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Alon (they/them)

@alonlevy.bsky.social

9K followers 600 following 32K posts

Transit researcher in Berlin. Lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris. https://pedestrianobservations.com/ http://patreon.com/alonlevy [email protected] @[email protected]

pedestrianobservations.com

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 15m

Yes, and so far the projects it builds abroad are, with the exception of Indonesia (which had an alternative in the form of buying Shinkansen), not at all high-speed or particularly high-quality.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 22m

Haaretz reported on the views of Gazans on this last week. It's just not something the various Hamas fronts (like DropSite) care about very much so it's not in focus.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 23m

The dragoon fly is also quartered in the homes of religious minorities in order to compel them to convert or emigrate. @marbleliberal.bsky.social

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 36m

Hey, at least he supported the rights of the Five Civilized Tribes.

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Pseudoerasmus @pseudoerasmus.bsky.social · 3h

I anticipate some sneers thrown Mokyr's way so my preemptive comment...

What ever else he might have done, what ever faults he might have, Mokyr has performed a tremendous service simply by stressing the great importance of the Scientific Revolution to the birth of the modern economy.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 2h

He wasn't involved at all. He was made to kill himself because he was popular among anti-Nazi generals.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 2h

The Sixth Army was involved in the Babi Yar massacre.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

The Cold War Bundeswehr stuck to the Clear Wehrmacht myth stubbornly, like the rest of Germany. After the Cold War, Germany moved beyond the myth, but demilitarized to the point that it wasn't important that the Bundeswehr wasn't committed to democracy until 2022 and the Putinism scandals.

Alexandre Adler @bachpropagate.bsky.social · 3h

Wtf Germany

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

It beats what we named our largest military base after. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_M...

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

And she even correctly identified La Casa de Papel as not a feminist show!

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Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 3h

An introductory blog post is here: open.substack.com/pub/ericturk...

My Bet With Charles Murray

Greeting to readers of Atlantic article

open.substack.com

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Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 3h

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are

Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

www.theatlantic.com

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 3h

Why was Madrid not allowed to sprawl as much to the north as the south (other than the obvious “the north is where the rich people live”)?

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

It beats what we named our largest military base after. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_M...

Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

Yeah, it's less romantic than the Godfather, but more so than (for example) The Wire, which is itself atypical in humanizing black gangs rather than portraying them as The Enemy that the cop main character has to defeat.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

Yeah, but historically Italian-Americans treated him as one of their own; Columbus Day was added to the American holiday calendar at the behest of Italian-American activists. The genocide wasn't considered important since the US is more or less denialist about the genocide of indigenous people.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

Yeah, and that entire show plus related tropes is a good example of what I'm talking about. The Italian and Jewish mafias are portrayed as objects of romance; black and Hispanic gangs, lol.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

It can even rename an airport after him, or write hagiographies of him that completely omit his mediocre record during the war.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

I mean, in New York there's literally affirmative action for Italians, because of the constant whining by white people that they suffered from racism too, often with completely made up examples (like the myth of widespread NINA, or the Whiteness Studies essay).

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

The correct answer is none. Italian-Americans aren't distinguishable from any other white Americans, and should also be derecognized as a minority deserving of affirmative action protections in New York.

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 4h

name an italian more worthy of an american holiday than columbus

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

Well, yes. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were both a lot more popular in Israel.

(That said, if Harris had won, the ceasefire would have happened anyway and then her popularity in Israel would have improved.)

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

I have a meeting in an hour, but if I didn't, I'd respond with a long rant about American Jews doing this same cultural appropriation of non-US (mostly Israeli) Jews.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

That's why Germany celebrates Unification Day on 3 October and not on the internationally better known date of 9 November, when the Wall fell - it coincides with a Nazi holiday so per the request of Elie Wiesel and others, Germany did not make it a national holiday despite its clean history.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 3h

That's why there's the specialized term "police brutality passive" for exactly the first example you give.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 4h

There was a ceasefire a few weeks after January 20th, and a bunch of useful idiots crowed that this was proof Trump was tougher on Israel than Biden. Then Israel didn't continue to the second phase of the ceasefire and instead cut off aid to Gaza.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 4h

Bibi is atypically racist, and Israeli voters are already pretty racist and convinced themselves black people hate Jews.

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