Annie Andrews is running against Lindsey Graham. Her campaign video here is outstanding. A case study in how Democrats should communicate. YouTube


I supported Newsom until this year but he is showing himself as a cynical hack who turns whichever direction he perceives the wind blowing. He perceives transphobia, xenophobia and anti-woke as fashionable now so he’s happy to embrace those beliefs. sfstandard.com


A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.

Shadi Hamid at The Washington Post:

For Israel’s defenders, the cognitive dissonance is difficult to bear. I get it. Many Americans have long seen Israel as an ally, a country that shares our values — a Western, liberal outpost in a sea of supposed Arab barbarism. But Israel’s actions in Gaza should shatter that perception.

That a close ally of the United States would declare its intention to displace a population is remarkable. But many Israelis, including senior officials and ministers, have been saying this for a long time. Just one month into the war, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” explicitly referencing the 1948 expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land. In December 2023, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “what needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration” and that having “100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million” would allow the desert to “bloom.” This month, Smotrich offered further clarification. The goal is to leave Gaza “totally destroyed,” he said. These are not opposition figures or fringe elements. These are members of the Israeli cabinet.

Also:

As the Economist recently reported, new research suggests that as many as 109,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel – which would represent about 5 percent of the prewar population. Even the lower-bound estimate – 77,000 killed – is 44 percent higher than the Gaza Ministry of Health’s figure of 53,500 dead.

About 90 percent of Gazans have been displaced, many multiple times, forced to flee from one “safe zone” to another as Israel’s military levels entire neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of housing units have been destroyed or damaged.

The engineered humanitarian emergency is equally damning. Israel has weaponized starvation as a method of warfare, blocking food and supplies from entering the territory for 10 weeks. The new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report finds that 22 percent of the population faces catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with 71,000 children younger than 5 facing acute malnutrition.

Also:

Faced with assault on a population of this magnitude, one might expect universal condemnation. Yet, when atrocities are committed by a country perceived as sharing our values, powerful psychological forces activate to protect our beliefs. Israel can’t be that bad. It’s an advanced nation, where people speak English, vote in regular elections and launch tech start-ups. They seem like us….

Confirmation bias plays a part here, too. Imagine you had a close friend or family member who was accused of unspeakable crimes. You’d have strong incentives to explain away their actions — or, better yet, deny that they committed them in the first place. To admit that someone you love was capable of evil can simply be too difficult, because in some sense that realization would implicate you as well.


The way to end the Gaza war has been clear for nearly a year

David Ignatius at The Washington Post:

What’s agonizing is that Israeli military and intelligence leaders were ready to settle this conflict nearly a year ago. Working with U.S. and Emirati officials, they developed a plan for security “bubbles” that would contain the violence, starting in northern Gaza and moving south, backed by an international peacekeeping force that would include troops from European and moderate Arab countries.

In place of Hamas, a Palestinian government, backed by a reformed Palestinian Authority, would take political control. This wasn’t a pipe dream. Officials worked out a detailed road map. They began planning to train the Palestinian security force that would replace Hamas. This was, as golfers like to say, “a makeable putt.”

But Netanyahu said no. His right-wing coalition partners demanded “total victory,” even though they couldn’t define just what that meant.

Also:

The Israeli-Palestinian dispute might seem intractable, but ending this conflict would be relatively easy. I’m told that Israeli military officials keep working on “day after” plans, honing details as recently as this week. But they have had no political support from Netanyahu.

“The ‘exit ramp’ has been staring us in the face for a long time,” argues Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It’s a mix of Arab states and Gaza Palestinians, operating under a Palestinian Authority umbrella, he explains. “It is messy, with overlapping responsibilities and lots of dotted lines. But it checks all the boxes to enable the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation to get off the ground.”


Covid-19 is spiking again as the US government is making it harder to get vaccines. CalMatters


“Four people have died as thousands of Palestinians burst into a United Nations warehouse in Gaza, tearing away sections of the building’s metal walls in a desperate attempt to find food.” The Guardian


Trump is a scammer and scammers are his “most important, best-served constituency…. The Trump II presidency is the most scam-friendly presidency in history, and everyone knows it. The scammers are lining up to get their scams okayed.” Cory Doctorow


Support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel are not anti-Semitism. Claims that they are anti-Semitism promote anti-Semitism and make my life as an American Jew incrementally more dangerous.


Never Look at Your Files Again: Wikilinks, Tags, and Search. cartography.pika.page — Use a personal wiki as your organization system for documents on your computer. This guide is for iA Writer, but the principle works with Obsidian, NotePlan, DevonThink, HookMark or any app that supports linking.


Mitchellaneous Vol. LXXIV : Eleven things I found on the Internet


One of the women who participates in one of my regular weekly video meetings had her two dogs playing tug-of-war behind her. This should be a feature of every corporate meeting.


The ugly truth behind ICE agents’ masks. Will Bunch Newsletter — They can’t find enough hardened criminals to deport, so instead they’re going after college students and essential workers.

for every undocumented immigrant who commits a murder that gets the top-of-the-hour treatment from Fox News, there are hundreds of law-abiding college students and highway construction workers that ICE will instead target. The immoral stain of an American government’s war on these good people, led by goon squads who hide behind ski masks, may never be fully erased.


Mitchellaneous Vol. LXXIV : Ten things I found on the Internet


I just replicated the “I have a drinking problem” move from “Airplane” and not on purpose. How has your day been?


Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister, condemns Israeli war crimes in Gaza:

What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.


AI is a new iteration of the industrial revolution, and not in a good way

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic:

As has been the case since the Industrial Revolution, the project of automation isn’t just about increasing productivity, it’s about weakening labor power as a prelude to lowering quality.

Also:

The point of using automation to weaken labor isn’t just cheaper products – it’s cheaper, defective products, inflicted on the unsuspecting and defenseless public who are no longer protected by workers' professionalism and pride in their jobs.

And:

When techies describe their experience of AI, it sometimes sounds like they’re describing two completely different realities – and that’s because they are. For workers with power and control, automation turns them into centaurs, who get to use AI tools to improve their work-lives. For workers whose power is waning, AI is a tool for reverse-centaurism, an electronic whip that pushes them to work at superhuman speeds. And when they fail, these workers become “moral crumple zones,” absorbing the blame for the defective products their bosses pushed out in order to goose profits.

Cory connects:

  • The 19th Century Luddite movement — the Luddites get an unfair bum rap in this one. The Luddites were right and they were not anti-technology.
  • The recent incident where the Chicago Sun-Times included AI hallucinations in its list of recommended books for summer. The writer unfairly gets the blame.
  • And how AI is enabling Amazon to start treating tech workers as badly as warehouse workers.

Some of my favorite comfort movies

Writers for The Guardian list their favorite rewatchable comfort movies: Guardian writers on their ultimate feelgood movies: ‘ Pure sugar-rush’

A few of my favorites are on this list: “You’ve Got Mail,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Paper,” and “Defending Your Life.” There are a few more that are new to me, and that I’ve bookmarked for watching.

“Pink Flamingoes” is an interesting choice for a favorite comfort movie.

More of my choices:

“Almost Famous” (2000) is a fictionalized memoir by Cameron Crowe about how he became a Rolling Stone correspondent as a teenager in the 1970s and toured with an up-and-coming Southern Rock band. The movie stars Kate Hudson as the leader of a band of groupies, Billy Crudup as the band’s stardom-drunk lead singer, and Patrick Fugit as the teen journalist.

“My Favorite Year” (1982) is another fictionalized, nostalgic coming-of-age showbiz memoir, about a young, New York Jewish writer on a hit 1950s comedy-variety show, hired to watchdog one of his heroes, a swashbuckling movie star who’s now a charming, reckless drunk. Peter O’Toole plays the drunken swashbucker, based on Errol Flynn. Mark Linn-Baker plays the young writer, Benjy Stone, based on Mel Brooks. Hell of an ensemble cast: Joseph Bologna is the neurotic star of the comedy-variety show, based on Sid Caesar. Lainie Kazan is Benjy’s embarrassing New York Jewish mother, and Lou Jacobi steals his scene as Benjy’s embarrassing uncle (“Did you shtup her? " he asks Peter O’Toole’s character, about a rumored dalliance with a starlet. “Did you go all the way?!")

“Wonder Boys” is another 2000 coming-of-age story, this with a coming-of-age figure who is a middle-aged man. Michael Douglas plays an English professor at a small college who had a critically acclaimed novel as a young man, and is now struggling to follow that up. He is an aging ex-wonder boy, wandering Pittsburgh during a cold weekend in a ratty women’s bathrobe, hair uncombed, unshaven, making bad choices, accompanied by his equally reckless agent, played by pre-Iron Man, pre-recovery Robert Downey Jr., and a talented student, played by Tobey Maguire. The three have great buddy chemistry, and the movie has a strong supporting cast beyond those three, including Frances McDormand, Rip Torn and Richard Thomas. “Wonder Boys” is based on a novel by Michael Chabon. I love Chabon’s work, but this is not his best novel; the movie is better.

“Nobody’s Fool” is a 1994 coming-of-age story with a coming-of-age figure who is 60 years old, an aging handyman played by Paul Newman, who wanders around making bad choices one cold weekend in a declining small town in upstate New York. Newman was 70 when he made this movie; his performance is great despite his appearance — he looked too young to play a 60-year-old man. The movie features great characters, played by an outstanding ensemble cast, including Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, Melanie Griffith, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Margot Martindale. The movie is based on the first of a trilogy of novels by Richard Russo; the novels are each set about ten years apart. I love the novels and the movie.

“That Thing You Do” (1996) is a coming-of-age story about a fictional garage band in a small town in Pennsylvania in the mid 1960s that records a song that becomes a nationwide hit. The song is fizzy pop fun, and so is the movie. Tom Everett Scott stars as the jazz-loving drummer for the band, in a role that would have been played by Tom Hanks a decade earlier; Scott even looks and acts like young Tom Hanks. Hanks himself has a significant supporting role as the band manager, Mr. White, and he directed and wrote the movie. Liv Tyler is the lead singer’s girlfriend. I can imagine ways she could have had a meatier role without changing the movie much, but nobody asked me. She isn’t given much to work with but carries her scenes on sheer charisma. Steve Zahn steals every scene he’s in, as Steve Zahn does.

“The Mummy,” starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah and Oded Fehr. Everybody loves “The Mummy.” For a change, this is not a coming-of-age story, unless returning from the dead to seek vengeance counts as coming of age.

And two more comfort favorites: “Home for the Holidays” and “Tombstone,” which I wrote about here


Mitchellaneous Vol. LXXIII : Ten things I found on the Internet


Trump Praised Himself During Memorial Day Speech Political Wire


Season 2 of “The Last of Us:” Yes or no?