as megaprojects expert Bent Flyvbjerg explains in the following article, these grandiose projects operate by an iron law: over budget, over time, over and over again

Performance data for megaprojects speak their own language. Nine out of ten such projects have cost overruns. Overruns of up to 50 percent in real terms are common, over 50 percent not uncommon. Cost overrun for the Channel Tunnel, the longest underwater rail tunnel in Europe, connecting the UK and France, was 80 percent in real terms. For Boston’s Big Dig, 220 percent. The Sydney Opera House, 1,400 percent. Similarly, benefit shortfalls of up to 50 percent are also common, and above 50 percent not uncommon.

https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2017/megaprojects-over-budget-over-time-over-over

Most creators that have in-video sponsors also have Patreons with sponsor-free feeds.

Saying Gen Z and Millennials are “more into gig work” is kinda like saying black people are “more into incarceration”. I assure you, it is not indicative of a preference.

Always blew my mind at CompUSA that they had lil security boxes around the $30 games, but $200 (or however much it was) Red Hat was just chillin.

We have an entire movement in the US that says:

• Democracy doesn’t work, because people will never be heard through the bureaucratic institutions like the DOJ…
• …and rule of law ought to be administered with a gun instead of a gavel.

I don’t think you defeat that movement by assassinating its political leader. Especially out of a belief that his crimes will never be prosecuted lawfully.

I don’t think Biden has an ideological bone in his body. Supporting Israel is just good business. Simple as.

12 sources, but rated “mixed factuality” at best. I’d stay skeptical. https://ground.news/article/us-news-network-msnbc-takes-2-muslim-journalists-off-anchoring-duties-amid-war-in-israel_7aba2d

Most Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Transplanting to a new state is off the table for a lot of people, especially women. If you have enough money to move, you probably also have enough money to take a weekend trip to get an abortion in a neighboring state.

The cruelty is the point. The well-being of the fetus is the excuse.

So…

The second-largest voting bloc (moderate Republicans) is angry at the first-largest voting bloc (Democrats) for voting for their preferred candidate, cuz they think they’re entitled to the votes of the third-largest voting bloc (MAGA Republicans).

Makes sense.

Edit: Not sure why I got down-dooted to oblivion right off the bat. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Hezbollah (in Lebanon) has been firing rockets into the Golan Heights, which is technically still Syrian territory according to the UN, but Israel invaded in 1967 and declared theirs in 1981.

Some things to consider:

• Check out some maps of Israel-Palestine over time and tell me whether fleeing Palestinians will ever get their homes back
• Gaza has no bomb shelters. The best they have are their own homes, and hospitals – which are already overrun with local populations, let alone migrant populations, and are being targeted by Israeli air strikes
• Israel is using white phosphorous against a territory which, if considered a country on its own, would be the third-most densely populated in the world
• Supplies of food, water, electricity, and fuel have been cut off, so people who leave their local support systems have no chance of acquiring vital supplies
• There is no exit. Sea has a permanent blockade. The only airport has been a crater since 2001. There are two ground crossings (Israel and Egypt), and the Egyptian one has been repeatedly closed due to Israeli missile strikes – after Israel advised civilians to go there.
• Israel is already targeting evacuating convoys
• Earlier this year, displacement from the war in Sudan was repeatedly called a “crisis” by relief orgs when it reached a displacement of 1 million people in a country of 45 million, one month after fighting began. We’re talking about 1 million in a territory of 2.3 million, in 24 hours

Upon contact, white phosphorus can burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone as it is highly soluble in fat and therefore in human flesh. White phosphorus fragments can exacerbate wounds even after treatment and can enter the bloodstream and cause multiple organ failure. Already dressed wounds can reignite when dressings are removed and the wounds are re-exposed to oxygen. Even relatively minor burns are often fatal. For survivors, extensive scarring tightens muscle tissue and creates physical disabilities. The trauma of the attack, the painful treatment that follows, and appearance-changing scars lead to psychological harm and social exclusion.

Just to reiterate, cuz it really sounds like some sci-fi alien shit:

Already dressed wounds can reignite when dressings are removed and the wounds are re-exposed to oxygen.

I’m not gonna allege specific knowledge of this attack, but there is plenty of evidence that Netanyahu and his cabinet saw continued provocations by Hamas as a key to retaining their power.

Whether he did anything to make it happen, an attack like this was very much on his wish list.

https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history

a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

…

This is why Netanyahu reportedly saw Hamas rule in Gaza as something of an asset. So long as the Palestinians remain divided among themselves — Hamas in charge of Gaza and the moderate Fatah faction in power in the West Bank — then a peace agreement is likely impossible: You can’t come to a negotiated settlement without a unified negotiating partner. The terrorist threat Hamas poses, on this thinking, can be managed; the endless blockade and periodic military operations, euphemistically called “mowing the grass,” can keep the danger posed by Hamas within acceptable parameters.

Well see, it shaves off a fraction of the creative work’s statistical signal, and deposits it into this vector database that we created…

From the original source:

The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk.

Upon contact, white phosphorus can burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone as it is highly soluble in fat and therefore in human flesh. White phosphorus fragments can exacerbate wounds even after treatment and can enter the bloodstream and cause multiple organ failure. Already dressed wounds can reignite when dressings are removed and the wounds are re-exposed to oxygen. Even relatively minor burns are often fatal. For survivors, extensive scarring tightens muscle tissue and creates physical disabilities. The trauma of the attack, the painful treatment that follows, and appearance-changing scars lead to psychological harm and social exclusion.

Attacks using air-delivered incendiary weapons in civilian areas are prohibited under Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). While the protocol contains weaker restrictions for ground-launched incendiary weapons, all types of incendiary weapons produce horrific injuries. Protocol III applies only to weapons that are “primarily designed” to set fires or cause burns, and thus some countries believe it excludes certain multipurpose munitions with incendiary effects, notably those containing white phosphorus.

Human Rights Watch and many states have long called for closing these loopholes in Protocol III. Palestine joined Protocol III on January 5, 2015, and Lebanon on April 5, 2017, while Israel has not ratified it.

And for some context on exactly how fatal this might be in a place like Gaza…

We’re talking about place where urban areas are 4x as dense as Los Angeles. Where people are not in the most steady health to begin with, given that 90-95% of the water supply is unsuitable for consumption, over 75% are food-insecure, 50% suffering malnutrition, the median age is 18, and there is no electricity or fuel to power the hospitals and ambulances – not that it matters anyway, because even humanitarian aid facilities are being targeted by air strikes.

You could easily die from a small cut in Gaza. Anyone in the AoE here is totally fucked.

This is one of the reasons it’s so weird and toxic to have brands posting on social media as if they were just “fellow users”.

If a random user posts some Barbenheimer content, I can grant that person the dignity of being a full human who probably has complex, conflicting feelings about the Manhattan Project, and some kind of ironic detachment yet fascination with the existence of the Barbie movie.

If WB posts (or comments on) it, there’s really no room for nuance. They want engagement, they want money. If there is (or was) irony or self-criticism embedded in the content, that fact is only incidental.

So then WB gets rightfully scorned for casually dismissing war crimes to get more attention to their properties.

But where does that leave the rest of us?

Cuz the implication is that individuals shouldn’t be posting Barbenheimer stuff, either… but that doesn’t feel right.

There’s something culturally meaningful to this meme, that we probably shouldn’t quash — but it also shouldn’t be crudely leveraged for profit.

Are you immortal?

No joke, there are billionaires scouring the futurist community looking for a reassuring answer to that question.

Douglas Rushkoff wrote a whole book about it.

https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/

“Careless” is an understatement.

Kyle Hill’s episode on the demon core: https://youtu.be/aFlromB6SnU