Jason Hicks

I was an anti-Zionist. For years I protested against what I saw as the injustice of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Then I saw what Assad did to Syrians—and to Palestinians in Syria.

@NYCMayor "enduring hope"...but not for a free Iran

Nowruz Mubarak to all the Iranian Americans who call New York City home! It was an honor to celebrate Charshanbeh Soori with so many of you in anticipation of spring, renewal, and - now especially - the enduring hope of a new day for the Iranian people. 
Nowruz is typically a time of good feeling, but this year is different. I continue to stand in opposition to this war, and I wish as many moments of joy as possible for all Iranians observing this special holiday.

@FeserEdward @BMcGrewvy Not an entire country, but why not an ideological regime? ISIS did it.

"They" meaning individuals, sure. But not an entire country. It's one thing for individuals to accept martyrdom in the course of a long conflict, quite another for a government to allow its entire country to be destroyed for the sake of lobbing a nuke or two that will harm but not destroy the U.S. They would never do such a thing. They're not stupid.

"Iran poses no nuclear threat to the U.S." is one of those claims that absolutely enrages people precisely because it is so obviously true. It's like "The emperor has no clothes on."

@FeserEdward @BMcGrewvy "it would be suicidal for them to do so" - they've demonstrated time and time again they're willing to risk suicide to carry out their goals.

Sure, but one shouldn't accept that they pose such a threat to the U.S. They have no nuclear weapon; even if they did have one, they have no way to hit the U.S. with it; and even if they had a way to hit us with it, it would be suicidal for them to do so, since they would be destroyed in any counterattack.

All men and women, especially Christians, are called to fix their gaze on those who suffer, on the pain of the lonely, and on those who are emarginated for various reasons, for without them we cannot build a just society. Only together can we build communities of solidarity capable of caring for everyone, in which wellbeing and peace can flourish for the benefit of all. Caring for the humanity of others helps us to live our own lives to the full.

@kristenmag do you have any evidence it's a money grab?

Does Mamdani really have any evidence that 15 mph is safer in school zones than 20 or 25? I’m skeptical. It’s a money grab. And it’s also a control grab.

@RevaLi41 @TheLastNeocon they don't target economic populists

@TheLastNeocon They’re literally gloating about helping rat fuck all the economic populist in IL. I wouldn’t call that literally fine

reminder that aipac is literally fine and aipac opposition is just straightforwardly antisemitism. same with DMFI

@TheFIREorg This would be more convincing if you presented an alternative means to address the safety concerns animating support for these bills.

TAKE ACTION: The First Amendment protects the right to speak your mind on public streets and sidewalks. FIRE and NYCLU are urging lawmakers to stop these misguided proposals. Tell New York officials to defend New Yorkers’ right to protest. ⬇️ fire.org/get-involved/t…

The Empire State has always been a home for protest — until now. Proposals being debated in Albany would criminalize peaceful protests at thousands of locations across the state. New Yorkers could face up to 364 days in jail for a first offense.

@JamshidHormuz it's just proof the algorithm works b/c it's only showing the unpopular opinion to ppl who agree with it

There seems to be a rule, when someone starts a message with "Unpopular opinion: ", what follows is the most popular, completely predictable groupthink imaginable.

@CoreyWriting Yes, to ask a random Palestinian would be racist, but he's not a random Palestinian.

I don't think Palestinians should be asked to comment on Hamas, just like Israelis or Jews should not be grilled about Israel's government. However, Khalil's group distributed pro-terrorist flyers at Columbia University, so it's fair to ask him these questions.

@transgendererer now i want a coffee table book on double liminal zones...are there triple liminal zones?

i really like the mezzanines on subway platforms. the whole system is liminal obviously, it transit, but mezzanines are DOUBLE liminal. transitional zones between transitional zones! no one waiting for anything, not even an entrance to the surface, just a weird tunnel to nowhere

@HistoryBoomer Mugging isn't what most are worried about. Mugging, I hesitate to frame it like this, has some rationality to it, versus people getting pushed in front of a train, punched on a platform, having someone on train screaming they'll kill them/someone else...

My Monday poker game buy-in is $600. So normally I have $600 in my wallet on gameday. That day, I'll ride the subway, walk through neighborhoods, and never think I'm going to be mugged. Because New York is not a crime-ridden hellscape.

The @AbolitionistLC & @theCCR filed the only amicus that didn't take Anthropic's side, earning the distinction of being the most legally friendly to the Trump admin--despite being the furthest 'left' of amicus filers. Their 'pox on both houses' argument rests on claiming the existing Claude workflows facilitate war crimes, which even if that were true, is tantamount to saying: "We have no legal qualms with gov retaliation that undermines the first amendment if we disagree with the target or what they're doing." More, if this ability to apply supply chain risk is upheld, it's being invoked precisely against a private company trying to decline to participate in certain actions, and so it would make it harder, not easier, for a private company to decline to participate in actions that these legal groups dislike. If these groups had legal capabilities and the DOD can apply the DPA/SCR in the maximal way it has claimed, then the DOD could claim DPA to force these lawyers to work for them or SCR them for refusing to carry out that work.

@sporadica how does he know he feels grateful for the messages? why is he grateful (given his premises)?

it’s getting sad how much he can’t stop

@yewie115 @ssankar He doesn't-Anthropic had a contract and the gov side sought to change that contract.

@JasonMHicks @ssankar Was not aware that supreme leader Dario had full control over the US military despite never having been elected by the people.

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@GarrisonLovely It was a memo-did they have their revenge? Campuses got more, not less, leftist, for instance.

@JasonMHicks The revenge of corporate power and the wealthy?

I wonder if yud has heard of the Powell memo. Might have slightly more explanatory power than this theory…

@renegade_Kathy @MarcGoldberg111 I'd like to think that given a few more years Hitchens would've changed on this issue as he did so many others--or more, it's of a piece with his transformation on how to think about Saddam.

@MarcGoldberg111 The other problem is that the argument is premised on a hypothetical Palestinian, not a real one. Real Palestinians have, from the 1930s on, refused every offer to share the land, waging terror instead. Hitchens, like so many leftists, never recognized this fact.

Let's call this the hypothetical Jew argument. “If Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine, then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine. Anyone who doesn’t agree with that principle I think is suspect.” So said Hitchens and who in their right mind would disagree with that formulation? The problem with it is that it's built on the back of a hypothetical Jew not a real one. Of course when Zionism came about the Jews who went for it weren't living in Brooklyn they were living in Russia and they grew up in the midst of massacres which we don't talk about now because the scale of the Holocaust cast such a shadow that everyone forgot about the lived experience of the real Jews of Russia in the world before the Nazis. The real Jew of Russia didn't want to create a state for himself he wanted to move West and did. In large numbers the Jews of Russia became the Jews of Brooklyn and Ohio and wherever they could go. Until the doors of America and elsewhere slammed shut. Then the real Jews of Russia were trapped in a Russian civil war in which 250,000-600,000 real, actual Jews were murdered. We don't quite know how many because the murderers didn't care to count. It was at this point that the real Jews of Russia began thinking seriously that perhaps waiting for death at the hands of their fellow citizens wasn't a great way to live and that perhaps they might be able to take the future into their own hands in a country where hating Jews would be impossible because the majority were Jews themselves. The real Jews, some of them, made their way to Palestine and set about creating a new world. They were mad but no more so than anyone else. And then the Russian Jews in Palestine became the new Jews of Israel and provided their children a life of opportunities rather than a long wait for a slow death as was the fate of the real Jews in Russia they left behind. And would you know that real Jews of other countries in the Middle East came to the same conclusion that perhaps a life of dignity and promise had more to offer than a life of misery and suffering inflicted upon them by their fellow citizens. and they came to Israel and they thrived and the country thrived and survived. But the hypothetical Jew still looms large in Western thinking. He is the aggressor against a hypothetical Palestinian. The hypothetical Jew is wittering on about the Holocaust and telling hypothetical Jews to move to Israel. Meanwhile the real Jews of Israel are sitting in their bomb shelters worrying about other real Jews as they fight against the enemies who are committed to their destruction. I prefer the real Jews to the hypothetical ones who live only in the minds of those sitting comfortable in their own superiority creating straw men arguments so that they can posit what is moral and what is not while others suffer.

@TheNewsHam @srcasm @AnthropicAI @shaig @brettperl EB White did (h/t @danielgolliher )

@srcasm @AnthropicAI @shaig @brettperl Outside of organs, in the context of NYC, I've never heard "transplant" used with a positive connotation before.

NYC is *a* new home for so many people building incredible things in the AI ecosystem. Hosting an intimate dinner with @AnthropicAI soon. We want to find the best transplant founders building the future in the city. Tag the most exciting new arrivals below. cc:@shaig @brettperl @andruyeung @lindsaykap @TeddySolomon11

@sporadica studiously avoiding the moral law within connects the two episodes (denying introspection and rejecting moral formation)

watching marc andreessen crash out over his introspection crap is the funniest shit ever like dawg just take the L and move on. didn’t you learn this lesson when you came at the Pope + Daniel and lost?