So. The term anti-semitism was made up by anti-Jewish racist Germans in the 19th century. It was supposed to be a more “scientific-sounding” alternative to the older term, Judenhass (lit. “Jew-hatred”) that would be more palatable to the gentile German people. At the time (1870’s or so) few people in Europe were too much concerned with what was actually going on with Palestinians or Arabs in general.

This is why you see a lot of pro-Israel folks still use “anti-semitism” as shorthand for “anti-Jewish racism” today. The term, read literally, initially seems to include racism against all “Semitic” people as well (which is… what exactly? I truly don’t know, is it every ethnic group who speaks a Semitic language?). But the very term “anti-semitism” is just itself an old dog whistle for “jew-hatred” that is now becoming a cudgel that pro-Israeli folks use to bully folks into ignoring Israeli war crimes. Anyway

So what are we supposed to call the political ideology championed by Theodor Herzl? I wonder if he had anything to say about this himself. Anyway

I’m sure you also raise this criticism all the time when people are posting pro-Israel stuff.

TBH as a non-Tesla owner, Teslas are the only brand of cars that I’ve encountered that light up and verbally threaten me that they’re recording me when I walk by.

SpaceX was basically all him.

Anecdotally, I’ve personally spoken with many former & current SpaceX employees who would disagree with you. He’s mostly known for slowing shit down by interrupting their work with “disruptive” new layouts for assembly lines and then fucking off for another six months.

The car is fantastic. FSD is fantastic. Love the guy or hate him, it’s the best car I’ve ever owned by a significant margin.

As a car guy, this is wild, and makes me question if you’ve driven other electric cars. IMO Teslas aren’t that much fun to drive compared to other electric cars, and with the FSD thing that makes me think they’re primarily targeted at people who don’t like driving anyway. Which is fine, but like, IMO they have slow, grainy steering and overall feel like tanks in the bad way.

I think he has done a lot of good for our civilization with SpaceX and Tesla and bringing about the era of actual electric cars (which previously were perpetually always 10 years away)

I don’t think Musk made electric cars happen any faster. The delay was technical, caused by lack of lithium batteries, older batteries just couldn’t do the range. Once there were lithium batteries, lots of companies started making practical electric cars. We saw a renaissance in portable power tools at the same time for the same reason, and Musk isn’t involved in that industry at all (although if he was half the “industrialist” he claims to be, I think he would be).

He was right about the need to build out big capacity for building lithium batteries and charging stations, but hardly alone in saying this stuff, and mostly appropriated government money for these things rather than using his own.

The guy still makes an excellent car.

Not according to the crash statistics… 21% higher than average death rate in crashes (coming in 21st out of 26 compared brands) and that’s 2023 numbers, so before the cybertruck.

I’m against the death penalty, but obviously if it’s going to happen, the guillotine is the only acceptable method. Everything else is either unreliable, cruel, or both.

Uhhh surveillance definitely doesn’t prevent a thing

If you’re a Marxist-Leninist, you probably already know that soldiers in the Tsar’s imperialist army switching sides and becoming revolutionaries was an important part of the Bolshevik victory. Just something to think about, idk

That’s odd. I live in Seattle. In the summer it’s light until 10PM, and most of us think it’s extremely fun

I very much doubt people would adopt something like this within the same country

This is how they’ve been doing it in China for awhile now, and it seems… fine

There is actual metric time, it’s ten hours a day IIRC. Ten day “weeks,” ten “months” a year, etc. I think the French tried it briefly after the Revolution.

But if school doesn’t start at 7:30, then the sports teams won’t be able to practice after school!

In the same way that German and Italian fascists were inspired by American politics, the Hitler Youth were modeled on the Boy Scouts and many former Boy Scouts don’t love it when you point this out (ask me how I know).

I believe they’re saying that “no one in the USA gov’t cares about the consequences of raising the cost of gas to US consumers”

Seed-fund unions in underleveraged, corporate wage-theft-common industries, requiring only that the new unions to contribute parts of their dues back to the fund to accelerate more seed-funding of unions.

TBH unions already do some of this, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_(union_organizing) More would be good, of course!

The USA had the largest series of sustained protests in human history in 2020. Several of the largest one-off protests in world history have been in the USA in the last two years. Americans protest plenty, and get quite rowdy sometimes, even though we have a much higher chance of being murdered by police than French people do.

The difference? The French media engages this stuff, the American media suppresses it.

Also pretty impressive was the Iraqi foreign minister blocking the second shoe. Quick reflexes

He really is like everything bad about the mafia, with none of the good stuff

I mean, for the last ten years people have been telling me I’m a conspiracy theorist for saying that the DNC fucked over Sanders, so I appreciate this article for backing me up lol