Many voters believe, with good reason, that none of this would have happened without Biden’s assent. Biden has continued to speak of Israel’s attack on Palestinian civilians using the absurd language of “self-defense”. He has insulted Jewish Americans and the memory of the Holocaust by invoking them to justify the slaughter. And though his White House repeatedly leaks that he is “privately” dismayed by Israel’s conduct of the war, he has done little to stop the flow of US money and guns that support it.

Even after the US state department issued a vexed and mealy-mouthed report on Israel’s conduct, which nevertheless concluded that it was reasonable to assess that Israel was in violation of international humanitarian law, the Biden administration has continued to fund these violations. That state department report was published on 10 May. The Biden administration told Congress that it intends to move forward with a $1bn arms sale to Israel. “OK, [Israel] likely broke the law, but not enough to change policy,” is how one reporter summarized the administration’s judgment. “So, what is the point of the report? I mean, in the simplest terms, what’s the point?”

Meanwhile, Biden has expressed public disdain for the Americans – many of whom he needs to vote for him – who have taken to protest on behalf of Palestinian lives. Speaking with evident approval of the violent police crackdowns against anti-genocide student demonstrations, he said coolly: “Dissent must never lead to disorder.”

Worth reading in full but here's some snippets:

In 1985, hundreds of Columbia students, led by the four-year-old Coalition for a Free South Africa (CFSA), initiated a blockade of Hamilton Hall in the center of campus – the same hall peacefully occupied and renamed by students on Tuesday.

The protest lasted for three weeks, drawing worldwide support. The administration photographed, videotaped and threatened student activists with disciplinary charges and expulsion. Five months later, after years of dragging its feet, the university divested from companies implicated in apartheid South Africa.

In 2013 and 2014 a successful campaign by the Columbia Prison Divest students forced the university to divest from the private prison industry. Underlining the linkages of struggles, Students Against Mass Incarceration (Sami) sought the advice of Students for Justice in Palestine.

...

Omar was a Palestinian student activist on campus at the time, supporting the Free South Africa Movement and highlighting striking similarities between the struggles in South Africa and Palestine to dismantle settler-colonialism and apartheid. Omar was deeply inspired by the divestment demand as a tactic to pressure a duplicitous and complicit institution. He later co-founded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement calling for ending international state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians.

After the interview aired, Lehrmann was charged with sexual intercourse without consent, but the trial was abandoned in 2022 due to juror misconduct and not revived due to fears about Higgins’ mental health.

Without a trial and a means to clear his name, Lehrmann turned to defamation action, claiming that Network Ten and “The Project” presenter Lisa Wilkinson damaged his reputation by providing enough information in the program for him to be identified, though he was not named.

Network Ten and Wilkinson chose to fight the charge, mounting a truth defense, meaning that to win, the network’s lawyers needed to prove that on the balance of probabilities the rape happened.

Lee found Monday that the two had sex that night, but Higgins was so inebriated she couldn’t possibly have given her consent – and that Lehrmann didn’t seek to obtain it.

“I’m satisfied that it is more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann’s state of mind was such that he was so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Miss Higgins’ consent,” said Lee.

The ruling delivers a devastating blow to Lehrmann’s attempt to clear his name. As Lee put it in his judgement: “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”

Proponents of AI and other optimists are often ready to acknowledge the numerous problems, threats, dangers, and downright murders enabled by these systems to date. But they also dismiss critique and assuage skepticism with the promise that these casualties are themselves outliers — exceptions, flukes — or, if not, they are imminently fixable with the right methodological tweaks.

Common practices of technology development can produce this kind of naivete. Alberto Toscano calls this a “Culture of Abstraction.” He argues that logical abstraction, core to computer science and other scientific analysis, influences how we perceive real-world phenomena. This abstraction away from the particular and toward idealized representations produces and sustains apolitical conceits in science and technology. We are led to believe that if we can just “de-bias” the data and build in logical controls for “non-discrimination,” the techno-utopia will arrive, and the returns will come pouring in. The argument here is that these adverse consequences are unintended. The assumption is that the intention of algorithmic inference systems is always good — beneficial, benevolent, innovative, progressive.

Stafford Beer gave us an effective analytical tool to evaluate a system without getting sidetracked arguments about intent rather than its real impact. This tool is called POSIWID and it stands for “The Purpose of a System Is What It Does.” This analytical frame provides “a better starting point for understanding a system than a focus on designers’ or users’ intention or expectations.”

Maybe, to the extend that we are institutionalists, we need to recognize that our vote doesn't free us from any other obligations between elections. Maybe we need to recognize the ways our commitment to institutions that abuse others have caused abused people to despair and mistrust us. Maybe we need to admit how we were wrong about the nature of our institutions, how we believed they protected and benefitted everyone simply because they protected and benefitted us. Some of us, if we are particularly unthreatened by fascism and particularly benefitted by supremacy, might need to realize that listening and following are more effective anti-fascist actions for us now than speaking and leading.

Or maybe, to the extent that we are anti-institutionalist, we need to recognize that our anti-institutional alignment doesn't mean we aren't still culpable to the degree we are, and recognize that if we are taking that alignment primarily to evade culpability, we're still aligning ourselves spiritually with that institutional supremacy. Maybe we need to recognize that while elections aren't the only thing, they are still a thing. Maybe we need to recognize that just as voting doesn't free us from whatever culpability we carry, not voting doesn't free us, either.

If I have the right zoom level to make the text in the feed a sensible size, the font size in the threads is too small to read easily. Correct the zoom level in the thread and the font size in the feed becomes way too large.

This has long been a problem and I'm not sure why this is suddenly irritating me more than usual. Is it just me? Is there a setting I'm missing?

E2A: It's likely a browser issue. I've found a workaround, thanks all.

As the Post Office (Horizon/Fujitsu) scandal is getting more coverage this week, I thought this accountancy blog (which talks about an accompanying video, for those who like video) might be of interest. I've been following this story for years but this is the first thing I've read that gets into the detail of what went wrong with the software.

The Post Office trial is one of the few cases where an in-depth examination of system failures is made public and so it’s a valuable lesson to learn from. Even simple problems like maintaining a stock balance become complex when part of a distributed system. Techniques like ACID transactions can reduce the likelihood of errors but real implementations will sometimes fail. When a system processes a large number of transactions, this small probability of failure can add up to frequent errors. I hope that the presumption that computers operate correctly is revisited, and the factors revealed by the Post Office trial are taken into account when doing so.

"On September 29, the Fulton County Clerk’s office scanned and uploaded the signatures, names, and full legal addresses of 116,000 civilians. These are the identities of a large number of people who signed a petition to convene a referendum on the future of Cop City. This process is being illegally suppressed by the government. While the Dickens administration and his lawyers use every legal trick they can to delay the referendum process, Brasfield & Gorrie and their subcontractors (thanks to money provided by Cadence Bank and the Atlanta City Council), are erecting barbed wire fence around Weelaunee. They are planning to move forward with construction no matter what the law says.

"We are releasing the identities and addresses of the Atlanta Committee for Progress. This Committee represents the most influential and corrupt industrial and corporate interests in the state of Georgia. The Atlanta Way, as the governing ethos of the region is commonly known, is to their primary benefit. They coordinate contracts and mega projects with local Black officials in exchange for extractive profits and unlimited privatization. They are the white power behind the Black face of municipal politics. This movement must destroy their influence in regional affairs.

They are being targeted because the Mayor’s office surely prompted the Clerk to “accidentally” release the addresses of the signatories. Since they control the Mayor, we are targeting them directly. If the City Council cannot reign in the Mayor, maybe the ACP can. We will give them some pressure to do so.

"Anyone who knows the home address of the Fulton County Clerk should publish that information.

"We cannot allow our movement to be attacked directly without responding, even if we do not believe in the referendum process per se.

"It is clear that the Mayor has lost his mind. Even his own Councilpeople are admitting that he rules like a monarch or dictator. He must step down. If he will not go willingly, he must be removed by other means. For that, we need to continue to increase participation in this bold and uncompromising movement without falling into chauvinistic sectarianism or political opportunism. We can’t expect apolitical civilians to fight against abstractions alone. They must learn step by step with their own experiences. Something they care about (their right to vote) is being attacked. We must turn this into a moment of popular education about the true function of the state, the violent reality behind the glimmering veneer of consent and democracy.

"Not for petty vengeance or individual fulfillment — for the social revolution!

"All together, step by step.

"Free & Rowdy Party (Accountability Caucus)"

The PSA said it had "very strict rules" for connection services, and enforcement action is taken if providers break these rules.

It also said it would cap all call costs at £40 from 18 September.

Fear the regulator! Only £40 for a call that should be free!

Here's the other sort of PSA (from the link):

How to spot a call connection service:

• Official numbers usually begin 01, 02, 03 or 0800

• If the number beings 09, 087 or 084, it is likely to be a connection service and will cost more

• When searching for a number on a search engine, be aware that the first number may not be the one you are looking for

• Look out for paid-for ads - these may be connection services.