On the other hand, he’s an absolute fucking moron.

Trump is the fascism vaccine: He is the weakened form, so the system can learn about it, recognize it, and respond with no fuckin’ around when it happens for real.

I’m not saying he is not dangerous. The camps are going up right now, and people packing into them every day. I’m just saying compared to what he could have been, we might have some kind of chance. Or I hope so at least.

Makes perfect sense.

Almost as if you can’t look for morality or amorality in broad categories, and you need to look at what someone’s actually doing (or advocating or whatever), and be specific.

!experimentalfilm@sh.itjust.works

Beastie Boys had one of the first and biggest of the anti-Iraq-War songs, I can’t think offhand of one that was more “mainstream” at the time and still explicit and specific about it.

Well I’ll be sleeping on your speeches 'til I start to snore
Cause I won’t carry guns for an oil war
As-Salamu alaikum, wa alaikum as-salam
Peace to the Middle East peace to Islam

And so on. It might not have been the best (IMO that is “Empire” by Dar Williams, with haunting sadness, historical scope, and irony), but it was big.

A buddy of mine was leaning towards joining the military, and it was interacting with the recruiters and observing that they seemed miserable that changed his mind about it.

The pay is closer to $43k.

Oh, well in that case

Many words have multiple, often contradictory and historically loaded meanings: “christianity”, “socialism”, “honour”. What’s weird about talking about them?

If somebody was writing about the “evils” of socialism, I would actually have exactly the same complaint about it for exactly the same reason. I would actually fully expect people to have precisely Tim Kaine’s reaction to it, basically to say “Whoa WTF are you talking about, I am socialist, and I’m not evil.” That’s actually a pretty good example to explain what I am trying to clarify with you.

Christianity’s a little different… I think “honor” actually has enough of an agreed-upon definition that you wouldn’t need to get tangled up in the definition of “honor.” That’s actually another instructive example: Two people arguing about whether a third person “has honor” are unlikely to be unintentionally wrangling about “what does honor mean,” and so getting themselves confused about it in the same way that they might be if they’re arguing about “Zionism” or “socialism,” and so it’s more likely to be productive. They might disagree, but they won’t extensively go in circles about it. With these kind of broad and definition-varies-by-the-person definitions, you just have to be really careful with how you apply it and talk about it, especially when huge issues of good and evil are involved, or else you’re going to do material harm to people who are trying to help you, and make it more difficult for them to help you.

So… you’re on board with defining some people as “evil,”

Where the actual fuck did I do that?

When you posted the article about “the ‘evils’ of Zionism” along with “Zionism has proven how evil our society can be” and “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way. This is Zionism.”

Again, he’s not wrong. I get what he’s saying, it is accurate. But you can understand how someone who thinks “Zionist = anyone who thinks Israel should be allowed to exist” could read that and then object to it. Right? Or no? I feel like you’re having a lot of trouble grasping simple points here.

I’ve actually seen people get accused of being Zionists

I already told you: “I personally don’t consider the word “zionist” to be a slur.” I don’t use it as an accusation. So I don’t know what to do with your defensiveness here.

Advanced reading comprehension: Why did I bring this up? I get that you don’t know what to do with it, but what point was I trying to make when bringing up accusations of someone being a Zionist that I’ve seen before? I’ve touched on it and why it is important a few different times.

Yeah. It’s also notable that Rasoul is a Democratic committee chair, and he’s been railing against Israel’s “war” for years now, and all of that has always been fine. It became an issue with this particular post, for the reasons you specified, and now people are trying to use it as a way to spin up this whole thing where the Democrats hate the Palestinians and want to silence his criticism of Israel, and this is just more proof.

You are saying that the word means too many different things to too many different people and therefore is not helpful to be used. Did I get it right?

100% right. Doesn’t that make sense, though? You don’t necessarily have to agree with me that it’s not helpful, but isn’t it weird to just kind of keep using it and acting like we’re talking about what the “real” definition of it should be when you know that that’s my argument?

I did answer, I told you I don’t care.

Point out to me where I applied the term it to any particular person.

So… you’re on board with defining some people as “evil,” but you couldn’t care less whether any particular people are or are not in that category that you’re calling “evil.” You just know that people in this vague category are evil. Sterling. I’ve literally never heard of that working out bad for any reason, in history or anywhere else.

The whole substance of the kerfuffle to me is that different people mean different things when they say it. Rasoul means one thing, and I get what his message means, it makes sense to me. But then some other people see it, and they think he’s talking about a totally different group of people, and they get heated up about it, which also makes sense. Now you’re coming in with a third definition, which I’ve actually never heard before (I’ve actually seen people get accused of being Zionists and then extensive arguments about why they are Zionists and what it means, they definitely didn’t get to use your definition “well I say I’m not, so that means I’m not.”)

This is no way to run a railroad. The purpose of language is communication. It’s actually fine if different people mean different things when they use words, it doesn’t take too much to get to the heart of the issue and people can talk it out without the language getting in the way. But you seem totally unconcerned about any of this, and just kind of want to make a simplistic point without needing to define your words well or get everyone on the same page. I don’t think that will work, I don’t think it’s a good way to try to type messages, that’s why I am disagreeing with you.

Well, we have spent the last few comments discussing what other zionisms could be like

No, you spent the last few comments saying that. I was saying something totally different from that. What was I saying? I am curious about your reading comprehension.

You also still haven’t answered my question, I don’t think. Am I a Zionist? Is Bernie Sanders? You really want to be able to use this terminology, say that particular people are or are not Zionists (in the “really existing” form), so I am curious to hear how you would apply it when you’re not trying to construct the exact messaging that’s your favorite messaging to construct with it.

disagree with your reading of the article as somehow smearing “Democrats”. It’s about Virginia politics. Top democrats in Virginia talking about a Virginia delegate. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. Nothing dishonest about focusing on Virginia.

Nothing in the headline says “Virginia.” Actually, if it said “Top Virginia Democrats” I would think it would be significantly less dishonest. But they’re clearly trying to paint a particular picture, through creative use of ambiguous language and editing the boundaries of the picture creatively. Hence my objection.

not something to be foisted upon the Palestinians to figure out all the nuances of zionism

I’m not talking to Palestinians, I’m talking to you. I’m pretty sure I explicitly said that I get why this person would say things that way. Sure, he’s allowed. You’re not. For you, I feel like it’s fine for me to point out when you’re using language that can be used in a careless way that can (and does) hinder the Palestinian cause by being used to attack their defenders. Right?

I don’t see value in tone policing the people speaking out for the victims.

I would never dream of responding to this person’s post by trying to tone-police him. I’m responding to the OP article, which is describing some people as “top Democrats” who are not top Democrats, putting their statements next to statements from the ADL to create an overall gestalt about “Democrats” by bringing in other things from other sources, other dishonest things. And I’m responding to you. Again, he gets to say these things in the way he wants to say them, it’s fine, he’s earned it. You have not. I get to disagree with you about your use of language.

I feel like I’ve reiterated enough at this point what my issue is. One person in the article is describing Zionism as “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way.” Pretty much everyone in this conversation, I think, is against that. One other person is describing it as “the desire of Jewish people to have a state of Israel.” Some people might be against that, for valid reasons at this point, but I don’t think it is fair to attack someone who wants the second thing as if they were supporting the first thing. Using one word for both of those things and saying things like that it’s the job of the “honest universalist democratic zionists” to make you stop, and otherwise you’re going to continue with it, is just weird.

You’re talking about Zionism as if it’s a single international club, with central definitions and leadership that can include or exclude particular people. Honestly you seem like you’re just persistently missing the point of what I’m trying to say. I’ve said it a few different times at this point, and it seems like you’re still not grasping what I’m saying, so I’m going to give up trying. Cheers.

If there is a version of zionism that can coexist with full Palestinian freedom, with full Israeli accountability for what they have done and are doing, and with fully equal democratic rights for all the people in Israel-Palestine regardless of creed and ethnic origin, including the right of return for all refugees as well as reparations in the context of a genuine Truth and Reconciliation process, then I have no problem being called that kind of a zionist too.

So are you saying “not all Zionists,” then? I pretty much agree with everything you just said, I agree with all of that. Maybe more, truth and reconciliation is probably more productive, but my prescribed solution would be a little more inclusive of measured revenge to disincentivize repetition in the future. But yes we generally agree about all of that.

This was my central point: A lot of times, breaking down things into “isms” and “ists” can lead people to huge failures of thinking. I get why this Palestinian person is attacking Zionism. It makes sense to me. I’m just saying that once you start using a word that can both mean “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way” or also mean something so mild that you don’t mind being identified with one version of it, that starts to become a dangerous word to use, because it helps people become more confused instead of helping them understand what is happening and what you wanted to communicate.

Like I said, I’ve seen people attack Bernie Sanders for being anti-Palestinian, it’s not just some kind of idle speculation about how people could get confused by it.

It is your choice to focus on a “not all zionists” take

That’s not at all what I was saying. It’s actually backwards from what I was trying to say.

Am I a Zionist (if I want peace, and justice for Palestinian victims of the current genocide, but I also don’t want Israel to be destroyed)? Is Bernie Sanders?

I thought I had it worked out, how to sort of strike a balance so I can keep my focus intact and let it be helpful without wasting time constantly correcting its stuff or shying away from actually paying attention to the code. But I think my strategy of “let the LLM generate a bunch of vomit to get things started and then take on the correct and augmentation from a human standpoint” has let the overall designs at a high level get a lot sloppier than they used to be.

Yeah, you might be right, it might be time to just set the stuff aside except for very specialized uses.

Certainly possible

I’m also genuinely a little bit alarmed looking back now at my pre-LLM code and seeing the quality vs. the with-LLM code.

IDK, I just popped open a project from 10 years ago and it’s perfectly clean, it’s actually better than some of my modern code because it’s not LLM-ified to save time.

I think it has a lot more to do with whether it was made in that “kind of crappy IDK what I’m doing” phase of programming. Some of your old stuff is going to be in that category sure. As long as you’re out of that, however long it took you to get there or however far away it was in time, your code should be good.

Yeah, that sounds about right lol. All my python projects for years were basically writing C in python. It actually took me all the way up until I got to look at the code ChatGPT likes to generate that I learned idiomatic python. My first database project was based on the Unix philosophy, where everything was strings (no ID keys, no normalization), because Unix is good.

The client wasn’t happy when they looked at the DB code lmao. Whatever, it worked, they still paid us and I didn’t do it again.

My point is that attacking someone as a “Zionist,” now that Israel exists and has for a while, is kind of meaningless and dishonest at this point. Specifically because the label can mean a few very different things, you can ratchet someone into a viewpoint they don’t actually hold by using the loosest possible definition when classifying them as Zionist and then using the most damning possible definition when attacking them for being a Zionist.

I won’t say 100%, but they’re generally pretty good. Big ones I can think of:

• They’re going to apply every attack against Kamala Harris that they did against Biden
• Trump is going to be infinitely worse for the Palestinians even than Biden was

The first is a little bit qualified I guess. I was somewhat against replacing Biden for that reason (definitely before the debate), which was absolutely a mistake. But I think in retrospect, the way that they were able to blame Kamala Harris for Gaza and inflation and make it work was pretty spot-on to what I predicted.

The second one, people were furiously telling me how wrong I was, how impossible it would be for anyone to be worse than Biden, and in early days saying that Trump had achieved a cease-fire and it was just proof of how easy it would have been if only Biden had put some slight effort to it.

Am I the only one who likes looking at my old code? Generally I feel like it’s alright.

Usually the first project when I’m learning how to use some new language or environment is super-shitty. I can tell it’s very bad, usually I don’t like interacting with it if I have to make changes, but it’s still not overly painful. It’s just bad code. And that one exception aside I generally like looking at my code.