Thanks for sharing this. I wasn’t familiar with this channel, not I’m liking it.

I just read that this guy was part of Nebula and was forced out. It’s remarkable that he’s forced out for speaking openly and defending his beliefs when Isaac Arthur is tolerated despite having much more onerous politics but having them in secret. Smh.

Amen. It drives me fuckin’ nuts anytime – in business as well as in sci-fi and general discussion – when people envision a society made perfect because it’s run by a genius computer.

For pretty much every challenge society faces, the major obstacle is not that we’re unsure what to do or lack the intelligence to solve. We already have all the solutions, it’s just that our decision making systems are completely disinterested in employing any of the solutions that we already have.

It’s like, if you could get everyone to agree to listen to a computer, why not just skip the computer and get everyone to agree to listen to a combination of popular will and expert advice? Popular will and expert advice are like the supercomputer that runs society that we already have.

I feel like this is a pretty crass joke to make.

A good friend of mine found a body a few months ago. It’s a pretty shitty experience. And it’s actually a lot like what OP describes. A sense of foreboding and suspicion combined with a conviction that these thoughts are foolish. And an uncertainty whether to check or to alert someone or to just try to forget it.

Op, I’d report it and ask them to please follow up with you and let you know. It’s probably nothing, and you’ll feel better once you know it was nothing, and that you did the responsible thing in having it dealt with.

I would suggest calling the city or county and reporting suspicious dumping. It could be a body. It could be a rotting animal carcass. It could have toxic chemicals in it.

You don’t need to suspect that it’s a body to call the city and report what looks like dangerous dumping.

It’s exciting. Decarbonization cement (or replacing it) is going to be essential.

I think this is taking us way off topic, but I’ll answer.

First, I think you’re making a key logical misstep. This isn’t actually relevant, but it’s bugging me:

If antisemitism existed prior to Israel, than Israel cannot be responsible for its invention. Logically sound.

If antisemitism existed prior to Israel, than Israel cannot be responsible for its rise. Logically unsound.

This is separate from the fact that I don’t actually think Israeli policy fosters antisemitism. My working theory is that most antisemitism exists for other awful reasons, but is held at bay by the high cultural standing of Jews, the strength of our social ties to allies, and the protections afforded to us by democratic, multi ethnic societies. Israel’s actions damage all three, which erode the foundations of our defenses.

Second: The story of Esther; The story of Hanukkah; the destruction of the first temple; the destruction of the second temple. And on and on and on.

Like… I’m sorry but what? Did you think we were just having a good time for thousands of years and then people started persecuting Jews in the common era? That makes no sense dude. What does your Sedar look like?

Can you just summarize?

If you think someone is making light of a serious situation and you want people to know that, I think you should say it in words. Speaking for myself, I’m not making light of anything, and that characterization seemed respectful. I’m not sure what part you read as glib or jokey, and your response when asked to clarify seems needlessly cryptic.

Thank you for sharing those links. I’m already all up in that, but I hope others will join their mailing lists and participate in their actions.

The reason it exists is it is fed by a stream (deep-rooted cultural antisemitist sentiment as a cultural practice that uses desire to scapegoat, etc).

Wait, what part of this seems flippant? That seems to me like a succinct and accurate characterization of the enduring presence of antisemitism since antiquity. I don’t see anything dismissive about this.

If the present rise in antisemitism is rooted in Israeli governmental policy, then before there was an Israeli government, by that logic there should be no cause for antisemitism.

I’m not sure if I should take these seriously. I don’t think observing that Israeli policy has implications for how people view and behave towards Jews suggests that antisemitism was created several years after the Holocaust happened.

Would the inverse be true? Does the existence of antisemitism in prechristian times suggest that the blood libel conspiracies couldn’t have any influence on antisemitism in medieval Europe?

I want to point out for context that in 2019, the American Jewish Electorate survey found that a quarter of American Jews considered Israel to be an apartheid state, and 22% of American Jews thought that the treatment of Palestinians constituted a genocide. That was where American Jews were half a decade ago.

That should have been a huge canary in the coal mine. When the survey results came out, the established Zionist institutions insisted it was some sort of error in the way the data was collected. What that was telling us is now clear: the Likud party’s leadership was able to maintain support among political leaders, but they’d already overdrawn our store of goodwill YEARS ago. Oct. 7 just brought this all back into the news, and now we’re dealing with a loss of reputation that had been building slowly for years.

That doesn’t account for the rise in antisemitism we’ve seen in the last four months, but I think it contributes heavily to the loss of allies who previously served as a crucial bulwark against antisemitism.

This is a very serious problem. However addressing it requires context that I don’t think the article provides.

First, this study was conducted by the Community Security Trust, and you can find the full report here. It’s worth reading.

Thankfully, if you check page 23 we can see that murder or extreme violence were at zero. Less fortunately, they count 266 assaults and 305 threats. The vast majority of incidents – over 4,000 – are speech.

The Haaretz takes great pains to insist that the rise in antisemitism occurred in the week after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack but before the Israeli counter attack. I think the case they make is very thin, since I suspect the window of time is too small for reliable statistics, and this kind of attribution is notoriously subjective. Regardless, it strikes me as an attempt to dispel the obvious fact that Israeli policy fuels antisemitism around the world. To pretend otherwise is absurd.

Overall, I find it enormously frustrating as a Jewish father that many of my Zionist friends appear unwilling to reconcile the fact that for better or worse, combating antisemitism cannot be pursued while simultaneously deligitimizing criticism of Israeli crimes against humanity as pure hate speech. Additionally, we cannot operate from a starting assumption in which we believe we’re entitled to and capable of achieving widespread public goodwill irrespective of the actions of Israeli leadership, the Israeli military, and western allies. That’s not something that is possible.

Is it fair that all Jews must bear this burden? As an anti-zionist Jew, I get to be the first to say, “No, it’s absolutely fucking not fair that I have to deal with this.” And I also get to be the first to say to Zionists, “If you think it’s unfair, that do something about it: stop conflating Zionism with Judaism and then complaining when gentiles get confused. Stand up against war crimes when they are perpetrated by people insisting that they speak on behalf of Jews.”

I have this issue with friends. Frankly, we shouldn’t need to be threatened to speak up against atrocities. But with our own safety jeopardized as well, what the hell reason is there for us to run defense for fascists like Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich? Let’s protect Muslims AND ourselves by making clear: they don’t speak for us.

Absent that, it’s hard to take concerns about antisemitism from people who won’t do that seriously. If you cared, you join me in trying to actually do the obvious first step to improve this terrible situations for world Jews.

Well said.

It feels silly to ridicule Vaush for jacking off to hentai.

I’d rather people ridicule him for being just an insufferable troll. And I say this as a leftist: he doesn’t seem to add anything to the discourse.

I enjoyed that.

I love how all the responses are like, ‘Yeah, of course.’

I think your assessment is right on. It’s just that this all sounds like an obvious Ponzi scheme. If success is based on endless unsustainable spending and growth, eventually the bubble pops. Plan better.

Forgive the arrogance of this statement, but I find it bewildering how dumb national and international economists are.

Take one step back and there’s a lot of obvious critical flaws in their whole ambition: the kind of growth everyone’s chasing is specific to industrialization. It’s like measuring your child’s height and weight from age 3 to 10 and then trying to keep them growing an inch a year forever. It’s both impossible, and also hugely destructive.

Could be a double agent.

With the CIA, I don’t know if your can ever really be too paranoid. The could war was wild.

I generally agree. I think there are no great answers, but the expert they interviewed makes good points. The main point that resonates with me is the network effects: if everyone feels pressured to begin using tools because they feel like everyone else is on them, it’s very difficult for any parent to constrain their kid’s use.

Age prohibitions aren’t very restrictive because they’re difficult to enforce. They’re basically just advice and a legal tool to go after the very most flagrant business targeting minors.

As for the positive effects: that’s a great point. I want my kid to have access to explore cyberspace in the same way I want them to have access to explore our city and nearby wildlands. I want them to have as much freedom as possible while teaching them to recognize and avoid danger. I think in all these cases, exposure with supervision before gradually increasing unsupervised access to areas that have become familiar is the only strategy to achieve that that in aware of.

That’s interesting. It also makes some sense.