BeautifulMind

The logical end of the ‘Solution to bad speech is better speech’ has arrived in the age of state-sponsored social media propaganda bots versus AI-driven bots arguing back

Link to the summary of findings submitted by South Africa: apnews.com/…/un-court-south-africa-israel-gaza-ge…...

“There’s always the hope that states function as laboratories of democracy, and when one state does something that makes sense and seems to work, that other states will adopt it,” says Davis. “Arrests went way down, overdoses didn’t change: To me, that’s an improvement over the previously existing system.”

It might be a controversial take, sure, but the linked article/post makes a pretty thoughtful case for the benefits of having functional state capacity vs. outsourcing or just not having it

It’s probably helpful to note that it’s quite common in right-wing rhetoric, particularly as pertains to Likud politics, to conflate criticism of Netanyahu’s politics with antisemitism. It’s an effective way to call his critics anti-semites for an audience that doesn’t understand the difference between Judaism and...

Scientists have said climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very low snow volume, which have caused the accelerating melts. The volume lost during the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as that lost between 1960 and 1990.

The result is a portrait of Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, as someone well within the bounds of the regular, the respectable. Here is a normalization machine that perpetuates itself: Once it has successfully transformed Johnson into someone who is legible as “normal,” he will get the “normal” treatment: Rising...