Okay, but only if these guys show up to arrest me.

Well, yes, I suppose, and that’s why I said all the stuff I imagine you must have read before you got to that part, and the thing I said right after that, too.

I appreciate you adding context to why some Jewish students feel unsafe with the discourse going on at the moment.

I feel like a dick talking about it with what’s going on, but it’s still important. And to be clear, we Jews who are inculcated with Zionism and the generational trauma of the Holocaust from a young age have to zealously interrogate our unconscious fears and biases. The protests provide the perfect opportunity to confront it head on if you can swallow your pride and just listen. My Arab & Muslim friends are some of the most thoughtful people I know, with strong opinions and moral convictions that come right from the deepest parts of their being. I feel as at home with them as I did in the Synagogue growing up, and I have no doubt if I were to attend a peace protest that I would find many more like them. They’re an absolute gift; I was never a supporter of Israel, but their friendship has thrown the whole thing into even sharper focus since October 7th. I hope one day the Zionists can be defeated, and from the river to the sea, all good people will finally be free.

Full disclosure, I am Jewish myself, and sorry for the book… try not to knee-jerk react to it.

I hate to partake in this genetic essentialism garbage, but Ashkenazis by and large share their paternal heritage with Sephardic Jews and other Semites, although that Semitic heritage has become somewhat diluted over time by converts in the maternal line and their descendants. My point in saying that is not to say that Zionists have any legitimate claim to Palestine - they absolutely don’t. It’s just “Ashkenazi Jews aren’t Semites” is a highly debatable and fraught claim that has the potential to lead one down a rabbit hole into actual racism, and incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with the crimes of Zionism. When I hear that implication, my mind is drawn to the adoption by antisemites (most recently Black Hebrew Israelites) of the now disproven myth that the original Semitic Jews died out and were replaced by Khazars.

I’m stopping short of calling what you said, specifically, antisemitism, but in another context a similar statement might be called a dog whistle. People can say these things unintentionally when they just don’t understand the implications. This kind of reckless use of language and ideas is at least part of why we have Jewish students on college campuses claiming they don’t feel safe. We Jews have grown up being implicitly taught to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to rising intolerance, and yes in a lot of cases that has resulted in a massive blind spot for our own intolerance, but it doesn’t mean we should ignore warning signs. Of course, as a Jew, and like you, I often scoff when I hear claims of antisemitism, and in fact I get angry about them when they conflate Jewishness with Israel & Zionism, which ironically IS antisemitism.

Now I mentioned the Khazar myth and Jewish students who don’t feel safe. The issue here is that they lack the self awareness to say, “maybe my hangups about certain things people say are a product of my own upbringing and sensitivities, rather than any intentional antisemitism on their part.” On the other hand, when people talk about Jews or Jew-adjacent issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they should also have the self awareness to ask themselves “am I contributing to a climate that lets actual antisemitism fly under the radar and should I be more careful about the things I say?”

In any case, flinging accusations back and forth is unproductive. If my fellow Jews feel threatened by protestors and their words, I would recommend they approach those protestors with humility, and listen to their grievances before making assumptions about their intentions. Which is funny, because here I am Jew-splaining in response to a flippant remark in an internet comment section, but the reason is I just desperately want people to understand each other (and themselves) better.

Without even reading it.

A Windows update broke my wife’s install earlier this week. Her laptop has Manjaro on it now.

I just started my switch to Linux and the only things that don’t work out of the box on my brand new Lenovo laptop are things that have no bearing on the actual use of the device. And frankly, spending hours fiddling to make things work is much more satisfying than spending hours trying to figure out how to stop Microsoft spying on me.

Is that true?

Yeah I took digital art classes in the 90s and the teacher and all the students pronounced it jif. I never heard the hard g until that dumb YouTube video.

no u

Yeah, I have friends who say it with a hard g and I never say a damn thing, but I say jif once and it’s “jraphics” this and “jod” that. I get it, you watched that stupid video in 2012, congrats.

Historically it doesn’t matter what the creator of anything prefers unless it’s an “unveiling” and they name it on the spot.

I can’t for the life of me find it now, but the gif was introduced with an image that contained in its metadata a statement that “it’s pronounced jif”. You can still find it somewhere and open it in notepad and read it for yourself.

What’s frustrating is that anyone can find a piece of evidence for their argument, and there are propagandists everywhere offering up grand narratives full of such evidence. So when someone is extremely concerned about children getting sex changes, and you say something to the effect of “that’s not really happening” they’ll just come back at you with a few examples and you’re like “yeah but a few examples isn’t a statistical trend and you’re blowing this way out of proportion” and then they call you a groomer. Like, I’m not okay with it, but also it’s not something that we need to be specifically worried about and build an entire political movement around. Like children get attacked by sharks occasionally (probably more often than they get sex changes), but there’s no mass political movement to shame parents who encourage their kids to swim in known shark habitats.

Hah, I kinda glossed over that one. Not sure what the downvote is about, it’s a joke. JS and PHP are the two I’m most familiar with and they’re scripting languages, not “proper” programming languages. That doesn’t make them any less serious. Anyway, React, being a library for a scripting language, is two steps removed.

Scripting languages are for popular kids and jocks.

I’m not going to tell you all the things you mentioned are impossible. I’ve read your other comments too. I’ve seen homeless women crying in the street, people with obvious mental or physical problems begging. Homelessness - visible homelessness - is terribly common. As far as crime goes, I don’t know, maybe people target tourists? My rental car visibly full of luggage was broken into in San Jose once, and they stole a bunch of electronics. Learned my lesson on that one. Apart from that I’ve wandered around some rough areas on occasion and in 36 years I’ve never been victimized in person.

Anyway, one last point: according to official stats, the rate of homelessness in Australia is nearly 3x that in the US, although I imagine that Australia probably counts homelessness differently, so it’s hard to compare, but 3x seems like a big difference for simple differences in methodology to account for. That said, I’m sure Australia has better services, so it may not be as visible to the average person, and less of a struggle for those experiencing homelessness. Hard for me to believe things are all that much better in the land of Murdoch, though.

To be fair, Gary, Indiana isn’t most people’s first choice to visit…

I have replaced your child.

~ Gacek

Even if the lights are leveled correctly, part of the problem is how directional LEDs are. On a flat surface you’re fine. If you’re cresting a hill so your vehicle is level and there’s someone coming up the hill towards you, your headlights are shining directly in their eyes. As soon as you start descending the hill your headlights are now pointing in the right direction relative to oncoming traffic again. Adjust the headlights down and you just change the angle that this happens at. Adjust the headlights down so it only happens on particularly steep hills, and your headlights are basically useless because they’re not illuminating enough of the road in front of you.

https://youtu.be/SLaltfyTEno?si=cZO2NIjd0eqCKJez