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Let the Messiah In Nokia N95 8GB Tel Aviv, Israel Thursday, November 24th, 2011.
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Five minutes ahead of schedule. Right on schedule.
Dwight Schrute in The Office
HaShalom iPhone 13 Mini Tel Aviv, Israel Thursday, October 30th, 2025.
Plot of Gold iPhone 13 Mini St Ives, Cornwall, England Sunday, August 24th, 2025.
A Light Unto the Hillocks iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Thursday, August 7th, 2025.
A Simple Dog One iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Thursday, July 10th, 2025.
Fresh Circle iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Monday, July 7th, 2025.
Heavy Port Fence iPhone 13 Mini Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England Sunday, July 6th, 2025.
Gentle Stairway at Hove Lagoon iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 22nd, 2025.
Cauliflower on Wood iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Seaside Rounded View iPhone 13 Mini Brighton, East Sussex, England Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Exercise in Textures iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Saturday, May 10th, 2025.
New Dog Frolicking Brighton, East Sussex, England Monday, March 31st, 2025.
Remember the Good Old 1980s Arad, Israel Wednesday, February 5th, 2025.
Rauschenbike iPhone SE 2020 Brighton, East Sussex, England Tuesday, August 27th, 2024.
Lovely Rishpon iPhone SE 2020 Rishpon, Israel Tuesday, August 20th, 2024.
Late Night Kiryat Sharet iPhone SE 2020 Ra'anana, Israel Tuesday, August 13th, 2024.
Azrieli Structures iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Ladies & Matkal Tower iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Telawiwi #2! iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Sunday, August 11th, 2024.
Near Nevei Ne’eman iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Monday, August 5th, 2024.
A Spot of Mine iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Monday, August 5th, 2024.
Friday Market Near Carlebach iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Friday, August 2nd, 2024.
Crazy New Developments iPhone SE 2020 Tel Aviv, Israel Friday, August 2nd, 2024.
Beach Tableau iPhone SE 2020 Herzlia, Israel Wednesday, July 31st, 2024.
Eucalyptus with Dilapidation iPhone SE 2020 Hod Hasharon, Israel Tuesday, July 30th, 2024.
Kelly Maud along the River Adur iPhone SE 2020 Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England Sunday, June 16th, 2024.
2:55am UTC
Monday, December 29th, 2025
Light unto the nations: Israel launches the national Iron Beam laser defence system.
Good bonkers, I’m Adam S Khan, S for Samuel.
As a web architect I produce Engaging OS, a work system platform for organizations; and RSSDeck, the browsing platform for the rss’d of us. I build using Nuxt, Apollo and Directus.
I live in Brighton, England with Irit and our kids and dog Kelly Maud.
Thanks for dropping by — it’s my pleasure to host you.
Monday, December 29th, 2025
Light unto the nations: Israel launches the national Iron Beam laser defence system.
Thursday, December 25th, 2025
Domain-Driven Design
Eric Evans
Emerson introduced one of his essays noting how sometimes you read an idea that is disturbing because it’one you yourself that you ignored. Eric Evans’s book, now an acronym in the industry, DDD, is such on steroids; I’m sure many like me have felt the correctness of this instinct to build software according to a model of the reality where it will be used, but Evans picks and picks at it. His insistence on the power of language seemed slightly outlandish, but given the power and ubiquity of LLMs today, proves eerily prescient.
As I recall, it’s marred by diving too deep into specific examples in the final parts of the book, and I stopped reading.
Wednesday, December 24th, 2025
An important timely piece: “The Return of the Jewish Question” by David Azerrad in Compact Magazine. All of this should be obvious but perhaps that is why it’s important.
That the average Fox News watcher is utterly oblivious to the JQ only enhances its appeal. The JQ is a kind of gnosis, a secret knowledge that allows the enlightened few to pierce through the illusions of ordinary politics and grasp the ultimate reality.
Thursday, December 18th, 2025
Call it Jewsonia: the week that Norman Podhoretz passes on, I’m sure he’d be pleased that Commentary Magazine published “The New American Jews: A manifesto for change, survival, and national flourishing” by Tal Fortgang and Ella Fortgang.
> More [Jews] should also consider affordable, growing cities with small Jewish populations such as Omaha and Reno. This is an economic issue with a significant political dimension: We will continue to be taken for granted as constituents as long as we remain clustered…
It’s a kick-ass—not to mention world-saving—manifesto.
Monday, December 1st, 2025
Alchemy
Rory Sutherland
Read by the mellifluous, or at least fabulously raconteur author, Alchemy serves to me as the contemporary vital yin to J. Storrs Hall’s Where is My Flying Car yang. Yes, we must overcome our engineering slump and get back on track towards the Jetsons, but at the same time, Sutherland pretty conclusively persuades, we leave a lot of psycho-physics on the table.
After all, what matters to living creatures is not facts but our perception of those facts, and we must stop neglecting this aspect of societal (and any other) improvement and progress. But because physical improvements are easier to measure than psychological ones, and psychological ones are not obvious and often counter-intuitive, we lean towards faster trains rather than other improvements around a journey that could shorten the entire journey. It’s basically a manifesto for bringing marketers and advertisers into decision-making usually reserved for accounts and lawyers.
One choice sentence:
Sometimes I have a £3.29 headache rather than a 79p one.
This is not merely fatuous; Rory backs it up with an ingenious defence of the placebo effect, pointing out that sometimes we don’t get ill until we’ve finished a big task, that we have a healing mode that focuses energies there.
Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Demonstrating the relative seriousness of Israeli versus British media discourse, The Independent vs The Jerusalem Post on Trump’s UN speech. The former characterized it as “an extraordinary tirade” and “a spectacular outburst” and worried that “the speech risked all of the goodwill from last week’s historic state visit.” The latter:
Trump held up a mirror to the world. He did not seek to please, did not seek to appear enlightened, but exposed what other leaders try to hide. For him, leadership is not the art of compromise but the courage to tell the truth.
Friday, April 18th, 2025
At JCPA, Oded Ailam pens “Why Israel Should Embrace its Role as a Regional Power”.
A country that acts like a leader attracts others. Countries prefer to affiliate with a strong, stable power that leads with purpose and confidence. By projecting strength, not just militarily but diplomatically and economically, Israel can become a pole of attraction in the Middle East – for states, investments, and influence.
I’d like to see stronger initiatives to partner with similar countries. Finland to me seems a great target for seduction. About the same size, also fiercely independent, innovative, threatened — as liberals they lean pro-Palestinian but with better engagement I think they could be shown where true liberalism lies.
Thursday, March 6th, 2025
As a young advisor to then-Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Madrid Conference in 1991, Dore brought his policy and national security expertise. Dore was a firm believer in the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, and the possibility of a federal-confederal, security-based approach to the Palestinian issue. Dore’s profound strategic concern about preventing future attacks from the East led him to pioneer a revival of General Yigal Alon’s defensible borders concept, which he advanced following the 1967 war.
On Montaigne by Jared Marcel Pollen in The Point.
Montaigne’s depiction of his mind “from day to day, from minute to minute” is sometimes regarded as his method (i.e. his intellectual process), but it is also and equally the formation of a literary style: in letting his mind wander freely in the act of writing, he spontaneously creates a form that allows him to depict that wandering.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025
In Mosaic, A pair of important lengthy pieces of where we’re at in Israel: The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7 by Shany Mor, and To Save Itself from International Isolation, Israel Must Hold On to the West Bank by Rafi DeMogge. While both are problematic — DeMogge drums in a two-step argument that territorial withdrawals are actually harmful to Israel diplomatically but is thin on other points, and Mor throat-clears by it seems to me unfairly presenting the settler movement as irrational before focusing on the failure of peace-processing — together they touch on each other to paint a developed picture of the situation.
The idea that a Palestinian living in Palestinian territory under a Palestinian government is somehow a refugee from Palestine is a deadly contrivance, the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Shany Mor, The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7
Sunday, January 5th, 2025
This New York Times (brilliantly designed) interview with Secretary Anthony Blinken cap-ends the Biden Administration. On Gaza, he says:
My goal has been to end this conflict in Gaza in a way that makes sure that Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again, that ends the suffering of people and does it in an enduring way that brings the hostages home.
I’m not happy about the order here, but okay. But in the next answer he continues:
First, you’ve got to end the conflict in Gaza.
These two positions are contradictory, and that has been the failure of the Biden Administration here. In pressing for the conflict to end NOW, regardless of victory, ensures that his previously-stated goals — ending the suffering of people, enduringly, and with hostages home — will not be met.
There is an immediacy sickness in western discourse. Wanting things NOW, Peace NOW, return the hostages NOW, is infantile and counterproductive. Disdaining plans is akin to disdaining institutions.
Yes, Davar still exists as a publication of Israel’s Histadrut. There’s a great piece by Or Paz-Ivry published in February, 2024 entitled “The Path Not Taken: Yigal Allon’s Approach to the Gaza Strip”.
Now more than ever, Israel is in need of an Allon-esque approach to security, what he referred to as “a strategy of peace.” As part of this conception, the possibility of Jordan playing the stabilizing role that Allon suggested in his plan must be reexamined, as many of the geopolitical conditions that Allon described at the time still exist today, despite the passage of time. These conditions lead to the conclusion that Jordan must be a central partner in any political solution…
I was saying this myself 20+ years ago. A pity in my ignorance I had no idea there was a strong thread of thought along these lines, articulated by a major Israeli figure whom history has regrettably sidelined. I am an Allonite.
Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
In reading what would be Yitzhak Rabin’s final speech to the Knesset, the Prime Minister reassures his colleagues regarding the Oslo Accords:
The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
He goes on to argue:
An examination of the maps and of the paragraphs of the agreement regarding the additional stages of the redeployment shows that Israel retains complete freedom of action, in order to implement its security and political objectives relating to the permanent solution, and that the division of the areas gives the IDF and the security branches complete security control in Areas B and C, except for the urban areas.
But this belies what the accords state in Annex IV: Protocol Concerning Legal Affairs, Article I.a, namely that Area C “except for the Settlements and the military locations, will be gradually transferred to the Palestinian side in accordance with this Agreement”.
It seems the idea was for Israel to leave Areas A and B, allow Israeli forces to enter Area B to protect Israelis, and leave for a future date a negotiation over how much of C will also be handed over. The text covering this is in Article XIII: Security:
Further redeployments from Area C and transfer of internal security responsibility to the Palestinian Police in Areas B and C will be carried out in three phases, each to take place after an interval of six months, to be completed 18 months after the inauguration of the Council, except for the issues of permanent status negotiations and of Israel’s overall responsibility for Israelis and borders.
That is a big “except for” yet it appears in the sentence as a kind of afterthought — “to be completed except for some important bits”
The Area C handover never happened yet the Palestinians nonetheless presume, along with pretty much all of the international community except some Americans, that it belongs to them. Israel is presented as oppressing the Palestinians by not letting them build there; theoretical dollar amounts are placed on natural resources that the Palestinians are being blocked from exploiting in Area C, like some sort of bill to Israel that is being added up.
The question now is whether it would better to clarify all this or leave it in the current limbo. I would say it does; if Israel unilaterally annexes some of Area C, as the Likud campaigned on in 2019, that does not preclude it from annexing more later. The status quo seems to be however that both sides are willing to sneak around Area C, each hoping the other will somehow eventually disappear.
At Bar Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center, Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal (recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking) is concerned that in Lebanon Israel has “launched an operation against infrastructure, not against an enemy”.
Thursday, December 19th, 2024
Sometimes one must check in with the other side, such as it is. So this is “Prof. John Mearsheimer on the Fall of Assad: Syria Will Be in CHAOS For the Forseeable Future” on Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground Vimeo channel. With Mearsheimer’s erudition, University of Chicago credentials and light New York area accent, now I understand why he is taken seriously, yet even he must politely push back against this charlatan Rattansi with the constant bitter laugh, who signs off with:
Continued condolences to those surviving UK/US/EU-armed genocide here in this region. We’ll be back on Monday with the legendary Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.
It was worth having 28 minutes on just for that. What twaddle.
Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
In The Jerusalem Post, Gil Murciano, CEO of the Mitvim Institute, pleas for Israeli engagement with the new Syria, deriding “splendid isolation” and the “village in the jungle” mentality. For one, if we don’t, the Iranians will be back in full force, willing to help out.
In retrospect, when I used to blog more, this issue was perhaps my main one outside of navel-gazing. Of course, hanging back is the lesson of Menachem Begin’s intervention in Lebanon in the early 1980s; and when he intervened, he was breaking an already-established norm.
There’s no doubt that Israel is in the center of the region, and her actions affect others. So there could be even more authority garnered by being very obviously clearly not interested in intervening in other countries, which is an unusual stance. But hasn’t that Rubicon now been crossed? Perhaps not; Israel’s shockwaves affecting others is not quite so new as it seems; regimes fall after wars with Israel — that’s how Nasser and Assad himself came to power.
I’m torn; while I tend towards the engagement direction, prudence suggests hanging back and staying out of the maelstrom of Middle Eastern affairs as much as is feasible. How much does the Powell Doctrine — you break it, you own it — apply?
Tuesday, December 10th, 2024
John Podhoretz wonders what can explain Obama-Biden policy towards Iran. Michael E. Ginsberg has an answer in American Greatness: “The Biden Administration and Iran: DEI Manifested as Foreign Policy”:
Iran is DEI catnip. For the DEI crowd, Iran today is a non-Western, Third World country, the alleged victim of Western meddling and colonialism that threw off its supposedly Western-imposed chains and established a government whose defining characteristic was hostility to the West. It was the perfect petri dish for a new foreign policy rooted in Western self-abasement, guilt, and deference to “indigenous” voices.
The resulting behavior is a vivid example of the cul-de-sac you go up when you willfully defy reality this way. And when you are responsible for the security and flourishing of the free world, it’s a scandal for the ages.
Friday, December 6th, 2024
David P. Goldman’s back! His piece in Law & Liberty, “China as It Is”, is educational and deft.
The geography of China meant that flood control could not be undertaken locally. It required the full resources of an empire across the 8,000 miles of the Yellow and Yangtse Rivers, not counting tributaries. That was China’s equivalent of Manifest Destiny.
Saturday, November 30th, 2024
Michael Beckley of Tufts gives a mind-blowingly impressive 37-minute lecture on China hitting a great wall.
Thursday, November 28th, 2024
The Reverse Shot’s review by Julien Allen of A Matter of Life & Death does the movie justice. Some 75 years after the movie was made in part apparently to bolster post-war morale and Anglo-American relations, its dive into the relative merits of the USA and the UK is a surprising delight. The visual effects too are wonderfully crafted — it must have opened the minds of viewers such as Stanley Kubrick to the standards possible if you care enough.
Friday, November 22nd, 2024
The guy with the great hair at Web Dev Simplified has made a “How To Handle Permissions Like A Senior Dev” video which addresses the issues that my Engaging OS handles. He comes to a slightly different solution, relying on a third-party setup, something I hadn’t even thought of doing, abstracting out the permissions. And I think I’ve been made to understand that attributes are not just a better and more detailed way to organize the user/role’s permissions, but liberate the user/role from primacy in handling permissions.
Friday, November 15th, 2024
Grades reveal who is persistent, self-disciplined, and compliant—but they don’t reveal much about emotional intelligence, relationship skills, passion, leadership ability, creativity, or courage.
David Brooks, How the Ivy League Broke America
Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
The turnaround had perhaps begun, not a moment too soon: beloved Boeing sheds DEI. This pernicious practice may not have been the original source of the rot at Boeing but its acceptance at an engineering firm was at very least a symptom.
Thursday, October 31st, 2024
Interesting erudition on Jews and Adventists [PDF].
Monday, October 28th, 2024
The Knesset has finally banned UNRWA, the humanitarian agency serving as strategic weapon against Israel since 1949.
Sunday, October 27th, 2024
Jordan B on Donald J. You know what, i think it’s all gonna be okay.
Friday, October 25th, 2024
The Manhattan Institute surveys American Jews. The more Jews attend synagogue, the more they support Trump. Only the Orthodox care most about Israel — and are the only Republican Jews. As a whole, American Jews are mostly sticking with the Democrats despite qualms. Conservatives most care about the economy and abortion equally. Reform Jews care most about abortion (wishing to enable it, presumably).
Sunday, October 20th, 2024
On Sky News, former Head of MI6 Sir John Sawyer disagrees with David Patraeus’s characterization of Sinwar’s takeout being more important than that of Osama Bin Laden — because as opposed to being “a global struggle against the West” Hamas is merely limited to “the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank”. I presume Sky News asked this question in order to get this answer. And it perfectly encapsulates my personal fundamental incompatibility with the established British viewpoint.
Saturday, October 19th, 2024
In Newsweek, Spengler on Orban’s European Zionism:
European nationalists look to Israel as a beacon of hope. It’s the only high-income country with a fertility rate above the 2.1 breakeven level — so far above breakeven at three children per female that its working-age population will more than double from today’s 4.5 million to 11 million by the end of this century, according to UN demographers.
As a member of a scientific advisory board to the Hungarian government, I have had the opportunity to speak to numerous high-ranking officials, and can attest that their admiration for Israel and the Jewish people is sincere, principled and deep. They view Israel as “the exemplar and paragon of a nation,” as Franz Rosenzweig put it.
Liberal American Jews cannot wrap their minds around the new philo-semitism among conservative European nationalists.
No further Ribbonfarm story of ribbonfarm has been, in a small one-of-a-million threads way, the story of civilization itself, through the 2007-24 period. Venkatesh Rao writes:
The story of ribbonfarm has been, in a small one-of-a-million threads way, the story of civilization itself, through the 2007-24 period.
There’s even wit in the laudatory comments.
The path out of loneliness is always a path of action.
Bret Stephens, If Israel Is Alone, What Do We Do About It?
By Armin Rosen in Unherd, the most important thing I’ve read about Sinwar and his passing:
A significant body of facts suggests that Sinwar believed he would succeed in destroying the state of Israel on or about October 7, 2023. A few years before the attacks, he co-sponsored a conference at a Gaza City hotel entitled “Promise of the Hereafter: Post-Liberation Palestine” in which participants discussed topics such as the enslavement of educated Jews and the mass execution of alleged Arab collaborators in the aftermath of Israel’s imminent violent destruction.
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
Great thread: To whom to send condolences on the death of Sinwar. A lot of Greta Thunberg.
Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
I keep going back to it to see if he’s reconsidered, so I guess I need a link to it. Paul Graham, startup hero, in his sharp and well exquisite style, tweeted on October 9th:
65 doctors, nurses, and paramedics told the New York Times what they saw in Gaza. What they saw was a pattern of children being shot in the head.
PG’s artful repetition of the fragment “what they saw” expresses his suppressed fury at Israel’s ongoing moral repugnance. I wonder, once this blood libel is debunked, if he will revisit this thread and more importantly his own priors. In such a sharp mind it’s difficult to imagine the thought framework required to arrive at this fury. PG presumes it’s true; wanting to believe it’s true requires a lot of scaffolding; actually believing it’s true requires still more.
[Update 2024 Oct 19:] Nope, he’s still at it, retweeting more of this kind of thing. Though the only thing he’s tweeted on the topic himself since is this on October 17th:
When I first saw this tweet I was horrified. Then I read the account name and I was relieved. This is from 1940. Then I remembered that the same things are happening right now, and I was horrified again.
He’s referring to this tweet from @RealTimeWWII:
Kennington Park rescue worker: “Whole thing’s blown to bits- heads, arms, legs, feet lying about. Only way you can tell girls from the men is their hair.”
Monday, October 14th, 2024
Tal Becker, a great thinker, on Call Me Back.
Monday, October 7th, 2024
Pretty troubling — in this interview with Hugh Hewitt, who asks repeatedly and gets the same answer again, Trump believes a deal can be made with Iran once they are sufficiently impoverished.
I would have had a deal a long time ago, because they were bust. They were totally busted. They were ready to make a deal. They would have made a deal. … I would have gotten, in my opinion, 50/50 chance, maybe more than that, Iran would have been in the Abraham Accords. They wanted to make a deal so bad until we had that phony election.
To his credit, Hewitt pushes back with: “I think they’re fanatics, and you can’t deal with them.”
The Jerusalem Post reports on Hamas Rape Tunnels of Gaza posters being put up in Tube stations. Generally I abhor the the mournful, sanctimonious, dull tone of British Jewish statements, but this is excellently acerbic. Very well done (I see in the bottom right corner they even put their names to it, that is unusual).
Unpleasant but necessary: this fellow Pataramesh provides sober intel on Iranian capabilities. He seems to think they are the good guys. He’s arguing that Iran’s missile strike was calibrated and limited and sends signals that it can do more.
On Twitter, Dan Linneaus writes (he’s pinned this one to the top of his profile):
Taking out Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities puts the cart before the horse..
He provides more detail here and here. This all makes sense to me: defang them first; this has the added benefit, apart from being smart, of doing what Biden asks: not hitting the oil nor nuclear facilities. Yet.
Israel just pulled off this snake-charming trick against Hizballah, degrading them for a year before delivering a hammering burst of coups de grâce; can it be done again. You know, I bloody think so.
Saturday, October 5th, 2024
Khamenei’s sermon translated in English at his homepage.
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
Good piece looking at things more from Iran’s perspective in Asia Times, “Iran has everything to lose in direct war with Israel” by Shahram Akbarzadeh.
Fighting Israel is very much a pillar of state identity in Iran. The Iranian political establishment is set up on the principle of challenging the United States and freeing Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. Those things are ingrained in the Iranian state identity. So, if Iran doesn’t act on this principle, there’s a serious risk of undermining its own identity.
Things have come down to the wire, as they do. Reportedly, the Israeli cabinet has decided on its response after a 4-hour meeting. Going by experience it will be shock and awe.
David Goldman often looks to demographics. “Improbable as it may seem,” he writes, “the core scenario according to present trends will make Israel the economic center of the Middle East sometime toward the end of the century.”
Goodness, Niall Ferguson on Bibismarck.
David Goldman tours the world with Caroline Glick with an emphasis on Israel and China.
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024
Here we fucking go, this didn’t take long.
“We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us (G7 nations) agree that they have a right to respond but the response but they should respond proportionally Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One.”
One advantage of striking back immediately would have been not having to deal with this bullshit.
On the other hand, Biden is reliable; if he says he does not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, then an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites it is. And they made a show of helping repel the attacks. And they may put in place more sanctions against Iran. And if they are willing to get out of the way, as they have eventually done each step of the journey, that is likely enough.
Stories like The Wall Street Journal’s “Israeli Response to Iran’s Attack to Set Course of Widening War” are faintly ridiculous in their discourse of retaliation and restraint. A typical quote:
“Israel will seek to reinforce the idea that its technological superiority and military skill allow it to strike any target in Iran,” said Norman Roule, who served as the top U.S. intelligence officer on Iran from 2008 to 2017. But Israel is likely to avoid striking targets that could spark a full-scale war with Iran, Roule said
Wrong. Israel is no longer playing the game of retaliation — and has stated so explicitly, as least vis-a-vis Hizballah — nor of message-sending. Whatever happens next is not retaliation but simply the next move in an existential conflict that is therefore indeed all-out war, albeit less visibly so than most due to the complexity of the theater. Further quotes in the article are more on track: “In the end, decision makers in Tehran settled for the idea that restraint would not help to avoid a bigger confrontation anyway,” they quote Walter Posch, a senior researcher with the National Defense Academy in Vienna.
Remember, Netanyahu gave what is in retrospect the most credible wartime speech ever at the UN, one that demands being pored over given that even while he spoke Nasrallah was being assassinated at his order. Much of that halo remains for a subsequent video Netanyahu made to the Iranian people, in which Israel’s long-serving Prime Minister tells them they’ll be free “sooner than people think”. I choose to take this not as credibility-spending bluster but rather with credibility-maintaining seriousness.
After all, Israel had spent much strategic energy on the devastating, ingenious take-out of Hizballah — We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years, was the IDF’s line — but Hizballah is merely Iran’s proxy. It strains credulity therefore that the forthcoming operations against Iran will be any less historic and gob-smacking. Israel would not have begun Operation New Order with the pager attack against Hizballah’s fighters without having in place the plan for Tehran.
Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
Netanyahu: “When Iran is finally free — and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different.”
Ohad Merlin’s Indigenous Pact:
Israel’s challenge in the next stage is to create a mirror image of [Iran’s] bloody proxy war. Everywhere Iran has sent its arms – that’s where Israel needs to forge alliances and contribute to the cutting of the regime’s arms. Following Ben-Gurion’s “Periphery Alliance” and Begin’s “Minority Alliance” policies, Israel must now forge the “Indigenous Alliance” between the Jewish people and other indigenous peoples and religious communities in the Middle East who are suffering under the oppression of Khamenei and his emissaries throughout the region: Druze, Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis, Christian denominations, anti-regime Shiites – and fight the Islamic Republic together.
Been wondering who is this Khaled Hassan on the Twitters. My pet theory: there’s gonna be a lot more converts to Judaism like him once this damn war is won. It’s gonna be like moving to the New World.
Hemorrhaging Money?
UPDATE: Concerns Mounts as Shia's Erratic Behavior Escalates...
She uncovered terrifying lab hidden in California, with alleged ties to China...
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People 65 and older can get better with age, study shows. This is the key...
Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming, Ancient DNA Confirms...
LANDMARK DECISION: HARMED KIDS, TEENS...
Zuck pivots to 'small business'...
Influencer arrested for 'staging her kidnapping' to boost follower count...
TSA to begin closing airports...
White House turns down Musk's offer to pay workers during DHS shutdown...
'Homeland' watchdog warned of risks in airport shoes-off policy. Report got buried...
Texas city has just few months of water left -- and insatiable industry demand...
Colbert Co-Writing New 'LORD OF THE RINGS' Movie...
LA jury finds META, YOUTUBE negligent in social media addiction trial...
After the DHS Shutdown
Chicago Killing Is 'Laken Riley 2.0'
Why Elect GOP Majorities If They Can't Pass SAVE America Act?
Trump Still Can't Decide Whether His War Is a War
Controlling the Money Is Crucial in an Iran Deal
Get Dangerous, Unqualified Truckers Off the Roads Now
Then They Came for the Immigrant Truckers
Go Outside: A Place To Visit, When the World Goes Mad
Small Window for U.S., Iran Talks--All Eyes Are on Friday
Tony Dolan's Other Evil Empire
Passover Reminds Us Not To Rely on Miracles for Safety
Not Funny: Why Late Night Ratings Are So Low
Interviewing Leaders of Women's March, No Kings
What a Total Joke California Democrats Have Become
Neocons Make a Mistake To Ignore Serious Skeptism on Iran
Links for the intellectually curious, ranked by readers.
Show HN: Nit – I rebuilt Git in Zig to save AI agents 71% on tokens
False claims in a widely-cited paper
Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog's chip reunites with him after 11y
Show HN: A plain-text cognitive architecture for Claude Code
"Disregard That" Attacks
Running Tesla Model 3's computer on my desk using parts from crashed cars
Health NZ staff told to stop using ChatGPT to write clinical notes
The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos
Sodium-ion EV battery breakthrough delivers 11-min charging and 450 km range
FreeCAD v1.1
Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy
90% of Claude-linked output going to GitHub repos w <2 stars
ARC-AGI-3
Show HN: Optio – Orchestrate AI coding agents in K8s to go from ticket to PR
Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
How Is the Iran War Impacting Gaza?
More Evidence that U.S. Was Right to Act before Iranian Missile Threat Grew
U.S. Must Extract Ironclad Commitments from Iran on Nuclear Disarmament and Missile Limits or Risk Watching the Regime Recover
The Alternative to Wars of Choice Is Wars with Our Backs Against the Wall
Why the Iran War Should Not Cause Higher Gas Prices in the U.S.
Iran's Military Spokesperson to U.S.: "Don't Dress Up Your Defeat as an Agreement"
Israeli Ambassador Sounds Red Alert Siren at UN
Israel Keeps Targeting Iran's Ballistic Missiles
IDF Expands Raids in Southern Lebanon
Israeli Woman Killed in Hizbullah Rocket Strike
Iranian Cluster Bomb Wounds Nine People in Bnei Brak
Israeli Officials Doubt Iran Will Accept U.S. Ceasefire Terms
Iran Arrests over 1,000 Individuals Connected to "Enemy" Networks
Iran Refuses Talks with Trump Negotiators Witkoff and Kushner
The War Is Going Better than You Think
History of ‘forever’ chemicals is written in Antarctic snow
Decadal-scale droughts disrupted the African Humid Period in the Sahara
Extreme climate outcomes could still occur with just 2 °C of global warming
Testosterone promotes growth of a type of brain tumour in young boys
AI scientists are changing research — institutions, funders and publishers must respond
Charting the human brain’s lifelong functional organization
Who let the wolves in? Genetic record for domestic dogs pushed back by 5,000 years
Remembrance of inflammations past
Exposed phosphatidylserine is an inhibitory molecule in T cell exhaustion
Ectopic NMDAR expression in cancer unmasks germline-encoded autoimmunity
Dominant clones leverage developmental epigenomic states to drive ependymoma
Genomic history of early dogs in Europe
Can China keep up its extraordinary research growth?
Why insects aren't huge: a new challenge to a decades-old idea
Superluminal correlations in ensembles of optical phase singularities
Syrian Kurds return home to celebrate Nowruz for the first time since exile
Iran missile strikes wound over 100 in two south Israel towns
They beat us with whips: Sudan RSF detainees tell of horrors in El Fasher
Iran ready to cooperate for Gulf maritime safety, IMO representative says
One killed after fire in vehicles near Israel’s Galilee, emergency service says after strikes from Lebanon
Trump threatens Iranian power grid over Hormuz; Iran vows to hit US energy, water facilities
Projectile causes explosion near vessel off UAE’s Sharjah: UK monitor
64 killed in attack on Sudan health care facility: WHO
A Gulf Suez Canal? Bypassing the Strait of Hormuz may be harder than its advocates suggest
From Gaza Strip to Lebanon, doctor races against time to treat war-wounded children
A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
Reclaiming Liberty & Equality: What the Founders Got Right—and What We Forgot (with Professor Robert George)
City Journal PodcastDo Mamdani's Wife's Posts Really Matter?
Not as such, but her past views are part of a broader milieu of radicalism around the mayor.In the Iran War Debate, “Legality” Is a Red Herring
A strong historical precedent of limited unilateral presidential military action—coupled with nearly a half century of Iranian aggression—provides more than enough legal justification for Operation Epic Fury.The LaGuardia Crash Is a Warning
Those in charge have become complacent—and they’re abusing sturdy, functional systems.California’s Tax Proposal Is Already Backfiring
The state has lost an estimated $536 billion in wealth.
Robert Trivers reveled in explaining the contradictions of the human condition, and he himself was a mess of them. Steven Pinker explains
As Francis Bacon put it in 1597: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”
In the ’60s Richard Hofstadter identified a “paranoid style.” Today’s version of that impulse, a “woke style,” is similarly inescapable — even on the Right
Long fact, literary nonfiction, narrative nonfiction: The genre is hard to define, essential, and imperiled. Paul Elie explains
Constantine Cavafy preferred mystery, candlelight, and shadow. His biographers are still squinting
In response to AI, artists and critics are increasingly retreating to a Romantic conception of art, but there are problems with that defense
Marc Andreessen says introspection is a Viennese import from the 1920s. Montaigne, Bacon, and Descartes beg to differ
Euro, Chinese yuan to end US dollar dominance, top economist says
Life in Iran illustrates shifting realities amid US-Israel war
Iran war could boost China’s ‘petroyuan’ and weaken US dollar dominance, analysts say
DOJ settles with ex-Trump adviser Flynn for US$1.2 million over ‘historic injustice’
Trump to skip CPAC for first time in decade amid war with Iran
Why China’s strategy to stay out of Iran war is working – and crisis may spur opportunity
French court sentences Islamic scholar to 18 years in prison for rape
US offers US$3 million to breach financial fortress of Haiti’s gangs
‘We are in agony’: Savannah Guthrie makes tearful appeal for abducted mother
Records in Trump documents case raise concerns over business conflict, lawmaker says
Brain candy for Happy Mutants
This guy used AI to document his grandmother's life on a personal Wikipedia and now you can, too
A clown fought a robot in 1897, and we can finally watch it
Unknown traders made a fortune shorting oil 15 minutes before Trump reversed Iran threat
The autism spectrum has 39 dimensions, and every profile is unique
Second Duggar brother faces criminal charges involving children
Toyota ad offers critical purchase information
Thieves steal Sea Scouts sailboat, leave worse one behind
Most AI prompts are weak: this subscription can fix that for $200
Learn a new language the fun way with Qlango's gamified app
Meadow is a small square smartphone with a few useful apps
Seven Stories Press compiles "Hands Off Iran" reading list
Iran refuses to deal with Kushner and Witkoff any longer
Feds threaten to pull funding unless SJSU bans trans athlete policy
OpenAI shutters Sora, continues to burn money
Solve for the China tech equilibrium
Wednesday assorted links
What should I ask Katja Hoyer?
An economic framework for space immigration
Ryan Hauser interviews me in print
Tuesday assorted links
Johan Fourie interviews me at University of Stellenbosch
Physician Incomes and the Extreme Shortage of High IQ Workers
On the Giving Pledge
The rise of China as a global innovator in pharma (incentives matter)
What should I ask David Baszucki?
Monday assorted links
Oil versus Ice Cream
When will “the research paper” disappear in economics?
Paraguay trend of the day
Rumors and news on everything Apple since 1997
How to use Playlist Playground to build Apple Music playlists in seconds
This Meta smartglasses-detecting app is a great model for Apple Glass developers to follow
Elgato Prompter XL review -- simply the teleprompter for Apple users to buy
Apple Vision Pro trade secret lawsuit reaches settlement
Google & Meta found liable for social media addiction
Upcoming 3% Big Tech tax in Poland may leave Apple some wiggle room
Get AirPods 4 from $99, AirPods Pro 3 for $199 during Amazon's Big Spring Sale
Apple is distilling Google Gemini into smaller chunks for on-iPhone AI processing
Developers finally get more App Store data from Apple
Ugreen NASync iDX6011 Pro NAS review: The right kind of overkill
M4 iPad Air review: Middle of the road is the best place to be
There's an app for that - Iranians monitor air strikes with crowdsourced data
Opinions on corporate and brand identity work.
Announced: Brand New will Shift to Subscription Model
Spotted: New Logo for Blue Islands
Linked: Louis Vuitton Architecture
Noted: New Name and Logo for St. Louis City SC
Reviewed: Friday Likes 339: From Studio MPLS, Wade and Leta, and Unifikat Design Studio
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for Vitkus Clinic by Tandemo
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for Netgen by IDnaGroup
Linked: Biden &Harris &Decimal
Noted: New Logo and Identity for Correos de México by Carl Forsell
Reviewed: New Logo and Identity for BERA by How & How
Spotted: New Logo for Playtika
Spotted: New Logo and Identity for The 19th by Page 33 Studio
Linked: Objects may be Closer than they Ap-pear
Noted: New Logo and Identity for Zappos Adaptive by Eric&Todd
Reviewed: New Logo and Identity for Lot61 by Smörgåsbord
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Indian government probes CCTV espionage operation linked to Pakistan
Datacenter batteries are selling out years in advance, because AI, says Panasonic
GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all
AI supply chain attacks don’t even require malware…just post poisoned documentation
Scammers have virtual smartphones on speed dial for fraud
Jen Easterly, cybersecurity's 'relentless optimist,' hopes feds come back to RSAC next year
Only Trump can decide when cyberwar turns into real war
Meta cuts about 700 jobs as it shifts spending to AI
Oracle: AI agents can reason, decide and act - liability question remains
Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros
OpenAI now gets to decide which type of product assassin it will become
Firefox 149 adds a free VPN and finally plays nice with Linux dialogs
experiments in refactored perception
Ribbonfarm is Retiring
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be my 50th birthday. There will be one final roundup post before […]Truth-Seeking Modes
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive at a dispositive “winning” right […]Intellectual Menopause
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny than the more familiar one we know as midlife […]
