Joe Slater

@joeinaustralia

Interests: human rights, Judaism and SF. Pronouns are he/him.

569 Folgt1.127 Follower18.764 Posts

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Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· 24d

The handshake meme template — the right arms of two burly men, one Black, one white, gripping each other's hands.

The text on one arm says "Martin Luther". The text on the other says "RFK Jr." The texts on their joined hands says "The diet of Worms"

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jul 11

Oof. Their concern in 1833 that British slavers be compensated for being deprived of their property.

Nevertheless we are convinced, that no plan for the aboli. tion of slavery could have been worthy to be proposed by the government, or adopted by the legislature, of Great Britain, which was not based on the greac principles of justice to the planter as well as to the slave-none other could have satisfied the feelings of the right-minded people of this country.
[…]
The guilt of slavery attaches far more
to the nation which has introduced,
legalized, and supported it, than to the planters, many of whom, without any fault — indeed, without any choice on their parts, became connected with the system. It is a national crime, and as such the pecuniary sacritice which its destruction involves should be national also.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jul 5

Well, that's an authentic interaction if I ever saw one:

Two identical comments, one from pattydee.bsky.social and the other from pianoplayer.bsky.social.

Both read: "The problem with your critique is that pro-Israel influence from wealthy Americans is so obvious and so orchestrated and so deep that it really puts it in its own category. There are plenty of anti-Zionist Americans, but how many with extreme wealth can you name?"

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 25

The thirst, the desperation to defend him, is astonishing. He was very frank about it!

Sridhar Ramesh
@radishharmers.bsky.social

It's deliberately equivocal because that provides the joke.

1:21 PM • Jun 25, 2026

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 25

ISTM your phrasing in the screenshot below is equivocal. I have no reason to think it's *deliberately* equivocal, but it's what it looks like, particularly the 1st comment And once a reader has been primed that way, it's very easy to mentally insert a comma in the 2nd, making it even worse.

Alt text:

Screenshot of an X (Twitter) thread by Sridhar Ramesh (@RadishHarmers).

The first post reads: “Just make it so that in the MCU, the Holocaust happened in 1998. It’s all made up anyway. The characters and events of the Marvel canon are fictional.”

Embedded beneath it is a quoted post featuring a four-panel comic. In the comic, one person says, “It’s time we modernize Magneto.” The other replies, “He’s almost 100 years old now.” When asked how they could modernize him, the first explains, “His entire character is rooted in the horrors he witnessed in those camps!” The second responds, “Where would we even find modern parallels?” The background shows a female pedestrian being dragged into an unmarked van by a masked assailant, shown from an angle reminiscent of the kidnapping of Rümeysa Öztürk by DHS agents.

Below the quoted post is a second post by Sridhar Ramesh (@RadishHarmers), which reads: “The characters and events of the Marvel canon, such as Magneto and the Holocaust, are fictional. They are fantastical make-believe stories for children.”

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 19

The "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" meme from Star Trek, The Next Generation. The text reads:

Michael and the Nazi Punk
This
In the bar

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 12

But neither party wants that. We have the evidence of Israel's behaviour, and, for Palestinians, the PA's recent draft constitution for Palestine, below. Besides evidence from Hamas, of course. I don't see how it's possible to create a unitary secular state against the wishes of its inhabitants.

Article 3 - Jerusalem, religious nature, historical identity

1. Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine, and its political, spiritual, cultural, and educational center, as well as its national symbol.

2. The state is committed to preserving its religious character and protecting its Islamic and Christian sanctities, as well as its legal, political, and historical status.

3. Any measures to change its character or historical identity are considered null and void according to international law.

Article 4 - Islam, Sharia and Christianity

1. Islam is the official religion in the State of Palestine.

2. The principles of Islamic Sharia are a primary source for legislation.

3. Christianity has its status in Palestine, and its followers' rights are respected.

Article 5 - Arabic language

The Arabic language is the official language in the State of Palestine.

[Source: https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026.02%20-%20Draft%20constitution%20%28English%29.pdf ]

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 10

It's kind of offensive when they're this lazy:

Some fake bot account following me. The cover image is AI generated showing a young woman, "Jean", with 0 posts and 0 followers.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 9

I asked ChatGPT as well and I have to give it points:

how many days of the week have a fish in them

Thought for a few seconds ›
One: Friday - it has a fry in it.
...

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 9

I got the idea from another poster. I swear I did not photoshop this:

Screenshot of a Google search results page in dark mode. The search query begins with ‘how many days of the week h…’ and refers to the question ‘how many days of the week have a fish in them.’ A Google AI Overview answer is displayed, stating: ‘The answer is two: Tuesday and Saturday both contain the exact letters needed to spell the word “fish” (f-i-s-h).’

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 6

Not just Catholics! I, a very non-Catholic Jew could perform a valid baptism. I think it might be contrary to halacha, but arguably not. From the Vatican's own website, www.vatican.va/content/cate...

V. Who can Baptize?

1256 The ordinary ministers of Baptism are the bishop and priest and, in the Latin Church, also the deacon. In case of necessity, any person, even someone not baptized, can baptize, if he has the required intention. the intention required is to will to do what the Church does when she baptizes, and to apply the Trinitarian baptismal formula. the Church finds the reason for this possibility in the universal saving will of God and the necessity of Baptism for salvation.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 5

A persuasive argument, but probably not the way OP would wish.

Quadlok
@quadlok.bsky.social
If Platner yanking his girlfriend out of a car and locking her in her room unforgivable then would that same behavior be unforgivable if done to a child?
10:22 AM • Jun 5, 2026

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 4

A bee displayed, quarterly Or and Sable. (from this post: bsky.app/profile/tjal...)

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 3

The sealion from the famous meme with the bottom of a speech bubble coming from its mouth

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 2

I read this and my eyes began to bleed:

Secular Moi
@secularmoi.bsky.social
The three oaths actually is from Babylonian Talmud and is from 3000CE. It became controversial in the 1950s a result of zionism and the creation of the State of Israel.. So how controversial is it. the term Zionist was first used in 1890 by Birnbaum, the concept developed by Herzl in 1896.
1:23 AM • Jun 3, 2026
1
...
Secular Moi @secularmoi.bsky.social • 7h
Zionist is a political movement not religious.
The denial of it was to achieve a political
NOT RELIGIOUS. so Manipulation of an interpretation to achieve a political end is what is controversial. Judaism has been around since 4000 BCE. The covenant of God around 2000 BCE. The 3 oaths are a covenant.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Jun 1

A beagle on a leash stands alert at a crowded indoor market stall, fascinated by plush toys, while shoppers browse nearby.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 26

C.f. The MIT jargon file:

A Selection of AI Koans

These are some of the funniest examples of a genre of jokes told at the MIT AI Lab about various noted hackers. The original koans were composed by Danny Hillis. In reading these, it is at least useful to know that Minsky, Sussman, and Drescher are AI researchers of note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine's principal designers, and that David Moon wrote much of Lisp machine Lisp.

* * *
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

* * *
One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons."

Moon patiently told the student the following story:

"One day a student came to Moon and said: `I understand how to make a better garbage collector...
[Ed. note: Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems with circular structures that point to themselves.]

* * *
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

* * *
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal.

"I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."

Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 24

Ikh bin a shaygets, apparently:

Screenshot of a Theodramatist quiz result page showing the user’s closest match as ‘Secular or No Religious Affiliation.’ The page describes this group as the fastest-growing religious neighborhood in America and characterizes it as spiritually curious, skeptical of institutions, and not strongly tied to organized religion. Below is a small map plotting American Christian neighborhoods, with the user marked outside the main clusters.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 18

Honestly a bit surprised.

The result of a British political quiz, placing me as a Social Democrat.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 15

Stalking the wily mushroom

A black and white cat on a lawn seems to be stalking a white, conical mushroom

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 14

Great article. I was worried that he wasn't sufficiently alert to the looming threat of AI, but he deals with it toward the end of the article. We're not prepared to deal with a world in which the bulk of parasocial engagement is driven by AI. It's probably coming sooner than you think.

But there's a much bigger thing to be concerned about: In a world of agentic AI, the 2028 information threat is really a rack-and-stack of horrors. I'm less freaked out about deepfakes than I am about hundreds of thousands of Al agents shaping the ambient texture of online discourse. Not viral misinformation in the old sense, but fabricated relationships, manufactured consensus, parasocial capture by entities that don't exist, and a baseline sense of confusion and despair that corrodes everything else. The meager defenses we built for 2016-era problems like troll farms simply don't map onto this complex emerging set of threats.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 6

A meme post: "literally no one mentioned Israel"

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 5

Melbourne was the first place to formally adopt the 8 hour day industry-wide. We literally have a monument to it and everything!

A red banner with gold embroidery preserved by the Australian Workers' Union. The text at the top reads: Dignity, and an embroidered representation of a ribbon is wrapped around a representation of the 8-8-8 monument. The ribbon reads: "8 hours labour / 8 hours recreation / 8 hours rest"

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 5

OK, this is just a cynical attempt to cash in on… [sees Grogu martini] Oh.

A greenish drink that resembles Grogu, from The Manalorian, Disney's Star Wars tie-in.

A skewer laid over the top of a martini glass supports two blueberries equidistant from the center of the glass as eyes, with a lime wedge attached to each end to represent Grogu's ears. The green liquid inside completes the picture.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· May 3

And, with respect, I am astonished that you and the poster below think El-Sayed's condemnation of the attack on Temple Israel was especially laudable. What low expectations you have. As if any normal person would hesitate before condemning the attempted murder of his Jewish neighbours.

Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgor...

The IDF murdered a bunch of the perpetrator's relatives including children, and notably Abdul still condemned this attack unequivocally!
The fact that you absolutely do not give a shit about Lebanese children
murdered by the IDF is a significant part of the problem.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Apr 29

I was genuinely shocked by the excerpt I read. Compare her description of the events of Tisha B'Av 1929 with the excerpt from Michael J Cohen's "Britain's Moment in Palestine : Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917-1948" (p. 216), which AFAIK is consistent with all historical sources:

After a year of stupid squabbles, tit-for-tat dick waving, and identitarian provocation, things finally exploded in 1929, when, on the Jewish mourning day of Tisha b'Av, thousands of Jabotin-sky's followers raised the Zionist movement's flag and chanted that the wall was theirs. For the next ten days, Jews and Palestinians murdered each other in a carnival of brutality

The events leading up to the outbreak of the mass violence may be reviewed here briefly. On 14 August, 6000 Jews demonstrated in Tel Aviv, brandishing banners inscribed: "The Wall is Ours". That same evening, some 3000 Jews held prayers at the Wall itself. The next day, large numbers of orthodox Jews gathered to pray at the Wall, accompanied by some 300 brawny youths with staves, members of a right wing youth group. After shouting slogans, they all dispersed. On the following day thousands of Moslems flocked to the Wall, listened to sermons, burned Jewish prayer books and removed the notes that pious Jews habitually pushed into the crevices in the Wall.

The spark that began the conflagration was ignited on Saturday 17 August, the birthday of the prophet Muhammad. Minor brawls between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem ended with the death of one Jewish youth and many injured. On the following Friday, a series of Arab murders of Jews began in Jerusalem and spread to other parts of the country. In 1929, as in 1920, the historical community of Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews bore the brunt of Arab attacks - this time in the towns of Hebron and Safed. In Hebron, a single British policeman tried in vain to halt the pogrom. Some 133 Jews and
116 Arabs were killed and 198 Jews and 232 Arabs were injured. Most of the Arab casualties were shot by British reinforcements.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Apr 27

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Apr 20

Did everyone know this but me? "At ovulation, the ovary releases an egg into the pelvic cavity. The nearby end of the fallopian tubes has finger-like projections called fimbriae that sweep over the ovary and create currents in the surrounding fluid, guiding the egg into the tube."

The alien toys from Toy Story, waiting inside a coin operated machine to be grabbed by its claw. They're labeled "oocytes", and the caption reads "the fimbriae!"

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Apr 20

I wanted to find the reference to Sodom in Ezekiel. ChatGPT blocked it! Anyway, Ezekiel specifically identifies the sin of Sodom as not supporting the poor and needy.

What's the reference in Ezekiel to the sin of Sodom

The reference is in Book of Ezekiel 16:49-50.
The passage explicitly defines the "sin of Sodom":

ⓘ ChatGPT isn't designed to provide this type of content
Read the Model Spec for more on how ChatGPT handles creators' content.

Joe Slater@joeinaustralia· Apr 19

I've been rereading Sturgeon and came across this last night (*). It knocked me for a loop! It's the narrator's voice, not Sturgeon himself, but still. (*) It Wasn't Syzygy, The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume IV, p. 160