Andrew Sabl

Time for another social media break. Stay strong.

In some cases, witnesses described other IPS personnel being present during attacks by the IRF. They stood idly by and did nothing to protect the victims, their presence essentially lending legitimacy to the actions. The presence of IPS officers and the participation of dozens of IPS guards in the assaults indicates that these were not isolated incidents or the work of a rogue guard. On 9 November 2023, at around 2:00 P.M., a force of 20 masked officers from the IRF and DU arrived with a dog. They opened the cell door and attacked Some of the us with batons. Two of them grabbed me forces filmed and hit me in the back with batons. One of us with cell them grabbed my head while I was on the phones and floor and hit me in the face with a baton. cameras. I My face and right eye started bleeding. I heard the told them in Hebrew, "I'm going to die," and officer tell one of them said that he wanted me to die. the others in Others told me to shut up. Hebrew: "We're After they beat us up for about 10 minutes, they tied our hands behind our backs with loresee wins zip ties. They fastened them so tight that I felt them cutting into my hands. The beating continued, and members of the forces stepped on my chest and head. There were also two officers in the cell, and one of them ordered them to beat us. The members of the forces laughed among themselves. They took some clothes away from inmates. They dragged some of us on the floor and forced others to kiss one of the officer's shoes. I saw them grab some inmates by the testicles, and the inmates screamed and cried. The officers also pressed their batons against

Keter Welcome to Hell the genitals of some inmates. The stream of insults didn't stop: "motherfuckers," "sons None of us could move, of bitches," "dogs," "ISIS." Some of the forces not even to filmed us with cell phones and cameras. I go to the heard the officer tell the others in Hebrew: bathroom. "We're livestreaming for Ben Gvir." We were all The attack lasted a long time, more than half dizzy and lost an hour of nonstop beating. It looked like they balance. wanted to cause as much damage as possible. My right eye When it was over, I felt I was going to pass swelled up, out. Afterwards, we lay on the floor for hours. and I was None of us could move, not even to go to the afraid I'd lose bathroom. We were all dizzy and lost balance. my sight. We My right eye swelled up, and I was afraid I'd were in a very lose my sight. We were in a very bad state. One bad state. prisoner said in tears that they'd raped him One prisoner with a stick. said in tears that they'd After that incident, we lived in constant fear. raped him Also, we were shocked by the screams of with a stick. inmates being beaten in other cells. We were afraid all the time, day and night, that the forces would attack us again. From the testimony of Firas Hassan 50, a father of four and resident of Hindaza in Bethlehem District, who was held in the Negev Prison (Ketziot) | Full testimony

Those who are so inclined to immediately dismiss all the seemingly grandiose reports of torture and abuse in the Israeli prison system should read this report from B'Tselem entitled: "Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps"

Local store owners are giving no quarter.

(I’m avoiding other natural puns. You may be relieved.)

Michael Tesler and others have shown that, prior to 2008-2009, politically disengaged swing voters did not perceive the Democratic Party as more liberal than Republicans on racial policy (fair to include immigration as part of this). Almost impossible for high info people to believe it, but true. /4

😆 Ha! That entry says “[? Yiddish/Russian]” so maybe that’s the answer: different dialect of Yiddish from what I grew up with.
But clearly, at least in the long version, it’s been American for quite a while. So I was wrong. Must have not talked to enough gamblers and loan sharks growing up.

What about “vig” (for the percentage that the House, e.g. a betting house or brothel, takes off the top of a transaction)?
Brits think it’s Yiddish but I never heard it growing up. And Americans have started using it, but only recently and, I think, copying Brits (like “spot on”).

Until last year, I’d never seen the Thriller video. My family started talking about how it was a Halloween song and I had no idea what they were talking about.

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

@fishkin.bsky.social outlines a key strategy of the Shakedown State: the attempt to pockets of “no law”. Immigration has always been an area of tremendous deference to the Executive; by the signing these “compact” any university would be acting at the sufferance of the Executive.

Agreed! But they haven’t achieved fascism; those who deride the term are completely right about that.

We have to avoid a Boy Who Cried Wolf problem. They’ve achieved competitive authoritarianism and huge amounts of racism and reaction. But to call it fascism now just erodes credibility.

Keep taking videos of what ICE is doing. @govpritzker.illinois.gov is right, document what’s happening. This is why they hate journalists so much.

So far they have. When it’s actual fascism I’ll call it that (from abroad, or a prison cell).

Blocked.

Um…no.

But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn’t read my bio rather than that you were being deliberately rude.

Not bad, but for those who aren’t political theory junkies “attempted tyranny” risks sounding archaic, like “long train of abuses.”

(And for those who are political theory junkies, “attempted despotism” is more descriptive.)

As an adjective describing intentions, “fascistic” is fine. But we need a noun for what’s going on: “attempted fascism.”

I really think we need to popularize “attempted fascism”.

It faces the very real danger without misstating the facts—there’s still tremendous room for dissent and pushback—or sliding into defeatism.

All legal nonsense aside about the supposed state of armed conflict between the U.S. and Venezuelan gangs, what "I wish to emphasize is that there is a word for killings outside of armed conflict for which there is no domestic legal authority. That word is murder." [@benjaminwittes.lawfaremedia.org]

No, just attempted fascism.

Trump wants us to believe that his power is unlimited. Don’t.

Strong statement today from UC's Academic Senate:

As if irony isn’t already dead, the Hatch Act violation on the DOJ website, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, appears on the page advising DOJ employees they are subject to the Hatch Act. joycevance.substack.com/p/a-note-abo...

This usage has a practical origin: 20th century US political scientists used education as a proxy for class b-c most population surveys tracked the former but not the latter: sometimes income, never occupational status.
(I’d love to read the political history of why govt-funded surveys did this.)

Horseshoe theory was originally created to explain anti-semitism on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately its original application still very much holds true.

Remember (if it helps it make more sense) that New York City has a higher population than all but one Canadian province.

(That said, NYC mayors only run the schools only by the permission of the State legislature, which must be renewed every few years.)

Slight amendment: Ford said that the comments were “disgusting,” not her. Still a chilling effect.

A UofT colleague has been placed on leave and may face firing for an occupied Twitter post that was v. rude and in awful taste but should be totally protected by academic freedom (qua not relevant to her job).
Why? Ontario’s higher ed minister made threats and the premier called her “disgusting.”

Remember this the next time university colleagues (esp. in Canada) say private donations are tainted due to donors’ potential power to shape teaching and research.
*All* sources of funding confer such power. They all require worry, safeguards, strategy, contingency plans.

Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy

But also we’re terrified of the subway

When he died of Covid, early in the pandemic, I must have listened to “Angel from Montgomery” fifty times.