Peter Heyck

Heritage Conservation, Religion and Public Life, Jewish Studies. Views expressed are my own. Retweets/follows are not endorsements.

[Michael Tomasky @mtomasky]

She was placed at CBS by Ellison to crush the left and advance Donald Trump’s agenda, so it’s no surprise that that is precisely what she’s doing. And no matter her level of incompetence, she’ll stay there as long as she’s doing that. https://t.co/oax4XKWmZO

[Jordan Zakarin @jordanzakarin]

The NY Times taking time off from writing about Graham Platner’s dating life to write the softest focus puff piece possible on Susan Collins.

A whole story on her voting 10,000 times, not a word about the wars, billionaire scams, and racist judges she voted for.

[Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto]

Remember: the last time Russia was losing territory and concerned it might lose the war in late 2022, the U.S. prepared “rigorously” for Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons, as I reported here:

https://t.co/vksdqpGh4C

[Millennial Moron @Mill_Moron]

This is why I find Poilievre so tiresome - his only strategy is to attack on every issue simultaneously, even if it doesn't make sense.

Household debt-to-income has actually been pretty flat over the past decade, but he wasn't concerned about it rising drastically under Harper.

[Joni Askola @joni_askola]

Is it the smell of burning oil after Ukrainian drone strikes?

[Tom Nuttall @tom_nuttall]

Distasteful and embarrassing, of course, but also just miles off on the facts. Genuinely puzzling to me how Greater MAGAworld cannot unmeme itself from seeing Europe through the prism of 2015-6.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

"The British Used to Sound Like We (Americans) Did, explains @JohnHMcWhorter: British English at the time of early colonization was "rhotic" (they pronounced r's after vowels: they would have parked their cars if they had any). Southern British toffs dropped r's starting in the late 18th, and coastal Americans with British ties and Britain envy copied them, pahking their cahs. But settlement matters too: Canadians, with even closer ties to the mother country, kept their r's, probably because more of them came from northern England, Scotland, Ulster, & Ireland, or were British loyalists who defected from the American revolution when even coastal Americans were rhotic. https://t.co/dvBCmLx7Zg

[Yoshua Bengio @Yoshua_Bengio]

If leading AI companies are indeed approaching the point of recursive self-improvement, a coordinated, verifiable, and universally applied pause is probably the only responsible solution to mitigate several major AI risks; at least until safety guarantees are developed and demonstrated. Ensuring that such a moratorium is respected would require sincere collaboration between various countries and companies, but I definitely believe it is achievable if others follow in @AnthropicAI's footsteps.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Anthropic is calling for top AI labs to weigh slowing the pace of development, suggesting that AI systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon be able to improve themselves without human intervention in ways that could pose societal risks. https://t.co/8c7xkeX17B

[Matthew Petti 👨‍🎓 @matthew_petti]

The report seems to imply that Israel was bugging the phones of U.S. troops sent to defend Israel.

[The New York Times @nytimes]

The Pentagon has raised its counterintelligence threat level for Israel amid concerns about eavesdropping on U.S.-Iran talks. https://t.co/U7bB6WOsrg

[Peter Heyck @peterheyck]

Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel https://t.co/ZPL1OFSI8p

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

‘There's no event in our history books that combines the current global population with the impending fertilizer shortage and the strength of the El Nino that's coming. We are about to witness an unprecedented event that will push crops around the globe to their limit.’

[Matthew Gross @HurricaneAddict]

I really don't think enough people fully comprehend the worlds that are about to collide here.

You already have people in geopolitical circles warning about the threat of famine based on surging prices / availability of fertilizer components, and you also have long-term weather modeling all converging on a worst case scenario for a building El Nino event, which will peak near the end of the year. These are two slow moving but entirely predictable disasters that when coupled together will each make the other orders of magnitude worse. (This will take months to fully unfold, but at this point, the die is cast.)

There's no event in our history books that combines the current global population with the impending fertilizer shortage and the strength of the El Nino that's coming. We are about to witness an unprecedented event that will push crops around the globe to their limit.

[PBS News @NewsHour]

Scientists across the country are expressing alarm as the Trump administration dismantles another tool for understanding how the planet is changing.

Starting this month, more than 900 deep-sea ocean sensors will be pulled out of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans off the coast of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, North Carolina, and Greenland.

Researchers say these are critical ocean observation tools.

William Brangham (@WmBrangham) explains.

[Barak Ravid @BarakRavid]

אביו של התינוק שנורה למוות בידי צה"ל בחברון: עצרתי כשהתבקשתי ואז פתחו באש. "לא הייתה שום אזהרה", סיפר פאהד אבו הייכל, והוסיף שהכדור עבר דרכו ופגע בראש של בנו – שהיה בזרועות אימו. "החייל היה במרחק של כעשרה מטרים ממני. היה אור יום והכול היה ברור"
https://t.co/W1pxLQhTy7

[Claire Giangrave @ClaireGiangrave]

Pope Leo XIV on war in Iran:
"I think this has already been made very clear: the notion of a just war no longer applies. The problem is that just war theory developed in centuries when no one could have imagined the weapons we have today or humanity's capacity for destruction."

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

I can’t think of a decision more vindicated by history than protesting the pending genocide that everyone with the most basic knowledge of Gaza and Israel knew was coming on Oct 8 2023

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

The intense media focus on Graham Platner is understandable. He is an unknown in a crucial Senate race with a lot of baggage. Less understandable is the lack of coverage of Ken Paxton, whose sins are far worse. That it is “old news” is no excuse. Most voters have no clue.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

All of the argumentation here is appallingly weak. But I'm always puzzled by the popularity of this specific talking point.

It is true that Israel-Palestine is drastically more salient globally than other ethnic conflicts with a similar or larger death toll (in part because, when a piece of territory is deemed holy by three major world religions, a lot of people will be interested in what happens there).

But the American left did, in fact, mobilize in opposition to US support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen! Sure, there weren't as many protests. But progressives organizations and elected officials agitated for the US government to cut off aid to the Saudi campaign and under Biden it (officially) did so https://t.co/ThggXmJ3RM