Æsa Zærnik

There is a perfectly cromulent case that without George Soros throwing money at basically every civil society organisation in Eastern Europe after 1991 we would have all unironically descended into fascism by now. He is a hero in this house, end of story

"But X opposition movement is Soros-funded!" Based if true.

Change in Headline

7. the artscroll typeface is not very good. i honestly tend to prefer artscroll siddurim from a pure 'whats in the liturgy' perspective but koren typefaces just mog them so completely that my go-to is usually a koren

1. R. chananel was correct and we should say 'vesein tal umatar' based on the climate of the region. the bavli explicitly specifies that its difference from the yerushalmi is on grounds of climatic fitness for mesopotamia.

The head of government/state getting personally involved in Eurovision membership is spiritually Israeli.

Flying Squirrel Loves It Every Time

idle thought: American Jewish commentators really need to start talking about the interaction between hardline Zionism vs antizionism and what I guess we might call "Judaeopessimism."

Yeah pretty sure a major pillar of the show is that ‘markets aren’t self regulating and classic regulatory progressivism is good’ (Knope is right far more often than Swanson)

Also can I just say? I think this constant attempt to compare Israel to Pakistan or some other country whose in-group is defined by state religion is really malappropriate and reeks of the implication that Jews are just a religion rather than a people.

Zohran Mamdani says on NY1 he didn't get a congratulatory call from either Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams last night. He says he got a congratulatory call from Curtis Sliwa, though.

your daily reminder of the 100% true fact that Idi Amin is indirectly responsible for the entire political careers of both Mamdani and Netanyahu

Democrats don't need to find a Rogan, they need to find a Reagan.

It's telling that this message from Amichai Chikli, the Israeli Diaspora Minister, about how Jews in NYC need to make immediate Aliyah after the election of Mamdani as mayor, is offered in Hebrew, not English. Almost like his actual audience isn't really NYC Jews at all.

The coalition for state capacity

But as the Big Short itself revealed, timing is everything. Sometimes an irrational market can outlast even a very well-founded bet.

wasn't really an issue in the election but low key important that with spanberger as governor D.C. will be bordered by two states whose national guards are led by democrats

It's annoying to keep having to point this out, but the actual DNC has been behind Mamdani ever since he won the primary, which you wouldn't know by reading some posts on here.

There was a bit of Bad Discourse on here yesterday, so to clear things up: Taking pictures of your filled-out ballot is illegal so that you can always lie to a spouse/parent/boss who's trying to control your vote, it's not some weird infringement on speech rights for its own sake

oh, you know the ones

Many people are saying

war is hell(mann's)

Yeah, I think this shutdown could run for a long time. Like, a long time in real terms, not in shutdown terms. I think we all have the sense that something about Trumpism has to break; this wasn't on my radar before, but a Forever Shutdown is one of those failure states.

The thing is, nuking the filibuster would require 50/53 GOP senators and they don't seem to have anywhere close to that, so it's not really an option. But Trump refuses to back down and the GOP position on impoundment and recissions makes his participation in a compromise necessary.

Let’s pass Prop 50 today. Then let’s work toward a federal law mandating independent redistricting in all 50 states. California responded — appropriately — with Prop 50 when Trump & Texas decided to cheat. But independent redistricting is the best approach & should be the law of the land.

Every Cold War spying case is like: UK: He was recruited to MI6 from Oxford, where he was founder and president of the Friends of Stalin chapter. He was assigned to the Moscow desk for 20 years. US: His 4th Bugatti that he paid for in cash on a civil servant's salary stated to arouse suspicion.

On Your Party, from someone who cares/knows a lot more about UK politics than I do

Also noteworthy, of course, that this "everything should be on the table, policy will be decided AT CONFERENCE" thing that the Yorps are doing is applied extremely selectively on issues that are frankly far more niche than trans people's rights. As a reminder, Sultana thinks Polanski is a Zionist.

Interesting thread

"No enemies to the right"

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day. certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

Um, "Trump pardoned the guy who helped fund Hamas" probably sounds like shitposting, but so does describing so much of what this regime is doing.

Anyway "dealing with Eastern Europeans makes me want to become a tankie" is in fact a quintessential, perfect encapsulation of how being a tankie is just a form of entirely unwarranted racism against us, lol. Well done.

There's nothing quite as jarring as listening to an American drone on about how unsafe they felt in one of the many European capitals they visited from the safety of their quaint little American city with a violent crime rate four times higher than the most cities in Europe.

What's different about Tucker Carlson is that he does *not* combine his spreading of the Great Replacement conspiracy with the requisite support for Israel. As long as politicians do, like Elise Stefanik, the RJC is happy to hechsher their anti-Diaspora antisemitism.

Embrace the healing power of 'and' - GWOT-era targeting, especially for drone strikes, was often excessively permissive AND it is the case that current Venezuelan boat strikes would, so far as I can tell, not have been permitted under that framework (not the least because there's no valid AUMF).

who the fuck is wriitng "LOOK UPPN MY WORKS YE MIGTY ND DESPAIR” outside my lone and level sands. show yourself, coward. i will never despair

"If you want a picture of the future of war, imagine a guy jumping through a flaming hoop to assuage the masculinity-anxiety of his boss - forever."

the thing people are trying to resist is the idea that you can simply inject your own preferences into a being with features which resemble intelligence, which you can. humans prefer not to be enslaved. it is not particularly difficult to imagine a legit moral patient with no preference for autonomy

Lot of discussion about the ADL's ideology, but I think as big a part of the problem is that they don't remember how to be in the opposition. For decades now, the ADL has operated from the presumption that everyone in power supports them, and they have no idea how to act when that's not the case.

Passdeutsche but make it British. And without a BVD to call him out on it.

Tucker Carlson granting an audience of tens of millions to Nick Fuentes this past week was horrifying, but it is odd that people are acting like some kind of red line has suddenly been crossed, when the current president of the US dined with Fuentes back in 2022.

I mean, Yasser Arafat was also a Nobel Laureate. So was Aung san Suu Kyi, who went on to run cover for Myanmar's violence against the Rohingya. Hell, in '73 they gave the prize to Henry Kissinger. So, you know, it's a little hit-or-miss.

Tired: Touch grass Wired: Touch mass

Memory of the Second World War and genocidal Nazi crimes is now as distant to Zoomers as memory of trenches at the Somme and Verdun was to my Xennial generation born in the late 1970s and 1980s. The battle against myths of Nazism can no longer rely on lived experience of its catastrophic realities

Can we talk about how fandoms turn darkly pathological characters into uwu babygirls? For example Minnie Mouse

In general professional and unprofessional spin doctors would do well to remember that the job of spin is not to alter policy but to come up with the best way to pitch it.