Open Mic for the week of 9/2/2024
How is it September already?
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
If you were wondering what NaNoWriMo’s official policy on AI is, I’ve got you covered:
Report
This id a selective edit without giving the full quote and context but thanks for trolling.Report
So click on the link (that I provided, for the record) and lift a *BETTER* quotation that will give a fuller picture! Hold me accountable! Explain it to me! Explain it to all of us!Report
While the language is not how I would start with, the observation that not everyone can afford a professional editor is a decent one and it acknowledges that there is no way to get people not to pay for editors if they can afford them even if it goes against the spirit of the competition.Report
“there is no way to get people not to pay for editors if they can afford them”
If people aren’t going to pay for editors, you can’t stop them.
Yeah, I’m going to have to call your criticism limp and lifeless.
The errors, however, indicate that you didn’t use AI and so your criticism may yet be problematic in ways undiscovered.
Do better.Report
Saul, please do a little more research here. NaNoWriMo are a shit organization, and the statement they released at that link is a backtrack of their original position of ‘Any AI is fine!’
And they took that position because the only people willing to sponsor them after last year, when all their volunteers quit, is the AI industry, who has never had a problem being child-abuse adjacent.Report
I read the whole thing and don’t think that the part Jaybird quotes was unrepresentative. The weird thing is that they reached a fairly reasonable conclusion while going out of their way to justify it in the dweebiest terms possible.Report
Over at BlueSky, CL Polk has a thread:
I, personally, was reminded of Ana Mardoll’s infamous tweet in which she said:
There’s a thread going around mocking writers who “don’t read very much” and I’m trying not to haul out my soap box but…this is ableist? Not everyone can read for pleasure (or indeed at all) and some of those people are writers.
And so my thoughts went from “reading is ableist” to “writing is ableist”.Report
It’s because it’s their second draft at a conclusion. Their first on was ‘AI is great, use it’. Because, they are, in fact, sponsored by AI companies now after everyone else fled.
The whole ‘AI will work as editor’ is not only a retroactive justification, but there are not really any AI tools that do that. Grammar and spell checkers have existed for decades, but are not AI at all. Text-to-speech _can_ be machine learning, but literally no one has ever had a problem with writers (Or anyone) using that, and it’s generally not considered AI at all, despite machine learning often called AI.
You know, if anyone every ones the almost definitive example of motte and bailey, here it is:
“You need to condemn AI, by which I and everyone else complaining very clearly mean generative AI”
“AI not only includes generative AI, but includes all sorts of machine learning, including things possible helpful for disabled writers. Hence we cannot condemn categorically.”
“Do you condemn _generative AI_?”
*crickets*
Or:
NaNoWriMo, original draft: Stabbing people is fine.
Everyone: WTF? No it’s not. The community condemns stabbing people. You need to take that back and condemn stabbing people!
NaNoWriMo, second draft:There are two forms of stabbing, consensual and non-consensual. Doctors often stab people, with consent, and it’s ableism to deny people the healthcare they need. Thus, we cannot categorically condemn stabbing people.
Everyone: ….so you condemn the non-consensual stabbing subcategory, right? Cause you didn’t say that, you didn’t say those words, you just sorta hoped we read that into the statement. Which is exceptional weird after you had to sit down and explain the two kinds of stabbing.
NaNoWriMo: …Report
On the other hand…Report
In case people are unaware, NaNoWriMo _imploded_, very spectacularly, last year. This is because they defended someone who abused children, and then basically had _all_ volunteers leave, en mass, because of their response to everything.
They also lost all their sponsors. Except, of course, the AI techbros who, are always willing to step in and dump huge amounts of cash on cash on things.
And because AI techbros will say and do literally anything to justify heir plagiarism, machine, they have come to this position.
So, what is happening here is that a bunch of AI techbro morons are speaking the language of disability rights to justify any incredibly stupid position, and the end result of that is people thinking the problem is the way they are talking instead of the fact that a) what they are saying makes nonsense, and b) is trying to justify a very bad thing.
The reason it is stupid is threefold:
1) AI (or, rather, LLM) is not an assistive technology of any sort. It does not help someone do a creative thing, it just…strings together a bunch of stuff that it asserts is a creative thing. There are. indeed, uses of machine learning that are very helpful to disabled writers, like speech-to-text and text-to-speech, or even better predictive text or spelling corrections, that are assistive tech.
But generative LLM Ai is not that because, again, typing a prompt into a screen and having it invent a story is not assisting _you_ write, it is ‘writing’ for you, and it’s not even really doing that. Getting someone else to do things for you is not assistive technology.
2) Of course, if you are disabled, and _need_ things done for you, we shouldn’t criticize that. Except, this isn’t _that_. There’s a difference between saying ‘We should have a handicapped accessible bus so disabled people can get between two distance points’ and saying ‘Handicapped people should hire taxis so they can participate in a fun run’, which is, in fact, what NaNoWriMo is. It is not a job, it is not a requirement, it is a self-imposed challenge, and it is utterly insane to think that anyone would even want to hire someone else to do a self-imposed challenge for them.
3) The people saying this, who I remind people are _supposed to be a writing non-profit_ but are actually just now a bunch of AI dudebros who took it over, appear to think that the difficultly in writing is ‘Coming up with a concept’. This is, in fact, the exact _opposite_ of a true thing.Report
As someone who does a *LOT* of fiddling with AIs, I could see how it might kinda be an assistive technology? Kinda?
Like, let’s say that I have an idea for a short story. Hell, let’s make it a Batman story. The basic idea is… um… I’ll plagiarize myself. It’s a Condiment King story. He has decided to make his mark at a state fair chili contest.
Ripped from the headlines, you know how The One Chip Challenge had a body count? Well, he’s decided that it’s time to debut his new hot pepper “Pepper Omega”. This is a hot pepper that is more than 300,000 SHUs hotter than Ed Currie’s Pepper X, breaking the 3 Million mark.
And then, um, Batman manages to get the handful of people who ate the chili set up with milk from the dairy barn (it’s at the state fair, after all) and he beats up the Condiment King and puts a Pepper Omega seed up the king’s nose to teach him a lesson. We can end with the Condiment King blowing his nose right before being put in the paddy wagon screaming “it burns, it burns!” or something like that.
We should be able to get 5000 words out of that, right?
Well, AI can set us up with setting the scene at the fair, describe what Bruce Wayne is doing there that day (he’s a special guest celebrity judge for the pie eating contest, maybe), we can have ai set the scene for that, we can hear the screams from the chili contest, and establish how Bruce changes into his costume, and, from there, it writes itself.
The only real thing you’d need to do is come up with a monologue for the Condiment King himself and maybe AI could even help with that.
So I asked. I described the above to ChatGPT and asked it to write a Condiment King monologue.
Here’s what it gave me:
Now, I’m kind of surprised. I thought that I would get something that I would have to edit but I’d be tempted to put that in there untouched.
Maybe I’d take the stuff about Batman out. Why would he be thinking about Batman? Get rid of that paragraph. But the other stuff?
Heck yeah.
The main thing is whether I could use AI to create the part of the story setting up the scene before the arrival of the villain and get it to help me with the fight and the dénouement.
So, as an assistive technology, I think it could actually get something done.
But *I* am the guy who had the idea about having the Condiment King show up at the state fair.
The AI is only helping put meat on the bones.Report
Why not ask the AI for 50,000 words of that, and then, hey, you just finished NaNoWriMo ! Congratulations!
Actually, you don’t even need the premise! You can just have it write 50,000 words of anything. Or, actually, even easier…I have an epub reader on my computer I can copy things out of, you can just get one of those, and copy text from an existing book.
I might do that this NaNoWriMo.
It’s sorta the same way, and people don’t know, but I hold the world record in marathon time. It’s not official marathon or anything, just the distance, but I used assistive technology, namely, my car, to complete a marathon a few years ago in less than 30 minutes.
Yay us! We’re really winning at these self-imposed challenges. Look at all those dumbasses doing things the long way.Report
What’s the criticism?
Is it that there’s too much dross and not enough gold?
Is it that AI is not, in fact, an assistive technology for this sort of thing?Report
The argument that generative AI is not an assistive technology, at all.
Because it does not assist in writing.
It just _does_ writing. The entire thing. From start to end.
Assistive technology enables disabled people to perform tasks, it is not something doing the task _for them_. Having a maid clean your house, while something that is incredibly useful for disabled people, is not an assistive technology.
The problem is that it is often hard to define the actual goals of things being done. Wheelchairs, for example, do not assist with the task of walking…they instead assist with the task of moving from place to place. (Usually shorthanded as ‘mobility’)
It is easy to think that AI helps with writing, but what it actually helps with is ‘Having the end result of a bunch of text’. Which is, of course, not what writing is. Writing is the process of turning ideas into a coherent written whole.
There are ways to assist with that, such as speech-to-text and even grammar tools, and ways that could actually use AI, like something that ready the story well enough to understand it and pointed out problems, aka, a hypothetical real-time editor, which is not something that does exist but could.
But _generative_ AI is not assisting with writing. It is _doing_ the writing itself, and pretty poorly, and there’s almost no circumstances where it would do it better than a disabled human anyway.Report
Writing is the process of turning ideas into a coherent written whole.
Seems like AI can, in fact, help with turning ideas into a coherent written whole.
Can it do the same thing as someone opening a vein at a typewriter?
No.
Can it assist? Yeah. I’m going to argue that it can, in fact, assist.
Can it make it *GOOD*?
Probably not. Can it make it good enough? Well… if your target audience merely wants “content”, it’s pretty good at making content.
It doesn’t have to be James Joyce.
It can be Stephanie Meyer.Report
Also, Jaybird, I’m starting to get the idea that maybe you are not a creative writer?
I don’t even call myself a writer, not really, but I do write creatively, in fact, one of the things I write is DC fanfic, and, again, coming up with a premise is trivial.
‘Ho do you come up with your idea?’ is almost the definition of a question that annoys writers, because coming up with ideas is trivial. It not only is merely the first step of writing, it’s barely a step at all.There are literally _people who cannot write_, children who are too young to read and write, that come up with ideas for stories. There are automated writing prompt generators that randomly output characters, verbs, locations, actions, etc, that could come up with your idea!
AI techbros fundamentally misunderstand the actual difficult part of the writing process and think that because they have ‘ideas’, that is the same as being a writer. (Same with art, incidentally.)
Writing those ideas down is much more difficult, and writing them _meaningfully_ instead of just ‘a bunch of stuff happens’ is even harder. That is what writing is, not ‘having ideas’. AIs can sorta to the first part, via plagerism, but that just creates uniformly bad writing.
And the only reason that generated writing looks passable is that it is absurdly over-the-top deliberate scenery-chewing puns, which is basically _supposed_ to sound like hackney writing. Which is entirely in character for Condiment King, who was designed as a throwback to 1966 Batman.
Try doing it an actual conversation set before that between, let’s say, Bruce and Damien Wayne, Bruce having drug Damien to the fair to make him be social, and them running across an adult Dick Grayson who is attending of his own free will to watch this contest…and I came up with that combination in about 60 seconds, it wasn’t writing.
I could write it, it honestly isn’t very far from the stuff I do write, but it sure as hell would be a lot more work. So let’s see the AI result.Report
Okay. I asked for what Bruce and Damien would be talking about in the car and we’d have Alfred drop a dry line here or there.
Here’s what it gave me:
Okay. I would edit that to have Alfred driving and Bruce and Damien in the back. It helps set up a funny scene where Damien will win multiple prizes at this or that carnival game but be 100% flummoxed by one of them. Have him complain about it and do it again. He hands the carny another $5 for another 5 rings for the ring toss. The crossbow, maybe. Something. Make it *FUNNY*.
I asked about running into Dick Grayson. Got this:
I’d edit that… take out some of the Condiment King stuff (let’s have that be a surprise) but…
Hey. We’re surprisingly good at making “content” here.Report
One think that many non-Jews simply don’t understand is how most Jews in the entire world, not just in Israel, really and I mean really hate Hamas and want it gone. The latest murder has basically been an out pouring of grief on my social media feed from Jews I know in real life and online. Fish Hamas. Everyone of them deserves to die.Report
Hamas may deserve to die – though making more martyrs is probably not in Israel’s best interests – but Palestinians do not. And Given Israel’s abilities to kill high level terrorist leaders abroad (see Iran for recent evidence of this), the desire to level Gaza seems misplaced.Report
If you think that Israel just needs to take a certain amount of violence from Hamas, and by a certain amount I mean quite a lot and ignore things that would be causes of war in other places, than you should at least be brave enough to say so. Hamas is an utterly horrible organization that is being serious when it says “No Israel, No Jews” as the only just solution to it. Nobody has any idea how to peacefully dislodge Hamas because they aren’t one of those types of governments that will respond to popular pressure against it like the Iranian clerical regime doesn’t go.
For decades the Palestinians and really the rest of Islam have been fed a very steady diet of extreme anti-Semitism. The Western Left and Liberals has added and abetted in this anti-Semitism by taking what the Muslims say at face about Jewish and Muslim relationships at face value even if they would not if you replace Muslim with White Southerner and Jew with African-American. They just go for all these front people that are obviously lying out of their rear ends and don’t have any real power. Since the world does not see Jews as a real people with a real culture and does not believe that we need what they grant their groups and other groups they care about, they are willing to lead us to total destruction to soothe their consciousness. Instead all burden on good relationships between Jews and Muslims is placed on the JEws.Report
The Western Left and Liberals has added and abetted in this anti-Semitism by taking what the Muslims say at face about Jewish and Muslim relationships at face value even if they would not if you replace Muslim with White Southerner and Jew with African-American.
That’s not the dynamic, though.
Replace Jew with White Southerner and Palestinian with African-American and stuff might come more into focus.Report
That is what happens in the head space because the Western Left and Liberals are more comfortable with it. DW Documentary had a documentary on the birth of Israel for Israel’s 75 anniversary. While most of the focus was on Jews, they had some acceptable to the West Palestinian front people at the start of the documentary. One of them said that they didn’t understand why this happened to them and that they always got along with their Jews.
Besides the fact that he was treating Jews more like pets than fellow citizens, this sounded exactly like White Southerners talking about how they always got along with their Blacks until outside agitators came along. There are Mizrahi Jews who have experienced life under Islam and their recollection of it is very different from what the Muslims say, especially if they are from Yemen or Iran. From what I can tell nobody listens to what actual Mizrahi Jews say about life under Islam accept other Jews and even then some don’t because of ideology, so we get exchanges like this:
Intersectionalist: It is important to listen to the lived experience of miorities.
Mizrahi Jew: This is what life was like under Islam in Yemen…
Intersectionalist: Quiet you.
There is a weird sort of logic that goes “because of Islamophobia in the West, Muslims can’t be persecutors when in the majority.” This isn’t done for any other group on the planet. The Left is very aware of what the Hinduvata people are doing in India or what Burmese Buddhists are doing in Myanmar despite Hinduism and Buddhism being minority religions in the West. With Islam, tribal politics or sometihng has basically prevented many people in the West from ever saying anytihng bad about Islam or Muslims. They just seem biologically incapable of doing this.Report
While most of the focus was on Jews, they had some acceptable to the West Palestinian front people at the start of the documentary. One of them said that they didn’t understand why this happened to them and that they always got along with their Jews.
Okay, with you so far…
Besides the fact that he was treating Jews more like pets than fellow citizens, this sounded exactly like White Southerners talking about how they always got along with their Blacks until outside agitators came along.
What if you see the West Bank Palestinians as saying “the Whites were always good to us!” and the documentary was saying “we always got along with our Blacks until outside agitators came along”?
Does that bring things more into focus?
The Left is very aware of what the Hinduvata people are doing in India or what Burmese Buddhists are doing in Myanmar despite Hinduism and Buddhism being minority religions in the West.
To be honest, this gives The Left a lot of credit. I doubt that one out of five lefties could explain who the Hinduvata people are or could find Burma on a map (especially if it was marked “Myanmar” instead).
With Islam, tribal politics or sometihng has basically prevented many people in the West from ever saying anytihng bad about Islam or Muslims.
After 9/11, there was a *LOT* of weird dynamics flying around with regards to Muslims.
The Left did a very good job of protecting the Muslims from the excesses of the Racist Bush Administration.
A lot of those people still remember what The Right wanted to do and will continue to fight against people who want to do it even now.Report
One of the subjects that interests me is that while the left talks about power all the time, it only seems to have a very surface-level, and often mistaken, understanding of it. There are a lot of kinds of power, and no matter how weak a military or economy may be if you’re surrounding your enemies, you have some power over them. If you have access to the international press and other institutions, you have a power your enemies might not. If you can train the next generation of your people to be violent, you’re building a kind of power.Report
Despite being on the left, or at least significantly enough to your left to vote differently, I think this observation is true in a broad sense but doesn’t make a lot of sense in this context. Israel has nukes, all the best American and European weapon systems, a high tech services economy, and a rich, first world standard of living.
The Palestinians have small arms, a home grown rocket program that’s no match for Israeli missile defense, and a few shrinking occupied bantustans that under the best of circumstances arent a sufficient base of a war time economy. You can see the limitations in the rockets in the way Ukraine has used NATO systems to neutralize Iranian made drones over the last year or so, which are higher tech but from the same, inferior schools of design.
So of course the Palestinians use the press and other levers modern resistance movements have employed, at times successfully, but it’s silly to treat that asymmetry as some kind of power advantage. To put a finer point on it, if the Palestinians could trade all the sympathetic press in the world for a few deployable nuclear weapons and a fraction of the American and German kit the Israelis have they would. I believe even Ghandi has a quote to this effect about the British.Report
I’m not arguing that the Palestinians have more power, or complete power. I’m arguing that it’s exceedingly rare to find a situation in which anyone has complete power. How that ties to the conversation: if people on the left are trying to identify which side has “the” power, they’re always going to miss a lot of the story.Report
The side with the most power is usually the side we are focusing on. Because that’s where the greatest change can be made.Report
This might be because I’m in one of the few areas in the United States where the Further Left is thickest on the ground and also spend a lot of time online, but I am really tired of all the people and organization that seems to forget that Hamas exists.
On a broader level, I am really tired how all the burdens in Jewish-Muslim relations are placed on the Jewish people. We are the ones who have to understand them but they don’t have to understand us or why Israel is important to us at all. Likewise, I am really frustrated at all the groups demanding Jewish support because of our history but also saying that Jews are just white bougie people doing white bougie things rather than a minority culture that attempted to maintain our identity in the face of vast persecution.Report
No one has to forget Hamas exists or feel anything remotely positive towards them to conclude that they and the Israelis deserve each other.
In terms of the situation in deep blue territory I don’t know how many times to suggest maybe getting new friends.Report
This is more about the general environment and the sheer presence of the Far Left. I see signs like “Israel is committing genocide” daily. One is a big sign visible from the train as I go to work. And yes, there are lots of people that pretend Hamas doesn’t exist and acts like Israel launched an assault on Gaza just for the lulz or they pretend that Hamas is a civil rights organization.Report
I drive by a synagogue every day on the way to my kids’ school with a wall covered in pictures of the hostages. I find it similarly lacking in nuance.Report
It probably is but many Jews have been feeling very isolated for years now. There is a growing feeling of being under assault from the Right and the Left.Report
What I think is that if MOSAD can effectively kill senior terrorist leaders by planting bombs months out in a foreign nation then Israel possess far more precision and likely more effective ways to deal with Hamas then the methods currently being employed. Hamas doesn’t represent an existential threat to Israel. And yes, Israel is on the hook for their choices. They have been at this nearly a year; all the hostages are not yet home; Palestinian casualties are mounting and Hamas is as strong as ever.
Israel’s response to this failure has been to expand the fighting into the West Bank.Report
Hamas is a symptom of the problem, it’s not the problem itself.
The Palestinians want “their” land back so they can create an Islamic republic. Israel can’t agree to that without it’s destruction.
We have two sets of natives but there’s not enough room to create two real countries. At best one of them can be a real country and the other a sawed off rump.
The Palestinians have historically insisted on everything or nothing. This is why they don’t have a state.
Philip: They have been at this nearly a year; all the hostages are not yet home; Palestinian casualties are mounting and Hamas is as strong as ever.
We’re deciding on the cost for killing a thousand Jews. If the cost is only that you need to return your hostages, then expect more hostages taken and more dead Jews because you’re rewarding something that should be punished.
And btw Palestinian casualties per day are going down, not up. Presumably Israel is running out of things to destroy.Report
I wouldn’t say Hamas is getting stronger, much of their leadership is dead. They are just so ideological fanatical that they don’t know how to give up the ghost.
This leads to another problem with the I/P conflict, the number of well-meaning Westerners that refuse to take the religious elements of the conflict seriously. Neither side in general, but the Palestinians and other Muslims in particular, aren’t exactly shy at saying that they see this conflict in religious terms and Israel is a blot on all of Islam. They have said this repeatedly and release easily available propaganda to this effect. From what I can tell, there is just a big chunk of Westerners that refuse to take them seriously and go “oh, nobody can believe something this ridiculous” and “they really don’t mean it” despite all evidence that they do mean it.Report
Yes, they mean it. They’ve meant it often enough and in large enough numbers that it’s presumably true.
From their point view: There are a lot more of them. They have claimed this land for centuries. They’re religion 3.0 compared to the Jew’s 1.0. They’re told how special and superior their religion makes them. How they’re the ones who know the truth.
Israel’s existence showcases that they’re not special, and they’re not strong. It’s like you’re disproving their god.
My solution is that everyone become atheists and learn to think rationally but we’re centuries away from that at best.Report
I actually think that the fact that Arabs and by extension other Muslims lost to Jews of all people is one reason why Israel is so traumatizing. I mean losing to another group known for waging war is one thing but losing to the Jews, especially after the Shoah, is just an incomprehensible defeat.Report
I see evidence for this on social media since on nearly every Pro-Israel thing you see on Facebook, you get people showing up ranting and raving about the “illegal state of Israel.” They are never going to give up this ghost.Report
If you can get past your manifest bigotry, I recommend reading either Frankopan’s The Silk Roads or Ansary’s Destiny Disrupted for high-level histories of the Arab Peninsula, Levant, Persia/Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other Central Asian Stans. Neither breaks new ground, really, but they both pack a ton of historical information into a relatively small package (ok, Silk Roads is a pretty big package; I read it on my Kindle, but saw it in an airport bookstore recently and my God is that a big book). Basing your stereotypes of everyone involved on European history is pretty bad in and of itself, but is completely damning when trying to reason about the way people from outside of Europe view that part of the world and its conflicts.Report
Fish you with you with your manifest bigotry comment. The problem with you Further Leftist types is that you don’t consider Jews to be a real oppressed people but bougie white people masquerading but still want us to be support troops for you because of our history. You clearly don’t place any great stock into Jewish survival or Jewish needs but expect us to quietly deal with exclusion and death. Decades, centuries, and thousands of years of Jewish life destroyed over night and it is “oh well, what can you do about it” and a demand support at the same time.
I am sick and tired of the entire one way street of Jewish-Muslims relations where all burden is on the Jews and we must show true respect but get the grudging tolerance given to an embarrassing older relative.that doesn’t quite get it at best. That is simply not good enough. Why should Jews want to be second class citizens of a Muslim state? Why should we want to be in a place where we are so utterly dominated.
Israel might not mean very much to you but it means a lot of for us. Besides being the one sure refuge if we need one, and Israel has provided refugee for millions of Jews that needed a place to go sine 1948, it is also the one place in the world where we are not dominated. The culture, history, holidays, and literature are our own. But you deny us that to satisfy your ideological vanity and groups you are more romantically attracted to.Report
There’s a political party and presidential candidate out there who agrees with you on this topic.
Are you willing to vote for this presidential candidate or does your solidarity not extend quite *THAT* far?Report
It is reasonable and expected for the Arabs to be butt hurt that Israel exists.
Ditto the Mexicans with the USA taking a third of their land. Ditto the Native Americans with the USA taking all their land. (Almost?) Every country was created by taking the land from someone else.
As a country of immigrants, the USA has less “ethical” claim to being a country than most. The Jews in Israel (and for that matter, the Palestinians) have a greater “ethical” claim to the land than most.
But this line of reasoning is stupid and pointless! Victimhood does not grant moral superiority and competing for “who is the larger victim” shouldn’t be a thing.
If Mexico starts destroying cities on our border and/or engaging in terrorism, then we will kill as many as we need to keep our civilians safe. If we need to put their entire country through a woodchipper then that’s what happens. That would be expected and even ethical.
We forgive countries the crime of their creation because the alternatives are amazingly ugly.
It is a fact that Israel exists. Refusing to accept that is extremely aggressive and takes that part of the world to ugly places.Report
That’s my point. The Palestinians and really their allies Muslim or Leftist generally refuse to move on. They are still going for only the total destruction of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews is true justice for Palestine. i have no idea what people expect Israel to do but manage this. But there are tens or hundreds of millions of people that really want all of Israel to be reversed down to everything built being gone.Report
I think you missed his point. He’s questioning your whole framework. You say “they’re attacking us despite our status as a…” and Dark Matter’s saying that “they’re attacking us” is enough. To add more is to imply the need for more.Report
Now that read is comment, I agree that you are correct. I suppose the big dividing line in the I/P conflict is whether you consider Israel a real place or fake place. I consider Israel to be a real place or even the real place while Palestine seems like the more shaky construction. The enemies of Israel of different ideological backgrounds consider Israel to be the fake place and not a real true country while Palestine is the real place.Report
Yes. “They’re attacking us”, full stop.
Israel is a real country with all the normal bells and whistles. If we treat them like a normal country then the ethics gets clearer.Report
I agree that Israel is a real country. You agree that Israel is a real country. Many of the surrounding countries also are increasingly agreeing that Israel is a real country even if reluctantly. The Palestinians by and large do not. There so called allies egg them on. They aren’t going away though and I think Israel should just ditch the West Bank to get that albatross off their neck.
I’ve been looking at Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian propaganda a lot. Besides the fact that I’m obviously more sympathetic to Israel, I have no idea how it is supposed to help. On the other blog, there is a poster who points out that treating Palestinians as the ultimate indigenous victims, to be protected by White Savior activists against the mean Jews naturally, is not doing then any favors.Report
RE: Israel is a real country.
Facts are stubborn things. Not only is Israel “real” but it’s a regional power house.
Pretending it’s one glorious attack away from being pushed into the sea is how we got the current war.
…is not doing then any favors.
Constant refusal to accept a peace that allows Israel to existence means no set borders. No set borders opens the door to the settlements.
If the settlements become to big to move the Palestinians lose more land.
That’s ignoring various short term costs. The effects on trade, jobs, the economies, and even the war.
Although I’m less sure this war is still a “short term” thing. When it’s over, Israel is going to try to prevent Hamas from rebuilding. That implies grim things for Gaza’s standard of living and so on.Report
I agree with this but the Palestinians and Israel’s other haters have never been known for rationality. Lots of people including Further Leftists believe precisely that Israel is “one glorious attack” away from being pushed into the sea.Report
They need fatality rates of (WAG) about 100:1 to convince them.
We’re re-fighting the war of 1949 to see what will happen now that Israel is a regional powerhouse.
It is possible that this time, now that we’ve seen those massively lopsided fatality rates even are present when you expand the scale, maybe things will change. The other thing that needs to happen is Netanyahu needs to get kicked out but I assume next election will do that.Report
I do not understand how people who can speak at great and elegant length about how bad the concept of the Jewish State is and how alienating it is for Muslims, can also go “duh oiy, Jews should have no problems what so ever living in an officially Muslim state that is part of a collection of other officially Muslim states/” The only explanation is that they simply don’t care if Jews feel alienated and don’t think Jews have group needs like the groups they care about do.Report
This is a common intuition that shows up a great deal in most discussions of the death penalty.Report
Hamas releases propaganda video of the six dead Jews:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-publishes-propaganda-footage-of-six-murdered-hostages/Report
Tucker Carlson features a Holocaust Denier without credentials but we are concerned about NaNoWrMo: https://www.mediaite.com/news/tucker-carlson-starstruck-by-historian-who-calls-churchill-not-hitler-the-chief-villain-of-ww2-and-casts-holocaust-as-accident/Report
Why are you writing about NaNoWriMo when you could be talking about the hostages killed by the Palestinians?
Why are you writing about the hostages killed by the Palestinians instead of talking about the Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs?
Why are you writing about the Palestinian children allegedly being killed instead of talking about Ukraine?
Why are you talking about Ukraine instead of Harris?
Why are you talking about Harris instead of Trump?
Why are you talking about Trump instead of Concord turning its servers off?
Why are you talking about video games instead of talking about the existential threat posed by unaligned AI?Report
I’m sorry, I thought this was the Open Mic thread.Report
Why are you complaining about my comments instead of writing about… lemme check MSN… The Umbrella Academy Season 4’s Eiffel Tower plot hole?Report
Thanks for the quick confirmation.Report
Would you say that someone who complains about someone else’s topics in the Open Mic thread is making a silly, even puerile, complaint?Report
Just trying to figure out the rules here. I know the general rule that only Jaybird is allowed to change the subject, but I’m unclear on how it applies to an Open Mic, where there isn’t any subject except what anyone wants to talk about.Report
Do you have anything to contribute to the conversation?Report
That would be grading my own papers.Report
What do you think that the rule should be?Report
Not my circus, not my monkey. I can adapt to whatever the rules are or decide not to play. As long as I know.Report
Is sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander?Report
Your sarcasm against NaNoWriMonth involved a volunteer organization for a volunteer activity using language that is over the top and too chronically online but seemed to have some points behind it.
Tucker Carlson is propping up a fake historian who is downplaying the intentional murder of millions of Jews and also other groups the N@@i’s declared undesirable via execution, gas chamber, medical experimentation, work on starvation diets, torture, etc.
We also have a candidate for President of the United States that called the governor of Pennsylvania an “overrated Jewish governor” and the Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s governor, a Jew lawyer.
Do you really want to play your cutesy wordgames on this one?Report
Sure. How’s this?
“Okay. Tucker Carlson sucks and Darryl Cooper sucks. Oh, and Trump sucks too.”Report
Is it a day ending in “-day?”Report
Was there context to the Shapiro description?Report
You want context to TFG making anti-Semitic remarks? Really?Report
I know the context, and it wasn’t anti-Semitic. What I want is Saul to admit it.Report
Of course its anti-Semitic. TFG doesn’t talk about overratred Baptist governors. Or over rated Catholic governors. Or overrated any other religious tradition governors. That it doubles as a racial slur is just icing on his cake.
Sort of how questioning the Vice President’s blackness is a racial slur.Report
For that particular take, are you familiar with the argument that Jewish people stepped up for all kinds of progressive events over the last however long but, now that the time has come for Israel to fight back against a Palestinian massacre of a music festival, the progressives aren’t standing in solidarity with Israel?
Note: I am not asking if you agree with it, I’m asking if you’ve heard it.
Well, if you have, I’d say that Trump is making a similar argument here.
He’s been a friend to Israel and that solidarity is not being returned.
(Yeah, I know. It’s an argument that fails to take a *LOT* into account.)Report
Oh that is pathetic. Trump isn’t smart enough to make points like that even as a blunt instrument. He is a deeply stupid and deeply bigoted man with a history of inflammatory remarks against women, black people, Hispanics, Jews, and other groups. He has open anti-Semites like Nick Fuentes and other Proud Boys who love him.
Trying to be loveable over video games doesn’t hide your trolling and Trump-curiosity.Report
Here’s what the Wall Street Journal reported:
I appreciate not liking the argument.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a very good argument either.
It overlooks a *LOT*.Report
What did Trump say though? What was the argument he was making? Hint: What day did he post it?Report
Trump backs Israel more than Biden. He recognized their capital was where they claim it is. He didn’t bat an eye at his daughter becoming Jewish.
Those are solid creds against him being an anti-Semite.Report
I disagree strongly that Trump backs Israel more than Biden and Harris. Giving the most right-wing elements of Israel a blind eye if they go carte blanche against the Palestinians is not giving support. It is showing he dislikes Muslims more.
Biden and Harris never made comments about only wanting guys with yarmulkes to count their money. Harris is also married to a Jewish man. Biden appointed Jewish-Americans like Blinken and Garland to his cabinet. They both have deep ties to the Jewish people.
Support for Israel and Israelis is different than support for the most right-wing elements of Israeli society. Right-wingers do not have a monopoly on defending Israel and Zionism.
There were massive protests in Israel today from hundreds of thousands of Israelis who want a ceasefire.Report
Giving the most right-wing elements of Israel a blind eye if they go carte blanche against the Palestinians is not giving support.
Holy cow, I agree with this.
Enabling the worst impulses of the Israel army as they rampage through Gaza, acting like White Supremacists during Apartheid, is doing active harm to Israel and its interests.Report
Saul: Right-wingers do not have a monopoly on defending Israel and Zionism.
“Backing Israel” in this context means “backing their government’s efforts in the war”.
That would be the official elected government of Israel doing official things like fighting the formally declared war.
Trying to claim that it’s “backing Israel” to back Israel’s protesters against their government is doing backflips with the normal meaning of the words here.
The counter argument is “Biden is trying to get Israel to do things that are in it’s long term interests”, and not “Biden backs them more”.
Biden is trying to play Jimmy Cricket. Trump would hand out guns and say the other side has it coming.Report
And wait, did the Josh Stein thing even happen? Or is this another LGM falsity?Report
It happened – https://www.wtae.com/article/josh-shapiro-donald-trump-dnc/61951436
Interesting you can’t keep the PA Governor’s name straight from the Green Party’s nominee.Report
Interesting that again you accuse someone without understanding their comment. I asked about context for the quote about Josh Shapiro, then I also questioned the validity of the quote about Josh Stein, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina. And I expect an apology for this one.Report
You are correct that Josh Stein is running for governor in North Carolina to replace Roy Cooper, who is also a democrat. AS always, adding more clarity to your comments obviates these mistakes.Report
With your new interest in clarity, could you find any statement that Trump made calling Josh Stein a “Jew lawyer”? If you don’t find one, would you join me in questioning whether Saul is making false accusations? “Saul is on my side” isn’t an answer, nor is “Trump is often crude”.Report
I will join you in asking Saul to clarify. And leave it to him to do it.Report
Can we agree that deliberately calling someone a “Jew lawyer” is bad, assuming that the speaker wasn’t stumbling through a sentence but meant to say it? Can we agree that falsely accusing someone of calling someone a “Jew lawyer” is bad if invented wholesale, and only somewhat less bad if repeated from an unreliable source?Report
Yes to 1. Yes to 2. Three is always going to be subjective in that the unreliability of a source is not universally accepted.Report
existential threat posed by unaligned AI?
I’ve worked with these technologies. IMHO these fears are unrealistic, ignorant, and grossly over rated. The people making these statements typically don’t personally work with this tech while the people who do work with it have less problems.
Skynet from Terminator is a work of fiction and imho as unrealistic as “Left Behind”.Report
I’m more talking about what Yud thinks is going to happen.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that unaligned AI is probably going to kill us all, but we’ll have been talked into it first so that makes it more okay.
The “alignment” people might have had a shot, a year or two ago, but they spent it on making sure that AI wouldn’t write poetry about Republican politicians rather than on folding proteins.Report
AI isn’t going to kill us.
What will kill us are the people who figure that It’s Not Their Job To Think About This Stuff and do whatever the computer says ought to be done, including “activate the Paperclip Convertor and stuff everybody into it”.
Which…kinda means that the Killer AI isn’t coming, it’s already here, and it’s been here since the Third Reich in the 1930s.Report
Rotten Tomatoes reports Reagan at 19% among reviewers, 98% with audiences. Is it good or bad? Who knows.Report
Americans have proved time and again they wan to be entertained and could care less about nuance, historical accuracy or agendas in movies. Its why Marvel does so well at the box office but few Americans can name a Sundance winner.Report
My theory:
Back in the mid-90’s, I must have seen 2-3 movies a week in the theaters. I had opinions on which movies were good (and why), which movies were bad (and why), which movies followed a rote formula, which movies held surprises, which comedy movies worked, and which action movies failed, and which romances fell flat.
If I saw 100 movies that year, and you asked me how many were good, I’d probably have said about 10 were great, 20 were good, the rest were between fair and crappy.
I now see maybe 3 movies a year in the theater. And you know what? All of them are pretty good. Fun times.
If I may speculate: that 98% includes a *LOT* of people who haven’t seen a movie in the theaters since before the lockdowns.Report
I think another factor is streaming blurring expectations around quality. I don’t want to overly romanticize the past but my recollection is that something that got a wide release came with an implied promise of quality, compared to the direct to video market or the small number of independent theaters that in addition to foreign or art films might still run some exploitation and grindhouse fare. That started eroding once the Netflix streaming service went online, and they’d have an ok selection of A movies in a sea of stuff that once upon a time wouldn’t have ever been reviewed. Now with even widely released films spending such a short time in the box office one really has no idea what is what, or what to make of the reviews. I’ve had a number of experiences on Prime in particular where I’ll pick something that seems to be well rated but turns out to obviously be barely above a student film. Of course I then google it and pretty quickly find out it was some D level direct to TV effort for an obscure premium channel or other streaming service or something like that.Report
In 2005, the book “Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need” was published and, lemme tell ya, all of the stuff that people are complaining about with AI is the exact same thing that I complain about for that damned book.
It started slowly but now you see its pawprints everywhere. *EVERYWHERE*.
If Reagan didn’t use Save the Cat!, it’s going to be new and novel and different all by itself… but not different in a new way, different in an old way. It’ll generate nostalgia just by doing what it’s doing.
Ugh. I hate that book. I hate that book the way that DavidTC hates AI.Report
If that stuff depresses you, take a look at IMDb’s or most anyone else’s list of best films. Hollywood may make a lot of formulaic movies, but people recognize and remember movies that have their own voices.Report
In August, 2024 domestic box office beat the prior year, largely due to Deadpool and Wolverine. This is only the second month that happened this year, the other being March with Dune: Part Two. Domestic box office is running 14% lower for the year.Report
On the one hand, the system worked in that they were caught. On the other hand, democrats really need to learn how to be a bit more focused on OPSEC:
https://gothamist.com/news/feds-arrest-former-aid-to-ny-gov-kathy-hochul-after-raid-at-long-island-homeReport
On the other hand, Biden’s justice department charged her and her husband, Trump’s admin would not.Report
Jill Stein, useful idiot for Russia: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/useful-idiot-for-putin-russia-dnc-jill-stein-green-partyReport
U.S. charges Hamas leadership with crimes.Report
Oooh, now that’s interesting:
The impact of the case may be mostly symbolic given that Sinwar is believed to be hiding out in tunnels and at least two of the other defendants named by the Justice Department are thought to have been killed. But U.S. officials say at least one person, whom they did not name, is expected to be brought to New York for prosecution.
If they can make a big deal of the yet-unnamed-person, they’ll benefit. “Look, they’re taking it seriously!”, this will communicate and it’s one hell of an opportunity to give non-mealy-mouthed speeches about October 7th.
I’ve heard precious little about college protests by idiot students and I imagine that much of that is due to enthusiasm on the part of college leadership rather than a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the idiot students.
They play this deftly, they can neutralize a pretty-good criticism from “the right”.Report
That surprises you? After all the other Muslim terrorists we have charged, tried and convicted in absentia?Report
The United Statws has generally been treating Hamas like an actual negotiators to end the Israel-Hamas War. This action suggests that everybody is fed up with Hamas.Report
They have had to treat them like negotiators since they have control of what’s left of Palestinian governance in Gaza. No one else has come forward to take over that role.
Two things can be true at the same time Lee.Report
NWS forecast for tonight says snow above 12,000 ft in central Colorado.Report
Hunter Biden to accept guilty verdict in tax evasion trial in Los Angeles
“Hunter Biden will accept a guilty verdict in his tax evasion case in California, his lawyer Abbe Lowell said Thursday, as jury selection was about to begin.
Lowell said President Biden’s son would submit what’s known as an Alford plea, meaning he would accept a guilty verdict while maintaining his innocence. Court is in recess until 2 p.m. ET while the government reviews the law on this issue. Prosecutors said this is the first they’re hearing of Biden’s plea. ”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-guilty-verdict-tax-evasion-trial/Report
OK, this is behind a paywall, and I don’t know if the article is as Kaelesque as its title, and I hope I’m reacting to nothing, but:
Jessica Fern’s ‘Polysecure’ is the reason everyone you know is in an open marriage.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jessica-fern-polysecure-book-consensual-nonmonogamy-polyamory-2024-9Report
Maybe they did a poll of the people who subscribe to Business Insider.Report
That makes me wish I had and deeply glad I don’t have paywall access.Report
Maybe it’s just a semantic issue — I mean, my wife is very “open” about what she’ll do to me if I cheat on her. We have really good communication there.Report
Yeah I have the same sort of “understanding.”Report
My wife and I have a One Celebrity Rule. At least in theory. Neither of us has gotten a shot at a tempting celebrity to test whether it’s real or a joke.Report
A long time ago, I was at a offsite working with the department, and during lunch, the all the guys were talking about this, and giving names of the female celebrites/actors, etc. who were on the list. I gave them my list. On the next go around, the topic changed to “who’s on your wife’s list”. I deadpanned my response of “my list is my wife’s list”. It took a few minutes for the group to figure that one out 🙂Report
We don’t have to specify in advance.Report
You’re cutting the pufferfish by calling that an open marriage.Report
“Baby, what if I cheated?”
“It meant that you left the house and talked to somebody.”Report
Clearly Business Insider is trying for click bait here, since “everyone” in open marriages makes up no more then 6% of marriages in the US.Report
My take on the open marriage thing is that there are like 5 couples that have somehow found a way to make it work such that they at least believe it is not inherently undignified and debasing. YMMV as to whether they are in fact right about that.
For everyone else it is a mere detour on the way to divorce.Report
“Why three people at that party in Brooklyn that I went to last weekend are in an open marriage.”Report
Precisely.Report
If you grant that the media have some impact on society, and that the media are increasingly drawn from progressive colonies, and that the culture has been moving toward a more libertine sexual ethos, and that there are no principles in contemporary sexual morality that would limit this, then is there any reason to consider this something other than an unprovoked attempt to open a new front in the culture wars?Report
It seems like one of those things where feedback will be immediate and costly. For every “it worked for those two”, I’ve seen a dozen “they refuse to talk to each other”s.
(The 90’s “poly” scene did an amazing job of introducing antibodies into the system. Thinking back on the various people with whom I am still vaguely in contact with (facebook), I don’t think a *SINGLE* one is still partnered with someone that they were partnered with back then… of course, this shouldn’t be used as the measurement of whether a relationship is “successful” or not. But a lot of people learned a mess of hard lessons, it seems with a mess of hard feelings. I can’t imagine “open marriage” not teaching the exact same thing.)Report
All sexual libertinism leads to heartbreak, yet that never slows us down, does it?Report
Eh, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is an acceptable price to pay for cheeseburgers. With bacon. Oooh, and sauteed onions.Report
Does it? I am not sure this is necessarily the case but rather something people want to be true. I can believe that this might be true for a plurality or even a majority of sexual libertinism but all of it? Nah, not even close.Report
I think most people can get away with a good degree of it in their youth. The stakes are a lot lower, and maybe some important life lessons can be learned in the process.
Once you’re married and certainly once you have kids though I think it’s gotta be like a 99% failure rate. Even for those who can get past the jealousy are going to end up falling way short on the relationship maintenance duties, which are hard enough when it’s just between 2 people.
Periodically my wife and I will hear about someone we know considering something like this and our reaction is always the same: where would you even find the time?Report
From what I’ve heard, most polyamorous couples are childless.Report
Every thread on Reddit where the guy wants to open the marriage up ends up with him regretting it and her getting tons of new partners.Report
Yea any man who does this and thinks he is going to come out on top is a fool. There is a basic asymmetry to it.
The word though is that it’s increasingly women proposing these arrangements, often via some therapy culture mumbo jumbo that would get a man mercilessly ridiculed. Personally I think it’s a sign that the sexs have reached near total social parity. Women now feel sufficiently independent to destroy their marriages and families with short sighted and selfish sexual indulgence, just like their dads did.Report
I’m amazed it’s that high. Got a source?Report
YMMV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_marriage#:~:text=Spaniel%20and%20Cole%20found%20that,sex%20during%20the%20prior%20year.Report
For perspective, 6% is significantly more than homosexuality. So it’s enough to have dating websites, clubs, and so on.
Also Phil’s link suggests that the number of couples who are willing, in theory, to do this is much greater than the number who actively do so. Some of that will be “theory” vs “practice”, also known as “lying to pollsters about your sex life”.Report
Your weekly reminder that providing government agencies the resources to do their jobs often produces positive results:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/irs-inflation-reduction-act-wealthy-taxpayers/index.htmlReport
I was skeptical from the beginning, and to be honest, even I’m surprised at how little money this has yielded so far. The so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” gave the IRS $80 billion in extra funding, later reduced to $60 billion. After two years, they’ve collected a grand total of $1.3 billion.
They’ve collected an average of less than $1,500 per person from people making $400,000 per year and haven’t filed taxes for six years. A person making $400,000 per year will typically have an effective federal personal income tax rate in the low to mid 20s. Let’s lowball it and say they made $2,000,000 each over the past six years (maybe they don’t make $400k every year), paying a total of $400k in taxes. Even if they’ve only collected money from a third of the people they contacted, withholding covered 99% of their tax liability!
Look, I understand that it takes time to train the new agents, and ramp up. Fine. I concede that it’s likely that recovery of unpaid taxes will accelerate in the coming years. But taking a victory lap after recovering 2% of the extra funding they received just tells me that they know that their base is really fishing stupid.Report
Actually, do we know for a fact that this has anything to do with the extra funding, and isn’t part of their regular enforcement operations that they would have done anyway?Report
“They’ve collected an average of less than $1,500 per person from people making $400,000 per year and haven’t filed taxes for six years.”
You and I see this as a pointless waste of money; government bureaucracy sees this as a success story because, at least one time, they actually did do whatever it was they’re supposed to be doing.
And, y’know. They’re not actually wrong, by their lights; the point is not to get return-on-investment of dollars regained, the point is to show potential wrongdoers that they will be Found Out, and Punished. Cops get paid to patrol whether or not they find any criminals.Report
Correct – the point is not to get return on investment since the government is not a profit making business. The point is to increase effectiveness of services – which this funding most assuredly does.Report
Your math is off. That IRA money included $25.3 Billion for operations support – things like keeping office open, computer networks up and running, etc. There’s also $3.2 Billion in taxpayer services – things like getting through the backlog of unprocessed returns, updating the telephone information system; and $4.8 billion to finish modernizing its computer systems.
I’m not sure why reporting on activity funded by congress – which is a normal congressional requirement for plus ups – is a victory lap. However claiming you conceded these things, and then smacking the IRS for not having done more inspite of your concessions – tells me you don’t really believe your concessions.Report
And here’s your weekly reminder ofhow our weaponized justice system is working:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100805/hunter-biden-trial-tax-evasion-addictionReport
Glib contrarianism and the natural endpoint of Holocaust Denial: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/opinion/tucker-carlson-holocaust-denial.htmlReport
The very stable geniuses at the Trump campaign on Vance’s interviews and speaking tour with Tucker Carlson: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca67ddbca2825ed4c9b1bf78efa58c2ba1420b6e55453750740206165a24be27.jpgReport
1) When do these people think IS the right time to deny the Holocaust?
2) What exactly does the Trump/Vance campaign do if not craft a message for its candidates?Report
Look what the Taliban has been up to and that the International Caring Community hasn’t said a word about. I, along with other Jews, have been moving in this direction for a few years before the Simchat Torah massacre and the Israel-Hamas War but there are some real big serious blind spots in how the various forms of the International Left sees Jews in general and Israel in particular compared to how they see Muslims in general and the Palestinians in particular. Jews are seen as white people cosplaying as a minority or at oppressed people. When we set up institutions it isn’t a minority culture trying to preserve itself but white bougie people doing white bougie things, yes I mentioned this above.
But something about Islam just sets the hearts of the white savior activist left, the revolutionary left, and the International Caring Community heats fluttering. They see Muslim religious modesty clothing and turn it into a diversity symbol while they recoil in disgust at Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. They would give the groups they care about everything on a silver platter while denying the Jews the same things. I despite the International Caring Community.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C-_kUS4vc-O/?igsh=bTN4Z3Z0M2l5eGM4&fbclid=IwY2xjawFKCX9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRvgufK-5-j3LgVKNrTnB6AQOqW758s3jVvhLN72wBY5pzoEGvSkPSgEoA_aem_bLq8ErKrPh4GwwWHF18NgQReport
Why are you blaming Biden for Afghanistan? Nobody would have done better. Nobody.Report
Endless military occupation isn’t exactly a great alternative either.Report
Well, the ICC has decided that criticism of this or that is likely to be tied to the whole “the buck stops here” thing.
Oh, you don’t like the Taliban being in charge? You must not like Biden pulling out of Afghanistan. Why are you criticizing the current administration that includes Harris?Report
See Dark Matter above:
“But this line of reasoning is stupid and pointless! Victimhood does not grant moral superiority and competing for ‘who is the larger victim’ shouldn’t be a thing.”Report
The very stable genius supported by Russian oligarchs goes on a rant calling for mass arrests: https://x.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1832560382675972187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1832560382675972187%7Ctwgr%5E78814eb0995e06371d646f16fa05ad934a49a852%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%2F2024%2F09%2Ftrump-i-will-order-mass-arrests-of-my-political-enemies-if-i-winReport
Hey Saul, Philip and I were wondering where you heard that Trump “called the Democratic candidate for North Carolina’s governor, a Jew lawyer”.Report
More words from the very stable genius and the media that refuses to report on it: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/09/sunday-bloody-sundayReport
Profiles in a lack of courage.Report