Decoding Trump 2.0: The Shock & Awe Version (12-1-24)

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 I was ahead of the game until I took that supplement to get my chi moving
04:00 Trump’s Next Move: The Legal Battle That Could Change EVERYTHING, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewE5SEkFnTM
07:00 Conservative Host WALKS OFF Show After CoHost Calls Her A NAZI,
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5012229-trump-dei-merit/
24:15 Maladaptive Daydreaming: Avoiding Pain by Fantasizing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqXbZtQ11SM
28:40 Behind the Curtain: Trump’s shock and awe, https://www.axios.com/2024/12/01/trump-cabinet-kash-patel-fbi
35:15 Putin abandons ‘weak’ Assad as rebels head for Syrian capital | Stefanie Glinski, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWdB984gz08
40:20 Putin’s armies too stretched to aid Assad’s ‘catastrophically bad’ military | Mark Galeotti, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pxr6tAfCxs
48:00 Trump tariffs
1:14:00 Glenn Greenwald: Dangerous New Escalation in Russia, & Our Blackmailed Politicians, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKh4txSD0eQ
1:20:00 Christopher Caldwell: Speaking Trumpian: Persuasion in a post-oratorical age, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/speaking-trumpian/
1:34:20 Post-Thanksgiving Extravaganza, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if04NMat9_4
1:43:30 Biden’s Parting Gifts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXQDOSzglW4
1:47:00 Claremont: All the President’s Mental Lapses: Democracy dies in deception, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/all-the-presidents-mental-lapses/
2:05:50 Who moved my chi?
2:29:45 Velvet Prisons: Russell Jacoby on American Academia, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qlBJpJZE0I
2:38:00 Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality, https://www.amazon.com/Character-Trouble-Undisciplined-Essays-Personality-ebook/dp/B09KM7MPG4
2:47:20 Kip joins to talk about how we affect other people
3:26:00 Milgram experiment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
3:30:00 Stanford prison experiment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
3:37:30 John Doris: Rewriting the history of psychology, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIhp_zxoc2k
3:39:00 The replication bros vs Amy Cuddy, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/when-the-revolution-came-for-amy-cuddy.html
3:45:00 I find redheads disturbing

Posted in America | Comments Off on Decoding Trump 2.0: The Shock & Awe Version (12-1-24)

Decoding World War III (11-29-24)

Posted on November 29, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 Europeans & Democrats resigned to working with Trump, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYdhN85KS88
28:00 Death of DEI
34:00 Who can influence Donald Trump? Not many people, perhaps Susie Wiles, Elon Musk, Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump in certain spheres
38:00 Israel has run the table the past four months
47:00 Yoav Gallant is an American sock puppet
54:00 Reason magazine fancies itself as a bunch of free thinkers but it is conformist on race, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIOJ0z1gbWI
56:00 Martin Gurri voted for Trump, https://www.thefp.com/p/martin-gurri-voting-for-trump-not-kamala
57:00 Sam Harris is not a blank slatist
58:00 Trump’s counter-cultural revolution, https://www.thefp.com/p/martin-gurri-our-countercultural-revolution
1:02:00 I don’t claim to be an expert on anything
1:06:50 Trump’s new coalition
1:10:00 Hezbollah suffers ‘most significant’ setback in its history, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ-I5ue0tnA
1:15:00 Kamala Harris’ Video Remarks to Supporters, the Nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to Head the Nation…, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_BmRay8o60
1:39:00 Getting Over the Election with Adam Grant, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5TEOG–4-c
1:57:00 Ricardo notes that he can’t type into YT that it is the high status thing to support WWIII
2:08:00 Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281
2:11:00 Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, https://www.amazon.com/Ringmaster-Vince-McMahon-Unmaking-America/dp/1982169443
2:21:30 Donald Trump is acting like Elon Musk and doing big bold things, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmC-GVMSPU0
2:47:30 How Donald Trump can make the federal government more efficient, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4lxJKj0I0
2:51:30 Kip joins – ever feel like another high school hot shot?
3:07:00 The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Distance:_How_Distance_Shaped_Australia%27s_History
3:12:00 Madness is contagious
3:13:00 2nd Edition: Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=154845
3:23:00 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species
3:40:00 My bookmarks on X

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Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Luke Ford

Here are some highlights from this 2024 book by Emily Nussbaum:

* If you could knock your subjects off balance, they’d reveal a moment so shocking and, sometimes, so tender or surprising, that it would shatter viewer skepticism. It was the quality that Allen Funt liked to describe as being “caught in the act of being yourself,” the fuel that fed the reality engine, at both its loftiest moments and its lowest.

* It gave you the godlike power to create stories from the lives of ordinary human beings.

* I began this book excited to dig into the lively, outrageous origins of the reality genre, but the deeper I dug, the darker things got. There are people whose lives were wrecked by reality TV; there are methods of production so ugly they’re hard to look at; and reality programs, like any kind of television, reflect the limits, and the bigotries, of their creators. Early reality production was utterly reliant on the innocence of its stars, their inability to understand what they were consenting to: That was the genre’s secret sauce, its original sin.

* Inspired by a Vanity Fair article about the journalistic fabulist Stephen Glass, Cutler approached Glass’s old high school, in Highland Park, near Chicago, using a reference from his old pal George Stephanopoulos. He cut a deal with administrators, donating $100,000 worth of cameras and editing equipment and also offering to teach a class on filmmaking. In the show’s early stages, Cutler — who had grown up in Great Neck, a similar high – pressure suburb — was thinking about the dark themes in the Glass article, about the “conflict between ambitions and ethics.” By the time the show finished production, however, American High had emerged as a deeply humane project, a real – life analogue to the brilliant mid – 1990s teen drama My So – Called Life . It was full of likeable, layered characters, including an insecure girl and her jock boyfriend, a gay teen coming out to his friends, and a charming trickster with ADHD, on the verge of flunking out.

* Trump was “great TV, because he had no filter,” said Jamie Canniffe, who had started as a low – level producer in season 1, then rose through the ranks to become The Apprentice showrunner through season 6.

* The less ethical a show was, the more authentic the footage it captured. The more trusting (or drunk or exhausted) the participants were, the more likely it was that they’d ultimately crack, releasing a flood of feeling that couldn’t be faked.

Posted in Reality Shows | Comments Off on Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

I’ve never become teary over an ad before

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Luke Ford

Posted in Apple | Comments Off on I’ve never become teary over an ad before

Capitalism vs Populism (11-28-24)

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 Lions QB Jared Goff learns to release, https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5948798/2024/11/27/jared-goff-detroit-lions-mvp-dan-campbell-thanksgiving/
02:00 Great Rabbinic Thinkers: Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (Part 1) || Dr. Marc Shapiro, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DeyHTzWng
05:00 This Maverick Thinker (Wolfgang Streeck) Is the Karl Marx of Our Time, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/opinion/wolfgang-streeck-populism.html
29:00 NYT: What’s a Democratic Billionaire to Do Now?
The party’s donor class is still wrestling with Donald Trump’s victory, worried about retribution and sluggish liberal energy. Some rich Democrats are even pondering leaving the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/us/politics/democratic-donors-reid-hoffman-democracy-alliance.html
44:00 WP: In transgender fight, volleyball ‘saviors’ miss the point of sports, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/11/27/save-womens-sports-transgender-athletes/
58:10 Wolfgang Streeck: The end of the German empire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUYrsA4sJeE
1:02:00 How Will Capitalism End: Reflections on a Failing System – A Lecture by Wolfgang Streeck, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo8TF6GZg7E
1:14:00 John Birch Society, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
1:25:00 Wolfgang Streeck: The International State System after Neoliberalism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ2z-ygbYNw
1:28:30 Dani Rodrik: Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8HGyS3IRz8
1:34:00 Christopher Caldwell: This Prophetic Academic (Emmanuel Todd) Now Foresees the West’s Defeat, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/opinion/emmanuel-todd-decline-west.html
1:40:30 Emmanuel Todd, Defeat of the West – the main ideas explained in English, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXZYDtBt9k0
2:05:00 Triggernometry: We Went To America…. What The Media Didn’t Tell You, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCjNsLKIPwY
2:11:25 The Race Hustle Is Over – Adam Carolla, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX9RoZe9ZU0
2:36:30 Great Rabbinic Thinkers: Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (Part 1) || Dr. Marc Shapiro, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DeyHTzWng
2:38:00 Rabbi Samuel Mohilever, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Mohilever
2:55:00 Evolution & Judaism, https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/ten-questions-on-evolution-and-judaism-258
3:12:00 New study says DEI increases hostility, https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1861085998379376997
3:30:00 Judaism’s teachings on dignified speech, https://seforimblog.com/2024/06/franciscans-and-more-repulsive-practices-saul-lieberman-abraham-joshua-heschel-and-r-jehiel-jacob-weinberg/
3:31:00 Wikipedia: ‘Neturei Karta believes that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the Land of Israel’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157969
3:35:30 Kip joins
3:36:00 New York Post: Ex-CBS News reporter accuses network of ‘defying’ orders from Shari Redstone, CBS CEO to probe Hunter Biden laptop scandal, https://nypost.com/2024/11/26/media/ex-cbs-news-reporter-accuses-network-of-defying-orders-from-shari-redstone-george-cheeks-to-probe-hunter-biden-laptop-scandal/

Posted in America | Comments Off on Capitalism vs Populism (11-28-24)

Decoding Kamala’s Latest Bizarre Video (11-27-24)

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 Do Dennis Prager’s doctors know about the wonderful healing qualities of Relief Factor and the other supplements that Dennis Prager promotes? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157917
05:00 Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein and the horrifyingly low standards in Alternative Media, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lID15vBWgI
09:00 Decoding Kamala’s Latest Bizarre Video
20:40 Donald Trump’s devoted aide, Natalie Harp, https://x.com/BorealBaron/status/1861232072091685166
22:30 Kamala’s 30-second video to not give up your power will change the world
23:00 Commentary magazine: Kamala sounds drunk in her latest video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou3lym-I-a4
26:00 Mark Halperin on Why Democrats Lost and Why Trump Won Again, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGdEADakrI
32:50 Elon Musk wants to be the George Soros of the right
38:00 Kamala should have known she was not suitable for the presidency
42:30 Kip joins to defend Trump’s lies about the validity of the 2020 election
59:00 Paula Burnette missing, https://charleyproject.org/case/paula-michelle-burnette
1:04:00 Do Dennis Prager’s doctors have easy access to the important supplements that Dennis promotes?
1:22:20 Mark Halperin says the news media needs to come clean about its cover-up of Joe Biden’s senility
1:24:30 “The War on Meat” with Vinnie Tortorich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDNI5FeIU1M
1:25:50 Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein and the horrifyingly low standards in Alternative Media, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lID15vBWgI
1:35:00 Nina Power: Being a woman is easier, https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/being-a-woman-is-easier

Posted in America | Comments Off on Decoding Kamala’s Latest Bizarre Video (11-27-24)

Dignified Speech

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Luke Ford

Marc Shapiro writes: “While Jews are obligated to speak in a dignified manner, there is an exception when it comes to speaking about idolatry. See Megillah 25b, where among other things it states: “It is permitted for a Jew to say to a gentile: Take your idol and put it in your shin tav [i.e., shet, buttocks].””

Posted in Marc B. Shapiro | Comments Off on Dignified Speech

Wikipedia: ‘Neturei Karta believes that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the Land of Israel’

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Luke Ford

According to Wikipedia:

Founded in Jerusalem in 1937 by Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenelbogen, Neturei Karta was formed as an offshoot of the Aguda movement. Aguda, representing the most devout of the Haredi Jewish community in the Old Yishuv, was opposed to the secular orientation and nationalism of political Zionism, which the religiously devout members of Aguda believed represented a threat to their way of life and was a rejection of Torah law. However, Blau and Neturei Karta disagreed with Aguda’s accommodationist stance to Zionism in the 1930s in response to European antisemitism.

Professor Marc B. Shapiro blogs Sep. 18, 2024:

We have recently seen behavior by so-called religious Jews that is vile. I refer to the actions of Neturei Karta. Of course, we have all seen their antics in the past, but I think most of us looked at them as clowns and sick people that maybe we should feel sorry for. This is no longer the case. Now they are marching in support of the murderers of Jews, aligning themselves with the enemy, and attempting to destroy the State of Israel. They are doing this at the very time that Jews are being killed at war. It is true that in the past as well they openly aligned themselves with the PLO,[1] and R. Moshe Feinstein already in the late 1970s referred to Neturei Karta as reshaim.[2] But to be allied during wartime with Iran and Hamas is I think beyond what we have seen before.

Here you can see a video of a Neturei Karta delegation that went to Iran to pay respects after the death of President Raisi. Here a different delegation visits the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. to pay respects. Here they are in Qatar at the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh whose death they mourned in a public statement here. It is hard to imagine anything more obscene than this. What we have seen from Neturei Karta since October 7 goes way beyond making a hillul ha-shem.[3]

Until his death, the spiritual leader of this group was Rabbi Moshe Beck (1934-2021). Here you can see him showing his affection for the Iranian leader Ahmadenijad. In the ultimate obscenity, in his book Derekh ha-Hatzalah (Monsey, 2002), pp. 40ff., Beck actually explains why it is halakhically appropriate to congratulate terrorists on a “successful” operation, namely, when they murder Jews. Thus, it is entirely in line with Neturei Karta ideology for them to praise the October 7 “resistance.”

Over thirty years ago I was naive and thought that I might be able to have a productive correspondence with Beck. Here are three letters I received from him…..In my second letter I actually strongly protested how he referred to Rav Kook. In his response to this letter he also answers my question how he could cite from R. Reuven Margaliyot’s commentary on Sefer Hasidim when R. Margaliyot was a religious Zionist whose book was published by Mossad ha-Rav Kook. (I never said that he was a maskil). In my third letter I attacked him for degrading great Torah scholars and I mentioned that R. Aharon Kotler supported the State of Israel. I never said he was a Zionist. My point was that once the State of Israel was declared, with the lives of millions of Jews depending on it, anti-Zionism in the sense of opposing the creation of a Jewish state was now no longer relevant. Once the State of Israel was created, anti-Zionism came to mean working to destroy the Jewish state, and thus putting millions of Jewish lives at risk. Satmar anti-Zionism is religiously based but remains entirely theoretical, even eschatological, and Satmar has always been absolutely opposed to allying with anti-Semites and terrorists and their supporters.)

It is a copy of a letter sent to the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem from Aryeh Leib Weissfish. Weissfish was later to become famous as one of the leaders of the Neturei Karta, and strangely enough he was also a great fan of Nietzsche. You can read about his colorful career here, where it mentions how he illegally entered Jordan in 1951 to bring a message from the Neturei Karta that Jordan should invade Jerusalem and the Neturei Karta would be its ally in this. When he was deported to Israel he was put on trial and sentenced to six months in prison.

In view of the fact that during World War II there was a fear that Germany would invade the Land of Israel and that this would also lead to the Arabs persecuting Jews, Weissfish wrote to the local Muslim leaders to let them know that the Old Yishuv type of Jews that he is speaking about are not involved in politics and that they oppose the Zionists. They have always treated the Arabs with respect and he therefore requests that these Jews be protected. He also offers to provide the names of the families who should be given this special treatment.

…[W]hen it comes to Neturei Karta and those of a similar mindset, I was wondering about some halakhic and ethical issues… For example, can such people be counted to a minyan? Are you allowed to give charity to them, and if not, how about the children who will suffer through no fault of their own? Can the children of such a family be kicked out of a yeshiva? If these people have businesses, should we boycott them, again, causing the children to suffer for the sins of their fathers? Or should we just ignore these people entirely? These questions are not only relevant when it comes to Neturei Karta, for as we have seen since October 7 there are many other enemies of Israel and the Jewish people. Some of them who support Hamas are themselves Jewish. As far as I know, there has not yet appeared an analysis of how such traitors are to be regarded in Jewish law.

…Here is what Maimonides says about one who separates himself from the community, and it certainly applies to Neturei Karta (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:11):

“A person who separates himself from the community even though he has not transgressed any sins, but has separated himself from the congregation of Israel and does not fulfill mitzvot together with them, does not take part in their hardships or join in their [communal] fasts, but rather goes on his own individual path as if he is from another nation and not one of them [the Jewish people], does not have a portion in the world to come.”

…[Chaim] Bloch was very interested in apologetics and softening anti-Gentile passages that appear in the Talmud and later rabbinic literature. He even devoted an entire (very dishonest) book to this topic, Ve-Da Mah She-Tashiv (New York, 1962). In my post here I include a page from Bloch’s Heikhal le-Divrei Hazal u-Fitgameihem (New York, 1948), p. 9. Here Bloch invents an entire story about how before the war there was a collection of letters in Vienna dealing with the sections of the Talmud that were removed by non-Jewish censors. He tells us that R. Elazar Horowitz wrote a letter to R. Judah Aszod stating that R. Moses Sofer did not wish to print a Talmud with the censored sections. The reason R. Sofer supposedly gave was that it was divine providence that these passages were removed, and once they have been removed they should not be put back. Based on additional imaginary letters, Bloch tells us more fairy tales about other nineteenth-century rabbinic leaders who agreed that the censored passages should remain out, because of the antisemitism that could be generated by them.

Bloch’s forgery of the Gentile-friendly “Pour out your love” passage is no different than his other forgeries dealing with rabbinic texts that present a negative view of non-Jews and that were often cited in non-Jewish attacks on the Talmud and rabbinic literature.

Posted in Marc B. Shapiro, Neturei Karta | Comments Off on Wikipedia: ‘Neturei Karta believes that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy to rule over the Land of Israel’

Nikki Haley Would Have Lost

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Luke Ford

Mark Halperin says Trump supporters usually have no problem acknowledging all the problems with their candidate while Democrats for years couldn’t admit that Biden was senile. He says Nikki Haley would have lost the general election. He says Trump took the majority position on national security, economy and culture while Dems were too far left on these triangle.

Halperin says Kamala Harris should have realized she would have lost, that she was not cut out to be president, and she should not have accepted the nomination.

He says Biden should not have run in 2020 let alone in 2024 due to his senility.

“Trump is the best political candidate I’ve seen since Bill Clinton.”

“You never once heard Biden or Harris express outrage about people coming to the country illegally and then committing other crimes.”

“I’ve never once covered an incoming administration about which I’ve had so little sense of what will happen.” (Halperin)

Posted in America | Comments Off on Nikki Haley Would Have Lost

Decoding How The World Works (11-26-24)

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157926
06:00 America’s illegal immigration problem
08:30 Trump’s tariff threats against Mexico, Canada, China
14:00 Fake News Creator on Manipulating Media for the World’s Worst Humans | Phil Elwood, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44ACKKfolFE
24:30 Walmart turns its back on woke
34:00 Dennis Prager sounds like he’s in a coma, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157917
36:45 Being a woman is easier | Nina Power, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tUD077Pml4
40:00 Psychologist Diana Fleischman, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Fleischman
42:00 If you want to be part of a community that looks after each other, join a religion
44:00 I thought the left was great at solidarity & compassion but the religious do it better in the real world
53:00 Kamala’s campaign makes excuses
57:00 Kip joins to discuss liberalism, feminism, mysticism
1:28:00 Why Has Trump disappeared from tv cameras?
1:34:00 Live From The Table: Ann Coulter. Immigration, Forgiving Trump, Worries About the “Crazy” Hard Right, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9RiDPbiiUA
1:35:00 Elliott Blatt joins to talk about seeing a homeless man’s beautiful red dog as the sun sets
1:56:30 Ann Coulter talks about her friend David Cole
1:58:00 Ann Coulter only wants the best looking immigrants
1:59:30 Understanding Trump’s picks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgv0lt5yO64
2:01:00 Donald Trump’s campaign was willing to say no to its special interest groups (such as the anti-abortion crowd) while the Kamala Harris campaign failed to do that
2:06:00 Does Kamala have a bright political future?
2:08:00 Trump Transition, Democrat Realignment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T19MbNiZSm4
2:12:00 Trump merch is cool
2:13:00 The 2024 election was Starbucks voters (Democrats) vs Dunkin’ Donuts voters

Posted in America | Comments Off on Decoding How The World Works (11-26-24)