This blog is not about Palestine

Lex

Lex

— 9 min read
This blog is not about Palestine
Snapping a 0.5 selfie at the rubble of Gaza

If you’re anything like me, you just signed a one-year lease. If you’re two things like me, you found your new apartment on Zillow — the favorite app of girlfriends everywhere. The Pinterest of 20-something urban professionals. The holy grail of content farm listicle writers. The Zillow of people who are two things like me.¹

I was a Zillow virgin. When I first logged on, I felt naked and afraid. And yet, as I familiarized myself with the app, I was struck by an eerily familiar feeling. Grainy photos? Swipe. Too far away? Swipe. No bio? Swipe. Adjust my preferences. Repeat.

A listing caught my eye. I hesitated. I opened the profile and read its details — too good to be true? Might as well shoot my shot. I sent a message, complimenting the property and requesting a tour. The landlord responded.

Then, for several days, I was left on read. Maybe she just got busy? On Monday, I decided to message again.

Two days passed with no response. Was I trying too hard? Did I seem desperate? I decided to play it cool — let her make the first move.

I gave her my number and waited for a text. Nothing. I definitely came on too strong. Should’ve waited longer before replying. Did I even want to pursue something serious with a landlord this flakey?

I decided I would give her one last chance — and wait a bit longer before responding this time.

After ten days of flirting in our Zillow DMs, we had a date.

They should hire somebody to do this

The intuitive solution to the dating-appification of apartment shopping would be to invent landlords who are prompt and professional. Of course, the iron fist of supply and demand, in all its cosmic wisdom (praise be unto him), would never allow this.

Instead, we invented real estate chatbots. I can confirm that Ms. Landlord-In-Question was not the world’s worst chatbot because I met her in real life, in which she is quite charming. But even if she had been a chatbot, she would still technically be a person when placed under duress, because that is how these things work.

Sure, chatbots can replace real estate agents (no they can’t), but can they replace influencers? No.

It does not yet appear that Meta’s first batch of A.I.-powered avatars has been a breakout hit. While Billie, the character inspired by Ms. Jenner, has 193,000 followers on Instagram, the comments on a recent video from the account were largely bemused. “This is so stupid,” one commenter said, garnering more than 12,700 Likes. “I wonder how Kyndall feels about this robot impersonating her,” said another, misspelling the star’s name.

And still another: “why ya’ll wanna text a robot?”

Perhaps we can find a chatbot to replace New York Times reporters who read Instagram comments to the tune of $100,000 per year. Doubt it.

To really replace an Instagram influencer, you need more than just one guy named Steve.² You’re also going to need 5-10 pervert scam artists, a few dozen Fortnite gamers, 343 billion gallons of water annually, and a rapidly growing number of traumatized teenaged sex crime victims.

Once you’ve built enough clout, you may be invited to participate in the inaugural “Miss AI” beauty pageant, where you will compete against not-real supermodels with hundreds of thousands of possibly real followers.

Awesome! What else has Steve been up to since we’ve been gone?

Wait, can we circle back to that one real quick

In November 2023, Israeli magazine +972 acquainted us with “The Gospel” — an algorithmic target generation system used by the Israel Defense Forces in its ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza.

Turns out, there are at least two other AI target generation systems with creepy nicknames. Introducing “Lavender”:

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases …

According to the (admittedly shoddy, anonymous) sources, the IDF systematically bombed targets in their homes, as a matter of intentional policy, “usually at night while their whole families were present.”

While their whole families were present? Well yes. In fact …

… according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians …

And how could we forget Lavender’s goofy-yet-lovable sidekick, “Where’s Daddy?”:

Another source said that each time the pace of assassinations waned, more targets were added to systems like Where’s Daddy? to locate individuals that entered their homes and could therefore be bombed. He said that the decision of who to put into the tracking systems could be made by relatively low-ranking officers in the military hierarchy.

“One day, totally of my own accord, I added something like 1,200 new targets to the [tracking] system, because the number of attacks [we were conducting] decreased,” the source said. “That made sense to me. In retrospect, it seems like a serious decision I made. And such decisions were not made at high levels.”

Everyone (my roommate who doesn’t read much news) is constantly asking me, hey, what’s up with Israel and Palestine? But now that you mention it, there are a few items due for some circling back.

Circling back: Without providing evidence, Israel claims that 450 employees of UNRWA — the largest and practically only humanitarian aid organization in the Gaza strip — are militant terrorists. What’s up with that?

“The best available current advice from agencies and the Australian government lawyers is that UNRWA is not a terrorist organization.”

Unlike Australia, Canada, and the EU, the US has not resumed UNRWA funding, and is instead building a floating island right next to Gaza from whence food will hypothetically be delivered via the sea sometime in May.

Circling back: The New York Times is accused of racially targeting its employees during an internal leak investigation regarding its inadequately-sourced reporting on alleged systematic sexual violence during October 7. What’s up with that?

“We did not reach a definitive conclusion about how this significant breach occurred. We did identify gaps in the way proprietary journalistic material is handled, and we have taken steps to address these issues.”

Glad that’s settled. Would be a shame if there was somehow a leak number two.

Circling back: Elon Musk’s own personal guy named Steve falsely claims that Iran attacked Israel, stoking panic, and then relief, as everybody realized that Iran did not actually do that. What’s up with that?

“Iran fired hundreds of drones and missiles towards Israel. Israel, with the help of its partners, defeated the attack. We express our full solidarity and support to Israel and its people and reaffirm our commitment towards its security.”

Sure, chatbots can replace international military conflict forecasters, but can they replace warfluencers?

Here’s why that’s good news for Joe Biden

In New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, self-described “veteran Democratic wonk” Ed Kilgore assures us that we are not living through the most significant antiwar movement since Vietnam, actually — at least as far as the Democrats are concerned. World historic event who?

In 1968, Kilgore argues, “it wasn’t common to call what was happening ‘genocide,’ but there’s no question the images emanating from the war … were deeply disturbing to the consciences of vast numbers of Americans.” Today, by contrast, lots of people are using the word genocide, but nobody has seen images of the violence in Gaza, and even if they did, they definitely wouldn’t disturb any Americans’ consciences.

Also, Kilgore notes, at the 1968 Democratic convention, when Chicago’s police brutally attacked antiwar rioters, they didn’t have a cool “Black progressive and labor activist” mayor to flex his “negotiating skills” on the angry mob. Good point! Police have not intervened in any pro-Palestine protests in cities with progressive leadership, much less engaged in violent suppression tactics. For example, on April 18, the day Kilgore’s op-ed was published, the NYPD did not arrest more than 100 pro-Palestine protestors. But even if they did, that would not be bad for Biden anyway.

Sike: This blog was mostly about Palestine

Another thing that is not bad for Joe Biden is the Chinese government’s decision to ban WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram in the wake of the American government’s decision to probably ban TikTok.³ For my TikTok heads wondering if and when the app might go away, the answer is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Don’t fret: the Fed can still demand text and call records from phone providers without violating the 4th amendment and cops can still force you to unlock your phone without violating the 5th amendment. Veto Queen Katie Hobbs recently ruled that PornHub cannot require porn-watchers to verify their age using government ID without violating the 1st amendment. And I recently ruled that no soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law without violating the 3rd amendment.

Speaking of things that don’t violate the 3rd amendment: “Everyone is so deeply in love with each other, whether or not it’s romantic love” in this 20-person “female-run” polycule which “reflects radical queer values.” Some might describe it as “an evolving organism that looks entirely different from everyone’s perspective.” From this guy’s perspective, it looked like this:

Unrelated: Using Notion to Maximize the Productivity of Your Marriage. Also unrelated: Americans Are Sleeping Less, Especially Young Women.

Long blog today. Unfortunately, I have other things to do, such as sleeping. I fear it’s time for Links.

Links (Palestine edition)

The guy who self-immolated outside Donald Trump’s trial in New York was a victim of the incoherent conspiracy theory industrial complex. I’m not linking to anything about him here. I trust we’re all mature enough to understand why. Peace and love and blogs ✌️

  1. A logical error has been committed for the sake of being funny. Technically, this is a sufficient assumption, not a necessary one. Having just signed a one-year lease is not a necessary condition to being something like me; you could have something else in common with me — and therefore be something like me — without having just signed a lease. Many such examples, in fact. The correct formation would be: If you just signed a one-year lease, you are something like me. Therefore, if you just signed a one-year lease on an apartment you found on Zillow, you are at least two things like me.
  2. As noted in previous posts, this blog ascribes to the Guy Named Steve model of AI ethics, which posits that all ethical dilemmas arising from AI output can be resolved by replacing the word "AI" with the name "Steve." In any given instance, if it is not okay for some guy named Steve to do that, then it is also not okay for AI to do that.
  3. See: TikTok is owned by a company
  4. See: Is this thing on?

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