Kaan A. 🇨🇦🇺🇦

Russian assets claim Russia isn't the threat, instead claim that the bulwark against Russia is the threat. News at 11.

Which is dumb, because a core benefit of good maths is providing the tools to think abstract and think analytically. "One correct solution" often runs against that idea.

The Far Right Hits The BBC The assault on free media gathers pace

“The Far Right doesn’t stay within borders. It’s at work everywhere and it works in sync. The strength in one area magnifies the strength in another. It’s a global threat.”

Dachau. Bergen-Belsen. Ravensbrück.

Houston.

Yup! Studying Israeli foreign policy and political history, this sort of stuff was eye-opening to me about five years ago. It's also—in a rather convoluted and long way—a decent way to get rid of stupid conspiratorialism around Israel, but knowledge generally is. What else is new?

This also didn't happen. It's a peak LinkedIn lunatic post, but on X.

This really shouldn't be a problem, James Bond is a codename like 007, done, problem solved. We don't watch the films for the deep lore, we watch it for the cheesy, corny spy action.

No, for Noah Smith this ain't it. He might be mediocre—I don't think he is, but he might be—but he definitely isn't lazy. I think he just lost the plot, and he certainly wasn't always like this.

He was always a bit weird yes but this is a case where people saying “He was always like this!!” are just wrong. He has become *significantly* worse

At some point it's just beyond stupidity, it's got to be malevolent behaviour. It's cynicism as a virtue. And it's serving the dissolution of democratic open societies, bit by bit. If you aren't constantly cynical, then you're a "naive sucker" and therefore an idiot, all the time.

The platform enables people to silo themselves in, and people do it. The algorithm just makes it easier to find things tailored for your silo, but at the end of the day it's human behaviour that does the heavy lifting. We want to be surrounded by people who agree with us and validate us.

And we haven't gotten to the algorithm, and I have a particular distaste for "the algorithm" as an explanation because even if you remove "the algorithm" wholesale from social media, the same effects would occur, though perhaps less amplified. Because it's primarily driven by human behaviour.

280 characters really doesn't lend itself well to nuance, nor do 15/30/60 seconds. So you need to trim down the message, and inevitably you end up with the provocative, slogan-ified core. And that just radicalises people further and further, causing a spiral.

I will concede that the shorter-format social media like X, Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts etc. are particularly problematic because they are inherently restrictive in terms of time/space. So you need to attract attention and get your point across really, really quickly.

This is a part of why social media is harmful for society at large. It encourages atomisation and in the long-run, will obliterate our politics. Politics is about disagreeing with others and figuring out how to govern despite those disagreements.

Microblogging like X, or Bluesky, or whatever, or places like Substack: you're allowed to silo yourself into a comfort zone where your views won't be challenged or disagreed with, where criticism can be waved away with some single-word label. You need to actively not silo yourself.

It's not an inevitability, but you have to -actively- seek out opinions who you do not necessarily agree with, and force yourself to read them. And that's not enabled by the nature of the program.

It's nothing to do with the "algorithm," either. It's entirely to do with the nature of the medium.

Disagreement in healthy doses breeds discussion, produces better arguments, and encourages deeper contemplation of the subject.

This is where I will, unironically, blame social media for this social ill. Social media ecosystems are encouraging purity tests and atomisation.

Wow, the original poster of this blocked me. The book was Shoshanna Zuboff's "the Age of Surveillance Capitalism," for the record.

It's pathetic that a person cannot contend with a book they like being disliked. Just as I was thinking about how we need more exposure to ideas we disagree with.

Yeah, I used to be a subscriber to his newsletter. It kind of started going bonkers. I still like to read his opinions and think about them, even—or, especially—when I disagree, but...he's certainly different nowadays.

-Your- country has failed to muster the collective action to prevent something, or regulate another thing. -Your- country has failed to deal with an issue. It isn't a systemic issue in that other countries implementing the same system do not experience these problems.

More generally, it's another symptom of American academics taking events in the United States (and the Anglosphere if they're feeling spicy) and thinking everywhere must be like America, and oftentimes, worse.

It really isn't. A lot of "capitalism" problems are in fact "American" problems.

It basically rides upon being edgy and foreboding to sell itself to an audience already primed against capitalism, in an exercise of circular doomerism common in political theory circles.

Bit of an unpopular opinion but this is an over-hyped but unremarkable book that doesn't really add to our understanding of capitalism.

"Putin attacked Ukraine, not Russians" fails to grapple with why millions of ordinary Russians were willing to follow orders in a devastating war against Ukraine.

This stuff open up questions over how far Russia as a society will come to terms with the past after Putin is gone.

My assumption is that a considerable amount of people are projecting a greater role in American politics for Mamdani in the near future. Can't be President, but maybe House rep, senator, maybe speaker or whatever, I don't know.

It's putting the cart before the horse in my opinion, but still.

Even if they were “high level” criminals…it is still murder. Who made our military the judge, jury and sentencer in matters that should be handled by the legal system?

Horrifying but not surprising. There should be an organized program to publicly record the experiences of the abductees/detainees. Maybe even people working in or with ICE who want to document what they have seen.

At some point, having a large compilation of evidence is going to be very useful.

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

Zero tears will be shed for the murderous petro-monarchy's Ozymandian projects.