Model welfare folks going nuts with excitement right now

There’s nothing wrong with having quiet-hours laws and enforcing them. The problem is when the criticism is framed in terms of groups by ethnic or national identity. Either the violations should be enforced, as with any other rule/law, or perhaps there could be some kind of policy change. All of that is worth talking about. My objection is to the idea that its appropriate to frame the problem in essentializing and racialized language. Suppose I have a dispute with my Jewish neighbor. He loves to grill his kosher meat every Saturday with his family. I don’t like the smell. Here is one way to frame this dispute: “My neighbor has a custom of grilling meat on Saturdays, but I don’t like it because the smell wafts into my house and I’m vegan.” Here is another “My JEW neighbor grills his JEW meat every Saturday because Jewish culture is just murderous and doesn’t care about animals like I and my culture do. He is such a piece of shit asshole, just like all of THOSE people.”

Which one sounds like a fair way to frame a discussion about a conflict between two people? Now obviously your initial comment didn’t say anything overtly racist like in my example, which is very extreme. But you framed it as a conflict between some anomalous THEM and the ‘local’ culture, a.k.a., US. The problem is subtler, but its the same problem.

“…there is living amongst us a non-German, foreign race, unwilling and unable to sacrifice its racial characteristics, to deny its feeling, thinking and striving, and which none the less possesses all the political rights that we ourselves have.”

It’s an odd hypothetical which posits the existence of a group that took the same role that the Jews did for Hitler - unable to assimilate because of cultural incompatibility, lack of loyalty to their nation-state, and this being true as a result of a self-isolation of the members of that community.

Or perhaps its a cheap shot to appeal to literal Nazis. How about the contemporary far-right?

“The Islamic culture is inferior to our Western culture… Mass immigration from Islamic countries means more crime, more terror, more anti-Semitism, and less freedom and democracy. Integration is impossible because Islam is not just a religion, but a totalitarian political ideology.”

It’s almost as if framing the problem as “the minority has big issues integrating” is in itself a kind of dogwhistle, a poisoning the well toward a racist explanation and therefore racist solution.

I don’t know how much this generalizes but I know that at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the doors were made large enough for Emperors and then Sultans to be able to enter the building with their horses and carriage.

Definitely reads like some Elders of Zion shit to me.

I appreciate that perspective, Weird! It’s certainly true that this is tragic in its own way.

This is a bit of a bizarre argument (in the article), despite that I agree with the conclusion. Like she is talking about all of the ‘human connection’ she has gotten through taxi/uber drivers, and all of the examples that she gives are of people who had to turn to taxi/uber driving out of desperation because their actual career path fell out from under them. I’m sure it makes for some interesting conversations, but is that really what we should be dreaming of? Having more opportunities for people to talk to about how they’re forced to drive uber because capitalism sucks?

“I must say that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ – quote tax the rich – spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs, and even the phrase from the ‘river to the sea’,” he said, referring to the controversial pro-Palestinian slogan.

A LOT to unpack here.

That’s interesting, as that would be the arrow I feel most confidently about. EA grew pretty explicitly out of Singer’s Giving Pledge and Giving What We Can book, and Will MacAskill’s (his student) networking with finance and tech bros. (That isn’t to say the tech bros weren’t just exploiting the idea for their own benefit.)

The rest of the arrows, I agree, it seems plausible to me but I have no hard evidence

I’m an idiot. Thank you!

I checked this article and the NBC one linked in the NY Post article, and they didn’t name the insurer? What the fuck are they holding water for this shitty company for?

Ok that’s good to know! Thanks!

My understanding (happy to be corrected) is that archive.ph is an archive.today mirror https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/417269/archive-today-started-including-malicious-ddos-code-on-its-site-what-should-we

Thank you, changed to upvote

I don’t trust archive.ph for security reasons. Can you just correct the original link? If not, no worries. I only commented to explain why I downvoted.

Link doesn’t work?

Not the main point at all of this article, but: “The price tag was also massive: the United Nations estimated that $33 billion would be needed to complete the Wall.” Still less than the US spent on the Iran War in less than a month.

Israel is almost certainly involved in this - either through pure fabrication, “opposition research”/digging up dirt, or some combination. But its also true that powerful men do shit like this all the time, and it isn’t automatically made up because it is someone we are ‘rooting for’. I feel like this is all the more reason why these prosecution teams need to be spread over several people, both so that if/when someone actually does do something shitty, or when someone is framed for doing something shitty, they can step aside with no delay or questions raised about the prosecution.

That being said, even if these accusations were/are true, what difference does that make to prosecuting Benjamin Netanyahu? They’re completely unrelated. It’s like saying labor unions are bad because Cesar Chavez was a rapist. Whataboutism.

Aww man now I feel bad, I was just trying to poke some fun at sociology, but y’all are out for blood!

I think a “stalemate” is more likely than you suspect - the Iranian and Israeli regimes both benefit from having the other one to demonize. I suppose regime change is the ideal goal, but even just more war to galvanize support around Netanyahu in an election year in Israel is a win for him.