It really is worth thinking hard about whether left and right would be quite as much at each other’s throats but for certain polarizing figures and bad media habits.
On the other hand, it really does depend on ultimate actual (not just declared) political aims, whether the divisions have become truly substantial.
If the right aims at God, family, and individual happiness, while the left aims at (e.g.) tearing down power structures...
...or something else equally radically, then, yeah. In that case the left-right acrimony and division *wouldn’t* just be illusory.
But that’s just theory. 75% of Democrats still ultimately want God, family, and individual happiness too, just a different way of getting there.
Of course, the means do matter. But violent revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat *isn’t* a means to advance those real interests of regular folks. It definitely does have different goals.
Bottom line: fighting back against “trolls” who are avowedly trying to destroy the system (one that supports individual liberty) is commendable and doesn’t just feed the need for self-righteousness. Somebody has to do it, even if the likes of @JonahDispatch find it distasteful.
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1/ Just built a Ruby CLI tool with Claude. Fetches ~93 Wikipedia pages, splits them into sections, classifies each via LLM, scores and ranks them, builds a cool, useful table. ~1500 lines of code. Seven sessions. I wrote virtually none of it myself. 🧵
2/ It's for WikiProject Intellectual Diversity—monitors policy talk pages and noticeboards for discussions relevant to the project's goals. Hundreds of active threads at any time, most irrelevant. The scanner finds the ones that aren't.
3/ My role: project owner/manager. Claude's role: programmer. Yup—that's it.
I made design decisions: what to build, how to score things, what to ask the LLM, which pages to monitor. Claude translated those into working Ruby. Almost everything worked first try.
I’ve compiled a clause-level synthetic harmony of the Passion narrative from all four Gospels, from the conspiracy through the Ascension.
Every significant detail from every Gospel, color-coded by source, woven into a single continuous narrative.
Samples 👇
It reads naturally. It all fits together well, with details illuminating each other, no dishonest fudging, nothing made up, no detail left out. That fact is itself an interesting argument.
If the Bible is all true and its words describe the same real events from different perspectives, then there is nothing wrong with the project in principle.
Showing that it’s possible would be part of a demonstration of the Bible’s truth.
To be perfectly serious: We need more evidence. Or, if we have the evidence, we need it assembled and clear reasoning from it.
But well, are these real emails? x.com/WallStreetApes…
So it appears. And maybe he's just really, really into beef jerky. But...come on, guys, this is weird.
Maybe it just needs to be hand-delivered. Or maybe it gets up on its own two feet and is led over?
"There is one bag of of beef jerky in the fridge"
"A small insulated bag would be just fine - I wouldn't recommend =hecking it. No need for crazy amounts of ice - one should do :)" justice.gov/epstein/files/…
Who refrigerates jerky? Maybe it hasn't been dried yet?
"JE said he was gonna start eating regular food again so he might be eating less jerky. That said he has 6 bags of it in the downstairs freezer for his next trip. I believe that should be enough to get him through." justice.gov/epstein/files/…
Well, maybe he's just weird—really likes jerky. And we can agree that, if that's your main source of protein, it isn't "regular food," exactly. And, I mean, we already know he was (or is) a very weird guy, so maybe it's not so surprising if he keeps it in the freezer. Even though it's usually made to keep for months and months.
"Steve needs a 6-8oz portion of jerky. I gave you all the jerky we had(roughly 2 pounds) and it lasted only half the amount of time it was meant to." justice.gov/epstein/files/…
I mean, maybe he's just a jerky fiend, and needs "portions" of jerky as large as regular steaks. Except this is no longer Epstein we're talking about, but Steve, who also really really likes jerky. Maybe it's a, you know, culinary trend in the pedophile jet set.
Let's be reasonable now. If you're super-rich and weird and you REALLY like jerky, then maybe a fellow jerky-eater will overnight some jerky "to your attention."
In the jerky set, there's another player:
"Francis has time to come tomorrow and show me how to make it!!! Jerky class anyone? He will also bring you a taste of his new jerky recipe from the restaurant. And he sends a warm hello. He is working at a restaurant called Cannibal and cooks... wait for it... Beef Jerky and Steak! He has time at 3pm tomorrow if this is okay with you."
Francis, a jerky cook at Cannibal and Cooks [not found on Google], offers to teach Epstein himself his latest jerky recipes, including one for "Beef Jerky and Steak." I'm telling you, maybe he was just really, really into beef jerky.
As more people claim Christmas as a kind of ecumenical holiday—most not believing that Jesus is God—the actual significance of the Advent and Incarnation are (of course) lost.
It is now a teachable moment for most. Christmas means... 👇
God, the one and only creator of the universe who first revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, determined that to save and perfect humanity, he had to appear as a man himself.
A rough explanation of the Trinity, which many non-Christians do not understand—
Think of the Father as timeless; while the Son is also eternal, he acted in time, among us; and after he returned to the Father, they sent their Holy Spirit to us. These three are one in essence.
Grokipedia v0.1 launched 24 hours ago with nearly 900,000 articles. I ran a test comparing it to Wikipedia on ten controversial topics. The results were striking, and suggest Grokipedia might actually have a shot. 👇
I can correct some errors out right out the gate. I'll start there:
"He resigned in 2002, citing unsustainable funding, dilution of editorial standards, and failure to maintain neutrality as anonymous editing allowed ideological influences to undermine the project's original vision of impartial knowledge dissemination."
I resigned because I was laid off, because Bomis couldn't pay me (or any of the other new hires). I *did not* (it is factually incorrect) leave because I cited dilution of editorial standards, or failure to maintain neutrality. That's just not the case.