@agraybee Gentile here. Have done a lot of reflection since 10/7. "It's not antisemitism it's antizionism" is officially a dead argument to me, coming from gentiles. Come back to me when you've stopped acting out your rage thru Protocol-of-Zion-level scapegoating. @agraybee I am so done with this bullshit. How the fuck did fucking *Jews* become the scapegoats--yes the scapegoats--for the sins of the West? Like all the sins. Colonialism. Racism. All the rage: Direct it at Jews. Oopsie I mean ~Zionists.~ Or only ~Israeli Jews~. It's fucking bullshit.

I was reading @TimothyDSnyder's "Road to Unfreedom" a few weeks ago & came across this passage. His description of Russian Active Measures' influence on Western audiences in 2014 felt eerily familiar to many online conversations happening now. Ukraine in one case; I/P in another.

Western Media in 2014: "Those who spoke so freely of conspiracies, coups, juntas, camps, & genocides shied from contact w/ the real world. From a distance, they used their talents to drown a country in unreality; in so doing, they submerged their own countries & themselves . . ."

Some people are frustrated w/ me bc I am critical of the campus protests. I'm not sure I understand. There have been many antisemitic incidents at these protests, across several sites. Such bigotry is deserving of strong criticism. It should be weeded out for the good of everyone To be critical of the protesters is not the same as endorsing the Universities' responses or the Police's responses. I think this needs to be done on a case by case basis. I think we all need to be a bit more frank about how we balance Campus Speech vs. Bigotry.

Not to be an old fart, but one of the things that we had to do in 2003 was to learn how to cogently oppose Bush's Iraq War while also acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was a bad person who did bad things to civilians. We didn't lie about Hussain. We still opposed the war. A very common form of pro-War argumentation--designed to disarm or persuade liberals--was that Hussain was a Monster. That he had gassed the Kurds. Did we argue these things were false? No. We argued, instead, that the true facts did not justify a violation of Iraq's Sovereignty.

I attended a w/ a former U.S. Diplomat, this year. Very respected fellow. He spoke firmly throughout regarding the major foreign policy threat: The Global South. I said, at the end, I did not understand the common interest of what he referred to. He said, "Anti-Westernism." I fear, given the land of bad entailments we now occupy, that I will be seen as championing Western ideals over the ideals of the "Global South," etc. That is not what I am doing. I am simply relaying the information & asking people to start paying attention.

My primary concern is w/ the antisemitism. I am also increasingly concerned that people are not going to take social justice seriously anyone after all . . . this It's up to the rest of us to continue to frame "social justice" in a humanitarian, pro-equality, non-zealous way. We are pro-civilian, pro-Truth, & anti-harm. This stuff is dangerous to its closest targets: Jews. It also risks making people tune out "justice" language in general

I have many things to say in response to abuse of Amit Soussana, as well as general denialism in response to 10/7. There is a part of me that wants to wait. To write an essay. Where I can be succinct. But there is another part of me that cannot wait. I will ramble. But plz listen

https://twitter.com/LeeCaspi/status/1772873362341040221

I am a rape survivor. I have been sexually abused at other times, but the "Big Event," the life-changing event, was when I was gang raped by 2, or maybe more, men in an apartment in Paris when I was 19 yrs old. I say "maybe more" b/c I was passed out for much, but not all, of it.

Here is Biden describing the file-drawer problem in biomedical research, such that he is telling Hur that he has identified a problem in the field: the non-publication of non-significant scientific results. This is graduate-level knowledge. Then he goes further & discusses NIH $.

Biden describes how little info, even on NIH grants, is provided. He describes how *only* significant results are reported, resulting in gigantic narrative holes. He addresses how to use the federal gov't funding system to change this detrimental pattern in science & medicine.

The lines are definitely blurrier than ever, but there are also clear patterns that emerge after looking at the bots for a while. There are definitely some "hints" in terms of both language & pragmatics, as well as historical knowledge & interpretative heuristics.

https://twitter.com/gamespotting/status/1766156128495534134

But this is really the way we need to start thinking about the current problem: there are troll/bots, just as in 2016, but, this time around, their corpus--of both contemporary language AND American culture--is much more well-developed. We have all given them quite a bit of data.

In my 40 years on this planet, I do not think I've ever seen liberals more fed up than they are right now. I believe this is a good development. Liberals laid out the consequences of a Trump presidency & were bullied for it. Then, when the consequences of a Trump presidency came true, liberals were bullied for that too. Now, liberals are being gaslit as to the harms of Biden vs. Trump. Liberals have reached their limit.

On the left: What Mehdi Hassan & others claim Joe Biden can do to effectuate a ceasefire
On the right: What Joe Biden & other negotiators--including members of the Egyptian, Qatari, & Israeli governments--are actually doing to effectuate a ceasefire

Be logical for a moment: Debates over the next stage are causing rifts in Netanyahu's own government. Netanyahu is determined to destroy Hamas at all costs, which puts him at odds w/ those who want to prioritize hostages. Yet Joe Biden, somehow, can stop this all with a pen.

I heard that many young people do not realize what the ACA did for pre-existing conditions, so let me briefly explain. W/out the ACA, if you are a 22-year-old who has had COVID, depression, or any other recorded medical condition, that record could be used to deny health coverage If you received treatment for an eating disorder when you were 16, your diagnosis of anorexia could impact your ability to get health insurance for the rest of your life. Your diagnosis could also lead to loss of coverage for issues related to anorexia, e.g. osteoporosis.

We should talk more about the fact that COVID-19 was a mass traumatic event. A lot of the problems we face right now are very real. They are are exacerbated by an un-named societal PTSD. A PTSD none of us claims for ourselves b/c it belongs to everyone & thus seemingly to no one. Obviously quite a bit of this is also exacerbated by social media. But this is different. Social media--especially political social media--has been equal parts problematic & influential for years. Post-COVID, or, really, Post-Omicron, things have gotten increasingly unhinged

I will add that this is an *objective* measure of the faith The Biden Admin has in the foreign policy acumen of VP Harris. To be the US Representative at Munich, at this point in time, is an enormous responsibility, just as EU allies are becoming more trepidatious re: Trump/NATO.

https://twitter.com/What46HasDone/status/1758927927171825816

I am not here to convince anyone that Harris is more popular than she is, within the US. Nor am I here to describe *why* she is viewed critically by (mostly white) voters in the U.S. That's a different discussion.

Reposting some stuff about stuttering from 2020. Biden has a severe stutter for which he has developed compensatory mechanisms. These compensatory mechanisms often weaken w/ age, but are *not* in any way associated w/ general cognitive decline.

https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1306782821663543298

Whole word substitutions are what Biden gets dinged for most frequently. Whole word substitutions are extremely common in stuttering. It's an issue of lexical access. There's a reason why Biden typically substitutes when saying names or places. It's not that he is confused.

Yes. Also: We have not well-formulated in the public consciousness 1. what the "Biden Doctrine" is, 2. how it relates to Obama-era policy, 3. how this current doctrine--which progressives should like, relative to previous doctrines--is currently being threatened.

https://twitter.com/What46HasDone/status/1753611758583906446

Obama inherited a foreign policy disaster, in addition to a domestic policy disaster. In such a case, it is hard to establish a firm "doctrine," so Obama's foreign policy was always going to be inherently a mixed bag. In general, however, he began a pull-back of US military power

Silver is making a number of errors here, including conflating best sampling procedures for population-level work w/ sampling of research experts. More pernicious, however, is that Silver is moving us further from any kind of shared truth thru undermining expertise more broadly

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1753774720225267862

Please note what is happening here; it is important to understand these dynamics in the current post-truth era. 1. Silver said there was no expert consensus, 2. A researcher responded by pointing to a study showing expert consensus, 3. Silver responded by (inaccurate) nitpicking

Nancy Pelosi is correct. It should be stressed--as Pelosi said--that there are large numbers of real people who truly care who are protesting. There are also clearly a large number of trolls/bots who are likely doing Putin's bidding. I will give some examples.

https://twitter.com/evamckend/status/1751615190053884253

This is an account named "BlackRussian." He replies to tweets almost exclusively about Israel Palestine. He is rather unsophisticated b/c he confuses conservative anti-Biden rhetoric w/ leftist anti-Biden rhetoric. He tries--& fails--to use AAVE. He is also anti-Ukrainian.

What do we know about the way the twitter algorithm currently works? For the record, I know quite a bit about how social media algorithms either 1. interact w/ our cognitive biases &/or 2. exploit our cognitive biases. I wrote about how Facebook did both for @AlterNet alternet.org/2021/10/facebo…

1. The political media was wrong about Ron DeSantis
2. This same media desperately *wanted* a "Smart Authoritarian" vs. Trump narrative. They pushed it relentlessly
3. They then used DeSantis's supposed "strength" (that they made up) to push "anti-wokeness" on the rest us)

https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1625172200675241985

These are things we really need to absorb about the current state of political analysis. There are *specific* fights the media wants, consciously or not. The media also makes some people appear strong & others weak, totally contrary to all available evidence.

The Democratic Party has never been as progressive as it is right now & the Republican Party has never been as openly racist fascistic. I increasingly do not understand how people are constructing this completely alternate reality in good faith.

https://twitter.com/katrosenfield/status/1747295665875521751

I would assume that anyone commenting on politics has been through a few presidential elections. This should enable them to
1. Compare current & past Democrats to each other
2. Measure the ideological distance between past & current Democrats & Republicans.