Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped the Nation’s Cold War History

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/henry-kissinger-dead.html

But before returning to the United States he visited Fürth, his hometown, and found that only 37 Jews remained. In a letter discovered by Niall Ferguson, his biographer, Mr. Kissinger wrote at 23 that his encounters with concentration camp survivors had taught him a key lesson about human nature.

“The intellectuals, the idealists, the men of high morals had no chance,” the letter said. The survivors he met “had learned that looking back meant sorrow, that sorrow was weakness, and weakness synonymous with death.”

Understanding the True Nature of the Hamas-Israel War

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/opinion/israel-palestinians-war-iran.html

Hamas argues that this is an ethnic/religious war between primarily Muslim Palestinians and Jews, and its goal is an Islamic state in all of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. For Hamas, it’s winner take all.

There is a mirror image of Hamas’s extremist views on the Israeli side. The Jewish supremacist settlers represented in Netanyahu’s cabinet make no distinction between those Palestinians who have embraced Oslo and those who embrace Hamas. They see all  Palestinians as modern-day descendants of the Amalekites.  As Mosaic magazine explained, Amalekites were a tribe of desert raiders mentioned often in the Bible who inhabited today’s northern Negev, near the Gaza Strip, and lived by plunder.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that some Jewish settlers simply cannot stop talking about rebuilding settlements in Gaza. They want a Greater Israel from the river to the sea. Netanyahu embraced these far-right parties and their agenda to form his government and now cannot banish them without losing his grip on power.

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/magazine/progressive-insurance-flo-stephanie-courtney.html

Subsequently pinning down the exact hows and whys of my consuming a profile subject’s forbidden caviar took either several lively discussions with my supervisor (my guess) or about “1.5 hours” of “company time” (his calculation). In his opinion, this act could be seen as at odds with my employer’s policy precluding reporters from accepting favors and gifts from their subjects — the worry being that I might feel obligated to repay Courtney for caviar by describing her favorably in this article. Let me be clear: If the kind of person who purchases caviar and offers to share it with a dining companion who has been tyrannically deprived of it sounds like someone you would not like, you would hate Stephanie Courtney. In any event, to bring this interaction into line with company policy, we later reimbursed her for the full price of the caviar ($85 plus tip), so now she is, technically, indebted to me.

They Thought They Were Free

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 is a 1955 nonfiction book written by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. It describes the thought process of ordinary citizens during Nazi Germany.

August Heckscher, the chief writer of editorials of the New York Herald Tribune, wrote that the book "suggests how easy it is for human beings in any society to fall prey to a dynamic political movement, provided their lives are sufficiently insecure, frustrated or empty."^[1] He stated that the book is simultaneously a discussion on ethics, on "how political tyranny is established", and on issues in Germany and the "German mentality".^[1]

Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

We hope that this cursory tour of some of Signal’s operations and costs helps provide a greater understanding of Signal’s unique place in the tech ecosystem, and of the tech ecosystem itself.

Our goal of developing an open source private messenger that is supported and sustained by small donations is both highly ambitious and, we believe, existentially important. The cost of most consumer technology is underwritten by surveillance, which has allowed people to assume that “free” is the default, and a handful of industry players have accrued eye-watering amounts of personal data and the unprecedented power to use that data in ways that are shaping our lives and institutions globally.

To put it another way, the social costs of normalized privacy invasion are staggeringly high, and maintaining and caring for alternative technology has never been more important.

Signal is working to show that a different approach is possible—an approach that puts privacy at the center, and where organizations are accountable to the people who use and rely on their services, not to investors, or to the endless pursuit of growth and profit.

Thank you for your support. It’s an honor and privilege to work on Signal every day, and we—very literally—couldn’t do it without you. Please consider donating to Signal via our website or learn how to give using the app. 

What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

Still, the collective horror of what we are watching does not mean that a genocide, according to the international legal definition of the term, is already underway. Because genocide, sometimes called “the crime of all crimes,” is perceived by many to be the most extreme of all crimes, there is often an impulse to describe any instance of mass murder and massacre as genocide. But this urge to label all atrocious events as genocide tends to obfuscate reality rather than explain it. [...]

My greatest concern watching the Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action. On Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay a “huge price” for the actions of Hamas and that the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On Oct. 28, he added, citing Deuteronomy, “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” As many Israelis know, in revenge for the attack by Amalek, the Bible calls to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.”

 

Why Palestinians Feel They’ve Been ‘Duped’

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/podcasts/ezra-klein-interviews-amjad-iraqi.html

You have Fatah, which especially since the Oslo Accords and under Mahmoud Abbas’s reign has focused on leading the political struggle through diplomacy, through going to the U.N., going to the I.C.C., focusing on these international forums, all while still keeping to the provisions of the Oslo Accords, like security coordination with the Israeli military, keeping its end of the bargain by playing that game.

But what they’re finding is that even that is now being defined as diplomatic terrorism. That even the P.A.’s model is actually basically roundly dismissed, is roundly demonized, and you still have the same occupation — not even the same, it’s even an entrenching occupation. And that the P.A. has now become this convenient subcontractor to this regime in the West Bank.

And then you have, let’s say, a third model of Palestinian politics of like the boycott divestment and sanctions. Using literally the nonviolent methods that all of us were taught are the best way to go, are very moral and righteous, and that is coercion without the same kind of coercion of armed struggle. And what Palestinians are finding is that when you practice that, you’re demonized also as terrorists and demonized, even worse, as anti-Semites because you’re using a nonviolent method to try to achieve your rights and to try to weaken the structures that allow the Israeli occupation to take place.

What Israelis Fear the World Does Not Understand

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yossi-klein-halevi.html?showTranscript=1

Yossi Klein Halevi:

Yeah, it’s interesting because my father raised me with the consciousness that the non-Jewish world is divided into two kinds of people. There are those who actively want to kill us and there are those who are glad that someone else is doing the job. And my maturation process was learning to break from that survivor mind-set that my father really tried to impose on me. And I understand why, given his experience.

But in the 1990s, parts of Israeli society were beginning to distance ourselves — and I was certainly very much part of that — from an excessive dependence on the Holocaust as a framing for Israeli and Jewish identity. And there was a very positive, a really healthy conversation that was beginning.

And then the second intifada happens. And all of the trauma returns. And the Jewish survival button was pushed. And that’s a very dangerous thing for the enemies of Israel to do because when that button is pushed, you can’t win.

Far from Gaza, the war between Israel and Hamas upends lives

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632899/west-bank-olive-harvest

KELLY: In Hebrew, they yell that we need to leave - that we have crossed a barrier. For the record, there is no barrier, no signage. They tell us, this is a time of war.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #1: (Yelling in Hebrew).

ABUHEJLEH: (Non-English language spoken).

KELLY: And then they separate Ayoub from our group, tell us they need to question him. We say we don't want to leave without him.

SHARON: Is it possible for someone to stay here with him?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: So he - they said no one will stay. They're going to be...

KELLY: The soldiers refuse. A gun lifts - points straight at us. So we back off.

Six Members of My Family Are Hostages in Gaza. Does Anyone Care?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/opinion/israel-palestinians-hostage-silence.html

Again and again I hear that Israel is a country of white colonizers and oppressors. So some of my bewilderment is in my very skin. My maternal grandparents, Avraham and Sara, grew up in a tiny rural village in central Yemen. Like other Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemenite Jews were persecuted as second-class citizens through what are known as dhimmi laws — the denigration of non-Muslims before the law. In 1949, after pogroms against Jews in Yemen, my grandparents set out by foot and donkey on an arduous journey to the capital, Sana. From there, they were airlifted during Operation Magic Carpet to the newly formed state of Israel. As refugees fleeing oppression in their birth country, they began their lives in Israel in poverty. Slowly they built a humble but comfortable life and raised five children, among them my mother.

So maybe you can imagine my surprise the first time I heard my Israeli family called “white colonizers.” When did we become white? And how could a family fleeing persecution be perceived as colonizers? I have heard this description for years; perhaps I shrugged it off too easily. 

How we got here. Some inside scoops from Microsoft on handling early days of pandemic to cutting over 20K folks in 2023

https://www.teamblind.com/post/How-we-got-here-Some-inside-scoops-from-Microsoft-on-handling-early-days-of-pandemic-to-cutting-over-20K-folks-in-2023-7ndQwLAU

2. Hiring boom of 2021 and early 2022.

Sales of our products and services skyrocketed during the pandemic just like it did for the industry as a whole.

Org leaders and finance departments were making rosy projections for growth. It quickly turned into a monkey see monkey do business in entire software industry. Everyone was making rosy projections for growth. Insane numbers like 30%-40% growth for certain businesses and orgs for years to come.

This was a critical moment. There were some leaders who had the foresight to see these growth numbers are not sustainable. There was also a slow but steadily growing belief that the demand was only brought forward and will quickly revert on the other end of the curve. Sadly the voices expressing skepticism were few and drowned out in the loud noise of empire building org leaders and SLT members drooling over the implications for their stock awards.

Everyone in the industry (except apple) was doing it so nobody wanted to go against the wisdom of the collective. Raising debt to finance things was really cheap (especially for Microsoft given our bond rating) so everyone in the industry began hiring and collecting employees like Pokémon cards.

SLT and the board did discuss the possibility of these forecasts not coming true. The overwhelming consensus was that there is a lot to be lost if it did come true and we were not prepared and resourced well to capture the opportunity. They thought the demand will last much longer and the tapering will be gradual. Similar discussions were taking place in corporate board rooms across large tech.

The scene was set. The dream castles of rosy projections for revenues were built on faulty assumptions. The dissenting voices were lost in the collective chorus of greedy leaders dreaming about lofty future stock valuations.

I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/opinion/desires-good-person.html

I’m increasingly seeing this in my work as a therapist in New York City. So are my colleagues. One said to me recently that he was tired of listening to his patients talk about the impossible advice inhaled on Instagram and TikTok — to say nothing of the self-help industry. “Doesn’t anyone come asking to be more free?” he exclaimed. “They don’t,” I said pessimistically. “Everyone wants to make the right decisions.” The problem is it’s very hard to tell someone that pursuing the abstract question of “right and wrong” ways to live will lead you into a cul-de-sac. It avoids the deeper question of desire, and desire is a compass.

The promised image of goodness skirts pleasures that — for obscure reasons — you aren’t sure you can want. I see patients grow fearful when they can’t tell if what they desire is compulsive — just another rote, maybe addictive, behavior, or a real attempt to test the boundaries they live under. How do you locate free will in a world this compulsory? Unsettling desires challenge our perception of who we are and what life might look like. This boundary, the testing of it, takes time and care. Importantly, you come to see that limits cannot be held or crossed under compulsion. They must be approached freely. 

To Be Happy, Marriage Matters More Than Career

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/opinion/marriage-happiness-career.html

As Wilcox writes in his vitally important forthcoming book, “Get Married”: “Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor I have run across of life satisfaction in America. Specifically, the odds that men and women say they are ‘very happy’ with their lives are a staggering 545 percent higher for those who are very happily married, compared with peers who are not married or who are less than very happy in their marriages.”

“When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with your work.”

The economists Shawn Grover and John F. Helliwell studied two groups of adults over time, some who married and some who didn’t. They found that marriage caused higher levels of life satisfaction, especially in middle age, when adults’ average level of satisfaction tends to be at its lowest. It wasn’t only the traits people brought into the marriage; marriage itself had positive effects.

CLASSICAL MUSIC IS FOR EVERYONE

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/08/classical-music-is-for-everyone

I host the mid-morning program “Classical Café.” I always enjoy the mix of works we have scheduled, but I especially enjoy Fridays, when the playlist is comprised of pieces that listeners have asked to hear. Their choices tell me a lot about why people love classical music.

Music can put a smile on your face and leave you humming a melody. Once one of the requested works was Bach’s Italian Concerto. After I played it, a listener called in to say, “If that doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know what would.” Yes, and I’d say the same about Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet.

Conversely, some works speak to feelings of loss and grief. Great music can heighten those emotions. Two pieces that listeners sometimes choose to dedicate to loved ones are Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. 

'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Nobel Prize-winning researcher Katalin Karikó

https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/10/penn-katalin-kariko-university-relationship-mistreatment

Scales also said that Penn's approach of giving minimal funds to Karikó followed a similar model to most peer institutions. He said many research institutions provide some degree of startup funds, and the expectation is for researchers to acquire external grants otherwise.

All of those interviewed commended Karikó for winning the Nobel Prize alongside Weissman.

“I think it’s a testament to her fortitude,” Sobol said. “Now that you look back on the calendar, you see that she was 20 years ahead of where everyone is now.”

Scales said he hopes that Karikó's win will prompt changes to funding allocations in research.

“I do hope that it causes Penn and a bunch of other institutions that fund science this way to reflect a little bit on what the chances are that some scientists who do not get funding, and wind up leaving, end up being like Katalin Karikó,” Scales said.  

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/

Since its founding in 1987, Hamas has used the murder of civilians to spoil any chance of a two-state solution. In 1993, its suicide bombings of Israeli civilians were designed to destroy the two-state Olso Accords that recognized Israel and Palestine. This month, the Hamas terrorists unleashed their slaughter in part to undermine a peace with Saudi Arabia that would have improved Palestinian politics and standard of life, and reinvigorated Hamas’s sclerotic rival, the Palestinian Authority. In part, they served Iran to prevent the empowering of Saudi Arabia, and their atrocities were of course a spectacular trap to provoke Israeli overreaction. They are most probably getting their wish, but to do this they are cynically exploiting innocent Palestinian people as a sacrifice to political means, a second crime against civilians. 

I Fought for the I.D.F. in Gaza. It Made Me Fight for Peace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/international-world/gaza-idf-israel-veterans.html

All our casualties and the suffering brought on Palestinians in Gaza accomplished nothing since our leaders refused to work on creating a political reality in which more violence would not be inevitable. While I believe in self-defense, fighting in Gaza taught me that if my government doesn’t change its approach from crushing Palestinian hope to committing to Palestinian independence, not only will this war kill an untold number of Israelis and Palestinians in addition to the thousands who already have died, but it also will not decisively end terror. A ground invasion is doomed to failure.

The attacks on Israel, and the response.

https://www.readtangle.com/israel-attacks-hamas-palestine-war/

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza. 

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this. 

Texas state representative James Talarico explains his take on a bill that would force schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom

https://v.redd.it/tj9xa36qektb1

Doesn't just discuss separation of church and state, also talks about being a Christian and praying in secret.

Ways of Knowing: Lessons on Agroecological Transitions from a Pothwari Farm

https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ways-of-knowing-lessons-on-agroecological-transitions-from-a-pothwari-farm/

As a researcher and self-identifying ‘citizen planner,’ I was curious if new methods of agriculture could make the sector remunerative enough to counter the desire to convert agricultural land into real estate. Since I was familiar with the emerging significance of agroecology and regenerative agriculture  in climate adaptation, I was motivated to understand what it would take to help us transition towards practices closer to agroecology.