2023-10-17: The Revisitation
Arguing with interlocutors real and imagined
Revisiting Last Week, Part One
Circling back to my last post, the Israel-Hamas conflict seems, if anything, to have gotten even worse. There is something I thought was clear at the time, but seems perhaps to still require a little more clarification. I don’t want to pretend to be speaking with any expertise at all about the history and politics of the region. I do pay more attention than a typical American to that history and politics, but there is a massive gap between what I know and what I specialist knows. I am not a journalist nor an OSINT specialist and I am thankful for the people who do responsible, high-quality work, especially since serious OSINT work is associated with high levels of stress, including PTSD. I simply want to have appropriate levels of modesty about what I know.
That said, I am absolutely an expert on not wanting people to die. It’s very clear that what’s going on how is going to cost thousands of lives, most of them innocent lives by any meaningful standard. I said last time out that I thought it would take “genuinely great leadership” to promote a path to peace. My sense is that it’s possible for that leadership to take different shapes, but Hamas, which is a political embodiment of anger, does not appear to me to be that leadership. Yitzhak Rabin may have been one of those people, and I don’t think the guy now occupying his job who seems not to have been especially bothered by it is likely to provide that leadership, either. I am hoping that I am wrong.
Revisiting Last Week, Part Two
That said, I was somewhat heartened by things that I was seeing online. It seemed as though there was a real consensus that was very well-aligned with my own position, including Jewish, Muslim, and Palestinian people. It’s incumbent on the majority of us, who do sincerely want peace, to speak publicly and apply pressure as we are able. Smaller steps to a better world—though I guess I should note than Dan Drezner, actual expert, suggests it may not help very much.
I should say, though, that I was surprised by the tone of the things I was reading online until I realized that I wasn’t hitting Twitter. And, as you may have heard, it’s a dumpster fire over there, part of an ecosystem that has real-life consequences.
I know I am continuing to proselytize about BlueSky—in a way that even surprises me—but I am primarily there now and would encourage you to join me if you use any of the microblogging platforms. I have even noticed that there’s a little more fun in the space now, whether you’re looking for the best Alt 90s tracks:
(I am good with the love for “Hunger Strike,” Singles, “Rid of Me,” Throwing Copper, “Violet,” and [as noted earlier] “Only In Dreams”)
Or a thread of unpopular hot takes:
(Love “Boardwalk Empire,” still think “The Sopranos” is better)
Or the birth of a meme:
I had a short argument about the utility of enshittification as a concept, but I haven’t found even the slightest inclination to block anyone, where I end up having to block something like an account per minute on Twitter at this point.
In Brief
In the “I used to work around the corner from CNET and still have a real affinity for their former employees category:
Nicole Lee has (re)started up a new newsletter, giving a little shoutout to Molly Knight’s The Long Game, to which I am a subscriber.
Tim Stevens, who is my first pick for a car/car tech analyst, reflects on having had a Tesla Model Y for 25 months.
Tom Merritt did a Tom’s Top 5 asking his community about their favorite YouTubers. None of them are regulars for me, but I have at least watched a couple vids from all of them:
The hook is that they just sold a billion-dollar lottery ticket, but I’m going to point at this short piece on Frazier Park because I’ve sort of been fascinated by that Gorman/Lebec/Frazier Park/Lake of the Woods/Tejon Ranch area going back to when I started driving over the hill. I think most of us associate that area with the drive over the Grapevine, but if you get even slightly off the beaten path, the area is at once sort of Alpine Southern California, National Forest, and High Desert in fairly close proximity. I need a little more stuff in my life, but I sometimes wonder if I couldn’t be persuaded to live up there if it was there was a little more of a center somewhere up there. Ojai, maybe?
Your tax dollars at work (if you’re in Virginia, anyhow): The Virginia National Guard referred just under 2,000 people to authorities and found no fentanyl at all as part of Governor Youngkin’s $2 million deployment.
Michael Des Barres answers the allnightmenu.la questionnaire. I don’t think any of it would surprise you. I would guess it’s the Silverhead thing, but he has always seemed like a clear inspiration for Johnny Silverhand.
Tuba Sendic and Peter K. Hatemi find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that narcissists are overrepresented both among people who say that they would like to run for political office and those who actually run.
This comes with something of a trigger warning, but I really like both John Moe and Felicia Day (yes, you now have some idea of what kind of nerd I am) and Moe interviews Day for his Depresh Mode podcast.
Merriam-Webster explores eight Dungeons and Dragons terms.
Today’s job board:
Chipotle is hiring a Head of Insights and Analytics down in Fashion Island.
Alberto Acerbi needs a two-year postdoc for a spot at the Department of Sociology and Social Research in Trento. It can be filled remotely, though I would also be thinking really hard about living in Trento.
The Dodgers are hiring a Junior Data Engineer.
CNN is looking for a Data, Polling, and Election Analytics Senior Producer. In case it’s not obvious, this is an analytic role, not a television production role.
The Sports Section
This also revisits an old topic, but Trevor May’s retirement announcement on Twitch was truly awesome:
Kelsey McKinney/Defector: Is The Phillies’ Good Luck Charm A Dedication To Himbo Culture And Showing Clavicle?
San Marino may be the world’s world international soccer side (and yet a source of real national pride), but they hung in pretty well against Denmark today. I will also note Zealand Shannon trying desperately to win with them in FM23:
So long (for now) and thanks for all the fish!