Ah yeah that makes sense. Though in the past I’ve gotten in trouble for trying to say who is and who isn’t a “real” Jew (many an argument about Messianic Jews over the dinner table). But yeah, anyone who supports genocide doesn’t deserve my respect, so I’m okay calling them not real Jews.

real Jews would never, ever, encourage this sort of behavior.

I really wish that were true. I’m a Jew, and I am fully against this genocide and Israel’s hypocrisy in general, but Israel is full of real Jews who absolutely encourage this behavior. It’s sad, demoralizing, and shameful, especially for us “normal” Jews who see it for the evil that it is, but I’m not sure enough of the world realizes how normalized this kind of violence is in Israel. I’ve spent a lot of time there, and the vapid, bloodthirsty hatred for Palestinians is absolutely real, and many many more Jews than you or I would like to believe support these atrocities.

I’m a descendant of Holocaust survivors, with a sizable contingent of family that escaped Europe to Israel, and I frankly won’t be talking to any of them ever again now that I know they happily support genocide.

My whole team and I work remotely, so it’s not the exact same situation as you, but I made a concerted effort from day one to set social boundaries with my colleagues. First week on the job my manager found out I’m single and offered to set me up with people. I acted very weird about it, purposefully exaggerating how uncomfortable the offer made me, and she got the hint. We have a very friendly and cordial working relationship, but she no longer pries into my personal life unless I volunteer information. Been happily working under her for four years now.

That work/life separation quickly filtered down to the rest of my colleagues, to the point where now they act a little weird when a company call starts to get personal. Mission accomplished.

I think the key thing is that you’ll never get through to people if they can’t read social cues. Sounds like your workplace cliques are filled with those types of oblivious folks, so you might just need to be completely explicit about keeping things fully professional. I’m lucky that my manager is emotionally intelligent, but that’s pretty rare these days.

Good luck!!

Edit: queues to cues

This makes me sick. Or rather, them sick. Or, whatever, this was a totally fucked up and inexcusable thing to do.

This is the only answer I’m okay with. Keeping government away from it would be a challenge, but an easier challenge to handle than our current cesspool of for-profit media companies.

Same with elections, they should be fully funded by taxpayers, and not a single cent of private money should enter the equation. Depending on the office and the size of its constituency, every candidate gets the exact same amount. You accept a dollar from a corp? You’re automatically disqualified. Imagine how much harder candidates would have to work for their votes.

It’s takes real skill to take a concept that has been developed over years of highly technical debate and scholarship and make it understandable with normal language, even if the underlying concepts are actually super simple.

I think a reason for this is that in highly technical or complex fields, it’s counterintuitively easier to speak in full jargon, since that’s how ideas are developed and how people in the field are convinced of their validity. Using language for the “public” can often mean you lose some of the more subtle meanings, though you’re right that at the end of the day the explanations that we end up with are usually easy for most people to understand.

So I think it’s actually pretty natural to start with jargon and then refine the ideas by translating them into normal speak.

I want to know who goes around giving a single downvote to entirely personal and uncontroversial comments. Happens to almost every single one of my comments. I’d rather have five or ten downvotes than just one. I dunno, I know I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does.

You win the internet today.

The article could have ended after the very first sentence.

Art is subjective.

Leaving aside the fact that this is about the UK, I’ll take a crack at this. Many large colleges in the US have what’s called an endowment, which is essentially a massive pot of money that they can’t spend, but can invest. I think they typically can spend the interest that the endowment accrues, so they invest it so it grows. Many of the Ivy League schools have endowments worth multiple billions of dollars. It’s a very strange system.

I could be wrong on some of the finer points, so folks can feel free to correct me.

Fully agree. This edutainment disclaimer also applies when it comes to explanations of archaeological sites and the “daily life” of ancient populations. The stories the public hears are based on the best understanding of complex interpretations of ceramics, surface features, architecture, stratigraphy, etc. You could ask two equally talented archaeologists to interpret a site and get two equally convincing but completely different explanations. We just can’t know any of this for sure, it’s all filtered through the lens of the researcher, their methods, and their biases. And that’s okay. The best we can do is apply the most relevant and current methodology to interpret the evidence, be transparent about potential shortcomings, and be willing to change our conclusions if better evidence arises.

Lots of people are uncomfortable with “that’s just our best possible guess at the moment,” but that’s how interpretive social sciences work. Until we invent a time machine, educated guesses based on all the available evidence are the best we can do.

I appreciate the pushback, I really do want to get a more well-rounded sense of Macron and his popularity.

I don’t usually like LLM summaries as a general rule, but since my opinions were admittedly based on vibes and not much substance, this might be a good use for it.

I definitely smell the McKinsey stench now that you mention it.

I’m not French, and my opinion is based on pretty much nothing but a smattering of headlines, but I really dislike Macron. He strikes me as an opportunistic little boy trying to make everyone happy while pissing off his parents (the French electorate) at nearly every turn. He tries to push his way into the global spotlight by meeting with Putin and Xi and thinks he looks like some neutral peacemaker, but we never really see any results other than a small boost to his profile.

Maybe I’m totally wrong, like I said I’m just a spectator. Maybe it’s just his face.

Yup, it is. I can’t really conceptualize a thousand billions or a trillion, though. These are not numbers that translate to reality in any practical way for me.

Two Thousand Billion is not a number I’m capable of conceptualizing.

This is really helpful, thanks.

Because it’s in everyone’s best interest that people with overt bias are dismissed. In high profile cases it’s standard practice for both sides to do pretty intensive research on individual prospective jurors (they get a list), and that often includes scouring the web for their social media accounts. If they find something you posted, and you didn’t disclose your account when asked, you could be in trouble.

I don’t think it’s usually standard to ask specifically about social media accounts, at least in normal mundane cases, but in a crazy case like this, it can say a lot about a person’s ability to be impartial.

I was just about to ask this same question in a different thread. I’m in a similar situation, in that Lemmy is the only social media I use (Reddit before the API crap), but I’ve never used my real name. I’d happily own all my comments, but the point of an anonymous account is that I don’t have to. I guess when you’re under oath it doesn’t matter, you have to truthfully answer the question that’s asked.

I wish there was a robust drafts feature linked to our accounts so I could go back and see all the comments I started but didn’t have the energy to back up or source. Voyager is pretty good about saving comments you accidentally close, but as far as I know there’s no way to save unfinished drafts to your account for later.

Also, dicks out? Is that something you often do to draw attention? Your HR file must be a fun read 😁