bubblegumpopdefiance

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As a Jewish conversion student in liberal spaces, I am aware that Israel is a bit of a challenging issue.

Now, I’m not crazy enough to try to cover the full issue here, but I want to focus in on this one teeny tiny piece:

Ever since Tucker Carlson has come out against Israel, I’ve been seeing more and more anti Israel comments in conservative subreddits.

Don’t give him credit.

I’m not seeing comments about the treatment of Palestinians, I’m seeing complaints that Christians are being prevented from traveling to holy sites.

Okay, sure…

But posts like this one make me real uncomfortable.

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Republicans were already comfortable with

School shootings

Domestic violence

Starving school children

No state funded day care

Single moms with no support network

No support network for anyone

An economy that requires two or more incomes to support a family

So if they don’t care about pedophiles anymore, what does being the party of family values even cover?

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So, I got my MS in CS from 2016-2018. Back then there were two hot topics that came up in basically every class:

Data Science and AI

The complicated relationships between governments, censorship, free interchange on the internet, and privacy.

Now, AI has obviously become big since then but I want to wax poetically about that second point.

So, back in the late teens, about half of my classmates were students from China. And the topic would frequently come up of Chinese censorship and the Great Firewall of China. None of these students would ever deny it and a few savvy ones would point out that America has always had its own priorities on censorship.

Case in point child porn. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but I am saying it definitely happens.

You might be aware that the Great Firewall of China is so fine tuned that it can identify dissenting trends in real time and censor within 20 minutes images. It’s wild how good their ai identification is. China is able to go packet by packet for data traffic going in and out of the country to find this stuff.

Another related issue is the access of the American government to social media data. This isn’t anything new and I’ve commented on it before, but this is why American social media companies are largely banned or strictly regulated in countries like China: the US gov has access to an enormous amount of data. (I did point out a while ago the humor and outright hypocrisy relating to TikTok)

Also, we’d often highlight countries like Iran that are largely cut off from the rest of the world’s internet traffic. If there are only a handful of hard lines connecting your network to the broader network, it is very easy to censor and control the flow of data.

To be clear, I’m pointing out countries like China and Iran because there are topical. I am not ignorant to the US human rights record that is growing darker by the hour.

Since I graduated, topics like TikTok, Starlink, Russian internet trolls, and astroturfing have become important parts of the conversation as well. Keep those in mind.

Now, fast forward to now and consider the US government’s plans to use Palantir or the push to support EU created technology. There’s been a shift from Chrome to DuckDuckGo to improve privacy and avoid ai. I’m loving the stop killing games petition.

Starlink was this promising tech to allow people in all corners of the world to have access to the internet but we all know how a company run by Elon Musk turned out. Anyone else remember that time Musk didn’t like Ukraine destroying Russian tankers so he just turned Starlink off on them?

Back to the point. We have a US regime that is demonstrably becoming more and more reliant on AI to understand trends to identify perceived threats and control sentiment of the broader public. This is explicitly being done with the cooperation of American social media and other tech companies. And while it’s funny at this stage of incompetence, it’ll be a lot less funny when it gets implemented on a broad scale.

China has known for years: if you want to avoid the US having enormous information on and control of your populace, you need your own social media. We need social media and tech in general produced outside the US. We need EU created social media. Canadian made. Latin American, Asian, African, Australian.

We need enthusiastic teens the world over writing software. We need open source projects. We need the EU and Canada supporting non profits. We need to fill that gap.

Because let’s be real: even if the US has a regime change with the next few elections, the model of corporate sponsored tech will always be dangerous for privacy and freedom of speech. If profits are more important than justice, this is where we get.

It’s not fair that we need to depend on the EU for the right to be forgotten or for dumb things like Apple abandoning the lightning cable. Its not fair to depend on the EU to save games made five years ago. It’s not fair that liberal Americans like me are looking elsewhere for someone to help.

But I do. We all do.

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Me causing trouble in my Intro to Judaism class:

So, we were discussing how traditionally in Judaism, you are Jewish if your mother is. The Reform movement declared in 1983 that you could be considered Jewish if either parent was Jewish and you were raised Jewish. To be clear, this is controversial and not accepted in more conservative groups.

Anyways! I threw the monkey wrench into the discussion like this: many if not most Jews outside of Orthodox Judaism are egalitarian and do not dictate actions based upon gender identity. These spaces are often inclusive of trans people. Even some Orthodox spaces are trans inclusive.

I also understand that traditionally adopted babies need to convert but I don’t know if that’s all denominations.

Anyways! Leads us to the question: can you still depend on a mother being Jewish if you’re egalitarian? What about interfaith couples with two moms? What about a trans woman and a trans man marrying and having a child?

Even if you’re going to put the distinction on the birthing parent, what about IVF or surrogate parents? What if the surrogate was Jewish but only the father in the couple whose genetic material was involved? What would happen if technology allowed us to fully gestate a child outside a womb or take genetic material from two or more parents or even two amab individuals (sexually male).

I am very certain that there are Jews who have started asking or these questions and I’m curious what some of these people are proposing.

Anyways, here’s an update on my trouble making conversion journey ❤️

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My spoiler free and very serious only take on Act 1 of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Pros:

Beautiful, haunting world that only the masters of ennui, existentialism, and getting your butt kicked in war can provide (I’m French Canadian, the worst kind)

Baguettes > emotional integrity of cutscenes

I just got dunked on by a diminutive paint brush and I liked it

I suddenly want a Pokemon inspired souls like—I think I just described Nightreign’s revenant class

Really satisfying combat and amazing music

Andre the Giant?

Cons:

I now have unrealistic hair expectations

Gustav is not my older brother

Game expects me to watch beautiful cutscenes while ugly crying

Charlie Cox credited when they CLEARLY hired Robert Pattinson. Look at those cheekbones

Baymax was an immediate clue I’d be bawling. Yea I know Tadachi is here!!!

Anyways, fantastic game.

[bubblegumpopdefiance]

More Catholic Catechism for no reason:

“2499 Moral judgment must condemn the plague of totalitarian states which systematically falsify the truth, exercise political control of opinion through the media, manipulate defendants and witnesses at public trials, and imagine that they secure their tyranny by strangling and repressing everything they consider ‘thought crimes.’”

Sounds like the new pope’s distaste for Trump shouldn’t be a surprise.

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More Catholic Catechism:

“2432 Those responsible for business enterprises are responsible to society for the economic and ecological effects of their operations”

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Quoting Catholic Catechism for no reason:

“Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to…make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on.”

Go look!

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I remember when I first became aware of preferred pronouns. I asked a friend how I could know what pronouns to use and she said:

“You just ask.”

And yeah. Fair play.

If you find pronouns weird or uncomfortable but you still want to do right by your fellow peeps, I swear it gets easier with time.

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🍊🍊🍊

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When I hear my engineer colleagues complaining about the strain of grocery prices I can’t help but wonder how hard it is for people who aren’t so lucky.

Sorry, folks.

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Everyone’s talking about the US banning synthetic food dyes but no one is talking about the FDA suspending testing milk.

And the Washington Post said it’s fine because we can trust states and milk manufacturers to just…keep testing.

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Since Russian online trolling and hacking have been demonstrably successful in the US, a part of me is morbidly curious of the chaos that will ensue when other nations’ hackers join the fray.

I mean, can you imagine MAGAs getting tricked into liberal ideas? No, me neither. But the results can only be weird AF.

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So let me get this straight. The White House is simultaneously complaining about a low birth rate while mass deporting immigrants?

Let’s break this down…

Because it is a well researched economic phenomena that low enough birth rates lead to a decreasing population which in turn leads to deflation and lowered economic growth. Case in point, look at Japan’s economic struggles over the past few decades.

Not only are there not enough young people to support the economy for the older people, but companies are incentivized to hoard money instead of investing in jobs and R&D…you know, the things we allegedly all want.

Let’s be real, complaints about immigration are about Latino immigrants who tend to work blue collar jobs. I’m going to skip over immigrants in tech and white collar jobs. No one seems to be complaining about them.

To be clear: Latino migrants are a boost to the economy. Employers consistently say that immigrants are harder workers. They work in low paying, difficult jobs like agriculture and construction that American born citizens just don’t want.

And furthermore, Latinos have a higher birth rate than other demographics in America.

So it’s not a question about economics or birthrate—it’s about racism.

P.S And yeah, healthcare, family leave, and affordable housing would all help.

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It’s a well known fact that corporations the world over have embraced ai. And while the theft of artwork is certainly obvious and eye catchy, I’d like to point out this likelihood:

The US federal government is fubar and likely does not have the organization or resources to manually find people.

So…

The United States government is likely using ai to find immigrants and others it wants to persecute.

Ai is well known to be able to make predictions in enormous sets based off data that is otherwise hard to draw similar conclusions from. You mark known data points for things you want to find and gradually develop an algorithm to determine…anything.

You can use ai to look at data from students in an entire state or even a country and determine with decent certainty who will succeed. You can use ai to determine the plot of a movie most likely to make money in a given market. Ai can even find skin cancer with greater reliability than many dermatologists.

Or you can hypothetically build a model off a dataset of Salvadorans where you mark known gang members and use that same model to attempt to find gang members in an entirely different country. Purely hypothetically.

And yes, there are obvious reasons to be worried. Innocent people are being deported to prisons known for human rights violations without due process. American born citizens are being picked up off the streets and held without due process.

We should be worried about vulnerable innocent people being targeted and treated inhumanely and without due process.

But consider this:

We should be worried that governments will able to pinpoint any demographic it deems undesirable and find them no matter how well they hide.

Because if you have any records in an industrialized nation, if you own a smart phone, if you have ever been online at all, if you’ve used digital currency or a credit card, you are at risk for the same treatment.

And maybe there will be no one left to speak up for you.

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I always liked Pope Francis. While I’m among those who wished he had pushed for more changes to the modern Roman Catholic Church, I do want to note this:

He showed that even with a conservative take of current Catholic doctrine, you should still focus on service to the poor and vulnerable, economic justice, stewardship of the environment, and not judging others.

Also, bonus points for being a chemist.

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So, I heard *someone* say autistic people can’t love, go on dates, pay taxes, get married, or play baseball.

Hey hun…

I’m pretty sure we just finished our taxes and you played baseball as a kid. Oh, and we’re married.

Huh.