quangdao.eth

[Peter Hague @peterrhague]

Heard some “not real degrowth” talk from people when confronted with real examples of the ideology, just like the old “not real communism” excuse.

I have some insight into the psychology involved, as I was drawn to the radical left in my youth. These ideologies essentially state “implement desired policy A and get desired outcome B” - and it’s important to understand that A and B are both desired. A is not just an expedient to get to B. The communists and the degrowthers both believe that a cathartic overthrow of the system they hate and their subsequent empowerment will lead to heaven on earth.

When someone implements policy A and gets outcome C, the ideologue infers that A can’t actually have happened because outcome B didn’t happen. They won’t abandon the link because, as I said, they are as attached to policy A (usually some form of radical change) as they are to outcome B - often more so.

In the theatre of their minds, the link is as solid as a law of nature. They’ve run through the revolution dozens of times, naturally with themselves as a leading figure. The outcomes in their dreams are always positive, and if reality differs then reality must be mistaken.

There is a danger of this for everybody - it’s impossible to build futures without imagining them first and you can always “cheat” in the theatre of your own mind - the key is to constantly touch ground truth by trying things and noticing the actual outcomes. Choosing a destination and then working out the path empirically is much better than choosing a path because it’s comfortable and denying that it won’t get you where you want.

[Wokal Distance @wokal_distance]

10/
Propagandizing against Jews and blaming them for everything.

The letter is, now, having it's desired effect on people.

Here, Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet spy explain the theory behind communist propaganda and subversion tactis. Many of which are present in this letter.

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

I will defend my view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in detail when I have time, I just don’t think Twitter is the right medium for that, but for the record let me briefly summarize it here. I personally have no problem with the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, so not only do I think that the one-state solution is a pipe dream because it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state and the Israelis will never accept it, but I don’t even think they should accept it.

To be sure, I also believe that the creation of Israel was unjust, because while I understand why many Jews supported the Zionist movement, it could only succeed by committing a massive injustice against the Arabs of Palestine. But we can’t change the past and it would be just as unfair to ask the millions of Jews in Israel, who have built a flourishing nation where by now several generations of people have their roots, to give up their state.

However, I do think Israel has a moral obligation to do everything it can to reach a negotiated settlement that is fair to the Palestinians and, despite the claims to the contrary, it has not. The narrative that Israel has repeatedly made generous offers to the Palestinians, who systematically rejected them because they're not interested in peace, has no basis in fact and frankly is mostly the result of nonstop propaganda on the topic.

The truth is that, to various degrees, most people in Israel's political elite have never really abandoned the idea that Jews are entitled to the whole land between the Jordan and the sea and this, not Palestinian intransigence, has been the main obstacle to peace. I know many people think the opposite is true, but they are just wrong. Because they couldn't just expel or kill the Palestinians who still lived in the occupied territories, the Israelis put in place a system of military control, which for the Palestinians translates into routine violence, humiliation and harassment.

But this reality, both the historical injustice done to the Palestinians and the oppressive system under which those in the occupied territories live, is largely invisible to most people, who just see the hostility and hatred of Palestinians toward the Israelis and think that Israel "has the right to defend itself", at best dismissing out of hand the idea that it might have something to do with the systematic oppression and at worse not even thinking about it.

The fact that, again largely because of propaganda, this reality is invisible to many people fosters a hysterical form of paranoia. It makes people think that, if they criticize Israel, it can only be because they hate Jews. Of course, some people use the accusation of antisemitism cynically (the Israeli authorities and organizations like the ADL certainly do), but most sincerely believe that and honestly I think it's really bad for them psychologically.

This has gotten much worse after the October 7 attacks. I see many otherwise intelligent and decent people who are increasingly disconnected from reality and say absolutely unhinged and vile shit while interpreting any disagreement with their lunacy as at best proof of cluelessness and at worst proof of some kind of conspiracy to destroy them. I don't know how to deal with that, other than make the case for my position (which again I will do in detail when I have time), but frankly I'm not optimistic and I think it will take a long time for people to recover from this hysteria, assuming they ever do.

[Stas Olenchenko @StasOlenchenko]

As a Ukrainian person looking at everything that’s been happening in the world lately, here’s what I really, REALLY need people living in liberal democracies to understand as soon as possible.

This isn’t a pleasant conversation.

A thread.
1/

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

I’ve heard a lot of people complain recently that they can’t criticize Israel without being accused of being an antisemite. In fact, it’s very easy to criticize Israel without being called an antisemite, I do it all the time.

Here's a helpful guide:

🔷 If you advocate for an “Intifada”, which means a violent uprising against the Jews in their homeland – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is “Occupying Gaza” without knowing that Israel forcefully removed all 9,000 of its residents from Gaza in 2005, and since then the only Jews living in Gaza have been 229 hostages that Hamas kidnapped - you’re an antisemite

🔷 If you chant from the “River to the Sea”, meaning the elimination of the sovereign state of Israel and home to its 9 million residents – you’re an antisemite

🔷 If you think indiscriminate violence against civilians by a bloodthirsty mob is a form of "resistance" – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there is “ethnic cleansing” without understanding that Israel does everything to minimize civilian casualties including pleading with the local population to evacuate before an attack - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there is “genocide” without saying that if Hamas lay down it’s weapons today there would be peace, but if Israel does the same it will be eliminated - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say “Free Palestine” without acknowledging the Palestinians refusal to in fact “free Palestine” themselves by signing all the offers Israel offered it over the years asking for only peace in return – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is a “white supremacist” country despite more than half of Israeli jews being from Arab and north African countries – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel is a “settler colonialist” state, despite Jews being indigenous to the land and Israel being a sovereign country for 75 years – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say indiscriminate violence against civilians by a bloodthirsty mob is a form of resistance – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you call Israel an Apartheid country without acknowledging that Arab-Israelis have equal rights and freedom of religion in Israel, and are freer here than in any other Mid East country – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you refuse to acknowledge the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and instead call it “the situation” or “the tensions in the Middle East” – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you oppose Israel because you stand with Muslims, but never made a peep about hundreds of thousands killed in Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Iran etc. – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you stand with Palestinians, but don’t demand rights for Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon where they have none -- you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you refuse to believe the IDF, but think Hamas is a legitimate source of information – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you believe everything Hamas says, except their charter where they say they want to kill all Jews - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say murdering 1,400 men, women and children and kidnapping 229 is a response to Netanyahu being “right wing” – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If your response to a massacre is to call for a "ceasefire" instead of the immediate release of the hostages and dismantlement of the perpetrators - you may not be an antisemite, but you're really dumb.

🔷 If you say Israel attacks indiscriminately, and not in precise airstrikes against Hamas targets that happen to be purposly placed in schools, hospitals, and mosques – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel attacks just to “punish” Palestinians, and not in order to prevent more harm to Israelis from stockpiled weapons and terrorists – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If the only Israeli perspective you are willing to listen to are a few fringe Israeli academics or artists who hate their country – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you “stand firmly” against antisemitism when the perptrator is someone from across the political divide, but mix words over Palestinians massacring Jews in Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you oppose “victim blaming” but feel the need to put horrors of October 7th “in context” whenever they are mentioned – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you’ve ever said “believe all women” but demand to see autopsies before believing women were raped in front of their friends’ eyes – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you’ve ever proudly declared that “hate has no home here” but don’t speak up against harassment of your Jewish friends– you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you support indigenous people yet don’t care that Jews have had a steady presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you're an LGBTQ+ ally…I can’t even do this one, it’s too stupid.

🔷 If you’re more concerned with exactly how many babies were beheaded instead of why the babies lost their heads – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say people are brainwashed by watching Fox News, but that Palestinians who are fed a steady diet of Jihad-glorification and Jew-hatred in their textbooks and children’s shows are freethinking freedom fighters – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Gaza was “stolen” from a country called “Palestine” and not won in battle against Egypt, who controlled Gaza until 1967 when they tried to destroy Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Arab terrorism against Jews is solely a response to settlements, meaning it only began in 1967 when Israel won a war against Jordan (West Bank) and Egypt (Gaza) after they tried to destroy Israel – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say there was a sovereign country called “Palestine” with a president and a flag before 1948 instead of the British Mandate of Palestine – you’re an antisemite (and also ignorant).

🔷 If you say poor living conditions and lack of food in Gaza are the fault of Israel and don't mention Hamas spends billions of foreign aid dollars on weapons I you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say Israel cuts off electricity to Gaza, without acknowledging that Israel itself provides the electricity in the first place, and that Hamas repurposes virtually all the electricity and fuel for terrorism – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you blame Israel for Gaza running out water, but not Hamas who ruins the water infastructure and takes the water pipes and repurposes them as rocket launchers – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you compare the bloodlust of Hamas, an elected government that controls Gaza, to a few fringe extremists who exist in Israel like they do in every society – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you are afraid to call out Hamas terrorism because you think it’s offensive to Muslims – you’re an antisemite, and also racist.

🔷 If you don’t call out Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza through which they could send relief and take all the refugees, but refuse to - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you call to “end the blockade” without acknowledging that the blockade is only on 2nd use materials, and is a response to the smuggling of weapons aimed at Israel into Gaza – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you compare death tolls like they’re basketball scores without acknowledging that Hamas is the source, and that they use their own people as human shields, preventing them from leaving dangerous areas despite the IDF warning them to - you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you worry about Palestinian refugees but not about tens of thousands of Israeli refugees from the north and south who have had to evacuate their homes because of Hamas & Hezbollah – you’re an antisemite.

🔷 If you say you’re not an antisemite but merely an antizionist, meaning you oppose the mere existence of a safe haven for the Jews in their ancestral homeland alongside it’s neighbors - well, you get the idea.

If that doesn’t help – know also that you are also hurting Palestinian chances for afree and independent state.
You are actively pushing for war and fighting from the comfort of your home, instead of peace and co-existence. How does that feel?

[Whatifalthist @whatifalthist]

We will have only learned the lessons of the 20th century, and why it was the most brutal in history, once we’ve realized the Marxist derived Left is as evil as Nazism. How can the Communists kill four times as many people as the Nazis and still be a political option?

We’re incapable of making that jump since in our hearts we want to believe the Left is right. We want to believe humanity is perfectible, we’re all equal, utopia is around the corner or people aren’t irrational animals. Until we realize the premodern world’s vision of the world was correct that humans are irrational, unequal, divided, utopia is impossible on this earth and progress isn’t a straight line will we won’t realize how wrong this is.

The far right’s flaw is sociopathy and the left’s is envy. The left hates everything great, it doesn’t love the meek. Whenever they seize power they turn the working classes into slaves and starve them. They hate moral standards, beauty, the truth, the great men of the past, God and anything else that could make them feel judged for being better than them. The Left wants a world where we’re all stuck swimming in shit, but you’re not allowed to get out.

[Stuart Loren @StuLoren]

1/50 This is a thread on the concerns and hopes I have about our American psyche, polity, policies and politics. I’m not sure anyone will or should care about what I have to say, but after a lot of reflecting I wanted to at least write down my thoughts.

[David Decosimo @DavidDecosimo]

We are seeing the utter ethical degeneracy of an ideology in which all that matters is finding the single most oppressed identity & then worshipping it, claiming anything done by it & on its behalf in the name of liberation, no matter how horrendous, is actually righteous & just.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

Whatever this is, I want none of it.

[Inna Vishik @InnaVishik]

In 2017 when neo nazis marched in Charlotteville yielding Tikki torches, spokespeople at every university raced to denounce them. My own chancellor wrote:

“There was only one side that provoked the hate-fueled violence…” and
“We cannot allow our institutions of higher learning to become centers for ideologies repugnant to everything our nation stands for.”

On Saturday Oct 7 2023, I woke up to the biggest slaughter of civilian Jews since the holocaust. The atrocities were plainly documented by Hamas terrorists in snuff porn cascading through my twitter feed, a modern day pogrom.

While anti-Israel bias is a well known problem on university campuses, I somewhat naively expected the administration (of any university) to unequivocally disavow this violence and recognize the victims and aggressors as such, just as they had opined on every major event in recent memory. With the facts so starkly laid out, how could they say anything else?

Days passed. Governments worldwide, celebrities, and even major league sports released perfectly sensitive and appropriate statements. Meanwhile, universities worked in lockstep, just as they did 3 years ago to send your kids to zoom university after the tuition check cleared, and they posted identical mealy mouthed garbage essentially saying that “there are fine people on both sides.” No mention of Israel, Jews, or Hamas.

What was stopping them from making an unequivocal statement that this was a terrorist slaughter targeting civilian Jews? Are they scared of what a fraction of their students would do? Are they so captured that they think that these atrocities are justified? Do they have intel that Iran would hack them if they said the wrong thing? If it is the latter, please send me an e-mail; I promise I won’t post it on twitter. But it is almost certainly the former two reasons.

Let me be perfectly clear. As a Jew in urban California, I am not likely to encounter the Charlottsville flavor of nazi. Those people are shunned from society and the individuals at that rally had lost their job at the hotdog stand by Monday morning. But I am surrounded by modern day Nazis who fill the halls and administration of academia, who celebrate in the streets of major western cities before the blood of the pogrom is dry, who sit on the city council of the city where I live. Their propagandized safe spaces have taught them that the slaughter of Jews is acceptable, if there is some justification, just like the Germans in WW2. People of the same ideology were operating in Israel on the morning of Simchat Torah yielding machine guns (not Tikki torches). The only missing piece in the United States is a charismatic leader, and we are just one octogenarian election cycle away from that happening.

I do not think that universities should opine on every issue; I actually think they should stay all the way out of making political statements to not tip the scales of free speech. But the fact of the matter is that they have been opining and picking sides for years, and it makes a statement when they suddenly choose to stop doing this.

[Lisa Goldman @lisang]

The Israeli media now confirming that the gov't did receive clear warnings from Egyptian intelligence about the imminent attack that occurred on October 7. The PM's office initially issued a flat denial after the first report, but then did an about face and admitted it.

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

Just found out my friend got murdered in his house together with his wife and all his kids. He was a very good man who helped anybody as a principle, even if you weren't close with whatever you might need. A real Kibbutznik. I am broken. Everybody around me getting similar news.

[Jack @tracewoodgrains]

When you say “I want to make the world a better place,” you add an implicit “I want power and should be trusted with it.”

Increasingly, I think “Copenhagen ethics,” as critically defined in Jai’s influential essay, is basically correct. When you try to solve something, you assert power over it. That matters.

Asserting power is not a neutral act. You tell people: I have identified a problem. I know what will make it better. Trust me—let me step in, let me Do Something—and the world will become a better place.

That’s a good thing, often. Almost every good work comes from an assertion of power. But by interacting with situations, you change them. You make others more or less likely to step in. You direct resources one direction or another. Should you succeed, you tend to acquire more power.

And when your good intent goes wrong, because you have asserted power, it goes wrong on a scale unimaginable for the regular, powerless person—the one who never interacted with the problems at all.

Effective Altruism is a noble concept that draws many well-meaning people. It is also, fundamentally, an assertion of power. The fall of SBF is a good illustration of its failure state: power irresponsibly gained and redirected, with countless left to pay the costs of its failure. When your circle of moral concern—those you feel a responsibility to act on behalf of—is the entire world, you assert power over the entire world.

This is at the front of my mind as I watch the tragedy unfolding in Israel and the commentary on it. Every act of public commentary is an assertion of power: Listen to me. Think and do as I say. My thoughts should impact this setting.

I get a taste of this every time I choose to cover a topic, sometimes intensely so. I learn deeply personal things about people and situations far from me. In my recent article about the backstory behind a beach altercation, I dug through half a decade of ugly and intensely personal drama between people I had never heard of prior to the altercation, and needed to choose what to attach their names to in the public eye. When I assert that power carelessly, I open myself to justifiable blame.

Jai’s post is worth reading. It’s full of compelling examples of people trying to do good in neglected areas and being lambasted for their trouble. But I think in neglecting the role of assertion of power it reflects a common blind spot among altruistically minded people, encouraging a fantasy: that you can Do Good without opening yourself up to the costs of Doing Good Wrong.

Do good. Say things worth saying. Get involved in causes that matter to you. But understand that every time you do so, you enmesh yourself in a web of responsibilities. The assertion of power is neither trivial nor costless.

[Whatifalthist @whatifalthist]

In times of crisis and turmoil, the lives of women, the lower classes or entire nations are like grass crushed under the feet of elephants run by the elites. Their lives become statistics to national survival.

A nation may be terrified of traffic or medical deaths that add up to a few thousand of a year and then happily throw away 10,000 lives in an hour in war. Women who only choose a man they love in the bottom of their hearts throw themselves on some local officer for survival in war. A country may quibble over raising taxes from 10-20% until war when it happily moves them to 90%. Beware of war as a place to lose standards and throw away the things you love

[Alex Kontorovich @AlexKontorovich]

I must say, I’m baffled by the response to this; I was quite sure I was restating the obvious. There were two main criticisms: many academics hate

(i) writing papers, and

(ii) grant proposals.

I get it, I used to really hate these too:

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

Seems legit.

[Lewis 🇺🇸 @ctjlewis]

based on my experience with doctors, not only do i believe this article but i think GPT is probably already a better diagnostician than many doctors working today.

we could probably be doing more with this than we are.

https://t.co/wcgWgFbMkZ

[Bryan Caplan @bryan_caplan]

The irony of mandatory training videos:

If you don't have a test afterwards, no one will watch.

If you DO have a test afterwards, it has to be so easy that the lowest-IQ person in your organization can pass.

Either way, near-zero "training" occurs.

[Whatifalthist @whatifalthist]

Most of the time when people give advice it’s true but they’re leaving out a major detail.

“love yourself”. Great, but this really means accept your flaws and failures rather than say affirmations.

“accept Jesus into your heart”. Sure but a lot of modern Christianity is cringe and someone else’s ego project.

“Work on yourself”. Yeah…but don’t expect results for a very long time.

“Feel your feelings”. Sure, but actively trying to feel deep feelings will make you miserable. You need an effective way to process your emotions.

“Go to therapy”. Most talk therapy is completely inneffective for men. EMDR or CBT work but they’re expensive and niche

I hate the banal culture of wellness jargon that we have. It mostly exists to externalize collective issues onto the individual so the ruling class isn’t compelled to do anything. Thus we have a society collapsing due to mental illness.

[Michael Tatarski @miketatarski]

"That makes it more 'valuable' than any of Detroit's Big Three...It's lunacy. No, it's more than that. It's a reminder that the stock market is a fantasy world, where everything is made up and the product performance doesn't matter." https://t.co/yeXoufA397