fromMars

Seems rather depressing to me but maybe I am a Luddite.

Is it really higher quality? I had a membership for a year and didn't find much I was interested in purchasing food wise, at least.

It's screens. We don't allow my son to use social media and he is still addicted to using an Ipad. We have to forcefully remove it. He just wants to play games on it constantly.

Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.

Do you have any sources for this? I know a lot of Jews in the U.S. support Israel, but not sure why they would care about settlements if they don't live there.

And if what you say is true, why is Netanyahu still in power?

That said I don't think your point undermines my suggestion that the U.S. should get out of the business of funding Israel and joining it in any wars over there.

Agree with your post. As a Jewish American, I have been advocating that it would be better for Americans and even Jews if we stop sending money to Israel and put political pressure on Israel to abandon illegal settlements, end the war on Gaza and work towards a resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Unfortunately, this POV doesn't seem to be widely held by many woth influence.

As a Jew and I don't think that is true at all and feel it is a bit of a dangerous characterization. Jews have just as much scruples as any other groups.

What I do think is true is that Jews have more fear of others based on past treatment and even a lot of current rhetoric and may justify actions as necessary for safety.

We do also happen to be a very small group of people. For instance, Palestinians have 1 billion Muslims supporting them.

That said, I happen to think that these unscrupulous policies will actually cause more harm than good.

As a Jewish American, I don't think it's antisemitic. We really shouldn't be sending any money or weapons to Israel or joining them in any wars.

What I do think is a bit antisemitic is the suggestion that Israel is somehow unique here. Russia, China, and the U.S. are all doing this. Heck we just captured Maduro and killed leader of Iran. I just think a country like Russia is way more effective and subtle when it comes to election manipulation, especially in Eastern Europe.

No idea why this is being downvoted. It seems only en-vogue on HN voice outrage about Israel.

Thanks for the clarification.

There are multiple different conversations which you are referencing there which is making it difficult to respond to your points.

On Epstein, I do think the Catholic Church scandal was of a similar magnitude, considering the number of priests and victims involved. The main point I was trying to convey is that the coverage of Epstein is greater than anything I have seen and there is a danger of it being used to promote anti-semitism. Just search the topic on X to see thousands of examples.

Regarding my comments on the age of consent, I am sensitive to words used to describe someone like Seinfeld. Pedophilia and specifically acting on it is one of the worst crimes anyone can commit. Branding someone a pedophile is a very serious accusation. That is a common trope used to describe Jewish men.

Jerry may be a lecher or a scumbag or a pervert, but I have difficulty using that word in his case, and I think in that context the mores in different countries is important. Maybe I am being paranoid and seeing anti-semitism where it isn't.

Thanks for the discussion.

Thanks for the perspective. It could be that I am being overly sensitive to the discourse around this.

As someone who avoids forums where these ideas are promoted, it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.

I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.

He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.

Sure, there are tons of conspiracy theories about Nigerian spies...

But I'm not sure why it's more likely that Epstein was a Mossad spy over CIA or Russian or any other spy agency.

I am not sure what the evidence was that he was an intelligent operative at all as opposed to just a depraved, rich, criminal.

Nice spin on what I said. Never "defended" Epstein or claimed what he did was legal, rape, sex trafficking...

Nor did I defend "old farts fucking teenagers".

What I did do was point out that this behavior seems to be viewed differently when the participant is a Jewish man than when he is French or Anglo.

By the way, if you're trying to truly combat antisemitism, it would be wise of you to avoid mentioning that you are jewish and defend old farts fucking teenagers in the same comment.

Between this and your comments that you believe Epstein was eating children, it's hard for me to take your advice as being in good faith.

The age of consent being this low is to avoid prosecuting 15-20 yo having sex with each other. Not for gross old men to coerce minors into having sex with them.

I don't buy this argument. That is addressed by age gap laws which some countries have or in the U.S. where there age of consent is different if one of the parties is over 18 and 21.

You can't honestly be claiming that these type of relationships don't occur in these countries. The fact is that in homogeneous populations there seems to be way more tolerance for these kind of age gaps.

Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary.

As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews.

Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church.

Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.

It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.

Shocking this is downvoted with the age of consent being 15 in countries like France.

The OP also mentioned Epstein, a Jew, and then made the leap that he must have been associated with Mossad.

The antisemitism is here. Pedophilia is essentially legal in Europe with the age of consent in many countries.

As far as I am aware, Gates was not knowledgeable of the extent of Epstein's crimes.

At the time they met in 2011, Epstein had been convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.

How did he help him and call him a friend?

There is a lot of hyperbolic vitriol in your post. Saying that Gates "has no qualms in killing children..." is quite a stretch.

Using words like "Big Pharma" to make working on vaccines look like something awful is also a poor rhetoric device.

It would be nice if you had a second source on the trials you referenced in India as it is not clear who the blame lies with.

Capital research isn't a serious source as they clearly have their own anti-vax agenda.

This is a brilliant article and shouldn't be dismissed so quickly.

I think the framing is dead on.

Most definitely. Many problems do not have giant datasets and it also depends on what is your task.

I don't why people get so excited about quaternions, like they are some mystical concept.

Personally, I think one is better off learning some Differential Geometry and Abstract Algebra to really appreciate the broader context in which these exist.

We can't really know for sure. We have the anecdote about the workbook but what about earlier and did he absorb any of his dad's teachings or aptitude by osmosis.

Even if we accept he didn't he still went to college and had an unusual experience as an undergrad in being mentored by an excellent mathematician.

That he took a gap year in h.s. doesn't seem that noteworthy to me.

This story is a bit of a misnomer when you look deeper. His dad is a statistics professor and he was mentored by well known mathematician in undergraduate so it's not like he didn't have a lot of schooling.

The world is an interdependent eco- system these days. The idea that a country can isolate itself an reproduce expertise that has flourished elsewhere is a bit silly and tilting at windmills.

Globalization is a fact of the world today and the best path to better lives for everyone is through mutual cooperation and policies that lift all boats.

Trump's goals and attempts to change this are foolhardy.

Did you read the book? Some of those are distortions.

Regarding the negging incident, she left out important context in her summary of this part of the book.

Feynman went to a bar where it was clear that some of the women at that bar were intending to use men to get free drinks and food. In the incident he described, a woman asked him to buy three sandwiches and a drink at a diner and then says she has to run to go meet up with a lieutenant (taking the sandwiches with her). His negging, was to ask for her to pay for the sandwiches if she had no intention of staying and eating with him. Basically, not being a pushover.

Secondly, he states right after that in the book, "But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn't enjoy doing that."

I also think the incident about lying about whether he was a student while at Cornell was exaggerated. Feynman was 26 at the time and his wife had just died. In the anecdote about the dance, he mentions that some girls asked him if he was a student, and after getting rejected by others at the dance, he says "I don't want to say" and two girls go with him back to his place. But later he confesses, "I didn't want the situation to get so distorted and misunderstood, so I let them know I was a professor".

Overall, I don't find strong evidence of the claims that he was a misogynist or abusive to women in the book outside of his frequenting of a strip club, which may be enough for some people, but, I think people don't realize how different people's attitudes were to things like nudity and sex in the 70s and early 80s before AIDs was a thing.

When I hear someone's brake's squealing, I try and avoid them at all cost. I've been behind an old car that when it braked, I was coughing for hours afterwards.

Whether he endorsed Harris or not is irrelevant to my point.

It was a poorly written article. I am actually very sympathetic with some of the pushback against some things associated with wokeness, like poorly implemented DEI policies that don't address root causes for representation disparities.

And you have no evidence that any of this is why Trump won. From the people I know who supported Trump, they did it for much different reasons.