@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Alon

@Alon@mastodon.social

I write about public transport and do research for NYU's Marron Institute. I've previously lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris.

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interfluidity, to random
@interfluidity@zirk.us avatar

if you want to make a case that antisemitism plays an unusual role in the US discourse surrounding Israel, your best point of reference is Yemen and US support of Saudi Arabia’s conflict there, which conflict (whomever you blame for it) did lead to mass famine and death, but not to mass protest on US campuses.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity Yeah, the part where somehow people blame the mass death in Yemen not on the country that actually did it (KSA) but on tepid allies (US, UK) and an uninvolved ally (Israel) is pretty bad.

Relatedly, this is also why I highlight how ~none of the people calling Israel's killing 0.6% of Palestine genocide call the US's killing 2% of Iraq genocide. A Putin comparison could be campism, but this is Americans who think Israel exploits the US.

(Also, police killing rates, same thing.)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@tequila0341 @interfluidity 15,000? What? The estimates I'm looking at are 300,000-400,000. The Gaza War has generally better reporting than others, so the rate at which deaths are confirmed is very high, but the overall death toll there is not high.

(Same thing with various Ukraine comparisons - there's not much confirmation of the civilian death toll there because it's in Russian-controlled areas and nobody's counting in detail, but the estimates are really high by Gazan standards.)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit @interfluidity The part where Egypt won't even send warships against the Houthis, who are blockading the aid ships to Sudan, and is taking hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees, but refuses to open refugee camps for Gazans, is such a meme. It's not anti-Semitism, since the issue is which unwanted population Egypt is likely to get stuck with, but Gazans are way higher-skill and more similar to Egyptians, there's just unwillingness to naturalize Palestinians in particular.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity @BenRossTransit Yeah, that's a big difference between Palestinian negotiators and the global Palestine movement. The negotiators know they're not getting right of return, and the UNRWA-refugees are staying in place or moving to Palestine. The Starbucks boycotters, lol.

(Also, it's not security grounds but just racism - note that Jordan did naturalize most UNRWA-refugees despite violence; Lebanon didn't, because its internal ethnic dynamics are a powder keg anyway.)

jsans, to random
@jsans@mastodon.social avatar

Hey @Alon, a hypothetical interlining (and crayoning) question— if 2 lines converge to the same route at the end of the lines, but a city only has the budget for 2 tracks, would you generally prefer to see them lines interlining briefly, so that both lines get access to the end point (let's say it's a larger destination) or have one line end earlier, forcing a transfer but not interlining?

For instance, if NYC only had the budget for one set of tracks in the Archer Ave extension to Jamaica?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jsans It depends so much on specifics. In the case of 1980s New York, if there were only enough money for a two-track Archer Avenue Line, then they should not have taken down the Jamaica Avenue El's outer section.

Alon, (edited ) to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

What's worse?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@acb Norm (will have to have several options, including social norms, Norman Finkelstein, and two more I haven't thought of yet).

adapalmer, to random
@adapalmer@wandering.shop avatar

Spain's electricity was 78%, 84%, and 85% clean in January, February, and March 2024, respectively. https://fixthenews.com/r/45c07306?m=d62c57a4-125a-4b9d-b04d-bdfd23b8627c

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@adapalmer Ooh, nice. Germany has been around 60% clean the last few months (and the dirty is something like 25% coal, 15% gas).

BenRossTransit, to random
@BenRossTransit@mastodon.social avatar

Thought-experiment relevant (although of course not perfectly identical) to current campus protests.
Imagine defenders of southern culture camped out on the college green, devoting the vast majority of their time to scholarly rebuttals of the history curriculum's denigration of Robert E. Lee and John C. Calhoun & loud chants of slogans that favorably remember them. Only occasionally do participants yell epithets, some overtly racist & some referring to DEI, at Black students walking by.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit It's not even that hypothetical... this was the "no means yes, yes means anal" chanting at Yale.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @BenRossTransit The political opinions of the people I know from that social milieu don't depend on class background that much - most students are from middle-class to wealthy backgrounds but the minority who aren't are equally likely to be e.g. anti-Zionist.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @BenRossTransit It's probably a representative sample, judging by what I saw when I was there in 2006-11. And, in turn, working-class anti-Semites exist in droves off-campus, they're just not as likely to be noticed as when an editor of the Harvard law review beats up a Jewish student.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Some people go to public screenings of football games

When in Maastricht I’m off to a public screening of a debate with Ursula von der Leyen 🙂

https://studioeuropamaastricht.nl/2024/03/13/maastricht-debate-watch-party/

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon Is S&D at all in the game? Or is it just EPP forever?

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Pedestrian Observations: Subway Expansion and Bus Redesign https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/04/28/subway-expansion-and-bus-redesign/

wollman, to random
@wollman@mastodon.social avatar

On Thursday, the released for public comment their SFY25-29 Capital Investment Plan, or CIP. (It's important to specify state fiscal years, because the Boston Region MPO, which is responsible for allocating federal transportation funds, uses the federal fiscal year, and the last three months of FFY24 are in SFY25 just to confuse everyone who's trying to cross-index programs and budgets.) The full plan is here: https://www.mbta.com/financials/the-proposed-capital-investment-plan-cip

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@wollman ...$50 million for writing an RFP for EMUs? WTF?

interfluidity, to random
@interfluidity@zirk.us avatar

“To even admit you are acting out of a perception of potential liability is thought in some circles to create a risk of liability. But this thinking in some cases creates enormous risk because the people who are articulating risk only think along one line of vulnerability, the one they understand—or because their logic is easily bent towards a pre-determined conclusion by ideologues prepared to manipulate it.” https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-on-the-inside

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit @interfluidity @djc Or "no means yes, yes means anal." The "I want to kill Zionists" line is a lot more visceral than bringing Murray to campus and the only thing that's similar against other groups led to big changes in how US uni campuses treat speech and launched the careers of feminists who pointed out early that this was a violence threat rather than some legal debate over criminal procedure in sexual assault cases.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity @BenRossTransit @djc The "I want to kill Zionists" line is from the leader of the Columbia protest; this isn't nutpicking. Likewise, open celebration of 7.10 is not a fringe view in Palestine advocacy but is in SJP (and JVP).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity @ikentcpel @BenRossTransit @djc It's not tarring Americans; it's tarring Trump primary voters, or perhaps people who repeatedly attend his rallies.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity @ikentcpel @BenRossTransit @djc Out of campus, yes, you're right (but then the chants do matter). But on campus, the leader was elected by the students on the encampment - IIRC his position was to be the protesters' rep in negotiations with the university. It's way tighter and they've shown ability to kick out people they don't want from the quad (e.g. Zionists).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity @BenRossTransit @ikentcpel @djc I mean, yes, Bibi steals money from the Israeli public. It's well-known, to the point that his supporters cope by saying that he's really stealing it on their behalf. And also, if you say "let's defeat Bibi," the entire Palestine movement will yell at you for being a liberal Zionist.

BenRossTransit, to random
@BenRossTransit@mastodon.social avatar

@Alon Did you see this reply? https://mas.to/@failedLyndonLaRouchite/112349421074718756

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@BenRossTransit No, Mastodon keeps hiding @failedLyndonLaRouchite's posts. I'm following back to see if that would solve the problem. Grrr.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @BenRossTransit *they, and no, I didn't mute you - the profile says it's being hidden by .social's moderators, I have no idea why.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite @BenRossTransit No, I block very rarely here, this isn't Bluesky.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Jewish Voice for Peace and anti-Deutsch Germans have more in common than either would like to admit. Both need to stop culturally appropriating Judaism. You can have opinions about Israel without claiming a connection to Judaism; your opinions will be about as good as those of anyone else who writes Hebrew this way. See also https://mastodon.social/deck/@Alon/111078505194329115

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

"Displaying Palestinian symbols like the keffiyeh, watermelon, or Palestinian flag is antisemitic."

#EvanPoll #poll

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@evan I didn't see this poll in time, but would have voted strongly disagree, and I'm pro-Israel. The Palestinian flag is just a flag, and the watermelon is a stand-in from when the flag was banned in Israel. A Hamas symbol like 🔻 would be anti-Semitic, but the Palestinian flag is not.

The kuffiyeh has a bad history, but became a generically Palestinian symbol, same way Antifa began as a communist symbol but later became a New Left one that is these days anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Real Anti-Deutsch sticker, found by an Israeli here on Birdsite. Shall we count all the errors before we dismiss Anti-Deutsch as repulsive cultural appropriation of real people?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DetersHenning Sure!

The sticker is supposed to be "Anti-German Aktion." The correct literal Hebrew translation is,

פעולה אנטי-גרמנית

However, they've made multiple errors:

  1. Left-to-right instead of right-to-left Hebrew.
  2. The word action (פעולה) is at the end and not the beginning; in Hebrew, unlike in English or German, nouns precede adjectives.
  3. The noun פעולה is feminine (like -ung nouns in German), so "German" should have the feminine ending; instead they made it masculine, גרמני.
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