Kay Hymowitz

@yeselson Positive valence? A far cry from as “the only thing that makes life endurable “

@KayHymowitz But she didn’t say that, right? Can you imagine any affirmative content to “standing with Palestine” ie, the mostly stateless, rightless brutalized people which share the land with Israeli Jews? No positive valence at all to supporting them?

Acc to Sally Rooney, Israel hate gives life meaning. “What else… can give us a reason to go on, to fend off despair, to live with ourselves, and to fight for our future?” Standing with Palestine is the only thing that can “make our lives endurable”, #selection-3423.96-3427.88" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">archive.md/fgG07#selectio…

Who knew an accordion, let alone the genius playing it, could produce this kind of complex and beautiful sound? If you already knew, please humor me and pretend you didn't.

THE I-35 HIGHWAY 🚧🦫

May not be an eagle but otherwise legit

Uta Frith, one of the world's leading experts on autism, now believes that we might be thinking about it wrong:

THE GREEKS ARE FIGHTING THE PERSIANS I REPEAT THE GREEKS ARE FIGHTING THE PERSIANS

@BeckyLTuch Help! I think I've turned into AI.

Ugh just read a Substack article by a lit mag editor that I'm almost certain was edited with AI. The style is so common: * short, punchy sentences * "This, not that" construction. ("It's not a rejection; it's a sign the process is working...") * Things in threes. ("Not a no, not a rejection, not a closed door. A window to something better...") I cannot say it enough: writers & editors, please stop relying on AI to help you edit your stuff. AI strips you of your own voice & makes you sound like a machine. It's utterly depressing to read such pieces from writers and lit mag editors.

A young idealistic @davidhogg111 dreamed of going into politics to cure the scourge of gun violence. Having grown up a bit, demonizing Israel has become a top priority. A young idealistic @GretaThunberg dreamed of becoming famous to raise awareness to climate change. Having grown up a bit, demonizing Israel has become her top priority. A young idealistic @krystalball dreamed of going into politics to give all Americans access to healthcare. Having grown up a bit, demonizing Israel has become her top priority. A young idealistic @AOC dreamed of going into politics to give people healthcare and reduce income inequality. Having grown up a bit, demonizing Israel has become her top priority. A young idealistic @camkasky dreamed of going into politics to cure the scourge of gun violence. Having grown up a bit, demonizing Israel has become a top priority for him. Does anyone have a psychological name or explanation to this phenomenon?

The Sydney Opera House illuminated with Gustav Klimt's The Tree of Life.

I say this as gently as I know how, because it seems to me unforgivably obvious. You cannot simultaneously build a strong international law system while also hating the West. International law is a Western idea born of a particular Western historical, cultural and political experience. And because God loves irony, no one exemplifies this fact more than the evil regime whose travails since yesterday have sparked so much legalistic hand-wringing. Both Khamenei himself and his teacher and predecessor Khomeini consistently and explicitly rejected international law as a tool of "global arrogance" (estekbar-e jahani) — i.e., of powerful secularist, individualistic democracies. Khamenei was even more explicit, routinely declaring legal frameworks like UN conventions as "colonial" traps. These declarations weren’t marginal to their ideology. They were fundamental planks of the regime’s political theology. I’ll say this, again, as gently as I can: The fact that international law and international institutions have transformed in practice into a system that more often than not runs defense for the most virulent and explicit enemies of said law might have something to do with their decline as an organizing framework of international affairs. For example, when UN agencies and international institutions target Israel more than Iran, or more than China, Iran and Russia put together, or more than all the dictatorships and wars in the world combined — they’re doing more harm to the law than to Israel. Similarly, it matters that so many of international law’s loudest spokespeople had nothing to say about Khamenei’s crimes just six weeks ago, but swung into action only when Khamenei’s long reign of terror was finally brought to an end. That’s not law. It’s the opposite of law. International law can be saved, but only if its scholars and practitioners grow up and shed the instinctive anti-Westernism and racist paternalism of the present-day academy. When international law is no longer seen by its own practitioners primarily as an instrument for containing, weakening and delegitimizing the West, but becomes genuinely about actual law, it will once again have a claim on us. If you fail to see in Khamenei the bitter foe of international law that he was, if in the midst of your legitimate critique of a war you can’t summon at least a little joy that this avowed enemy of your purported moral system is dead and gone, then you haven’t actually been fighting for international law.

Foolish misstep by an otherwise savvy player

RED, GRAY, AND BLUE The biggest mistake most commentators make today is talking about "the United States of America" as if it still exists as a unitary entity. In reality, it's the Disunited Tribes of North America. Different American tribes now have their own preferred influencers, foreign policies, genders, companies, counties, and even currencies. The only thing they don't yet fully have are their own countries. But the mass migration is already here between blue states and red, and the digital secession into separate social networks is already here too. It's blindingly obvious that the endless cloud strife is going to be printed out onto the land; all that awaits is formal American Partition. Until then, we are stuck in this bizarre twilight zone where people keep talking about "American policy." However, we know you can't talk about "Korean policy" without immediately clarifying whether you mean North Korea or South Korea. And so too you can't talk about "American policy" without clarifying whether you mean Blue America, Red America, Tech America, or one of their increasingly numerous sub-tribes. SILICON VALLEY VS PENTAGON Which brings us to the ongoing conflict between Silicon Valley AI companies and the Pentagon. This is just one of many conflicts between Network and State, and just one of several lose/lose scenarios between blue, red, and gray/tech that are playing out across the chessboard. But you can't understand what's going on without the tribal lens. Briefly: the center-left tech guys at Anthropic (along with many at OpenAI and Google) say they don't want their software to be used for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. They see themselves as protecting civil liberties. Meanwhile, the center-right tech guys in the US government do want AI to be used to defend their land, and resent the idea that every (potentially sensitive) military plan can be vetoed at will by a mere tech company. They see themselves as protecting national security. THE TRIBAL LENS This argument about principles breaks down because it's not really about principles, but about root control. The Anthropic employees trust their CEO to make judgments about what happens to user data. They don't trust these Pentagon MAGAs. And the Pentagon has exactly the opposite set of intuitions: they don't want these squishy wokes to be upstream of their military and their President. Fundamentally, the tech left doesn't want the tech right (let alone the full Republicans) to have root control over them, to be able to seize their companies or surveil them. And the tech right doesn't want the tech left (let alone the full Democrats) to have root control over them, to be able to veto their military plans or impede their presidency. All this is against the backdrop of many other raging conflicts, including Democrats vs Tech (via the wealth tax) and Tech vs Democrats (via AI disrupting blue jobs). The tech right thinks the tech left is dumb for not seeing that they're the one thing protecting them from getting taxed to death by Democrats, not to mention distilled by China. The tech left thinks the tech right is dumb for wanting to power up a surveillance state that may get handed over to Democrats...and thereby turned into China. Which brings us to China. THE CHINESE CHALLENGE Both tribes constantly invoke China as the outgroup. Obviously, China is building autonomous weapons. So if the American state doesn’t match what China is doing, it won't be militarily better than China! On the other hand, China is also doing domestic surveillance. So if the American state does match what China is doing, it’ll be no better than China! Both also have internal divisions on China. The tech left, including Anthropic, has used the China-vs-America framing to argue for AI funding. They're also mad about China distilling their models. So the tech left actually does have some real anti-China sentiment. Conversely, the tech right, including many in the administration, has used the China-surveilling-their-citizens argument to argue against censorship. They're also mad about Democrats abusing the state against them. So the tech right actually does have some real internal libertarian sentiment. (Note: the far left & far right oppose both tech and all military involvement abroad, for different reasons, so they aren't directly participating in this argument.) TAKING THE L Ultimately, however, none of this matters. On the present trajectory, the American state is simply not going to outcompete the Chinese state, because the American people are unable to cooperate for the greater good, and therefore a "United" States of America does not exist. The modern American is all about liberty (red), or protest (blue), or techno-capitalism (gray). That's all great stuff, but each is about individual rights, as opposed to the collective responsibility felt by the 1950s American. Meanwhile the Chinese are about harmony, the party, and techno-communism. They've developed a social contract where they're fine with fusing their nation, state, and network together into a giant Voltron. For China: their nationalists are their Republicans, their statists are their Democrats, and the technologists are their Silicon Valley. Of course they have their internal conflicts, but for now all of that has been quashed by the party. The result is that the Chinese have collectively built perhaps the most powerful manufacturing goliath that's ever existed on earth. And that Chinese nation/state/network fusion challenges the Republican belief in liberty, the Democrat faith in democracy, and the Technologist faith in founder-led capitalism. No mere appeal to principle is going to work against Chinese Voltron. It's like praying to Zeus against a nuke. You need a set of principles that actually generates collective power, power comparable to China. Or you need to capitulate. CAPITULATE, OR COOPERATE The Democrats (and the Western left more broadly) are actually the first to realize this, which is why Carney/Mamdani/Newsom/Walz and the like are just capitulating to the Chinese state. The Biden Democrats threw the kitchen sink at China, but the Chinese state won, and proved itself the stronger horse. So blues are now (implicitly) auditioning for a position as overseas bureaucrats in Xi's empire, as apparatchiks in Communist Canada and Chinese California. Tech and Reds haven't fully caught on to this. The Republicans still claim their military is stronger than the Chinese military, and Silicon Valley still thinks their tech is better than Chinese tech. They point to the few areas where they still have an edge, while trying to ignore the enormous scale and speed advantages China has (especially in the physical world). You might think the mass-produced, back-flipping Unitree kung-fu Chinese humanoids would be enough to disabuse both red and tech of their illusions here. But a demo is probably not enough; we may all actually need to see the Chinese drone armada in action to mark the world to market. Perhaps it gets debuted in Ukraine, Iran, or some other proxy war. As Orwell put it, "sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” I do hope my friends on left and right learn to cooperate before that happens. I am extremely skeptical that they will.

American exceptionalism:

This made me laugh 🤣

The New York Times is no longer a news company. $NYT

... according to an unnamed source from an anti-Israel organization. (would be useful to actually see the data or the empirical evidence)

@ANelsonhart @SwipeWright @willchamberlain Christians in Israel are full citizens.

@SwipeWright @willchamberlain How is that different from Israel?

I looked this up because Tucker's wording felt slimy. Turns out it was. With a smarmy smile, Tucker says, "There are many more Christians in Qatar than there are in Israel." This is seemingly meant to imply that Qatar must not be treating Christians too poorly, given how many live there compared to Israel. While it is technically true that "There are many more Christians in Qatar than there are in Israel," the details matter. Israel has roughly 188,000 Christians (~1.9% of total pop.), of whom nearly all are citizens that enjoy equal freedoms. In contrast, about 400,000 Christians live in Qatar (~14% of pop.), but basically NONE are citizens due to bans on converting from Islam, and practicing Christianity is only allowed in designated areas. Essentially ALL Christians living in Qatar are expatriate workers. THIS SEEMS LIKE AN IMPORTANT DETAIL!

Sometimes a student in one of my fiction writing classes will come see me during office hours and inform me they’re going to be a novelist. I always ask the same question: “Who are your favorite authors?” An alarming number of students can’t name a single novelist. Not one.

Ok,: Walter Cronkite is in the Epstein files. In fact, there's a photo of him at the island chatting with the villain himself. Look it up.