminating the jobs of the people whose work you consumed.

You are not 'liberating human creativity' -- you are strip-mining it and selling it back at a markup while calling the theft 'training data'."

[alejandro moncada 🥑 @caelanoche]

Las advertencias de Luis González de Alba https://t.co/7E3h5e0ojl

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

We can't trust AI companies to regulate themselves.

It's time for Congress to start taking AI seriously and put safeguards in place to protect Americans.

[Maral Salmassi @MaralSalmassi]

Die Story um Koçaks Verstrickungen wird gerade richtig wild. Er und sein Kollege Niklas Schrader wollten es offenbar sehr genau wissen.

Im Februar 2022 stellten die beiden eine Anfrage zu Anti-Clan-Einsätzen und fragten nach Ort, Datum, Uhrzeit, eingesetzten Polizeieinheiten, Einsatzkräftestunden und sogar nach getragenen Maschinenpistolen und anderen Schnellfeuerwaffen.

Man wollte offenbar nicht nur wissen, was die Polizei tat, sondern ziemlich genau wann, wo, mit wem und womit.

Im September folgte die nächste Anfrage – diesmal zu Hausdurchsuchungen im Clanmilieu,einschließlich der Untergliederung der eingesetzten Polizei und ihrer Bewaffnung.

Und während die Berliner Polizei die Bekämpfung der Clankriminalität intensivierte, forderte die Linksfraktion im Dezember 2022, die Gewerbeüberwachung vollständig aus dem LKA herauszulösen. Die Verbundeinsätze gegen Clankriminalität seien „rechtlich problematisch“, „stigmatisierend“ und „diskriminierend“.

Das erklärte Ziel: „Entpolizeilichung staatlicher Aufgabenwahrnehmung.“
Übersetzt: „Polizei raus und fuck you.“
https://t.co/4jzhd9J2yv

Schrader setzte im selben Monat die detaillierten Anfragen im Alleingang fort.

Was genau lief hier – und seit wann?

Mich würde ja schon interessieren, wie viele Mitglieder der Linken bei dieser Anti-Polizei-/Pro-Clan-Nummer mitgemischt haben. Langsam hätte ich gern ein Organigramm.

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

True multihyphenate Gerrit Graham has died at the age of 77. The actor, screenwriter, and songwriter is perhaps best known as Beef in Brian De Palma’s cult classic ‘Phantom of the Paradise.’ https://t.co/s3zcAvPusp

[S @sofiageste]

Naces, creces. Te haces funcionario público. Abres una librería. Te declaras independiente. Abres una editorial. También es independiente. La Hacienda Pública mexicana te condona el pago de impuestos (IVA). Mueres.

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

SOME POLITICALLY INCORRECT REMARKS ABOUT IMMIGRATION:

Germany just saw a massive victory by the far right, the most alarming result of its kind since Hitler was defeated.

These are not normal conservatives. The AfD contains openly extremist elements hostile to immigrants, LGBT people, women’s rights and the basic pluralistic consensus Germany rebuilt after World War II.

Why did it happen? Germany absorbed an enormous wave of immigration in 2016, much of it from deeply unstable, socially conservative Muslim-majority countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. That changed Germany politically and culturally, very quickly.

Mass immigration fuels the far right.

It did it here. It did it in the UK. It did it in Sweden. And now it’s doing it in Germany.

I am not anti-immigration. America has benefited enormously from immigration.

But there is a gigantic difference between highly-skilled immigration and importing huge numbers of refugees faster than a society can realistically assimilate them.

A democracy has every right to expect newcomers to accept its basic values - equality for women, LGBT rights, religious freedom, secular government and the rule of law.

When the left refuses to acknowledge that, we simply hand the reigns of government to the far right.

[Jan A. Karon @jannibal_]

Langsam dämmert es auch den Leitmedien, in diesem Fall Giovanni di Lorenzo von der ZEIT, dass sich die Folgen der gescheiterten Migrationspolitik keinem normalen Menschen mehr vermitteln lassen und zu den stärksten Treibern des AfD-Zulaufs gehören. Anlass ist ein grausamer Fall aus Köln, bei dem drei Südosteuropäer einen Rentner zu Tode folterten, seinen Ehering raubten und später nicht abgeschoben wurden. Di Lorenzo hat, selbstredend, Recht, wenn er sagt, dass man ein solches Versagen keinem Menschen mehr vermitteln könne.

Nur kommt di Lorenzos Diagnose viel zu spät und fällt noch immer viel zu weich aus. Fälle wie dieser sind keine Einzelfälle, die man betrauern und abhaken könnte. Sie bestimmen die Nachrichtenseiten im Wochentakt. Folgerichtig kennt so gut wie jeder jemanden, der davon betroffen ist und/oder Personen kennt, die betroffen sind.

Parallel dazu wird nur ein Bruchteil der Straftäter, Abgelehnten, Integrationsverweigerer, Islamisten und Sozialbetrüger abgeschoben. Parallel dazu kommen Jahr für Jahr weit über hunderttausend neue Antragsteller hinzu. Parallel dazu wird eingebürgert, was das Zeug hält – während über die Frage, wer eigentlich noch einreisen soll und wer nicht, seit einem Jahrzehnt nicht entschieden wird. Parallel dazu verändert sich die Demografie – und deine weißen Kinder sind plötzlich die nahezu einzigen, die im Sportverein Deutsch sprechen.

Was di Lorenzo also schildert, ist 2026 das bare Minimum und nur der offensichtlichste Beleg dafür, dass hier etwas ganz grundsätzlich nicht mehr stimmt. Die Kritik müsste aber viel tiefer gehen und die Maßnahmen folglich auch größer ausfallen als die Ausweisung von brutalen Gewaltverbrechern wie denen aus Köln. Nach Jahren und Jahrzehnten (Mia V. in Kandel war 2017) und etlichen Opfern dieser Politik fällt der Groschen nun auch ihm und der ZEIT. Too little, too late, aber immerhin.

[José Antonio Crespo @JACrespo1]

Estudié doctorado en historia; hice tres libros de divulgación histórica pero no soy historiador, sino politólogo.

Pero he oído y leído a J.M. Zunzunegui: alguien que cuestiona (como yo) la historia oficial, pero con muchos mas conocimientos.

Lo recomiendo ampliamente.

[José Antonio Crespo @JACrespo1]

Los que fueron súbditos y achichincles de Colosio, ahora se van contra su hijo porque éste decidió no sumarse a la 4ª Destrucción del país.

[tommy @tommydprimetim1]

LIVE NATION TAKES A STAGE FROM UNSIGNED ARTISTS AND GIVES IT TO CELEBRITY KIDS

I warned about this last month.

Live Nation subsidiary Festival Republic removed the BBC Introducing stage from Reading and Leeds after nearly 20 years.

A stage that helped unsigned artists get discovered.

They claimed the replacement would give opportunities to a “much wider pool of emerging talent.”

So who got the opportunity?

Dave Grohl’s daughter.

Liam Gallagher’s son.

David and Victoria Beckham’s son.

And a boy band created through Simon Cowell’s Netflix show.

The Guardian calls it the “nepo baby stage.”

They asked Festival Republic why they removed the BBC stage and got no answer.

@LiveNation didn’t comment either.

Take the stage away from unsigned artists. Claim you’re helping emerging talent. Then give the spots to celebrities’ kids.

THE GREAT HYPOCRISY CONTINUES

https://t.co/R7fMgabdBL

[El Universal @El_Universal_Mx]

🦞🍷¿Langosta y vinos pagados por la universidad?

Una investigación de EL UNIVERSAL revela que Benito Taibo, director de Radio UNAM, facturó más de 175 mil pesos en restaurantes, súper y hasta sus pasteles de cumpleaños con presupuesto universitario.

https://t.co/1dNNHT96xp

[Steven Edginton @StevenEdginton]

I consumed (nearly) all of the BBC’s coverage of Jason Arday, dating back six years.

What I found was extraordinary: years of uncritical interviews, repeated nonsense claims, and, once Arday was caught out, a broadcaster that chose to ignore the story, then double down on its favourite black academic.

I’ve documented it all for The Spectator.
https://t.co/DAcNEVyQK6

[Basti_SecOps_Lagebild @BastiGassl]

Für Notaufnahmen bedeutet eine Clan-Schießerei in Berlin übrigens immer das Gleiche. Entweder, zwei Cousin schleifen ihren Angeschossenen in die Rettungsstelle, brüllen erstmal die halbe Belegschaft zusammen und innerhalb fünf Minuten besetzen an die hundert Clan-Mitglieder die