Between the destruction of Twitter as a platform of consequence and my good fortune that most of my Facebook contacts are sane (and I can mute the others for 30 days at a time), I haven't seen much of the disinformation and propaganda about the Hamas pogrom and Israeli response that others have reported on. But I have read some good commentary that recognizes the context of the current conflict, particularly that its outlines haven't changed one bit in at least 3,000 years.
Before I highlight some of the commentary I found useful, even if I didn't agree with it completely, I should remind everyone that Israel has a right to exist. After the Romans expelled Jews from what is now Israel, Jews have been persecuted and killed simply for being Jews in every country they've lived in, including the United States. I don't think any other ethnic group has lived with that kind of threat for as long and in as many places, ever. So, after Nazis killed 6 million Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, the United Nations agreed to turn over the historically Jewish lands inside the former British colony of Mandatory Palestine to the administration Jews as the modern Jewish state of Israel—the name the land had before the Roman occupation 2,100 years ago. The million or so non-Jewish people already living there—alongside the million or so Jews who lived there before European refugees started settling post-WWII—had a choice: live inside the democratic state of Israel, with all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizens but under Jewish government, or leave. Many left.
Of course it's not that cut-and-dried, and there is ample evidence that Israeli militias forcibly expelled some of them. But the creation of Israel, and the departure of Palestinians from the new country, gave Israel's neighbors a single goal: the destruction of Israel. Since 1948, governments and militias in the region have openly advocated wiping Israel from the map and killing all the Jews in it. Imagine if every US State south of Canada wanted to destroy New Jersey—and on several occasions have tried—and you can start to consider what living in Israel feels like.
So last week, a group with an explicitly genocidal charter and who have ruled an area the size of Detroit through terror launched a pogrom against unarmed civilians for the purpose of undoing the normalization of relations between Israel and the aforementioned neighbors. The disorganization and incompetence of Israel's government under Netanyahu gave them the opening, and the illegal settlements and armed incursions onto Palestinian land by right-wing religious nutters with the passive acquiescence of Netanyahu's coalition partners gave them the excuse. Of course, they don't need an excuse; they just want to kill all the Jews.
I believe the Israeli government under Netanyahu needs to end, and the next government needs to remove the illegal settlements in the West Bank to allow Palestinians to form a real state with real borders and a real government. But there's no moral equivalent between land theft and killing babies.
I'll have more on this later, along with links to some of the saner commentaries I've read in the past week. Clearly one center-left moderate American won't have the answers to this 3,000-year-old problem, but I hope at least I'm looking for the right questions.
Sadly, my doctor did not tell me to try to have fun no matter what I do, though we did have a brief conversation about which Bourbons we both like. Nope, he just said I'm perfectly healthy: I exercise enough, I eat right, I don't drink too much, my vital signs are perfect, and I get enough sleep. Doctor visits should be like software releases: boring.
If only that were true elsewhere:
Finally, for those of you just tuning in, Chicago-based Motorola invented cell phones. And today marks (only!) the 40th anniversary of David Meilahn making the world's first commercial cellular telephone call from Chicago's Soldier Field. Meilahn won a race to get his phone turned on and dialed in order to get that bit of recognition.
On a more serious note, I haven't commented on the war in Gaza yet because I haven't sifted through all the propaganda and disinformation enough. Julia Ioffe said a lot of what I'm thinking on Monday, but right now, no one can hear us moderates. I plan to address it soon. Maybe my lone center-left voice will end 3,000 years of conflict peacefully, who knows?
I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head:
- Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into authoritarianism and ethnic entrepreneurialism has died, but unfortunately his ideas haven't.
- The US and Qatar have agreed not to release any of the $6 billion of Iran's money that Qatar currently has in escrow for them, which will no doubt make Iran yet another country demanding to know why Hamas attacked Israel just now.
- The Chicago Tribune digs into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's $16.6 billion budget.
- In the wake of huge class-action settlements, two major Chicago real-estate brokers have changed their commission policies, but we still have to see if they'll change their actions.
- The History Channel blurbs the origins of Oktoberfest, which started in 1810 and ends for this year today. Und nächstes Jahr, ich möchte nach München zum Oktoberfest gehen!
- Jacob Bacharach says the core problem with Michael Lewis's recent biography of Sam Bankman-Fried is that SBF is just too boring to be the subject of a biography.
Finally, Chicago's heavy-rail operator Metra formally proposed simplifying its fare structure. This will cut my commuting costs by about 11%, assuming I use the day passes and individual tickets correctly. It will have the biggest impacts on suburban riders who commute into the city, and riders whose travel doesn't include the downtown terminals.
I could have worked from home today, and probably should have, but I felt well enough to come in (wearing an N95 mask, of course). It turned that I had a very helpful meeting, which would not have worked as well remotely, but given tomorrow's forecast and the likelihood I'll still have this cold, Cassie will just have to miss a day of school.
I have to jam on a presentation for the next three hours, so I'll come back to these later:
- Alex Shephard says this is the week Twitter finally went totally evil.
- Bret Stephens says the American anti-Israel left really needs to sit down for a minutes.
- Julia Ioffe decided to take the risk of getting yelled at as she mourns the chance for any peaceful resolution to the millennia-long conflict in the Levant.
- Yair Rosenberg interviews his friend Amir Tibon, who describes how he and his family survived the Hamas attack on Nahal Oz on Saturday.
- Yoval Noah Harari draws a line from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and right-wing populism to Saturday's attack.
- Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz (Blue and White) have agreed to form a wartime coalition, excluding the crazy parties on both sides, and to suspend routine legislative activity.
- Speaking of crazy parties, House Republicans have nominated Steve Scalise (R-LA), "David Duke without the baggage," to take over as Speaker. He needs 217 votes to get elected, which means any 4 people in his party can send this game to overtime.
- As soon as that's done, the New York delegation to the Republican House Caucus plans to introduce a measure to kick out Rep. George Santos (R-NY). This will probably succeed as the seat will certainly go to a Democrat next November if he stays, but only probably go to one if the GOP can run someone else.
- In a filing with the court overseeing the XPOTUS's classified-documents trial this week, the US said it can show why he took the documents. ("Vell, Donald's just zis guy, you know?")
- Speaking of fraud, Molly White takes us through the first half of Caroline Ellison's testimony in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial.
- Speaking of corruption, US Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (R$), the subject of thousands of press reports that he took bribes in every form but bags of cash from billionaires before ruling on their cases before the Supreme Court, once again called on the Court to do away with the Sullivan rule that ensures the press can find out when Justices are on the take.
- Caltrans fired its deputy director for planning and modal programs for advocating against widening I-80 through Sacramento, even though widening I-80 through Sacramento is one of the worst ideas currently proposed by Caltrans.
Finally, no sooner did it open than the new Guinness brewery in Chicago is for sale. It will stay a Guinness brewery, just under different ownership. The Brews and Choos Project will get there soon.
Just a few:
- US Representative George Santos (R-NY) faces another 21 felony charges in New York, with prosecutors alleging he stole donors' identities and misappropriated their donations.
- Isabel Fattal attempts to explain Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on Saturday.
- Alex Shephard is glad the news media have gotten better at reporting on the XPOTUS, but they've still missed the biggest part: he's a "singular threat to American democracy."
- Jason Pargin pays homage to celebrity worship, and goggles at how weird it's gotten.
- Molly White explains the evidence presented at Sam Bankman-Fried's trial yesterday that (allegedly) shows how they perpetrated the fraud in code.
- McSweeney's has a helpful template for right-wingers who are upset with Taylor Swift.
Finally, National Geographic gets cozy with the history of bedbugs and their relationship to humans. Fun evening read, y'all!
The Writers Guild of America membership ratified the contract with the AMPTP yesterday by a vote of 8,435 to 90. The Guild provided a summary of what the contract contains, compared with what the studios didn't accept on May 1st, and it's clear the writers won almost everything they demanded:
The ratification marks the conclusion to the WGA’s turbulent 2023 bargaining cycle, which sparked a historic 148-day strike. After holding a strike authorization vote during a brief break from negotiations in the spring, union leaders officially called a work stoppage of around 11,500 scribes on May 2. As the strike got going, WGA members not only ceased their writing work but also set up picket lines in front of ongoing productions, seeking to shut them down as crew members and other workers refused to cross these barriers in solidarity. The strategy proved to be effective in disrupting day-to-day set work in Hollywood even before SAG-AFTRA called its own strike (which scrapped virtually all production) on July 14.
Multiple stops and starts to the talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ensued, and in the meantime a broad swath of industry workers were affected: Food insecurity among industry workers spiked as the months dragged on, and some workers reported facing eviction. Ultimately, only the entrance of some of the industry’s top leaders was able to finally break the impasse. Starting in late September, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley began attending regular bargaining sessions and speaking with guild leaders directly. The deal then got wrapped up in a matter of (marathon) days: The WGA announced a tentative deal on the evening of Sept. 24, after a long weekend of negotiations.
Congratulations to the Guild! I hope this is the first of many successes for labor taking back its power from management.
I woke up this morning feeling like I'm fighting a cold, which usually means I'm fighting a cold. One negative Covid test later, I'm still debating whether to go to rehearsal tonight. Perhaps after a nap. And wearing an N-95.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:
- Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum ran the world's fastest marathon yesterday in Chicago, finishing the race in 2:00:35, 36 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09 set last year in Berlin.
- David Ignatius reflects on the massive intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to attack Israel over the weekend.
- Matt Ford completely debunks the XPOTUS's argument that being president granted him total immunity from prosecution. Along those lines, David Graham says that anyone who represents the XPOTUS in court has a fool for a client.
- David French finds "moral outrage" in the insult "OK Boomer."
- Chicago spent $3.5 million hosting NASCAR over the summer, offset only a bit by the $620,000 in fees the organization paid to the city for the privilege. And we're stuck doing it next year, too.
Finally, pilot and journalist Jim Fallows annotates a 17-minute video of the Air Traffic Control conversations with FedEx 1376, which made a gear-up landing at Chattanooga, Tenn., last week. (No one was injured, but the Boeing 757 will probably be written off.)
Iranian-backed Hamas attacked Israel yesterday by sea, air, and land, killing hundreds and taking dozens—including US citizens—hostage in Gaza:
Israel’s military said its forces were still battling gunmen from Gaza on Israeli territory on Sunday afternoon, more than 30 hours after the initial surge of armed militants across the border as part of the broadest invasion in 50 years.
The land, sea and air assault on Israel launched by Palestinian militants on Saturday prompted Israel to respond with heavy strikes on Gazan cities, which continued into Sunday morning. Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, also continued to fire rockets into Israel, hitting the city of Sderot and injuring at least one person. The Israeli military reported fighting was underway in seven border communities and an army base, and tanks were seen crossing farmland in parts of southern Israel, heading south toward Gaza.
This is without a doubt the worst intelligence failure in Israel's history, with proportionately worse casualties and destruction than our 9/11.
Israel has formally declared war against Hamas. Lebanon-based Hezbollah has also taken potshots at Israeli targets near the border, threatening to make this a regional war that could involve American allies on both sides. (Not Hezbollah, obviously, but Jordan, who have formal but not actual possession of the West Bank.)
What this means for Israeli politics, especially for its embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who already faces tremendous criticism for the failure of his government to detect, let alone prevent, this attack. For now, though, the country is united against Hamas. Nothing good will come out of this.
A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week.
I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do:
Finally, for the first time in 346 days, the Chicago Bears won a football game. Amazing.
Chicago experienced its warmest October 1st through 4th ever, clocking in at 24.4°C, before a cold front pushed through this morning. Many of my friends, plus another 25,000 runners, look forward to Sunday's Chicago Marathon and its predicted 7°C start temperature going up to a high of 14°C.
So, with real autumn temperatures finally upon us, let us chill out:
Finally, something other than the dumpster fire in Congress: Gideon Lewis-Kraus looks into allegations that Duke Professor Dan Ariely and Harvard Professor Francesca Gino fabricated evidence about dishonesty.