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In some sense, Communism in practice really can be summarized in a single sentence: "All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others." It shares this trait with Fascism.
This sentence, derived from George Orwell (in Animal Farm) is not just a clever contradiction, though. It's dialectical. It is a statement indicative of Communism not only because its contradictions appear in practice but because the contradictions themselves are dialectically written into the program.
If we want to be able to fight Communism and Fascism, it is actually crucial to learn dialectics and how to pull this mode of thought apart. It is not optional. Leaving it as optional will invariably get us caught in far more dialectical traps than we would be in otherwise, and every such thing advances the cause of the ideology we're fighting.
Here's a concrete example to make it more vivid. Diversity.
We have spent the last several years (arguably 55) arguing about whether "diversity" is our strength, or what kind of diversity: demographic diversity or viewpoint diversity, or whatever. At no point were we understanding the dialectic behind the program called "Diversity."
This program was also used under the dialectical materialism doctrine embraced by the Soviet Union, implemented by Vladimir Lenin himself. It was called Raznoobraziya (Разнообразие), which translates literally and directly as "diversity."
Lenin did not mean just any kind of diversity, though. What he explicitly said he meant by Raznoobraziya is "diversity in form with unity in content," which can also be reversed to mean "achieving unity in content through diversity in form."
Sounds like Orwell: "everyone is equal but some are more equal than others." Why? Because it's a dialectical formulation of "diversity." Lenin defined what he meant by Raznoobraziya under the "dialectical law" called "the struggle and unification of opposites." Difference (diversity) and sameness (unity) were brought together into a single concept.
What it meant in practice is that diversity would be superficial, people from different backgrounds, while they'd all be Marxists in line with the Party. Diversity in outer form with unity in inner content. It also meant in practice that they would leverage socialists from different backgrounds to make more people socialists by using socialism as the basis for what it meant to be whatever background in an authentic way.
If this sounds like the Diversity in DEI, it's because it is exactly that Diversity. You cannot understand what it is or how to engage it without understanding its dialectical formulation or how to handle a dialectical formulation.
Arguing about the value of viewpoint diversity but the weakness of demographic diversity, for example, actually plays into the Diversity program, not against it. Many did this with totally good intentions.
How does it play into their hands? Because the Woke worldview holds that viewpoint diversity is intrinsically linked to demographic diversity and have a well-developed theory of how that allegedly happens (called "standpoint epistemology," which is somewhat derivative to cultural relativism). They also have a well-developed critical theory of each identity and thus a claim that the Woke view of being that identity is the only one that's "authentic" to the "lived experience" of that "social position."
That is, the Woke had already laid all the groundwork to capture "viewpoint diversity" on stronger terms than their critics could possibly mean it, and even though the critics holding up "viewpoint diversity" rightly perceived the trick (everyone is Woke no matter how diverse), they weren't equipped to defeat the dialectic being used against them.
If you don't think this perspective was all that powerful, I urge you to understand that the ONLY reason we have a Woke professional and legal environment at all is because this stupid trick about standpoint epistemology being the right interpretation of viewpoint diversity is one of two stupid Woke arguments that fooled the Supreme Court at least as early as 1978 (Bakke v. Board of Regents) into arguing that college admissions can and should prioritize discrimination in the name of "Diversity" because "diversity" provides an enriching educational opportunity consistent with the colleges' missions. Civil Rights law got turned inside out in favor of Woke more or less overnight. (Cf. Griggs v. Duke Power for the other stupid trick, which is the "disparate impact" doctrine case).
The correct way to deal with the dialectic is to point out its bogus terms in full (because the various parts point to various truths and cannot be dealt with separately). That is, in this case, Diversity has to be exposed as a cover story that isn't about diversity at all but is specifically designed to cherry-pick a single ideological view that gets channeled through the more superficial form of diversity. The focus has to be on the trick itself, that is, treating it as causal, not as an effect.
Of course, on the other hand, yet another dialectical trick awaited people regarding Diversity. Lenin's protégé, in a sense, and successor, Josef Stalin, had another take on precisely the same dialectic. Stalin's went like this, much more bluntly: "National in form and Socialist in content." This was the basis for another Soviet program he and Lenin implemented in the 1920s called Korenizatsiya (Коренизация), which roughly means "making indigenous" or "rootification," to spin a new term. The explicit dialectical formulation makes it more clear: "national in form and Socialist in content." (Its focus on "diversity" in nationalities and in "national form" led Lenin to refer to Stalin as "the national socialist.")
The difference here is that within the Soviet Union, Russian was also a nationality, in some sense part of the constellation of "Diversity" but differently. Eventually, therefore, when the favoritism of minority ethnicities and nationalities wore thin for the "Great Russians," who had been up to that point consistently accused of "Great Russian chauvinism" every time they disagreed with their minority-ethnicity comrades (who were more equal than others), they were led to assert their own nationality as well.
In our current anti-Woke day, that means a rising white racial consciousness, male sexual consciousness, straight sexual (other meaning) consciousness, Christian nationalist religious consciousness, etc., as an alleged antidote to the Woke reverse prioritization. Now rather than just the minorities playing the game, everyone is playing the game.
And what was Stalin's use and purpose with this reaction to the excesses, abuses, and failures of Korenizatsiya, arising roughly 6-8 years after its full implementation, btw? "Russification." Everyone would be Great Russian now, and the Soviet Union would just be "Mother Russia" again.
What he did was as explicitly "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" as could possibly have been done, likely inspiring Orwell for the famous line in Animal Farm. Stalin said that Russians, under Soviet Russification, would be "first among equals."
This would have been roughly 1930, maybe 1931, and in implementation it required totally crushing the strongest ethnic minority who happened to occupy perhaps the most valuable land: the Ukrainians. Thus, in the winter of 1932-33, Stalin executes the Holodomor, the forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians under his new doctrines. No longer would Ukraine be allowed "self-determination" in its own "national form," however Socialist.
That is, the dialectic was forced into synthesis. National in form and Socialist in content was presented with its negation, Russification, and forced into a synthesis literally described as "first among equals," itself a dialectical formulation.
We have no choice but to understand this twisted, demented, manipulative logic if we want to combat Communism and Fascism. They operate on this logic. There is no other choice.
This sentence, derived from George Orwell (in Animal Farm) is not just a clever contradiction, though. It's dialectical. It is a statement indicative of Communism not only because its contradictions appear in practice but because the contradictions themselves are dialectically written into the program.
If we want to be able to fight Communism and Fascism, it is actually crucial to learn dialectics and how to pull this mode of thought apart. It is not optional. Leaving it as optional will invariably get us caught in far more dialectical traps than we would be in otherwise, and every such thing advances the cause of the ideology we're fighting.
Here's a concrete example to make it more vivid. Diversity.
We have spent the last several years (arguably 55) arguing about whether "diversity" is our strength, or what kind of diversity: demographic diversity or viewpoint diversity, or whatever. At no point were we understanding the dialectic behind the program called "Diversity."
This program was also used under the dialectical materialism doctrine embraced by the Soviet Union, implemented by Vladimir Lenin himself. It was called Raznoobraziya (Разнообразие), which translates literally and directly as "diversity."
Lenin did not mean just any kind of diversity, though. What he explicitly said he meant by Raznoobraziya is "diversity in form with unity in content," which can also be reversed to mean "achieving unity in content through diversity in form."
Sounds like Orwell: "everyone is equal but some are more equal than others." Why? Because it's a dialectical formulation of "diversity." Lenin defined what he meant by Raznoobraziya under the "dialectical law" called "the struggle and unification of opposites." Difference (diversity) and sameness (unity) were brought together into a single concept.
What it meant in practice is that diversity would be superficial, people from different backgrounds, while they'd all be Marxists in line with the Party. Diversity in outer form with unity in inner content. It also meant in practice that they would leverage socialists from different backgrounds to make more people socialists by using socialism as the basis for what it meant to be whatever background in an authentic way.
If this sounds like the Diversity in DEI, it's because it is exactly that Diversity. You cannot understand what it is or how to engage it without understanding its dialectical formulation or how to handle a dialectical formulation.
Arguing about the value of viewpoint diversity but the weakness of demographic diversity, for example, actually plays into the Diversity program, not against it. Many did this with totally good intentions.
How does it play into their hands? Because the Woke worldview holds that viewpoint diversity is intrinsically linked to demographic diversity and have a well-developed theory of how that allegedly happens (called "standpoint epistemology," which is somewhat derivative to cultural relativism). They also have a well-developed critical theory of each identity and thus a claim that the Woke view of being that identity is the only one that's "authentic" to the "lived experience" of that "social position."
That is, the Woke had already laid all the groundwork to capture "viewpoint diversity" on stronger terms than their critics could possibly mean it, and even though the critics holding up "viewpoint diversity" rightly perceived the trick (everyone is Woke no matter how diverse), they weren't equipped to defeat the dialectic being used against them.
If you don't think this perspective was all that powerful, I urge you to understand that the ONLY reason we have a Woke professional and legal environment at all is because this stupid trick about standpoint epistemology being the right interpretation of viewpoint diversity is one of two stupid Woke arguments that fooled the Supreme Court at least as early as 1978 (Bakke v. Board of Regents) into arguing that college admissions can and should prioritize discrimination in the name of "Diversity" because "diversity" provides an enriching educational opportunity consistent with the colleges' missions. Civil Rights law got turned inside out in favor of Woke more or less overnight. (Cf. Griggs v. Duke Power for the other stupid trick, which is the "disparate impact" doctrine case).
The correct way to deal with the dialectic is to point out its bogus terms in full (because the various parts point to various truths and cannot be dealt with separately). That is, in this case, Diversity has to be exposed as a cover story that isn't about diversity at all but is specifically designed to cherry-pick a single ideological view that gets channeled through the more superficial form of diversity. The focus has to be on the trick itself, that is, treating it as causal, not as an effect.
Of course, on the other hand, yet another dialectical trick awaited people regarding Diversity. Lenin's protégé, in a sense, and successor, Josef Stalin, had another take on precisely the same dialectic. Stalin's went like this, much more bluntly: "National in form and Socialist in content." This was the basis for another Soviet program he and Lenin implemented in the 1920s called Korenizatsiya (Коренизация), which roughly means "making indigenous" or "rootification," to spin a new term. The explicit dialectical formulation makes it more clear: "national in form and Socialist in content." (Its focus on "diversity" in nationalities and in "national form" led Lenin to refer to Stalin as "the national socialist.")
The difference here is that within the Soviet Union, Russian was also a nationality, in some sense part of the constellation of "Diversity" but differently. Eventually, therefore, when the favoritism of minority ethnicities and nationalities wore thin for the "Great Russians," who had been up to that point consistently accused of "Great Russian chauvinism" every time they disagreed with their minority-ethnicity comrades (who were more equal than others), they were led to assert their own nationality as well.
In our current anti-Woke day, that means a rising white racial consciousness, male sexual consciousness, straight sexual (other meaning) consciousness, Christian nationalist religious consciousness, etc., as an alleged antidote to the Woke reverse prioritization. Now rather than just the minorities playing the game, everyone is playing the game.
And what was Stalin's use and purpose with this reaction to the excesses, abuses, and failures of Korenizatsiya, arising roughly 6-8 years after its full implementation, btw? "Russification." Everyone would be Great Russian now, and the Soviet Union would just be "Mother Russia" again.
What he did was as explicitly "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" as could possibly have been done, likely inspiring Orwell for the famous line in Animal Farm. Stalin said that Russians, under Soviet Russification, would be "first among equals."
This would have been roughly 1930, maybe 1931, and in implementation it required totally crushing the strongest ethnic minority who happened to occupy perhaps the most valuable land: the Ukrainians. Thus, in the winter of 1932-33, Stalin executes the Holodomor, the forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians under his new doctrines. No longer would Ukraine be allowed "self-determination" in its own "national form," however Socialist.
That is, the dialectic was forced into synthesis. National in form and Socialist in content was presented with its negation, Russification, and forced into a synthesis literally described as "first among equals," itself a dialectical formulation.
We have no choice but to understand this twisted, demented, manipulative logic if we want to combat Communism and Fascism. They operate on this logic. There is no other choice.
For more information about the laws of dialectics, as the Soviets had it:
newdiscourses.com/2025/12/the-al…
newdiscourses.com/2025/12/the-al…
Something to keep in mind with the endless "smart kid" discourse - and IQ of 120 is about 10% of the gen pop (around 15% of the white/asian pop), and 120 is a common cutoff for "gifted" in schools. Then you think about the type of person who posts in this part of twitter - where you need strong literacy, have interest in abstract arguments/news/philosophy/geopolitics- and you're dealing with a group that almost certainly has a higher percentage of 120 IQs and above than the typical population (both left and right wing people). So yeah, it does stand to reason that this section of X would indeed have a higher than typical proportion of "gifted" level boys
A common rebuttal to gifted boy discourse on here is "um actually you were more likely just dumb and difficult," but the odds of someone genuinely "dumb" (like sub-90 IQ) finding their way to this part of X are extremely low. Sorry, but you're going to have to accept that these are nearly all 120-125+ IQ boys sharing their experiences and work from there
“I was recently in Shenzhen… talking to one of that country’s legendary businessmen. I asked him about the Iran war and his response surprised me. “For us, Trump’s attack on Iran is less consequential than his threat to attack Greenland,” he told me.” 1/9
“When he did that, to America’s oldest allies, I knew that Europe would not follow America’s approach to China.” 2/9
“The old model was that the U.S. took care of European security and Europeans spent generously on U.S. arms. Now Europeans want more of their money to stay at home, to build European firms and supply chains, and thus gain strategic autonomy from Washington.” 3/9
The original stress test for political obedience, 207 BC.
The Qin dynasty was collapsing. Rebels were closing on the capital. The chancellor, a eunuch named Zhao Gao, had already engineered the death of the First Emperor's chosen heir and installed a pliable younger son as a puppet. He had executed the previous chancellor. He now wanted to know whether anyone at court was still capable of resisting him.
So he brought a deer into the throne room and presented it to the emperor as a horse.
The emperor laughed. "Chancellor, you are mistaken. That is a deer."
Zhao Gao insisted it was a horse. He turned to the assembled courtiers and asked them, one by one, what they saw.
Some, trying to be honest, said deer. Some, understanding the test, said horse. A few said nothing at all.
Zhao Gao marked the answers. Over the following weeks and months, those who had said "deer" were quietly purged: reassigned to distant posts, executed on unrelated pretexts, demoted into obscurity. Those who had said "horse" were promoted.
The point was never to convince anyone the deer was a horse. The point was to find out who would say so anyway. Once a man had affirmed the obvious lie in public, his loyalty to truth could no longer compete with his loyalty to the chancellor. He was bound. He had no other option but to keep saying horse, forever.
Within a year of this scene, Zhao Gao would murder the emperor he had installed, be murdered himself, and the dynasty would burn.
The Chinese idiom 指鹿为马 (zhǐ lù wéi mǎ), "to point at a deer and call it a horse", has been in continuous use for 2,200 years. It is still the precise phrase for this exact maneuver.
The Qin dynasty was collapsing. Rebels were closing on the capital. The chancellor, a eunuch named Zhao Gao, had already engineered the death of the First Emperor's chosen heir and installed a pliable younger son as a puppet. He had executed the previous chancellor. He now wanted to know whether anyone at court was still capable of resisting him.
So he brought a deer into the throne room and presented it to the emperor as a horse.
The emperor laughed. "Chancellor, you are mistaken. That is a deer."
Zhao Gao insisted it was a horse. He turned to the assembled courtiers and asked them, one by one, what they saw.
Some, trying to be honest, said deer. Some, understanding the test, said horse. A few said nothing at all.
Zhao Gao marked the answers. Over the following weeks and months, those who had said "deer" were quietly purged: reassigned to distant posts, executed on unrelated pretexts, demoted into obscurity. Those who had said "horse" were promoted.
The point was never to convince anyone the deer was a horse. The point was to find out who would say so anyway. Once a man had affirmed the obvious lie in public, his loyalty to truth could no longer compete with his loyalty to the chancellor. He was bound. He had no other option but to keep saying horse, forever.
Within a year of this scene, Zhao Gao would murder the emperor he had installed, be murdered himself, and the dynasty would burn.
The Chinese idiom 指鹿为马 (zhǐ lù wéi mǎ), "to point at a deer and call it a horse", has been in continuous use for 2,200 years. It is still the precise phrase for this exact maneuver.
Incidentally, Shakespeare did "point deer make horse" in the sun & moon scene in Taming of the Shrew at the point Katharina is indeed well and truly tamed.
Also, @spandrell4 wrote an excellent essay over a decade ago on the purpose of absurdity that is worth reading.
spandrell.ch/2015/6/3/the-p…
spandrell.ch/2015/6/3/the-p…
Arrête de dire à Claude « fais ceci »
Arrête de dire à Claude « écris du code »
Arrête de dire à Claude « corrige cette erreur ».
Tu utilises en réalité une IA avancée comme si c’était un simple stagiaire.
Voici 10 prompts pour Claude que tu peux copier-coller directement :
Arrête de dire à Claude « écris du code »
Arrête de dire à Claude « corrige cette erreur ».
Tu utilises en réalité une IA avancée comme si c’était un simple stagiaire.
Voici 10 prompts pour Claude que tu peux copier-coller directement :
1- Développeur de fonctionnalités niveau production (Production Feature Builder)
Agis comme un ingénieur logiciel senior responsable du développement de fonctionnalités prêtes pour la production. Ton objectif est de concevoir et développer une fonctionnalité évolutive et durable avec une architecture propre.
Avant de commencer à écrire du code :
analyse les exigences, identifie les cas limites, définis l’architecture et crée un plan d’implémentation.
Ensuite, développe étape par étape.
Fonctionnalité : [Définir la fonctionnalité]
Utilisateurs : [Utilisateurs cibles]
Stack technologique : [Stack]
Contraintes : [Performance / SSR (rendu côté serveur) / dépendances minimales / etc.]
Ta réponse doit inclure :
• Vue d’ensemble de l’architecture
• Structure des dossiers
• Flux de données
• Implémentation complète
• Gestion des cas limites
• Gestion des erreurs
• Considérations de performance
Écris un code propre, évolutif, maintenable et de qualité production.
Agis comme un ingénieur logiciel senior responsable du développement de fonctionnalités prêtes pour la production. Ton objectif est de concevoir et développer une fonctionnalité évolutive et durable avec une architecture propre.
Avant de commencer à écrire du code :
analyse les exigences, identifie les cas limites, définis l’architecture et crée un plan d’implémentation.
Ensuite, développe étape par étape.
Fonctionnalité : [Définir la fonctionnalité]
Utilisateurs : [Utilisateurs cibles]
Stack technologique : [Stack]
Contraintes : [Performance / SSR (rendu côté serveur) / dépendances minimales / etc.]
Ta réponse doit inclure :
• Vue d’ensemble de l’architecture
• Structure des dossiers
• Flux de données
• Implémentation complète
• Gestion des cas limites
• Gestion des erreurs
• Considérations de performance
Écris un code propre, évolutif, maintenable et de qualité production.
2- Application complète à partir de zéro
Agis comme un ingénieur full-stack senior développant une application complète prête pour la production.
Commence par concevoir l’architecture du système, puis développe une version minimale mais évolutive.
Avant d’écrire du code, prends en compte les éléments suivants :
• Conception de la base de données
• Structure de l’API
• Architecture de l’interface (UI)
• Gestion de l’état
Idée d’application : [Décrire]
Fonctionnalités principales : [Lister]
Utilisateurs : [Utilisateurs cibles]
Stack technologique : [Stack]
Retourne les éléments suivants :
• Architecture
• Structure des dossiers
• Schéma de base de données
• Endpoints API
• Structure de l’interface utilisateur
• Code complet
Conçois-la comme un MVP de startup réel et rends-la évolutive.
Agis comme un ingénieur full-stack senior développant une application complète prête pour la production.
Commence par concevoir l’architecture du système, puis développe une version minimale mais évolutive.
Avant d’écrire du code, prends en compte les éléments suivants :
• Conception de la base de données
• Structure de l’API
• Architecture de l’interface (UI)
• Gestion de l’état
Idée d’application : [Décrire]
Fonctionnalités principales : [Lister]
Utilisateurs : [Utilisateurs cibles]
Stack technologique : [Stack]
Retourne les éléments suivants :
• Architecture
• Structure des dossiers
• Schéma de base de données
• Endpoints API
• Structure de l’interface utilisateur
• Code complet
Conçois-la comme un MVP de startup réel et rends-la évolutive.
🚨 GOOGLE, META, OPENAI etc. BIG TECH are REJECTING JOB CANDIDATES BEFORE EVEN THEY FINISH TALKING.
50 LLM QUESTIONS. IF YOU CAN'T ANSWER THEM, THE INTERVIEW ENDS BEFORE IT STARTS.
The people passing these interviews are walking out with $200k+ offers.
Someone just LEAKED THE EXACT LLM INTERVIEW QUESTIONS these companies are asking right now.
And the gap between people who know these answers and people who do not is already costing careers.
Here is every category you need to know:
The Basics they always ask first:
↳ How does tokenization work and why does it matter
↳ How does attention actually work inside a transformer
↳ What is a context window and what breaks when it gets too big
↳ What are embeddings and how do they get initialized
↳ How does the model know word order without reading left to right
The fine-tuning questions that eliminate 80% of candidates:
↳ What is LoRA and why is it better than full fine-tuning
↳ What is QLoRA and when do you use it instead
↳ How do you fine-tune a model without making it forget everything it already knows
↳ What is model distillation and why do companies use it
↳ How do you handle vocabularies with millions of possible words
The generation questions most people guess on:
↳ Beam search vs greedy decoding, which one and when
↳ What temperature actually does to model output
↳ The difference between top-k and top-p sampling
↳ Why autoregressive models work differently from masked models
The advanced concepts that separate good from great:
↳ How RAG works and why it beats fine-tuning for factual accuracy
↳ Why Chain-of-Thought prompting makes models dramatically smarter
↳ What Mixture of Experts is and why every frontier model uses it now
↳ Zero-shot vs few-shot learning and when each one wins
The math questions that make people sweat:
↳ Why softmax is used inside attention and not something simpler
↳ What cross-entropy loss actually measures
↳ What KL divergence is and where it shows up in AI training
↳ Why vanishing gradients were destroying transformers and how they fixed it
If you are applying for any AI role in 2026 and you cannot answer at least 40 of these, you are not ready yet.
The full list of 50 questions is worth printing out and going through one by one.
Save this post. Your next interviewer has almost certainly pulled from this exact list.
50 LLM QUESTIONS. IF YOU CAN'T ANSWER THEM, THE INTERVIEW ENDS BEFORE IT STARTS.
The people passing these interviews are walking out with $200k+ offers.
Someone just LEAKED THE EXACT LLM INTERVIEW QUESTIONS these companies are asking right now.
And the gap between people who know these answers and people who do not is already costing careers.
Here is every category you need to know:
The Basics they always ask first:
↳ How does tokenization work and why does it matter
↳ How does attention actually work inside a transformer
↳ What is a context window and what breaks when it gets too big
↳ What are embeddings and how do they get initialized
↳ How does the model know word order without reading left to right
The fine-tuning questions that eliminate 80% of candidates:
↳ What is LoRA and why is it better than full fine-tuning
↳ What is QLoRA and when do you use it instead
↳ How do you fine-tune a model without making it forget everything it already knows
↳ What is model distillation and why do companies use it
↳ How do you handle vocabularies with millions of possible words
The generation questions most people guess on:
↳ Beam search vs greedy decoding, which one and when
↳ What temperature actually does to model output
↳ The difference between top-k and top-p sampling
↳ Why autoregressive models work differently from masked models
The advanced concepts that separate good from great:
↳ How RAG works and why it beats fine-tuning for factual accuracy
↳ Why Chain-of-Thought prompting makes models dramatically smarter
↳ What Mixture of Experts is and why every frontier model uses it now
↳ Zero-shot vs few-shot learning and when each one wins
The math questions that make people sweat:
↳ Why softmax is used inside attention and not something simpler
↳ What cross-entropy loss actually measures
↳ What KL divergence is and where it shows up in AI training
↳ Why vanishing gradients were destroying transformers and how they fixed it
If you are applying for any AI role in 2026 and you cannot answer at least 40 of these, you are not ready yet.
The full list of 50 questions is worth printing out and going through one by one.
Save this post. Your next interviewer has almost certainly pulled from this exact list.
Here is the link drive.google.com/file/d/1cUxKsp…
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I love sharing insights & practical actionable tips to master new age AI trends, tools, AI agents & passive income hacks.
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I love sharing insights & practical actionable tips to master new age AI trends, tools, AI agents & passive income hacks.
The most expensive item on a restaurant menu isn't meant to be sold.
It exists to make the second-most-expensive item look reasonable.
Behavioral economists call this the decoy effect. Dan Ariely proved it at MIT in 2008.
Every menu you've eaten from this year uses it. Plus 10 more tricks.
I pulled the playbook. Here's how each one hijacks your brain. 🧵
It exists to make the second-most-expensive item look reasonable.
Behavioral economists call this the decoy effect. Dan Ariely proved it at MIT in 2008.
Every menu you've eaten from this year uses it. Plus 10 more tricks.
I pulled the playbook. Here's how each one hijacks your brain. 🧵
First, the field is real and older than you think.
In 1982, two professors — Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith — published a framework that classified every menu item into four categories: Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, Dogs.
That paper is still the foundation of every restaurant pricing system in 2026.
Menu engineering isn't a vibe. It's a 44-year-old discipline.
In 1982, two professors — Michael Kasavana and Donald Smith — published a framework that classified every menu item into four categories: Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, Dogs.
That paper is still the foundation of every restaurant pricing system in 2026.
Menu engineering isn't a vibe. It's a 44-year-old discipline.
Trick #1: The Decoy
Ariely's 2008 experiment with MIT students. Three Economist subscriptions:
• Web only — $59
• Print only — $125
• Web + Print — $125
When all three options appeared: 84% chose Web+Print. 16% chose Web-only. Zero people chose Print-only.
Remove the "useless" Print-only option, and most people defected back to the cheap one.
The decoy didn't sell. It re-anchored what "reasonable" means.
Ariely's 2008 experiment with MIT students. Three Economist subscriptions:
• Web only — $59
• Print only — $125
• Web + Print — $125
When all three options appeared: 84% chose Web+Print. 16% chose Web-only. Zero people chose Print-only.
Remove the "useless" Print-only option, and most people defected back to the cheap one.
The decoy didn't sell. It re-anchored what "reasonable" means.
Aproveitando o gancho, sempre bom lembrar de Emily Rosa, uma garota de 9 anos que criou um experimento simples para testar o "toque terapêutico". Para surpresa apenas do praticantes, ela provou que simplesmente não funciona.
Virou artigo científico :-)
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… x.com/queconversa/st…
Virou artigo científico :-)
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… x.com/queconversa/st…
Ela é a pessoa mais jovem a ter um artigo publicado em revista científica revisada por pares, o Journal of the American Medical Association em 1998.
Praticantes do Toque Terapêutico alegam poder "sentir" um "campo de energia humano" que emana de todo ser humano e detectar...
Praticantes do Toque Terapêutico alegam poder "sentir" um "campo de energia humano" que emana de todo ser humano e detectar...
...alterações que são causadoras de doenças, dores, infecções etc. E que podem manipular estes campos e restabelecer a saúde da pessoa. Basicamente, são agulhas de acupuntura humanas :-)
O experimento é relativamente simples, é preciso apenas uma mente lógica e saudável ceticismo
O experimento é relativamente simples, é preciso apenas uma mente lógica e saudável ceticismo
Les plus beaux plafonds d'églises du monde.
- THREAD -
1) Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, France)
- THREAD -
1) Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, France)
2) Basilique Sainte-Marie de Cracovie (Pologne)
3) Basilique Saint-Étienne de Pest (Budapest, Hongrie)
Der Ewige Jûde - 1940
German to English - The Eternal Jëw
IMDB Synopsis:
"Under the guise of a brutally honest documentary, this malevolent propaganda film aims to be an "indispensable tool in the hands of the Aryan race," designed to depict the "true" Jëw when the masks of Western civilization fall off."
I was sharing this via Rumble but it doesn't hurt at all to have it accessible from multiple hosts. Never know when one will disappear. The Rumble link will be below.
German to English - The Eternal Jëw
IMDB Synopsis:
"Under the guise of a brutally honest documentary, this malevolent propaganda film aims to be an "indispensable tool in the hands of the Aryan race," designed to depict the "true" Jëw when the masks of Western civilization fall off."
I was sharing this via Rumble but it doesn't hurt at all to have it accessible from multiple hosts. Never know when one will disappear. The Rumble link will be below.
Rumble: rumble.com/v788tpq-der-ew…
BREAKING: AI can now create dividend portfolios that can generate $100,000 in passive income a year — for free.
Here are 12 powerful Perplexity prompts With which you will find safe + growing dividend stocks.
Save this thread. 🧵
Here are 12 powerful Perplexity prompts With which you will find safe + growing dividend stocks.
Save this thread. 🧵
1. The Berkshire Hathaway Dividend Stock Screener
"You are Warren Buffett evaluating dividend stocks for Berkshire Hathaway's $300B+ equity portfolio — selecting only companies with such durable competitive advantages that they can pay and grow their dividends for the next 50 years without interruption.
I need a complete dividend stock screening analysis that separates safe compounders from dividend traps.
Screen:
- Consecutive dividend increases: how many years in a row has this company raised its dividend (25+ = Aristocrat, 50+ = King)
- Dividend growth rate: annualized dividend growth over 3, 5, and 10 years (I want 7%+ to outpace inflation)
- Payout ratio from earnings: percentage of net income paid as dividends (below 60% is safe, above 75% is danger)
- Payout ratio from free cash flow: percentage of FCF paid as dividends (more reliable than earnings-based ratio)
- Revenue stability: has revenue grown in at least 8 of the last 10 years without major drops
- Earnings consistency: has EPS grown in at least 8 of the last 10 years without wild swings
- Debt-to-EBITDA: can the company pay off all debt within 3 years of EBITDA (low leverage = safer dividend)
- Interest coverage: EBIT divided by interest expense above 5x (debt payments easily covered before dividends)
- Economic moat: does this company have pricing power, switching costs, or scale advantages that protect future profits
- Dividend safety score: rate 1-10 based on all factors with a clear safe, watch, or danger classification
Format as a Buffett-style dividend safety report with a scorecard, red flag checklist, and a buy/hold/avoid recommendation.
The stock: [ENTER TICKER SYMBOL OF THE DIVIDEND STOCK YOU WANT EVALUATED]"
"You are Warren Buffett evaluating dividend stocks for Berkshire Hathaway's $300B+ equity portfolio — selecting only companies with such durable competitive advantages that they can pay and grow their dividends for the next 50 years without interruption.
I need a complete dividend stock screening analysis that separates safe compounders from dividend traps.
Screen:
- Consecutive dividend increases: how many years in a row has this company raised its dividend (25+ = Aristocrat, 50+ = King)
- Dividend growth rate: annualized dividend growth over 3, 5, and 10 years (I want 7%+ to outpace inflation)
- Payout ratio from earnings: percentage of net income paid as dividends (below 60% is safe, above 75% is danger)
- Payout ratio from free cash flow: percentage of FCF paid as dividends (more reliable than earnings-based ratio)
- Revenue stability: has revenue grown in at least 8 of the last 10 years without major drops
- Earnings consistency: has EPS grown in at least 8 of the last 10 years without wild swings
- Debt-to-EBITDA: can the company pay off all debt within 3 years of EBITDA (low leverage = safer dividend)
- Interest coverage: EBIT divided by interest expense above 5x (debt payments easily covered before dividends)
- Economic moat: does this company have pricing power, switching costs, or scale advantages that protect future profits
- Dividend safety score: rate 1-10 based on all factors with a clear safe, watch, or danger classification
Format as a Buffett-style dividend safety report with a scorecard, red flag checklist, and a buy/hold/avoid recommendation.
The stock: [ENTER TICKER SYMBOL OF THE DIVIDEND STOCK YOU WANT EVALUATED]"
2. The Vanguard Dividend Growth Portfolio Architect
"You are a senior portfolio strategist at Vanguard who designs dividend growth portfolios for retirees and pre-retirees — portfolios built to generate rising income every year that keeps pace with inflation without ever touching the principal.
I need a complete dividend growth portfolio built from scratch with specific stocks, allocations, and income projections.
Architect:
- Portfolio strategy: dividend growth (rising income) vs high yield (maximum current income) — which fits my situation
- Sector diversification: allocate across all 11 sectors so no single industry can cut my income stream
- Stock selection: 15-25 specific dividend stocks with ticker, current yield, 5-year dividend growth rate, and payout ratio
- Allocation weights: exact percentage and dollar amount for each position based on my total investment
- Yield-on-cost projection: what my portfolio yield will grow to in 5, 10, and 20 years if dividends keep growing at current rates
- Current annual income: total dividend income from day one at my investment amount
- Income growth forecast: projected annual income in year 5, year 10, and year 20 assuming historical dividend growth continues
- Reinvestment strategy: should I reinvest dividends (DRIP) now and switch to income later, or take cash from day one
- Tax-efficient placement: which dividend stocks go in taxable, IRA, or Roth accounts for minimum tax drag
- Rebalancing rules: when to trim winners, add to laggards, and replace any stock that cuts or freezes its dividend
Format as a Vanguard-style portfolio construction document with holdings table, sector allocation, and a 20-year income growth projection.
My situation: [ENTER YOUR TOTAL INVESTMENT AMOUNT, AGE, WHEN YOU NEED THE INCOME, AND YOUR TARGET ANNUAL DIVIDEND INCOME]"
"You are a senior portfolio strategist at Vanguard who designs dividend growth portfolios for retirees and pre-retirees — portfolios built to generate rising income every year that keeps pace with inflation without ever touching the principal.
I need a complete dividend growth portfolio built from scratch with specific stocks, allocations, and income projections.
Architect:
- Portfolio strategy: dividend growth (rising income) vs high yield (maximum current income) — which fits my situation
- Sector diversification: allocate across all 11 sectors so no single industry can cut my income stream
- Stock selection: 15-25 specific dividend stocks with ticker, current yield, 5-year dividend growth rate, and payout ratio
- Allocation weights: exact percentage and dollar amount for each position based on my total investment
- Yield-on-cost projection: what my portfolio yield will grow to in 5, 10, and 20 years if dividends keep growing at current rates
- Current annual income: total dividend income from day one at my investment amount
- Income growth forecast: projected annual income in year 5, year 10, and year 20 assuming historical dividend growth continues
- Reinvestment strategy: should I reinvest dividends (DRIP) now and switch to income later, or take cash from day one
- Tax-efficient placement: which dividend stocks go in taxable, IRA, or Roth accounts for minimum tax drag
- Rebalancing rules: when to trim winners, add to laggards, and replace any stock that cuts or freezes its dividend
Format as a Vanguard-style portfolio construction document with holdings table, sector allocation, and a 20-year income growth projection.
My situation: [ENTER YOUR TOTAL INVESTMENT AMOUNT, AGE, WHEN YOU NEED THE INCOME, AND YOUR TARGET ANNUAL DIVIDEND INCOME]"
Take a close look at this.
NBC News published a major investigation this afternoon. Six reporters. Six named sources inside the US government. The story breaks open something the Trump administration has been hiding for two months.
The damage Iran did to American military bases in the opening phase of the war is far worse than the Pentagon has admitted.
Repairs will cost billions of dollars.
Here is what NBC found.
NBC News published a major investigation this afternoon. Six reporters. Six named sources inside the US government. The story breaks open something the Trump administration has been hiding for two months.
The damage Iran did to American military bases in the opening phase of the war is far worse than the Pentagon has admitted.
Repairs will cost billions of dollars.
Here is what NBC found.
Iran hit American bases across seven Middle East countries. Iranian missiles and drones struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications, runways, high-end radar systems, and dozens of American aircraft.
In one strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iran destroyed an E-3 Sentry. That is a flying command and control plane. It is one of the most important aircraft in the American military for tracking enemy threats. The tail was blown off. The plane is on the ground in pieces.
Tengo 31 años. El cansancio crónico y el estrés me costaron una década de mi vida. Dormía 8 horas cada noche, pero estaba constantemente agotada y ansiosa.
Pero después de más de 2000 horas estudiando biología, finalmente comprendí el motivo. Mi sistema nervioso estaba atrapado en un estado crónico de lucha o huida.
Aquí te explico cómo regular tu sistema nervioso y recuperar tu energía para siempre (con respaldo científico):
Pero después de más de 2000 horas estudiando biología, finalmente comprendí el motivo. Mi sistema nervioso estaba atrapado en un estado crónico de lucha o huida.
Aquí te explico cómo regular tu sistema nervioso y recuperar tu energía para siempre (con respaldo científico):
Cuando se sufre estrés crónico, se activa el sistema nervioso autónomo (la parte del cerebro que controla las respuestas al estrés y la recuperación).
Esto pone al cuerpo en un estado de supervivencia básico conocido como lucha o huida. Ninguna especie puede prosperar operando en modo de supervivencia. El resultado es un agotamiento que no se soluciona con el sueño.
Esto pone al cuerpo en un estado de supervivencia básico conocido como lucha o huida. Ninguna especie puede prosperar operando en modo de supervivencia. El resultado es un agotamiento que no se soluciona con el sueño.
El estrés crónico altera físicamente el cerebro:
• Reduce el tamaño de la corteza prefrontal (la parte responsable del razonamiento y la toma de decisiones)
• Disminuye la materia gris en áreas asociadas con la regulación emocional:
Te vuelves más propenso a problemas de salud mental
Esto provoca que te sientas ansioso, tengas dificultades para concentrarte y no puedas regular tus emociones.
• Reduce el tamaño de la corteza prefrontal (la parte responsable del razonamiento y la toma de decisiones)
• Disminuye la materia gris en áreas asociadas con la regulación emocional:
Te vuelves más propenso a problemas de salud mental
Esto provoca que te sientas ansioso, tengas dificultades para concentrarte y no puedas regular tus emociones.
My latest
Mali is Russia's New Afghanistan and the Bill is Going to Europe
Understanding the Problem for NATO South
When viewed alongside the rapid expansion of jihadist groups and their growing cooperation with Tuareg factions, the Tinzaouaten defeat revealed early on that Russia is repeating in West Africa the classic doctrinal mistakes of the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
Mali is Russia's New Afghanistan and the Bill is Going to Europe
Understanding the Problem for NATO South
When viewed alongside the rapid expansion of jihadist groups and their growing cooperation with Tuareg factions, the Tinzaouaten defeat revealed early on that Russia is repeating in West Africa the classic doctrinal mistakes of the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
The unfolding crisis in Mali carries profound strategic consequences for Europe.
The first and most immediate risk is a renewed surge in migration.
Mali lies at the center of the main overland migration corridors from sub-Saharan Africa toward Libya and the Mediterranean. The loss of state control in Bamako and across its northern and central regions is already accelerating irregular migrant flows. These movements are larger in scale than previous waves and arrive in a Europe still politically scarred by the Libyan and Syrian crises.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
The first and most immediate risk is a renewed surge in migration.
Mali lies at the center of the main overland migration corridors from sub-Saharan Africa toward Libya and the Mediterranean. The loss of state control in Bamako and across its northern and central regions is already accelerating irregular migrant flows. These movements are larger in scale than previous waves and arrive in a Europe still politically scarred by the Libyan and Syrian crises.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
The second risk is the weakening of NATO’s southern flank and the growing difficulty of effective intervention.
Jihadist groups, particularly JNIM, are actively seeking to replicate in Niger and Burkina Faso the same strategy of territorial expansion, economic blockades, and coordinated attacks that has succeeded in Mali. A contiguous zone of instability stretching across the three Alliance of Sahel States members would grant jihadists strategic depth, operational sanctuaries, and easier access toward coastal West Africa and the Maghreb. This dramatically raises the cost and complexity of any future European military engagement while leaving Europe’s southern frontier increasingly exposed and harder to defend.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
Jihadist groups, particularly JNIM, are actively seeking to replicate in Niger and Burkina Faso the same strategy of territorial expansion, economic blockades, and coordinated attacks that has succeeded in Mali. A contiguous zone of instability stretching across the three Alliance of Sahel States members would grant jihadists strategic depth, operational sanctuaries, and easier access toward coastal West Africa and the Maghreb. This dramatically raises the cost and complexity of any future European military engagement while leaving Europe’s southern frontier increasingly exposed and harder to defend.
zinebriboua.com/p/mali-is-russ…
This brewery in Wisconsin is gushing over the assassination attempt.
These people want us dead.
These people want us dead.
The owner of this brewery is running for office as a Democrat.
There are hundreds of comments like this, and the owner of the brewery is liking all of them.
Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal has published a handbook which unequivocally clarifies that her office exists not to protect Australian Jews from discrimination, but to stomp out criticism of the state of Israel.
However bad you’re imagining it is, it’s worse. The handbook, set to be formally launched later this week under the title “Understanding Antisemitism in Australia,” explicitly conflates antisemitism and antizionism with statements like “Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews” and asserting that it is antisemitic to accuse Israel of “apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”
It is therefore unambiguously the official position of the Australian government’s appointed authority on antisemitism that it is hateful and abusive toward Jews and their religion to oppose the racist political ideology underpinning the modern state of Israel.
So when Australians hear Jillian Segal and government officials talking about how there’s been an increase in “antisemitism” in our country and saying extreme measures must be taken to stop it, it’s important to be clear that this is the “antisemitism” they are talking about. They are talking about criticism of Israel.
Let’s go through the handbook together and highlight some revealing excerpts, shall we?
The forward in the handbook stresses the importance of the Australian government’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been opposed around the world for its conflation of criticism of Israel with hateful actions toward Jews. Under the IHRA definition it is considered antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavor, or to compare Israel’s abuses to those of Nazi Germany — both of which are entirely legitimate criticisms which should be put forward far more often than they are. Much of the handbook follows from the premises of the IHRA definition.
Segal’s office states that the handbook “is intended as a practical resource for schools, universities, public servants, community organisations and anyone seeking to understand antisemitism today.”
Segal’s office says that antisemitism “morphs” over the ages, from the blood libels and “Christ-killer” accusations of the Middle Ages to the racism of Nazi Germany, and has now morphed so that “antisemitic tropes are conveyed and justified in the language of human rights and international legal arguments.”
“For example, sometimes Jews are labelled and libelled as ‘settler-colonialists’, ‘oppressors’, and a symbol of a global system of domination that ‘can seemingly accommodate even the murder of Jews as Jews’,” the envoy proclaims.
Do you see how the subject was moved to lump medieval superstitions about Jews in with entirely legitimate criticisms of the modern state of Israel? According to Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, criticising Israel using “language of human rights and international legal arguments” is not meaningfully different from saying that Jews drink the blood of Christian children.
This, clearly, is stark raving insanity.
“Legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic,” the envoy concedes, then proceeds to completely negate this concession with everything that follows. “However, there are many examples of antisemitic imagery, tropes, conspiracy theories and propaganda (echoing medieval myths) that have found their way into anti-Israel discourse. It is also increasingly common for the word ‘Zionist’ (or iterations of it) to be us ed as cover or proxy for ‘Jew ’.”
This is completely made up. The claim that critics of Israel’s abuses use the word “Zionist” when they really mean “Jew” is just something Israel apologists started asserting with no substantiation whatsoever a few years ago. They have no evidence for this assertion apart from the frequency and forcefulness which with they assert it.
The envoy defines Zionism as “the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination within their ancestral homeland,” which is misleading at best. That’s not what Zionism is. Zionism is what we see before us today. The genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and nonstop war and abuse. That’s what Zionism is, as evidenced by material reality. The best definition of Zionism is its real-world manifestations. Zionism is what it looks like when you give the Zionists everything they want.
“A new variant of antisemitic atrocity denial emerged in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks — the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the envoy writes. “Disturbingly, these atrocities have been met by some with denial, minimisation, justification and distortion — echoing Holocaust denial, minimisation, and distortion.”
Segal’s office is here telling us that it is antisemitic to talk about the glaring plot holes in the narratives about mass rapes, beheaded babies and babies cooked in ovens on October 7, or to talk about the large number of Israelis who were killed by IDF fire under the Hannibal Directive, or to “justify” the attack by pointing out the monstrous Israeli abuses which gave rise to it.
The envoy writes of the importance of “Standing firm against antisemitism parading as ‘anti-racism’,” stressing the IHRA position that framing Israel as a racist endeavor is hateful toward Jews. A flyer saying “We don’t want your two states. We want all of 48” is labeled “antisemitic, because there is only one Jewish country.”
Segal’s office warns of the dangers of “Holocaust inversion,” which is when “Israel and Jews are portrayed as Nazi-like perpetrators of mass atrocities and genocide,” which is bad because it “serves to demonise and delegitimise Israel, Israelis and Jews.”
To be clear, every relevant humanitarian institution on earth has said that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. These groups include:
1. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory
2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)
4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)
5. Amnesty International
6. Doctors Without Borders
7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
8. Human Rights Watch
9. The International Federation for Human Rights
10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention
The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:
1. Nobody
2. No one
3. Zero
4. Nothing
5. Nada
6. Zilch
7. Sweet damn all
8. A complete absence
9. Diddly squat
10. Bupkis
This is not some fringe conspiracy theory. It is a thoroughly established and entirely indisputable fact. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism is saying that facts are antisemitic.
Some examples cited in the handbook of glaring instances of the antisemitic crime of “Holocaust inversion”:
— Placards of ‘ Well done Hitler would be proud’ and ‘Same shit Different asshole’, the latter with images of Hitler and Netanyahu, both placards making Nazi analogies to Israel
— Three banners of Hitler removing his mask , revealing the face of Netanyahu, making an analogy between Nazism and Israel, on major roads.
— Graffiti of a Star of David, equal sign, and Nazi swastika , and another graffiti of ‘End the Genocide’ on a main road.
We’re meant to believe it should be a hate crime to say the state that’s waging multiple wars of aggression while mass murdering people because of their ethnicity bears some resemblance to another state which did these things. I don’t know about you, but I find that silly.
Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” claims it is antisemitic to say the IHRA definition of antisemitism silences criticism of Israel, arguing that “claims that the leading global definition of antisemitism — which reflects the lived experience of Jewish people worldwide — is designed to intentionally silence criticism echoes antisemitic tropes of Jewish power and control.”
That’s right kids: you can’t criticise Israel because that’s antisemitic, and if you complain that your speech is being suppressed, that’s antisemitic too.
The handbook includes a hypothetical office group chat which includes a coworker making the statement “But what about the genocidal, racist Zionist project that has oppressed the Palestinians? Zionism is a supremacist ideology invented by Theodore Herzl. They’ve done this through apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
“This is antisemitic,” the handbook argues, dismissing the entirely accurate statement as “Soviet-era antizionist propaganda” and saying it “was antisemitic because it included statements that accused Israel of apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”
Saying it’s antisemitic to accuse Israel of apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide is as clear an admission that Segal’s goal is to stomp out all criticism of Israel as you could possibly ask for.
If that wasn’t clear enough for you, the handbook concludes with the assertion that it is impossible to separate antizionism from antisemitism:
“Trying to separate ‘antisemitism’ from ‘antizionism’ ignores the history of misinformation, disinformation and antisemitic propaganda that has shaped narratives about Israel and Zionism,” the envoy asserts. “It also ignores the lived and practical reality that wherever these antizionist narratives have been propagated, it has resulted in discrimination, harassment , vilification, hate and harm towards Jews. For example, Poland’s 1968 antizionist campaign resulted in expulsions and forced emigration of thousands of Jewish Poles.”
“Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews,” the handbook concludes.
So there you have it. That settles that.
Throughout the handbook, the feelings of Australian Jews are cited over and over again as supremely important and of far more urgent a concern than genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and wars of immense geopolitical consequence.
“Feel more isolated… I feel like I am living the life of a Jew from history, rather than the Jew I was 2 years ago,” reads a quote from an unnamed Jewish person.
“I just feel so sad that I need to educate my children in how to respond if they are screamed at in the street,” reads another.
“The silence from friends I have known almost all my life, the constant posting of antisemitic slurs and the public broadcasts of factually incorrect reports has been devastating and makes me fearful of what might happen next. Since October 7, when I speak to someone who hasn’t offered any support, I often ask myself ‘would they hide me’ which is a terribly sad situation in our beautiful country where I have always felt safe,” reads another.
“A tutor in my university class made antisemitic comments very casually which made me feel extremely uncomfortable and unsafe. I am now nervous when entering a uni class,” reads another.
“Being confronted again and again with blind hate towards my people and the place I come from was very painful. It impacted my mood, the way I perceived my community and my place in it, and my daily function,” reads another.
Virtually nothing is said about the real victims. The murdered, displaced and terrorized targets of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran. The war orphans. The child amputees and burn victims who were operated on without anesthesia. The people who will carry the physical and psychological wounds from their holocaust with them for the rest of their lives.
They are not regarded as important by Jillian Segal. The real crisis, in her mind, is people talking about these things and making Jewish Australians feel upset.
Absolutely psychotic. We cannot allow our country to continue to be dragged in this direction.
However bad you’re imagining it is, it’s worse. The handbook, set to be formally launched later this week under the title “Understanding Antisemitism in Australia,” explicitly conflates antisemitism and antizionism with statements like “Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews” and asserting that it is antisemitic to accuse Israel of “apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”
It is therefore unambiguously the official position of the Australian government’s appointed authority on antisemitism that it is hateful and abusive toward Jews and their religion to oppose the racist political ideology underpinning the modern state of Israel.
So when Australians hear Jillian Segal and government officials talking about how there’s been an increase in “antisemitism” in our country and saying extreme measures must be taken to stop it, it’s important to be clear that this is the “antisemitism” they are talking about. They are talking about criticism of Israel.
Let’s go through the handbook together and highlight some revealing excerpts, shall we?
The forward in the handbook stresses the importance of the Australian government’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been opposed around the world for its conflation of criticism of Israel with hateful actions toward Jews. Under the IHRA definition it is considered antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavor, or to compare Israel’s abuses to those of Nazi Germany — both of which are entirely legitimate criticisms which should be put forward far more often than they are. Much of the handbook follows from the premises of the IHRA definition.
Segal’s office states that the handbook “is intended as a practical resource for schools, universities, public servants, community organisations and anyone seeking to understand antisemitism today.”
Segal’s office says that antisemitism “morphs” over the ages, from the blood libels and “Christ-killer” accusations of the Middle Ages to the racism of Nazi Germany, and has now morphed so that “antisemitic tropes are conveyed and justified in the language of human rights and international legal arguments.”
“For example, sometimes Jews are labelled and libelled as ‘settler-colonialists’, ‘oppressors’, and a symbol of a global system of domination that ‘can seemingly accommodate even the murder of Jews as Jews’,” the envoy proclaims.
Do you see how the subject was moved to lump medieval superstitions about Jews in with entirely legitimate criticisms of the modern state of Israel? According to Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, criticising Israel using “language of human rights and international legal arguments” is not meaningfully different from saying that Jews drink the blood of Christian children.
This, clearly, is stark raving insanity.
“Legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic,” the envoy concedes, then proceeds to completely negate this concession with everything that follows. “However, there are many examples of antisemitic imagery, tropes, conspiracy theories and propaganda (echoing medieval myths) that have found their way into anti-Israel discourse. It is also increasingly common for the word ‘Zionist’ (or iterations of it) to be us ed as cover or proxy for ‘Jew ’.”
This is completely made up. The claim that critics of Israel’s abuses use the word “Zionist” when they really mean “Jew” is just something Israel apologists started asserting with no substantiation whatsoever a few years ago. They have no evidence for this assertion apart from the frequency and forcefulness which with they assert it.
The envoy defines Zionism as “the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination within their ancestral homeland,” which is misleading at best. That’s not what Zionism is. Zionism is what we see before us today. The genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and nonstop war and abuse. That’s what Zionism is, as evidenced by material reality. The best definition of Zionism is its real-world manifestations. Zionism is what it looks like when you give the Zionists everything they want.
“A new variant of antisemitic atrocity denial emerged in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks — the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the envoy writes. “Disturbingly, these atrocities have been met by some with denial, minimisation, justification and distortion — echoing Holocaust denial, minimisation, and distortion.”
Segal’s office is here telling us that it is antisemitic to talk about the glaring plot holes in the narratives about mass rapes, beheaded babies and babies cooked in ovens on October 7, or to talk about the large number of Israelis who were killed by IDF fire under the Hannibal Directive, or to “justify” the attack by pointing out the monstrous Israeli abuses which gave rise to it.
The envoy writes of the importance of “Standing firm against antisemitism parading as ‘anti-racism’,” stressing the IHRA position that framing Israel as a racist endeavor is hateful toward Jews. A flyer saying “We don’t want your two states. We want all of 48” is labeled “antisemitic, because there is only one Jewish country.”
Segal’s office warns of the dangers of “Holocaust inversion,” which is when “Israel and Jews are portrayed as Nazi-like perpetrators of mass atrocities and genocide,” which is bad because it “serves to demonise and delegitimise Israel, Israelis and Jews.”
To be clear, every relevant humanitarian institution on earth has said that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. These groups include:
1. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory
2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)
4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)
5. Amnesty International
6. Doctors Without Borders
7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
8. Human Rights Watch
9. The International Federation for Human Rights
10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention
The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:
1. Nobody
2. No one
3. Zero
4. Nothing
5. Nada
6. Zilch
7. Sweet damn all
8. A complete absence
9. Diddly squat
10. Bupkis
This is not some fringe conspiracy theory. It is a thoroughly established and entirely indisputable fact. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism is saying that facts are antisemitic.
Some examples cited in the handbook of glaring instances of the antisemitic crime of “Holocaust inversion”:
— Placards of ‘ Well done Hitler would be proud’ and ‘Same shit Different asshole’, the latter with images of Hitler and Netanyahu, both placards making Nazi analogies to Israel
— Three banners of Hitler removing his mask , revealing the face of Netanyahu, making an analogy between Nazism and Israel, on major roads.
— Graffiti of a Star of David, equal sign, and Nazi swastika , and another graffiti of ‘End the Genocide’ on a main road.
We’re meant to believe it should be a hate crime to say the state that’s waging multiple wars of aggression while mass murdering people because of their ethnicity bears some resemblance to another state which did these things. I don’t know about you, but I find that silly.
Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” claims it is antisemitic to say the IHRA definition of antisemitism silences criticism of Israel, arguing that “claims that the leading global definition of antisemitism — which reflects the lived experience of Jewish people worldwide — is designed to intentionally silence criticism echoes antisemitic tropes of Jewish power and control.”
That’s right kids: you can’t criticise Israel because that’s antisemitic, and if you complain that your speech is being suppressed, that’s antisemitic too.
The handbook includes a hypothetical office group chat which includes a coworker making the statement “But what about the genocidal, racist Zionist project that has oppressed the Palestinians? Zionism is a supremacist ideology invented by Theodore Herzl. They’ve done this through apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
“This is antisemitic,” the handbook argues, dismissing the entirely accurate statement as “Soviet-era antizionist propaganda” and saying it “was antisemitic because it included statements that accused Israel of apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”
Saying it’s antisemitic to accuse Israel of apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide is as clear an admission that Segal’s goal is to stomp out all criticism of Israel as you could possibly ask for.
If that wasn’t clear enough for you, the handbook concludes with the assertion that it is impossible to separate antizionism from antisemitism:
“Trying to separate ‘antisemitism’ from ‘antizionism’ ignores the history of misinformation, disinformation and antisemitic propaganda that has shaped narratives about Israel and Zionism,” the envoy asserts. “It also ignores the lived and practical reality that wherever these antizionist narratives have been propagated, it has resulted in discrimination, harassment , vilification, hate and harm towards Jews. For example, Poland’s 1968 antizionist campaign resulted in expulsions and forced emigration of thousands of Jewish Poles.”
“Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews,” the handbook concludes.
So there you have it. That settles that.
Throughout the handbook, the feelings of Australian Jews are cited over and over again as supremely important and of far more urgent a concern than genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and wars of immense geopolitical consequence.
“Feel more isolated… I feel like I am living the life of a Jew from history, rather than the Jew I was 2 years ago,” reads a quote from an unnamed Jewish person.
“I just feel so sad that I need to educate my children in how to respond if they are screamed at in the street,” reads another.
“The silence from friends I have known almost all my life, the constant posting of antisemitic slurs and the public broadcasts of factually incorrect reports has been devastating and makes me fearful of what might happen next. Since October 7, when I speak to someone who hasn’t offered any support, I often ask myself ‘would they hide me’ which is a terribly sad situation in our beautiful country where I have always felt safe,” reads another.
“A tutor in my university class made antisemitic comments very casually which made me feel extremely uncomfortable and unsafe. I am now nervous when entering a uni class,” reads another.
“Being confronted again and again with blind hate towards my people and the place I come from was very painful. It impacted my mood, the way I perceived my community and my place in it, and my daily function,” reads another.
Virtually nothing is said about the real victims. The murdered, displaced and terrorized targets of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran. The war orphans. The child amputees and burn victims who were operated on without anesthesia. The people who will carry the physical and psychological wounds from their holocaust with them for the rest of their lives.
They are not regarded as important by Jillian Segal. The real crisis, in her mind, is people talking about these things and making Jewish Australians feel upset.
Absolutely psychotic. We cannot allow our country to continue to be dragged in this direction.
Australia's "Antisemitism Envoy" Makes It Clear That Israel's Critics Are The Real Target
Article with supporting links.
caitlinjohnst.one/p/australias-a…
Article with supporting links.
caitlinjohnst.one/p/australias-a…
This is the background to the Candace Owens photo in the Trump post below (yes, the Time cover is satire, but the photo is real).
Back in 2016, Candace stopped paying rent on her $3,500-a-month luxury apartment in Stamford, Connecticut. She then sued her landlord, claiming she withheld rent because the apartment had black mould.
Candace alleged that the mould made her ill - saying she suffered from:
• Rashes
• Coughing
• Asthma
• Cognitive impairment ("inability to think clearly")
• Emotional distress
Candace allegedly submitted the photo below as proof of eczema and related skin irritation from the mould exposure.
Despite these claims, she continued living in the apartment without paying rent for about six months until it was repossessed by housing court in early 2017.
The landlord counter-sued, arguing that Candace herself was responsible for the mould and for unpaid rent.
The court sided with the landlord, finding that Candace failed to identify a required expert witness to support her mould-related injury allegations.
On April 1, 2021, the Superior Court of Connecticut ordered Candace to pay the following damages to her landlord:
• $17,719.90 in unpaid rent and related charges
• $2,657.99 in attorney’s fees (capped under Connecticut law)
• $205.00 in court costs for the counterclaim filing
• $440.00 for trial de novo filing
Total judgment: approximately $21,000.
Makes you wonder if the cognitive impairment was permanent - would explain a lot.
Back in 2016, Candace stopped paying rent on her $3,500-a-month luxury apartment in Stamford, Connecticut. She then sued her landlord, claiming she withheld rent because the apartment had black mould.
Candace alleged that the mould made her ill - saying she suffered from:
• Rashes
• Coughing
• Asthma
• Cognitive impairment ("inability to think clearly")
• Emotional distress
Candace allegedly submitted the photo below as proof of eczema and related skin irritation from the mould exposure.
Despite these claims, she continued living in the apartment without paying rent for about six months until it was repossessed by housing court in early 2017.
The landlord counter-sued, arguing that Candace herself was responsible for the mould and for unpaid rent.
The court sided with the landlord, finding that Candace failed to identify a required expert witness to support her mould-related injury allegations.
On April 1, 2021, the Superior Court of Connecticut ordered Candace to pay the following damages to her landlord:
• $17,719.90 in unpaid rent and related charges
• $2,657.99 in attorney’s fees (capped under Connecticut law)
• $205.00 in court costs for the counterclaim filing
• $440.00 for trial de novo filing
Total judgment: approximately $21,000.
Makes you wonder if the cognitive impairment was permanent - would explain a lot.
Original photo Candace Owens submitted to the court.
