Gaza

Netanyahu Seeks His Place in History

Israel reignited their assault on Gaza, breaking the ceasefire with a bombardment that killed hundreds. The international community and peacekeeping operations were blindsided.

Endeavorance

24 Mar 2025 — 9 min read

Netanyahu Seeks a Place in History

Israel has reignited their ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza, ramping up their bombardments and ground invasions, targeting hospitals, and asserting that their intent has escalated into what essentially amounts to total annihilation of the millions of human beings who live there.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel. He is currently facing trial for corruption, and has directed the slaughter of untold Palestinian souls. He suddenly ended the ceasefire with Hamas over the past week with a surprise round of bombings that killed over 400 Palestinians in the first wave.

During the punctuated ceasefire, Israel and Hamas exchanged captives, with Hamas handing over some of their approximated 100 hostages, while Israel released 2,000 Palestinians, keeping thousands more locked up.

Israeli citizens and family members of some of the remaining Israeli hostages are protesting the resurgence of attacks since it directly puts their family members' lives at risk, as well as protesting the ongoing efforts from Netanyahu to leverage his power to undermine the judicial system that could hold him accountable for his actions.

Simultaneously, Israel is expanding their colonization of the West Bank. Israeli settlers invade and eject Palestinians from their homes, often referring to them as subhuman. Israel's government recently approved "independence" for 13 more settlements in the West Bank, bringing the number of settlements to 140. Pretty much the entire world aside from Israel and the United States agrees that these settlements are illegal invasions of occupied territory.

I want to be clear: Israel is not Judaism. Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a political movement that came about originally in the late 1800s/early 1900s and aims to establish a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine. Many Jews, especially the most deeply religious Orthodox Jews, are against Zionism and the current state of Israel.

The belief in the return to the holy land is indeed a part of Judaism, though the belief is based in a divine intervention and miraculous return, not a geopolitical superpower leveraging its advanced military to displace an entire people to force the return. Many Jews see this as completely counter to their values, which is why we've seen so many Jewish leaders and supporters at pro-Palestinian protests.

Zionism is largely pushed by Evangelical Christians, especially those in the US, which is part of why the Republican party is so intensely pro-Israel and reactive against any pro-Palestinian activism. Their belief is that the re-establishment of Israel marks a fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, getting us one step closer to the second coming of Christ, and thus the rapture.

I wish I were kidding when I said there is a religious death cult poisoning the political discourse of the United States and the world at large in an attempt to exterminate an entire population to fulfill a prophecy of mass death, but unfortunately that's… that's a real thing. And has been.

So maybe uh… maybe question a little bit why random US politicians are so gung-ho to equip Israel with some of the most advanced weapons of war the world has ever seen in their fight against the people who lived there already.

Policy Stuff

Yo… Ho….?

The original creator of the puffed-chip snack brand "Pirate's Booty" has gone off the FUCKING DEEP END Y'ALL.

Robert Ehrlich, mayor of something according to him

This dude, Robert Ehrlich, holy shit. He lives in a small town on Long Island called Sea Cliff. Sea Cliff had a recent mayoral election recently. The incumbent mayor was running unopposed for a third term in the tiny town, when Ehrlich rocked up to the town hall a week before the election and asserted that he was now the mayor.

Quite literally: he walked in to the building, stated he was the mayor, demanded access to the mayors office, and told the staffers they were fired. The staffers were confused (obviously) and said they've never heard from this man before in any civics context.

He went on to lose the mayoral election 1,064 votes to 62. And yet he still claims victory.

He asserts that he won because the election was rigged, and further asserts that he has been collecting votes for four years, and should be able to use those votes because of a precedent set in 1268 when the Vatican took three years to pick a new Pope. He also said the election was rigged because some of his supporters voted for him multiple times and didn't get caught.

When asked if he's going to try to run for mayor next time, he asserted that he was, in fact, already the mayor.

(Note: he's not involved with the company anymore)

Goodbye, Tourism Industry

The Trump administration's deportation efforts are going about as well as anything the Trump administration does, which is to say the entire world is turning against the United States right now.

Trump called on a 1700's wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act, claiming that we are at war with a South American gang. Using this as pretense to deport people, ICE agents have been detaining and deporting people with no due process and no publicly available information, sending hundreds of deportees to a foreign prison in El Salvador which was purpose-built to essentially torture the inmates and treat them like cattle. Many of the deportees have no criminal records, and some may even be US citizens. We literally do not know.

A judge demanded the return of the deportees due to the total lack of transparency, but the Trump admin did not comply. Now, the judge is asking for more information about the deportees, but the Trump admin has stonewalled, refusing to cooperate with the judicial order.

Meanwhile, Denmark, Canada, Finland, Germany, and the UK have issued advisories and updated travel guidance for their citizens traveling to the US, citing the elevated risk of detainment by the current administration. Germany and Canada among them have done so after citizens of their respective countries were detained and brutally interrogated by ICE agents upon entering the country.

One Welsh tourist in the US was detained by ICE for 19 days and transported in chains and handcuffs after committing the most heinous crime: nothing. She was visiting the US and staying with people in exchange for "helping around the house," which somehow ICE took as "unlawful employment on a tourist visa" which apparently merited detention and a holding facility with 24/7 fluorescent lighting for her sleeping arrangements.

This is of course on top of the German national who was effectively tortured by ICE agents at Boston Logan airport for returning home as a green card holder.

Technology Stuff

Chat GPT Hallucinates a Double Homicide

Arve Hjalmar Holmen of Norway has filed a complaint against OpenAI after ChatGPT told him he is known for the murder of his two sons. This was news to him, and his very-much-alive two sons.

When Holmen prompted ChatGPT asking, "who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?" it replied:

He was the father of two young boys, aged 7 and 10, who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020.

Apparently he does indeed have to boys around those ages, which was the first fairly spooky thing since it means it had that level of detail about him. But of course a bit more distressing is the fact that this computer system is claiming he killed his own children.

OpenAI's response to this was that they've updated their systems. Presumably, they are implying they've updated their systems to no longer include the "accuse the user of double homicide" bug. (In reality, they're talking about changes to how ChatGPT sources information to improve accuracy)

Reminder: ChatGPT is not a source, and is not a trustworthy reference. If you use an AI system for searches, always consider the output to be an untrustworthy summary, and dig in to any referenced sources to verify any claims.

Meta in the UK

A human rights activist in the UK brought Facebook to the bargaining table after launching a lawsuit against the social giant demanding they stop using her personal data to sell targeted advertisements.

Tanya O'Carroll sued Meta in 2022, citing that Meta was not respecting UK data laws which give her the right to control the use of her personal data. Meta settled the lawsuit and agreed to stop using her data specifically, but the precedent has been set, and regulators are considering further action.

Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp) makes around 98% of its revenue from advertising. They are an advertising company that has social media apps, not the other way around. All of that advertising business is made possible by ingesting a truly unbelievable amount of personal user data, then using that data to let advertisers place bids on ad space to target specific people. On the surface, that may seem fine and dandy. The reality is that companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon have spent decades ferrying along the narrative that people "shouldn't care who has their data."

This is great for them, since they profit entirely off of the free data they collect from you. Their entire business model relies on you not even realizing how much they watch you.

A few years back, Apple made a change to iOS to restrict apps' abilities to track you, and Facebook was so threatened by this that they took out full page newspaper ads against it. Maybe they should just spend less on avocado toast if they want their business model to not be threatened by user privacy.

Oh, Speaking of Data

Clearview AI is a company that is trying to create an AI-powered scannable database of everyone. You know in action movies when the government has that big screen and they're like "run a facial scan!" on some blurry photo of a dude from a security feed, and then the screen pops up a window that shows a bunch of different faces and its like "SEARCHING…" then eventually it pops up a big green flashing, "MATCH DETECTED" and some agent takes off their glasses and goes, "oh my god"?

That. They're trying to make that. And they're more successful than not.

They're mostly known for scraping everything they can from public data, social media profiles, and contracts with existing data brokers to create a massive index. They then turn around and sell their recognition tech to intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Recently, 404 Media broke that Clearview AI tried to purchase hundreds of millions of arrest records, including mugshots, social security numbers, cell phone numbers, home addresses, and more. They had gone to another agency called Investigative Consultant, Inc (ICI), who compiles this information for attorneys to use as a reference when making their cases.

The deal ultimately fell through, and there's now a legal back-and-forth between the two companies, as the payment for the data has yet to be returned to Clearview while both Clearview and ICI claim the other breached the contract.

Anyway, if you ever needed another reason to wear a mask when going out, there's one.

Science Stuff

Science Folk Do Cool Shit Again

A team at Purdue University released an open-source computer model called "NuFold," capable of helping to model 3D RNA structures to aid scientists in developing medication and treatments for myriad diseases.

Neat.

What?

RNA (Ribonucleic acid) is like besties with DNA, that good twisty stuff that makes us exist. Problem is, we've not had a good way to actually determine RNA structures aside from what essentially amounts to a hope and a prayer during experimentation. This new model can help predict the full atomic structure of an RNA sequence, potentially reducing the timeline of research into new treatments and therapies for conditions by years or decades.

You Don't Want to Be an Alpha Gal

Ticks—small bloodsucking insects that are common in deep forests and tall grasses—suck.

I probably didn't need to structure that sentence like that but it worked.

One of the reasons they suck, aside from the whole "bloodsucking insect" thing, is that a specific species of tick can potentially cause a condition called "Alpha-gal syndrome," (AGS) which can ultimately cause a person to develop a severe allergy to red meat. Recent reported Alpha-gal cases have caused a bit of a stir, as they seem to have come from ticks that weren't the usual Lone Star tick that is known for the disease. Instead, it may be the case that deer ticks caused the condition, though more investigation is underway.

A few things to note before moving on: AGS is fairly rare, and not everyone exposed to the bite of a tick can even contract it. It also differs from Lyme disease, which is one of the more common ailments associated with tick bites.

Always check yourself and your friends after going for a hike!