Norris Smith

Psychology PhD, am slightly obsessed with travel, beliefs/PR/propaganda, $TSLAQ

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Has there ever been a World Cup where a team is playing in the host country on the literal same day that the host country is bombing that team's country?

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Hi @NYTimesPR, thanks for responding. Appreciate it. I'm a subscriber and I think some of your reporters do some great reporting.
Just to respond to your response to my post:
1) There were no facts "misstated" by me. You cited three examples in response. Only one of them was about specific *named* GOP House members (and it wasn't from "yesterday", it was from a year ago.) So I stand by my post.
2) As others have pointed out already, none of the 3 articles you cited have the names of any GOP individuals in the titles ("Right-Wing Republicans" "a Kansas Republican" "G.O.P. Fingerprints"), in comparison to your original "Who is Darializa" takedown piece. Where is your "Who is Brandon Gill" or "Who is Keith Self" or "Who Is Randy Fine" or "Who Is Mary Miller" critical profile pieces? How about "Who is Tom Emmer," given the GOP House Majority Whip just a few days ago spewed racist crap about Somalis? And where are the Peter Baker tweets summarizing *their* most controversial claims?
3) This isn't a new criticism. Many have made it against your paper for many years; that you go harder on the left than the right, that you even occasionally whitewash the far right. Remember when you had to do a public response in 2017 to a NYT profile that went super soft on a... Nazi? https://t.co/IF6DhTwcrp. Remember when you guys did a softball piece about a far-right, Islamophobic Trump aide's love for cooking? https://t.co/dp0Sf9PQg9.
Oh, and dare I ask: where are the fawning 'Trump voters' in diners' equivalent pieces for DSA members in NYC bodegas? Isn't it time?
4) Finally, that your response to my post was to proudly say you guys at the Times have "been documenting the increasingly extreme viewpoints on both sides of the political spectrum" kinda makes my point for me. One side's extreme wants universal healthcare and an end to genocide. The other side's extreme says Somalis are "garbage" and wants "remigration", mass deportations and white supremacy.
But, hey, "Both sides!"

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Imagine telling someone in 1999…

The year is 2026.

The President is Donald Trump in his second non consecutive term.

The richest man in the world is PayPal cofounder Elon Musk… but not because of fintech or Paypal. Because of rockets, electric cars, AI, satellites, brain chips and something called “Boring Company”.

Apple is worth trillions but its main business isn’t computers… its selling glass rectangles everyone stares at for 9 hours a day.

People don’t watch TV. They watch teenagers explain geopolitics, finance, and relationship advice in ~60 second videos.

The biggest taxi company owns no taxis.
The biggest hotel company owns no hotels.
The most powerful media companies are social networks where everyone argues with strangers for free.

Kids are making millions filming themselves playing video games.

AI Robots write emails, code, legal memos, songs, essays, and breakup texts.

The internet is mostly bots arguing with humans who are trying to prove they aren’t bots.

You can summon a car, groceries, a doctor, a date, a private jet, or a dog walker from your phone.

People pay real money for invisible currencies, digital monkeys, AI girlfriends and pictures that disappear after 24 hours.

The richest companies in the world don’t sell oil, steel, or cars. They sell attention, compute, data, and addiction.

And somehow, after all of that everyone is still using Excel.

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

I have been reading the new UN report about how Israel has been targeting children in Gaza. There are no words to describe how awful it is. Here are some of the worst examples:

1) Hind Rajab and family, Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City, 29 Jan 2024. Named. A family of seven plus two paramedics killed. Hind Rajab, 5 to 6, stayed on the phone with rescuers for hours, trapped in a car among her dead relatives. Her cousin Layan Hamadeh, 15, was killed mid-call. The rescue ambulance, dispatched with COGAT clearance, was shelled.

2) The 15-year-old with the white flag, Khan Younis, 24 Jan 2024. Anonymous. Shot in the foot during an ordered evacuation while holding a white cloth, then shot twice more in the back and neck as he tried to rise. His 20-year-old brother killed running to him; their mother shot signaling for an ambulance. Assessed as DAN .338 sniper fire from about 200m.

3) The 10-day-old baby, Nuseirat camp, 12 Apr 2024. Anonymous. Shot in the head by a quadcopter-mounted rifle while being breastfed inside a tent. Survived with brain damage and seizures.

4) The 14-year-old killed with fragmenting pellets, Aug 2024. Anonymous. Cube-shaped pellets that fragmented internally like cluster munitions, destroying multiple organs. The report flags the munition itself as a possible war crime.

5) Jadallah "Jad" Jadallah, Al-Far'a camp, Tubas, 16 Nov 2025. Named. Jadallah Jihad Jouma Jadallah, 14, shot at close range and left bleeding for roughly 45 minutes while about 14 soldiers stood around him. One kicked his cap back when he threw it for attention, one filmed him, one placed a stone beside him to stage a stone-throwing pretext. Soldiers fired at his approaching mother and blocked two ambulances. Body withheld.

6) Layla al-Khatib, Muthallath al-Shuhada, 25 Jan 2025. Named. Layla (Laila) Muhammad Ayman al-Khatib, 2, shot in the back of the head during dinner at home, four bullets fired through the living room window. Youngest West Bank child killed in the reporting period. B'Tselem found the only man in the building was her grandfather, contradicting the "wanted terrorist" claim.

7) Saddam Rajab, Tulkarem, shot 28 Jan 2025, died 7 Feb 2025. Named. Saddam (Sadam) Rajab, 10, shot during an incursion. A soldier told the father, "I am the one who shot your son. God willing, he will die." Medical care obstructed; the boy died of his wounds days later.

8) Walid Ahmad, Megiddo Prison, died 22 Mar 2025. Named. Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, 17, from Silwad. Healthy at arrest in Sept 2024; dead six months later of starvation, muscle wasting, untreated colitis and scabies. First Palestinian minor to die in Israeli custody since Oct 2023. Family learned of his death from a news article; body withheld.

9) The Sde Teiman 15-year-old, detention. Anonymous. Held among 70 adults, shackled until his hands bled, dogs released on prone detainees; described as "the worst days of my life." A separate 15-year-old reported being electrocuted via a needle in his shoulder over 54 days.

10) The four newborns at Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital, Nov 2023. Anonymous. Found decomposing, still attached to defunct life-support machines, after staff were forced to evacuate without being able to move them. Independently verified by the Commission, Washington Post, and CNN.

11) Newborn hypothermia deaths, Dec 2024 to Feb 2025. Anonymous. At least 15 newborns, including a one-day-old girl, died of cold linked to lack of shelter, fuel, and incubators. UNICEF called the deaths preventable.

12) Sexual violence in detention. Anonymous. Forced public stripping and filming of boys during mass arrests; two cousins aged 7 and 13 stripped at gunpoint in Jenin; new reports of boys raped in custody, one on multiple occasions.

The Commission documents at least 20,179 Palestinian children killed and 44,143 wounded in two years, 30 percent of all the dead in Gaza, alongside 213 more killed in the West Bank. Thirteen times the Commission asked Israel to respond, and thirteen times it heard nothing back. Israel doesn't care enough to even respond. It kills children as a matter of policy.

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@JuddLegum Stop thinking and pay up (please). Asteroid mining is so cool!

[Declassified UK @declassifiedUK]

It’s funny how neither of these stories can be reported in national media, isn’t it.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

For 8 years, people at Morgan Stanley called Rick Rescorla paranoid.

Then September 11th proved he was right.

Rick was a decorated Vietnam veteran who became Head of Security for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center.

In 1990, he walked through the underground parking garage and quietly warned:

“Someone could park a truck bomb here and bring this whole place down.”

Executives dismissed the concern as excessive.

Then came February 26, 1993.

A truck bomb exploded in the World Trade Center parking garage almost exactly where Rick predicted.

Six people died.
Over 1,000 were injured.

The evacuation was chaos.

Rick watched terrified employees stumble through smoke-filled stairwells for hours with no real preparation.

Afterward, he made a decision.

Morgan Stanley employees would practice evacuation drills every three months.

All 2,700 of them.

No exceptions.

People hated it.

The company occupied floors 44 through 74 of the South Tower.

That’s a very long walk down when you have meetings, deadlines, and places to be.

Employees complained constantly.

“He’s obsessed.”
“This is unnecessary.”
“He’s paranoid.”

Rick didn’t care.

He timed every evacuation.
Studied bottlenecks.
Adjusted routes.
Ran the drills again.

And during the drills, he sang old military songs to keep people calm while they descended the stairwells.

For 8 years, people rolled their eyes at him.

Then came September 11, 2001.

8:46 a.m.

The North Tower was hit.

An announcement in the South Tower told people to remain at their desks because the building was secure.

Rick ignored it.

He grabbed a bullhorn and ordered:

“Everyone out. Now.”

Then he personally directed employees through the stairwells floor by floor.

And he sang.

The same songs people once mocked during drills suddenly became the sound keeping frightened people calm as they escaped.

At 9:03 a.m., the South Tower was struck.

Rick was still inside helping people evacuate.

His coworkers begged him to leave.

He refused.

“As soon as everyone’s out.”

By 9:45 a.m., nearly all 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees had escaped safely.

Rick could have saved himself.

Instead, he turned around and went back up.

Searching for anyone left behind.

Before the tower collapsed, he called his wife one final time.

“If something happens to me, I want you to know you made my life.”

At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed with Rick still inside.

Final numbers:

Morgan Stanley employees inside that morning:
~2,700

Survived:
~2,687

Most of the 13 lost were in the direct impact zone where no evacuation could have reached them in time.

Rick Rescorla died alongside members of his security team while trying to save others.

But here’s the important part:

Rick didn’t save those people on September 11th.

He saved them for 8 years before it happened.

He saved them every time he forced another evacuation drill.
Every time people mocked him.
Every time he prepared anyway.

The coworkers who thought he was paranoid went home to their families because one man refused to stop taking danger seriously.

Sometimes preparation looks ridiculous until the day it looks like survival.

And sometimes the people everyone dismisses are the only ones truly paying attention.

Rick Rescorla died in the stairwell doing what he had trained for nearly a decade.

And thousands of ordinary lives continued because he never stopped preparing for the day nobody believed would come.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@kurtispm8 @davegreenidge57 This sounds extreme, yet it is not a stretch from the plans/hopes of SOME, not all, billionaires. It's arguably the current trajectory.

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@SheldonMiller @davegreenidge57 Assuming there are elections (or approximations)

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@ChrisMurphyCT @thejackhopkins Anyone who is a Jesus -- orange version or otherwise -- is entitled to tax-free status. You can do it too!

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

The Pentagon has quietly dismantled a program it is legally required to operate to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in US military operations, according to its internal watchdog. https://t.co/W3AcKVGtu6

[Panzerpicture @Panzerpicture]

YOUTUBE DELETED 13 YEARS OF WWII HISTORY

At this point, I only have 6 months left to recover my channel. After that, everything on my account will be permanently deleted.

(155K subs) pure archive footage of tanks + veteran stories was nuked by AI for “child sexual abuse” and “harmful content with minors”. Zero kids. Zero violations.

Just historical footage. We need a REAL human review NOW! If you hate Big Tech erasing history: LIKE this post COMMENT “Restore Panzerpicture” REPOST this! if AI censorship of history must STOP! #RestorePanzerPicture #YouTubeCensorship #WWIIHistory #SaveHistory @TeamYouTube

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

A woman who lives and works in California had $20,000 taken out of her bank account by The Oregon Department of Revenue

She’s never lived in Oregon yet they were able to get her bank account information and take her money

Oregon said the woman owed the money in unpaid income taxes and penalties, but she didn’t. She’s never lived or worked there

She called and apparently Oregon has an address for her that was literally a public park

They told her it would be 5+ months to refund her money. The woman had to get the local media involved to put pressure to make them give the money back faster

Eventually, Oregon admitted it was a mistake

Another state should not have access to out of state residents bank account information

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🗞️ Leaked body-camera footage obtained by Haaretz contradicts Israeli police claims surrounding the violent arrest of a Palestinian Israeli prosecutor in southern city of Be'er Sheva, showing officers storming his apartment, pinning him down, and “beating [him] mercilessly,” despite no visible resistance, according to his lawyers and footage.

The prosecutor was hospitalized and underwent surgery for a broken nose and serious injuries to his eye and kidneys.

The raid began after an off-duty officer living nearby filed a noise complaint, then entered the apartment without a warrant alongside two other officers.

After the family demanded they leave, police later returned with reinforcements, forced their way inside, and arrested the prosecutor along with two relatives — a doctor and nurse at Soroka Medical Center — who were also repeatedly beaten during the raid. All three were imprisoned for three days.

According to testimony, officers mocked the bleeding prosecutor during and after the beating, while Israeli police later accused the family of assaulting officers.

Story and footage are linked below.

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Keir Starmer didn’t just appoint Peter Mandelson to Washington; he then walked into Palantir’s HQ with him – while Palantir was a paying client of Mandelson’s lobbying firm – and somehow “forgot” to log it as a ministerial meeting.

The Ministry of Defence, whose officials were also there, calls it a meeting, Palantir calls it a standard government visit, but Downing Street insists it wasn’t a meeting at all – just enough of a “non‑meeting” for the PM, his ambassador and a spy‑tech contractor to sit in a room together with no minutes, no transparency and, a few months later, a £240m no‑tender contract.

[Jvnior @Jvnior]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇱 BREAKING: Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was Benjamin Netanyahu’s political campaign manager.

The news is getting crazier every single day.

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@cginisty There is enormous potential for ibogaine, MDMA & others provided each is used properly. This administration is cartoonish and even unbelievable in several ways, yet this is a case where something truly helpful can emerge.

[Norris Smith @existentialasia]

@propublica "trauma achieved"

[ViralMind @ViralMindLive]

🚨 ISRAELI OFFICIAL THREATENS THE WORLD LIVE 🔥

"Anyone who criticizes Israel is our enemy.

We will watch you through Google.
We will expose your weaknesses.
We will get you fired from your job.
And if you own a business, we will bankrupt you."

This is not a random activist speaking.
This is an official from the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

This is exactly what Zionism has become.

A global intimidation machine that threatens your livelihood if you dare speak against them.

Share before they try to delete it.