It's incredible that a term was coined in the 19th Century to describe demonstrable hatred toward Jews, that the term was happily adopted and popularized by people who hated Jews, and now over 150 years later the term itself is pointed to as "proof" of Jewish privilege or conspiracy, perpetuating the cycle of ignorance and hatred under a new guise.
Modern Sweden was only a part of origins of vikings. If it is known that those people are specifically Swedish vikings, then it makes sense to highlight that.
Not unrelated at all. Webflow is suddenly using the excuse of 3x bandwidth usage to justify a 3x increase in subscription price, when we know that this isn't proportionate to the underlying hosting costs.
I've never been on a team where we've needed a new IC to come in and assess our inefficiencies, question priorities, and lengthen meetings with debates we've already had. There are plenty of management consultants available for that. What we wanted was for an IC to come in and help us meet our goals by churning out more code. There's lots of talk about reputation but no mention of value.
The existing team tends to be blind to stupid things they're doing. There's a period of time where the new guy sees things and thinks "wtf are you doing that for". Shout him down and you solve the annoyance problem and add him to the list of people who no longer notice the stupid things, or at least no longer try to fix the stupid things.
Maybe your team is only doing sensible things and all is perfect. Maybe you're blind to things that could be better. Heuristically, if you're writing software, it's not likely to be the first case.
My professional project moved to GitHub recently. It is terrible. The pull request / review system is borderline unusable. But already I can feel myself adopting clumsy workarounds and losing sight of how much better it should be.
What's more likely: a team of equally experienced engineers is waiting on a new hire to identify and fix significant blind spots or a team just needs more bandwidth to get things done?
in my experience, while teams are rarely “waiting around” for a new hire, it’s the outside perspective that makes the most significant improvements to process, tooling, and impact, and teams that resist the notion of blind spots that suffer from them the most.
These things can add value, but no one needs a new hire to point that fact out. I'm also skeptical that a freshly hired IC's values will align with business values, even though the latter is what shapes the tech debt and tooling you're referring to.
The point being is that new hires will bring fresh eyes to an organization, whereas the team in place might be numb to some of the issues.
You don't need a new hire to fix those problems, but it certainly helps shed new light on some problems. Especially if you are hired as a senior dev or a team lead, you will be expected to fix some of those things.
He had this style of portrait he liked to do of women and their distorted faces. It seems so surreal and imaginative, but in a way, it’s not at all. Picasso painted exactly what he saw in bed with these women. Close up he saw double images of their face from two angles, a bit grotesque if you think about it, but then sex is a bit grotesque as well;)
Where can I read more about this theory that Picasso's two-angle distorted portraits are somehow connected to what he saw during sex? Did you make this up, or is this interpretation discussed elsewhere?
I believe I read it on one of those little plaques describing the painting in a museum. I suppose everything was made up by someone though, including the time when Picasso made up these paintings.
I think that's a fair critique. Do you have any alternative metrics for evaluating the "most powerful" lobbies in the US? Because I'm curious how AIPAC and Israel get this reputation if it's not based on something objective like financial statements.
It's tough, because there's a lot of overlap between groups that advocate for Jews and groups that advocate for Israel. The difficulty in conceiving metrics which can account for 'soft power', like influence via political and popular media, is (in my estimation) part of what makes people so attracted to bizarre consipiracy theories on the matter. Even trying to formulate such metrics (on any topic, not just Israeli affairs) quickly leads to sounding like one has arrived at the far side of weird. I don't have the right answers, but raw dollar input in the lobbying industry simply can't be the whole story; humans are more complex than "money in, opinions out".
> I think that's a fair critique. Do you have any alternative metrics for evaluating the "most powerful" lobbies in the US?
It appears to be the only one able to consistently get US citizens working for US employers in US soil fired for expressing opinions about a conflict halfway to the other side of the globe. If it were Russia or Ukraine lobbists getting US people fired, probably the FBI would be already indicting people for foreign interference in domestic matters.
By "powerful" I meant being powerful enough to overcome public opinion. The vast majority of Americans are against our bombs being used to commit genocide, yet, our senile president is fully supporting turning Gaza into a parking lot.
I think you radically misunderstand the distribution of viewpoints of your fellow Americans (on Biden, on "genocide," and on selling our weapons to our military allies).
I’m not sure why you’re pointing specifically to American Jews as the source of authority on a conflict in the Middle East, but in terms of polls and surveys:
“About a quarter [of Americans] (27%) say Israel is going too far in its current military operation, while about as many (25%) say it is taking the right approach; 16% of Americans say Israel is not going far enough militarily.” So more Americans support Israel’s campaign than do not.[1]
“81% of American Jews support Israel continuing its military operation to ‘recover all Israeli hostages and remove Hamas from power.’” Which implies the vast majority of “prominent American Jews” are not calling this genocide.[2]
And on this last point, this is hardly a “textbook example of genocide” when scholars of genocide contest this label[3], it is outright rejected by the US State Department[4], and casualties fall within the expectations of urban warfare experts[5]. The textbook example of genocide is the Holocaust.
All this hyperbole and generalization, just like we saw in Paul Graham’s tweet, makes it impossible to have productive discussions.
> I’m not sure why you’re pointing specifically to American Jews
They weren't. They were referring to prominent American Jews. They probably have specific statements in mind, by specific individuals but for the sake of brevity, didn't include them.
> For all those asking why there is no education Gaza. Oops, we've had a missile fall on them. That sucks. Ohhh, too bad. That's how you'll not be engineers anymore.
And then there's the murder and attacks on civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, too. Or the bulldozing of a cemetary. I'll spare you posting dozens and dozens of pieces of proof each of which belie the claim of calling this a "war", much hiding the arbitrary, cruel attacks on civilians under the cover of "urban warfare".
As for "productive" discussions, for the purposes of ethnic cleansing and genocide, all that is required is a.) to continue sending arms b.) pretending this is a defensive "war".
> If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk about the day after will be different.
I'm curious which lobbying group Paul Graham is referring to as "America's most powerful lobby." Here are the top ten, by spending, in the US as of 2023:
1. US Chamber of Commerce $49,970,000
2. National Assn of Realtors $33,661,316
3. Blue Cross/Blue Shield $21,634,765
4. Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America $21,043,000
You here made a list of "American Lobbies" and down another list of "Foreign Lobbies," which is clever but desinginious.
He is talking about America's most powerful lobby FOR a foreign country. So this list is useless. Also, your second list only includes official foreign agents, while most pro-Israel lobbying is not registered as such (notably AIPAC).
I don't think that providing actual lists of top spenders is either "clever" or "disingenuous," but if you have a better way to empirically evaluate the claims being made about lobbying influence please share.
> He is talking about America's most powerful lobby FOR a foreign country.
I'm only interested in discussing the actual text that received (as of writing) 2.3 million views and is the subject of this thread, not your own revision.
> Also, your second list only includes official foreign agents, while most pro-Israel lobbying is not registered as such (notably AIPAC)
I was responding to a comment about the "Israeli lobby." Israelis are not Americans, which is why I addressed foreign spending. But since you're insinuating that AIPAC is a channel for foreign influence despite being a US organization with 3 million American members, changing its status wouldn't influence the list I provided, so I don't see the relevance of this argument to the larger question of lobbying power.
Maybe you live in a smaller bubble.
India: "Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old American, has been elected as Pope Leo XIV, making history as the first American to head the Roman Catholic Church." https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/10-facts-ab...
Denmark: "For første gang i verdenshistorien er paven amerikansk." https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/fra-missionaer-i-peru-til-n...
Brazil: "Papa Leão XIV é americano e tem cidadania peruana" https://www.estadao.com.br/brasil/papa-leao-xiv-e-americano-...
Nigeria: "America’s Robert Francis Prevost announced as new pope" https://www.vanguardngr.com/2025/05/breaking-americas-robert...
Slovakia: "Lev XIV. je prvý Američan na pápežskom stolci." https://svet.sme.sk/c/23488126/novy-papez-lev-xiv-profil.htm...