Tom H

America is to democracy as London is to underground railways: it’s got the oldest, and one of the biggest, but boy is the infrastructure creaky.

I think you need to re-read the context of Alon’s original comment, and the arguments I’ve been making, as neither of those sentences take this conversation any further. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

I’ve been grappling with the ethics of whether or not to bet on the outcome, considering the ludicrously good odds being given for a Harris victory (an easy 40% profit to be made even if she just wins the popular vote)

Note, I’m not saying all comparisons with SA fail. Just the idea that the relationship between anti-Whiteness and SA is comparable to the relationship between antisemitism and Israel.

A distraction from what? I joined this thread to discuss antisemitism not to discuss Israel’s crimes.
But the comparison with SA fails because (British concentration camps notwithstanding) White South Africans hadn’t faced an anti-white racist genocide aimed at their extinction in living memory.

It is entirely possible for the following all to be true:
1)Some bad people will make any kind of rhetorical move to justify bad actions
2)Jews as a people (including J Israelis) are so traumatised by Shoah that they’re extra sensitive to antisemitic tropes
3)There are bad people who hate all Jews

I will confess I find the politics of mask-wearing bewildering, so don’t feel able to say anything intelligible about it!

OK, but I’m fairly sure that you’d agree that, just because there are Israelis doing something, it doesn’t necessarily make it OK.

Yet if someone aggressively says any of those things to me, purely on the basis of identifying me (rightly or wrongly) as Jewish, then yes, it is antisemitic, as it implies that all Jews have some collective responsibility for the actions of the Israeli state.

“Jew” is not an antisemitic term. And yet someone can yell “Jew” as an antisemitic slur.

Thought-provoking skeets from one of the UK's most interesting policy thinkers: does doing well Maths GCSE predict high earnings because maths is important, or because we are better at fairly assessing maths? (It's both, IMO, but some more thoughts of my own follow.)

Agatha All Along was brilliant until the final scene, a cop-out which was presumably mandated by the Disney/Marvel suits.

Are you a National Trust member? Do you dislike the cancer of concocted right wing culture-war nonsense slowly and steadily making every good thing in this country, go shit? Then grab your membership number and vote online in the AGM by midnight tonight. Just choose the 'NT recommended candidates'.

Well deserved!

Don’t look now, but I’ve got a joke about Orpheus.

The funny thing is, I don’t know who Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore are, but I follow you so 🤷‍♂️

😮

The Scapegoat by Lucy Hughes-Hallett review – James I’s beloved bedfellow A biography of the Duke of Buckingham brings the royal favourite, and his ‘entrancingly strange’ world, to life

This sounds like a wonderful book about the infamous Duke of Buckingham, recently played by Nicholas Galitzine in the fun TV drama Mary & George

The Scapegoat by Lucy Hughes-Hallett book review – James I’s beloved bedfellow
www.theguardian.com/books/2024/o...

I would much rather the day came that he was wrong 😔

How controversial is it to say that Hadestown in the West End is better than the Broadway version?

Adam and Eve invite God round to show him what they've done with the Garden

📌

Thanks!

I take your point, but was wondering on what basis you exclude the War of Attrition from the list. Is it because the military operations were more sporadic and lower intensity?

One of the finest generals this country has produced. An incredible man to interview.

It is not hyperbole to say that he prevented a war with Russia in the Balkans, when Wes Clark was determined to start one.

I wrote about it here. authory.com/JohnBull/Pri...

Simons, a technology expert who wrote a book on artificial intelligence, told the Guardian in an interview: “I think that Twitter’s algorithm, its ranking model, which determines what we see on Twitter when we open it, has manifestly changed since Elon Musk took over. Not least because I don’t think I’ve ever liked anything that he said ever, and I see loads of him all the time, and I really don’t want to. “I’ve even said: ‘Show less of this,’ and there he is, every time. And that’s a sure sign – when a founder and owner of a company, you see more of them on an algorithm, despite not liking them – [of] something going on.” He added: “I think that it is totally and completely wrong and harmful to British democracy that the Westminster bubble gets to know each other through a ranking model designed by a man who’s spending his life campaigning for Donald Trump. I think that it’s shortsighted of us all.”

"Westminster’s reliance on Elon Musk’s X is ‘totally wrong’, says Labour MP." Josh Simons MP is right about this:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

You are right to say that different inhumane historical injustices each have specificities which are important in understanding those dreadful things, and that they should not be glibly compared.

A pleasant surprise to find @stephenkb.bsky.social in the new Reform machzor whilst hungrily leafing through it yesterday.

Any chance of the Tories ever learning LBJ’s first rule of politics…?