BTW, this is the primary reason for evangelical Christian support for Israel. American Christians donate 10x the money to Israel and the Israel lobby that Jews do, and their reasons are purely genocidal.

I genuinely wonder whether the answer is that a 90 minute class goes: 1. the teacher announces the essay question. students write in pen, in silence for 30 minutes. 2. 60 minutes discussion of the broad topic. 3. broad topic for next week is announced, you can research by any method you want.

To celebrate Rosh Hashanah (many parts of Judaism are beautiful, enjoy apple and honey and wishes for a sweet new year) I am recalling that it was visiting the Temple Institute that was a major step on my road out of fundamentalism. They have a model of what the rebuilt Temple would be like….

Yes. Much of what is happening now is two very extremist religious groups (fringe hardline ultra-Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist evangelical Christianity) going “haha God is actually on OUR side but let’s play along with these idiots who believe nonsense, to get what we want”.

yes the pipeline analogy is very good. I have known about the fundamentalist Christian drive to get Jewish people to Israel for decades; it's so obvious to me it feels like it barely needs mentioning. but if you didn't know, it is a good contender for top missing fact to explain what's going on.

I have discovered an additional benefit to this subscriber level which is that you can neither add to nor even see the comments.

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

This. If it feels like there are massive forces actively trying to make things worse… I’m afraid yes. I think rationalist people can really underestimate the power of religion as a driver of world events. They think anyone who believes in this stuff must be stupid and therefore unimportant.

“A growing number of scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may instead be subtly altering our immune systems. If correct, their hypothesis will change how we understand everything from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to shingles to sepsis” www.bmj.com/content/390/...

this is true. it is the unlikely-sounding but real answer to why there is so much fundamentalist Christian support in the US for whatever Israel does (and especially good if what it does causes more antisemitism so more Jewish people move to Israel. they need us all there. to die.)

I’m at Penguin today to record the audiobook of my new nonfiction Don’t Burn Anyone At The Stake Today. www.penguin.co.uk/books/469677... In an absolute rookie error I wore a “loud” linen top, ie you can hear it on the microphone, so I’m now recording an audiobook in my bra.

I have been reading Simone Weil (a wonderfully exacting and uncompromising moral thinker) for a radio programme and she would broadly agree. Her essay, On The Abolition Of All Political Parties: cooperism.law.columbia.edu/files/2023/0...

there is no such thing as social media where you can post about something you like without someone popping up telling you that you shouldn't like it. some stuff is driven by the algorithm. and some stuff is just... people.

there’s a scene in the new documentary where Elizabeth Taylor is talking about the stigma of AIDS and how she got involved in the movement and it’s fucking everything

People playing catch with a ball in the swimming pool: what is this about? It seems to me an abomination (can hit a random swimmer with a mis-thrown ball) and also why on earth is it fun to stand waist-deep in water and hurl a ball at each other? But some people seem to like it. Do you?

I complained to Marks and Spencer about them advertising on GB News. They referred me up to a Senior Manager and spent a long time listening to my concerns.

I am sure this is true. If you clearly went to effort that does count for something.

A Clock, a fan-made recreation of Christian Marclay's The Clock: the copyright implications here are interesting, Marclay's unique arrangement of thousands of clips can be copyrighted even if he never got permission to use them https://kottke.org/25/09/a-clo...

if I can give a piece of "theory of change" advice: never never never make a purchasing decision to stay away from a brand for ethical reasons *without letting them know that's what you've done*. they don't have a way to know otherwise. spend 5 minutes and send an email to the company.

this seems like sensible advice if you live in the US and want to do effective protest about Kimmel:

No spoilers for any of the things but: man so many things now have “and the villain is a tech billionaire!” i can’t remember the last movie/TV show with a vaguely OK tech CEO in it. (Halt and Catch Fire? But not really.)

Reading Anthropic's Economic Index, on take-up of Claude, and this leaps off the page: "150 countries and all US states" www.anthropic.com/research/ant... because, oh no, no this is not a colonising technology

this is incredibly interesting in the age of information crisis. There are now new ways to track what we’re doing, find out who to censor, spread misinformation. But it’s also really really difficult to censor everything now. There are so many different ways through now.

I love The News Agents, great exciting reporting. So I was disappointed that their AI special starts with a load of cliches and a weird new presenter. Then: surprise! what you’re listening to is AI! you can’t tell the difference can you? Except I really really could. pca.st/episode/4634...

Okay I know this is a joke but I did 100% download a backup copy of wikipedia back in February (and you can, too!) kiwix.org

Do you remember when it felt like the Internet wasn’t real, and things that happened there hadn’t really happened? Do you remember when it stopped feeling that way? (For me there were two things. First when I ordered a physical object online and it arrived circa… 1998?. Second was gamergate.)

you might enjoy this from yesterday. I do really like the opportunity to research things and the question was "mainstream Islam calls for the murder of apostates: am I wrong?" I love actual investigation and knowledge, it is wonderful.

Me, every day

London.

wow this is a wonderful photograph

I have dealt with my BIG FEELINGS about people saying mean things about London by writing this about 57 things I love in London. There were 100 things I loved, but it got too long for one email. London is inexhaustible. naomialderman.substack.com/p/57-things-...

this is vile. it is the worst racism of the worst part of the most hateful fundamentalist wing of ultra-Orthodox Judaism

I’m a fourth-generation Londoner. My great-grandparents came here in the 1890s and 1900s fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. Those who didn’t flee then all died in the Holocaust. London has been a welcoming, exciting, forward-looking, opportunity-filled, richly INTERESTING home for 135 years.

I love London so much. So much. Did you know that London has the lowest level of ethnic violence of any city of comparable size in the world? Multiculturalism has in fact worked here. They just don’t want it to be true because we happen to have a Muslim mayor.

I am so sorry to keep banging on and on about this but: “you can’t figure out whether this destruction is left wing or right wing, those words don’t seem to mean much anymore” is incredibly information crisis. Old allegiances dissolve and new ones have yet to coalesce in any intelligible way.

A good news story. :)

Robert Redford playing a gentle incarnation of death, coming for a frightened old woman in The Twilight Zone episode "Nothing in the Dark" (1962). An extraordinary performance then, terribly bittersweet today

that's such an interesting point! would you like to continue to interact, as I am prompting with my trailing question?

as we're talking about this, here's a thing I wrote about a harm-reduction approach to using an LLM for therapy/companionship. since Harvard Business Review says that in 2025 the NUMBER ONE USE for LLMs is 'therapy. naomialderman.substack.com/p/are-you-us...

“15m downloads a month and more than half their audience is under 35.” Good read on the success of The Rest Is History pod. Strikes me that mainstream broadcasters dumbing down history to “OMG #iconic” spoon-fed shite left a huge gap that they’re filling www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

this is, hands down, the best video I've seen on men's influencer content and it's not close either

I am (self-evidently) very interested in language. And also in technology. From that perspective, the rise of LLMs has created many new things for me to think about. One is: why is it that certain very small clusters of words are *clearly written by an LLM*? What is the quality of that writing?

Ok, found justification for an MP still to be using X.

God I hate reading chatty blogpost type things that are clearly written by an LLM. I think there are good uses for LLMs! But not for lifestyle/personal essay style writing which is ALL ABOUT VOICE. Ugh. This post brought to you by having been suckered into paying for an LLM-written thing.

mmmmm www.forbes.com/sites/abramb...

Not that I’m on there to get it first hand but it seems like the journalists and pundits who stayed decided there literally is no line, the owner of the site who *every day* proves how fucking terrible he is can apparently do absolutely anything and they will shrug and scoff at the idea of leaving

In the same vein: In 1980, there were just 250 mountain gorillas left in the world. Now, there are 1063. Cancer treatments are advancing so rapidly than oncologist now worn their patients that the customary five-year survival rate is no longer an accurate measurement of what to expect.

Remember, if you encounter what seems like an implausible survey finding, ask: 1. Were survey respondents selected randomly or was this an opt-in poll? 2. Could the results, especially for young adults, be driven by bogus respondents? Keep this post in mind: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... 🧪

among other things, just casually Sister Midnight is a beautiful film about how trans women and cis women are natural allies. on this it feels like a view from India of our whole hateful mishegas going "ffs how are you not cherishing trans women and even eg paying them give you a sacred blessing?"

read this and now I can electrocute people again