It would be nice if people did less grave dancing, but I suppose the DSA types are currently thrilling to the unusual savor of victory.

Tedious how pointing out a pretty reasonable thing gets the angry leftists coming out of the woodwork.

Elon Musk is retweeting lies about slavery and demands for reparations for white people. Tell your friends not to give money to his companies please

people are pointing out that this is obviously antisemitic, and it is, but one notes that this is sort of the natural endpoint of building your entire political identity around cultural criticism.

Current Affairs@currentaffairs.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is the sort of thing that people need to understand is as representative of the Palestinian nationalist fringe as their Favorite Leftist Cosmopolitan Thinker!

Jacquie@lajacq.bsky.social · 19h ago

This quote might be more obscene

oh hey we're doing degenerate Jewish art but leftishly.

Current Affairs@currentaffairs.bsky.social · 2d ago

Nolan, like many other modern commentators, compares the scenario and moral order of the Homeric world to the present, where society is stable enough such sharp lessons are unnecessary & the powerful can afford a loss. Homer does not do this. Homer assumes order is empty without punishment of wrong.

Not only do they gotta go, in fact, they gotta go BADLY. They gotta go bloody, because after so many years of willful sacrilege they need to be a violent caufionary tale of DO NOT DO THIS.

This is also where I do kinda disagree with Wilson in one key respect - by the ethos of the poem the suitors have to die for clear, morally coherent reasons. They have willfully and maliciously abused Penelope's hospitality for years at a time, devouring & subverting her household. They gotta go.

I still think Wilson was more right than not about Nolan's Odyssey.

Since I guess we're doing Pratchett Discourse, boots theory works for some goods - durable assets, etc - and not for others, but also the modern economy is Genuinely Fucking Weird historically.

I intend to write more thoroughly about this soon, but the fad for social media child bans should be resolutely resisted at all costs. There are genuine public health concerns about social media, yes. But unlike smoking, it has genuinely salubrious effects as well--including for teens.

Ben Schwarz@benschwarz.bsky.social · 2d ago

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

My brother got his wallet stolen on his way out of Florence. Pickpockets are a serious issue!

Chairman Goa Tse-tung@jctenton.bsky.social · 2d ago

americans are too decadent and lazy to learn pickpocketing skills

No child should face barbed wire and settler violence just to get to class. J Street welcomes this powerful letter from 115 House Democrats led by @raskin.house.gov calling on Netanyahu to remove settler barriers blocking students in Umm al-Khair. raskin.house.gov/2026/7/raski...

This is the thing everyone eager to talk up Al-Jazeera has to awkwardly forget - it is a state media outlet with a specific bias, coasting off the fact that everyone was so eager to herald it as a bold new direction for freedom of speech in the Middle East back during the GWoT.

(((Asa Zernik)))@asazernik.bsky.social · 3d ago

It doesn't "let itself down", it does its job. Al Jazeera is Qatari state media, and as soon as a story's subject is of interest to Qatari foreign policy (as Israel is) that becomes clear very quickly.

And lest anyone think this is just fringe voice, Al-Jazeera ran a column linking Israel to Moroccan migrants into Ceuta - citing no evidence of any Israeli involvement. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202... This is not a good way to be! This is an epistemic collapse on the left.

Is Spain being punished?

In the months leading up to the crisis in Ceuta, pro-Israel voices conspicuously raised the issue of the enclave

aljazeera.com

Today is Porajmos Memorial Day. Today we remember the half a million Romani people murdered by Nazi genocide. Dikh He Na Bister

Really doesn’t bode well that a bunch of people on here and Twitter are looking at the latest Spanish-Moroccan border flare up and going “Israel must be secretly orchestrating this”

It's extremely frustrating that the reactionary right tries to claim the classics & present the failure to teach classics & traditional subjects because I DO think we kind of HAVE taught these things badly & it's useful to teach them! But there are many things it is useful to teach!

The piece of shit who was harassing Stevens & her supporters at events is now trying to actively sabotage her voter outreach. “Influencers” are cheap these days.

And look, I'm just going to say it: antisemitism is doing to the US political left (not just leftists/DSA) right now, before our very eyes, what transphobia did to the British political left, and anyone who doesn't see it is choosing not to.

Ok I am just subtweeting somebody but I gotta say it: if your anger at GenAI is so intense that you think a group who are *textually* basically a sadistic hate group are "right" in their persecution of textually sophont androids, you have Lost the Plot.

Respect.

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 4d ago

I cannot rest from discourse. I will see that film again tomorrow. I will drink life to the lees. Again I will enjoy greatly, will suffer greatly, both with those that love me, and in Pleasantville NY. I am become a meme. Film showing: burnsfilmcenter.org/booking/the-...

Also like, sure, some of the monsters are people. Being people, some of those monsters will be assholes. Being *strange, not human people*, the way they are assholes may also be strange, inhuman, and terrifying!

All on a Speck of Dust in the Milky Way@inasilentdream.bsky.social · 4d ago

Because you don't need to develop the rich internality of the enemy in a game when you constantly have to navigate other people's internality in life and most people do not find wrestling with philosophy fun.

The media is desperate to find some reason why Elon Musk's politics are complicated or more sophisticated than they seem, because the simple truth is too ugly for them to admit - an actual Nazi is the world's wealthiest person, and his companies hold substantial American government contracts.

One could argue, indeed, that the whale is some sort of... Leviathan.

A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 4d ago

Nature produces many beautiful things nonetheless founded upon exploitation at a vast scale just as human society is. The great whale feeds itself through the consumption of staggering multitudes of lesser lives; their placid gentleness is an illusion originating in disparity of scale

or to quote Vetinari: "Freedom may be mankind’s natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling.” We are ideologically primed to look for that which is true in that which is natural, because the Enlightenment needed a replacement for divine law.

Seva@seva.bsky.social · 4d ago

that's the opposite of what I'm saying. Liberalism is unnatural to the reptile brain, which is exactly why it's valuable and worth defending bsky.app/profile/mark...

Some people deserve monuments as grand as their legacy. Harriet Tubman was reimagined as an ancient monument, the kind once reserved for kings and gods. Ruin of a Giant (Harriet Tubman) by Tavares Strachan. 🎥 IG: @UPB #SheShed #VivaHerAlliance

Look, if you're going to do this, pay creators VERY well for their participation and let them opt out.

Zach Bussey 🍁@zachbussey.tos.gg · 5d ago

Twitch and Amazon are apparently planning to use streams to train Generative AI. Multiple sources tell me it will be announced in the coming months, despite some internal friction against it. Creators may be able to opt out of some training data.

The funny thing about the em dash Discourse is that there's absolutely telltale default styles favored by genAI prose & it's not em dashes. For instance, something I've noticed is a recurring prose device of: 1: statement. 2: rejection of one interpretation of statement. 3: expository clarification

Chuck Tingle@chucktingle.bsky.social · 6d ago

YOULL NEVER TAKE MY EM DASH