Jon P retweeted
A few days ago, Al Jazeera hosted a debate about what October 7 achieved for Palestinians. One guest argued against the attack; the other praised October 7 and Hamas.
When confronted with the devastation that followed--families living in tents, homes destroyed, and people left with nothing but unimaginable suffering--the guest defending Hamas replied that people in Gaza were already living in tents before October 7.
Furious at this disgusting claim, Palestinians began sharing photos of their homes from before the attack, exposing the lies of Hamas’s mouthpieces and mocking their attempts to rewrite reality.
Jon P retweeted
Seems a great time to draw attention to Charlie Broker's excellent Russell Brand takedown in 2015
On Gaza casualty figures.
#Israel
I’ve been playing around with May’s Hamas fatality lists today, because what else are Saturdays for?
Gaza’s recorded deaths are heavily concentrated among adult males. In the May 2026 dataset, which contains 72,835 deaths, men aged 18–45 account for 41.12% of those killed, whereas that age/gender group comprised 20.52% of the pre-war population. Their share of recorded deaths is almost exactly twice their population share.
Widening the bracket to males aged 15–45 produces much the same result. They represent 24.39% of the population and 45.68% of listed deaths: 33,268 fatalities against approximately the 17,762 deaths we would expect if deaths had followed the population’s age and sex distribution. Among men aged 25–34, the death share reaches 2.18 times the population benchmark; among those aged 35–45, it reaches 2.35 times.
The 14–18 age group also warrants examination because Hamas has a documented history of recruiting and training minors. The UN’s 2019 report verified the recruitment and use of a 17-year-old by Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. Its following annual report recorded Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad camps exposing children as young as 14 to military activities. Hamas itself has publicised children’s military training through its Telegram channel, including instruction in firearms and guerrilla warfare. This evidence requires us to consider under-18 combatants within the casualty figures.
The list contains 5,551 males aged 14–18, against approximately 4,661 under the population-proportional benchmark, a difference of 19%. That disparity is considerably smaller than the adult-male concentration. Of course, it does not mean every teenage boy killed was a fighter, but we cannot pretend that Hamas’s recruitment of children has no bearing on the analysis.
Across all ages, the Gaza list is 69.96% male and 30.04% female.
In Gaza, Hamas’s conduct is central to that examination. In the Henry Jackson Society report I co-authored with @Aizenberg, Hamas’s Human Shield Strategy in Gaza, we documented military infrastructure embedded within civilian neighbourhoods, including tunnel entrances inside homes and weapons stored in residential buildings. The report also examines Hamas’s instructions to civilians to ignore evacuation warnings. These practices placed civilians around military objectives and exploited the restrictions their presence imposed on Israeli attacks. Any account of civilian deaths that removes Hamas’s battlefield organisation from the explanation discards a central cause of civilian exposure to harm.
Israel’s civilian protection measures also form part of the record. OCHA estimated that approximately 50,000 people moved south through an Israeli military corridor on 8 November 2023 alone. It recorded danger and shelling around the route, as well as the extension of the corridor’s operating hours while people continued to leave. This establishes that organised evacuation operated on a substantial scale. The IDF has also published footage of strikes being aborted when civilians appeared. This evidence cannot be omitted from any judgement about Israeli intent.
Even NAZA, a film constructed around allegations against Israel’s conduct, describes intelligence personnel identifying Hamas targets and calculating anticipated civilian casualties. Its most sensational claim, concerning approval for an attack anticipating 500 civilian deaths, comes without any corroborating evidence. The film provides neither a named target nor enough detail to verify its accounts of the alleged high-casualty strikes. Those allegations remain completely unsubstantiated.
A collateral damage estimate belongs within a military targeting process. In its detailed response to the film, the IDF explains that preliminary estimates precede operational review, during which commanders can change the weapon, timing or scope of an attack, require further precautions, or refuse approval. An Israeli targeting source told me 50% of planned strikes in Gaza were aborted due to civilian presence by July 2024. The IDF also distinguishes thresholds requiring senior authorisation from permission to inflict a specified number of civilian deaths. By proving the existence of those calculations, NAZA establishes that anticipated civilian harm was being assessed.
When considered alongside Hamas’s human shield strategy and the evidence of Israeli civilian protection measures, the casualty patterns do not indicate a genocidal campaign. The concentration of deaths among adult males is consistent with substantial combatant losses in a war fought through civilian neighbourhoods. Evacuation arrangements and decisions to withhold fire further undermine any claim of an intention to destroy Gaza’s population.
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Jon P retweeted
“Many Rapporteurs Totally Out of Control”: UN secretary-general António Guterres does not look happy at all posing now with the U.N. committee of the special rapporteurs — half of whom are being funded by the Chinese government. He said “many are totally out of control.” 🧵👇
Israel’s enemies (eg Ireland, South Africa) need there to have been a genocide in Gaza, and are quite happy to redefine the term to get the conviction they crave.
Why they NEED it to be a genocide.
From a live event at Valley Beth Shalom Synagogue, Encino, California. With Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz and Reverend Drew Sams, Senior Pastor of Bel Air Church.
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Jon P retweeted
The greatest danger facing Democrats after our historic victory is that the radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its allies will claim credit for a victory they did nothing to deliver then use that false narrative to seize control of our party's future.
Democratic leaders must act decisively now to isolate these extremists, minimize their influence, and prevent their radical agenda from defining our party.
The election results tell the story.
According to New York Times polling, Democrats won an estimated 56% of the national House vote to 43% for Republicans, a stunning 15-point shift toward our party since 2024. The shift was 33 points among voters under 30, 29 points among Hispanics, 18 points among men, and 14 points among white voters without college degrees.
This was a sweeping national repudiation of Donald Trump and his administration, extending far beyond the Democratic Party's traditional base.
Now look at where the DSA candidates won. All eight DSA-endorsed House winners, including six newly elected representatives, prevailed in reliably Democratic districts. Not a single one flipped a competitive Republican-held seat. Their strategy was to mobilize relatively small groups of highly motivated voters to win Democratic primaries, then coast to victory in overwhelmingly Democratic districts.
Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats expanded our House majority by winning competitive districts and persuading voters who were not already committed to our party. The DSA benefited from the Democratic wave without in any way demonstrating that its radical ideology could win the swing voters whose support determines control of Congress.
Worse, the DSA cost Democrats votes and potentially winnable races. In Florida, DSA member Angie Nixon defeated decorated Army veteran Alex Vindman in the Democratic Senate primary, then lost to Republican Ashley Moody by just 2.9 points. That narrow margin raises the distinct possibility that a more broadly appealing candidate like Vindman could have won.
The DSA's radical platform also handed Republicans powerful ammunition against mainstream Democrats. The organization calls for abolishing the Senate, fundamentally restructuring the presidency and Supreme Court, phasing out police and prisons, and bringing major corporations under public ownership.
Incoming Congresswoman Melat Kiros said America deserved the September 11 terrorist attacks and Incoming Congresswoman Darializa Avila Chevalier attending rally celebrating the October 7 Hamas massacre and led an organization that called for the “total eradication of Western civilization.”
Republicans eagerly exploited these controversies to portray mainstream Democrats as extremists. Those attacks would have been far more damaging had the country not turned so decisively against Donald Trump.
The DSA's electoral strategy poses a serious long-term threat to our party. By targeting low-turnout primaries in overwhelmingly Democratic districts, its strategy is to win congressional seats without demonstrating meaningful national support for their agenda, then exploit congressional visibility and social media controversy to build political power. The organization's own “dirty break” strategy envisions using the Democratic ballot line to build an independent socialist movement. Shame on us if we allow them to use our party as a vehicle for their radical agenda.
The incoming House will have eight DSA-endorsed representatives and perhaps five additional members of the broader far-left coalition. But with Democrats approaching a majority of 85 seats, these extremists will lack the leverage that allowed a handful of Freedom Caucus Republicans to hold their party hostage and ultimately topple Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
A Democratic majority of roughly 260 seats could withstand more than 40 defections on ordinary party-line votes. Mainstream Democrats can govern without depending on the DSA and, when appropriate, cooperate with pragmatic Republicans such as David Joyce and members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democratic leadership must deny DSA-backed extremists positions of influence, assign them the least consequential committees, and limit their access to party resources and leadership opportunities. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats must similarly prevent DSA-aligned politicians, including incoming Michigan Senator Abdul El-Sayed, from gaining disproportionate influence by giving them the worst possible committee assignments and fewest opportunities for additional exposure.
The DSA, in other words, must not be allowed to hijack a Democratic victory it did nothing to deliver.
Americans delivered a powerful repudiation of Donald Trump's leadership and a demand for change. Democrats now have a historic opportunity to respond with a positive, patriotic, common-sense agenda for national renewal that brings Americans together and builds a stronger, more prosperous, more inclusive country.
We must seize that opportunity rather than surrender our party's future to a small faction advancing an agenda far outside the American mainstream.
The future of the Democratic Party must be determined by the broad coalition of Americans who delivered this historic victory, not by the extremists who hope to exploit it.
Fortunately, the election results give Democratic leaders an extraordinary opportunity to stop this.
Jon P retweeted
Bob Geldof knew. Russell Brand tried it on with his daughter. Well done to all of Brand’s victims for speaking up and getting this conviction🧘♀️✌️💚
Jon P retweeted
This is hands down the greatest live-mic sequence in cricket history. 😭
Shane Warne was standing at slip, mic'd up and teasing Glenn McGrath for suddenly learning how to swing the ball in retirement.😂
Right in the middle of Warnie's banter, McGrath interrupts the broadcast on his own microphone. He looks at a young David Warner and announces the exact trap: "Looking for a little bit of a nibble outside off-stump... catch to Warne if you're out there. If not, okay, dive in front."
One ball later, McGrath bowls it, Warner nicks it, and Adam Gilchrist takes the catch behind the stumps. Gilly, who was ALSO mic'd up, immediately bursts out laughing because he heard the entire script live in his earpiece. Absolute cinema! 🐐🤣
Jon P retweeted
Sean Lock will be looking down and thinking "I knew this day would come".
He always knew Russell Brand was a wrongun.
Jon P retweeted
Adam Hamilton is a centrist pastor running in Kansas and only underperformed El-Sayed (running in the most blue-leaning swing state) by 1.5 points. Given the environment and the political tilt of their respective states, the two worst performing Democratic Senate winners were El-Sayed and Troy Jackson
I don't point shit like this out just to make it clear that the left is delusional (although I do enjoy that) but it's just absurd that this Democratic Senate class is actually *more conservative* than the Democratic Senate class it is replacing because of Democratic victories in Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and possibly Alaska and Mississippi and yet the left thinks we should defer to them because they gave us our two biggest underperformers in races anyone would have won in this environment
In terms of margin of victory, El-Sayed underperformed every other statewide Democrat who was up for election in Michigan
Jon P retweeted
The UN just elected the judges who will rule on the "genocide" case against Israel.
One of them, Jordan's Mahmoud Hmoud, already called it "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" weeks after October 7, before a single piece of evidence was heard.
Another, Phoebe Okowa, sat on Namibia's legal team arguing against Israel at the same court.
In any real court, that's called a conflict of interest.
At the ICJ, it's called a qualification.
Jon P retweeted
Takes on the election
1. To a first approximation, Republicans lost this hard because voters lost confidence in the Trump administration, not because of a positive agenda from the Democrats. Favorability of the Democratic Party was negative (-5). But Trump told voters to “vote like he was on the ballot”, and they did. The NBC exit poll found that 37% of voters approved of Trump, and 63% disapproved (-26). There’s just no winning the national environment with these margins.
2. There were essentially two major issues that voters cared about: 1) cost of living and 2) government corruption, both of which ~90% of voters said were “crucial or a major factor”. AI was not *that* big of a deal in this election - 56% said it was “crucial or a major factor”, but it’s really hard to disambiguate what voters feel about AGI and catastrophic risks (if anything) from ordinary median-voter NIMBYism around data centers. (It will, however, likely be a huge deal in the 2028 election when the impacts of AI become much more visible). Immigration was also not that big of a deal. Voters actually slightly favored Rs on immigration (+2), probably thanks to lasting backlash from the Biden administration’s laxity on border enforcement. It's unclear to what extent the war with Iran contributed aside from it raising the price of gas.
3. Data centers are probably not over. In fact data center ETF $DTCR was up nearly 2.5% today! It’s hard to understand why this is the case, but one hypothesis is that markets think ultimately, elites’ recognition of the immense economic and national security importance of data centers will override voters’ desire not to build them.
4. On cost of living in particular: one of the most important questions now is to what extent Dems will embrace economic slopulism (think rent control, broad asset taxes, and subsidizing demand) vs. “abundance liberal” policies like building more housing, cutting regulations, and embracing economic growth.
5. Thermostatic backlash is real. Voters hate incumbents. Political majorities shift constantly. The blue wave of 2008 was immediately followed by the red wave of 2010. Anyone predicting a durable multi-decade supermajority for Democrats will likely end up being wrong.
6. “Woke is back” is exactly the wrong lesson for Democrats to take from this, and Ro Khanna posting “DEI is back” doesn’t help. Using transgender issues as a proxy for “woke”, 52% of voters said trans rights have gone too far, compared to just 26% who said they haven’t gone far enough. Deep-blue Washington voted to ban trans athletes in girls’ sports, and Colorado voted to ban trans surgery for minors. Successful Democrats mostly avoided culture war issues.
7. Similarly, a lot of moderate or even right-leaning downballot measures passed, even in blue states. Eight states voted to require voter ID. North Carolina voted to cap state income taxes. California’s billionaire tax is on track to fail by nearly 11 points. Wisconsin voted to ban DEI in state government. Voters largely do not like left-wing ideas.
8. On the other side, “Demographics is destiny” (i.e. America needs to be a white nationalist/nativist country and heavily restrict immigration) is the wrong lesson for Republicans. White voters shifted 13 points to the left. Whites under 30 shifted 30 points to the left. Hispanics and other non-white groups shifted massively towards the right in 2024, and can be encouraged to do so again.
9. Moderates outperformed; radicals underperformed. Dems won by 13 points nationwide. Roy Cooper won by 19.6 in North Carolina (where Trump won by 3.2 in 2024). Jon Ossoff won by 18 in Georgia, where Trump won by 2.2. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Troy Jackson in Maine, both Bernie-backed supporters of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and wealth taxes, both underperformed the national margin. In fact, Maine shifted slightly rightward. Dems were able to win deep red states like Iowa, Kansas, and Mississippi by running moderate, Republican-presenting, pro-border-security candidates. I suspect this is the main reason markets are up today. (For some intuition on how insane it is for a Dem candidate to win in Mississippi, Trump won Mississippi in 2024 by a larger margin than Harris won California!)
10. One of last night’s biggest winners was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. Under his tenure, Florida has gone from slightly red-leaning to reliably red. Republicans swept every statewide office, kept every House seat, and kept their majority in the State House and supermajority in the State Senate. In January, Florida will be the only one of America’s ten most populous states to have a Republican governor. DeSantis is genuinely smart and nuanced, lacks the baggage of figures like Vance and Rubio who are associated with the Trump administration, and did a great job as an administrator running Florida (see its high rate of domestic migration, zero state income tax, very low debt per capita, high education rankings, state budget surplus, etc). I would be unsurprised if he decided to run for President in 2028.
11. The other biggest winner was Jon Ossoff. Ossoff is a young, handsome, charismatic, moderate white male who won by 18 points in a state that went +2.2 for Trump in 2024. He achieved this in large part by focusing relentlessly on the two issues that mattered: the Trump admin’s corruption and the cost of living. He may very well be the Democratic frontrunner in 2028 (although, of course, it's far too early to make confident predictions about these things).
12. The biggest loser of all last night was Israel and the US-Israel relationship. Israel’s popularity in the United States has been in a steep, secular decline for years. Just 13% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans have positive views on Israel, and this is heavily skewed by age - younger voters are much more likely to oppose Israel. With Democrats taking both houses, it’s unlikely America’s level of political and military support for Israel will last for very long.
13. Gerrymandering doesn’t work under sufficiently strong margins for the opposing party. In political science, this is known as “dummymandering”. Dems are on track to flip 7 of North Carolina’s 14 House seats, shifting the balance of power from 10-4 Republican to 11-3 Democratic.
14. Trump quickly conceded that his party lost and he would be open to working with the Democrats. This was a positive update on Trump’s tendency toward authoritarianism. Many mainstream Republican figures, like JD Vance and Ted Cruz, quickly posted somewhat genuine mea culpas. There was a lot less coping than I expected. It’s possible that the loss had to be very painful for them to learn from it, and we wouldn’t have seen the same if Dems had won only 51 Senate seats.
15. Elections are truly a ton of fun to monitor live. There’s nothing like it. And prediction markets beat mainstream media in terms of timeliness and accuracy by FAR.
16. There’s a good chance none of this matters that much. Trump is still the president and still has veto power. Voters might turn on the incumbent Democrats in 2028. And historically, real GDP growth isn’t that different during eras where Ds controlled Congress vs Rs. Much of your probability mass should go towards “nothing ever happens”.
Jon P retweeted
Palestinian Sees Nova Festival Massacre Footage For The First Time
Zach brings a Palestinian man to the Nova exhibit and shows him the October 7 footage.
#october7 #hamas #israel #jewish #civildiscourse
Jon P retweeted
Long post worth the read. I have a close friend who flies private jets. He flew Lear 60 for over 15 years and now flies a Gulfstream. This is a copy and paste of his response to me asking him if I thought Ice was the issue.
“We always fly in ridiculous cold temperatures.”
“Usually you get the bad ice when the temperatures are like 0 to negative 20. Believe it or not, there's a point where it gets too cold for ice. At negative 40, you pretty much can't get ice. Besides that, the airplane is equipped with hot wings and hot tail.”
“I flew the Lear 60 for like 15 years. It's a no joke airplane and probably the most dangerous airplane I've ever flown. It has a super critical wing. The airflow has to be perfect. When it gets into rough air and turbulence, it will easily stall. It has stalled on me at 41,000 feet just because we got into some turbulence. (On the way to Palm Beach as a matter of fact. ) we recovered and got her flying again around 30,000 ft. Scary
But here's the problem. This airplane has a terrible coffin corner. (At high altitudes) what that means is, you fly in a really narrow window where if you lose 20 knots, it stalls. And if you gain 20 knots, it goes into overspeed. The air goes supersonic over the wing and it goes into a high speed stall, or worse, a Mach tuck.
So if you stall, the normal recovery is to push the yoke forward to lower the nose and gain air speed again. At low altitude, you can push really hard and recover quickly. But in the 60... if you push hard, it will gain air speed and go into a high speed stall, it doesn't take much. It's very sensitive. The 60 has super short wings that don't make much lift. So then you high speed stall, and the computer is yelling at you... OVERSPEED! So then you pull back and enter a low speed stall. And you go back and forth trying to keep it in the air speed window.
This whole thing is pretty scary. And you should recover basically by using your finger tips using super small corrections. You can't over do it. If you try to muscle the recovery, she gets mad and will become unrecoverable. If she enters a mach tuck. You're done.”
“I taught the Lear 60 to other pilots and mentored them. I told them... this airplane has a soul and it's trying to kill you. Do not ever try to top the weather. Don't go over a thunderstorm. Go around it. If it means a half hour longer, then do it. Going over the thunderstorm will go into turbulence that you might not recover from.
These pilots went right over a thunderstorm. I think it stalled which caused them to drop down into the thunderstorm and ended up in mach tuck. They picked up so much speed that it ripped off the horizontal stabilizer. At that point... chuck Yeager can't fix it.
These same pilots did something similar a couple months ago. ATC got mad at them. They poked the bear one too many times.
This is not a beginner airplane. The Gulfstream would never do this. It has HUGE margins of error and won't stall like that. But then again... it's got HUGE wings. It's a pussy cat.
The Gulfstream is like driving a 4 wheeler. The Lear 60 is like riding a uni cycle.”