Sharmake Farah 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🍉 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦄 🏳️‍🌈
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sharmake.bsky.social
Sharmake Farah 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🍉 🏳️‍⚧️ 🦄 🏳️‍🌈
@sharmake.bsky.social
930 followers 1.9K following 4.9K posts
Interested in AI. Retweets!=endorsements

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Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and Iron Front/Antifascist enjoyer.

We must create a Popular Front against fascism.

I'm firmly anti-Zionist.
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sharmake.bsky.social
The article is also bad, though.

This part for example makes me want to scream at him with the self-centeredness, even at the cost of trans lives:
For many younger queer people, coming out versus staying closeted is an antiquated choice, a form of pigeonholing with little resonance in a 21st century that’s more defined by a long drop-down menu of identity options, including “prefer not to say,” a choice that, for some of them, has none of the political weight that it might have carried right after Stonewall, or in the middle of the fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that were adopted by the American military in the 1990s. To evoke 1974 or 1985 or 1997 onscreen is, for a couple of hours, to allow older gay men to forget our contemporary diminishment and the minimization of our history — to return to a world in which we were at the heart of queer culture and discourse. There is, undeniably, drama in oppression and romance in fighting it. We were the cause then. Now, not so much.
May 13, 2025 at 1:21 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
The article is also bad, though.

This part for example makes me want to scream at him with the self-centeredness, even at the cost of trans lives:
For many younger queer people, coming out versus staying closeted is an antiquated choice, a form of pigeonholing with little resonance in a 21st century that’s more defined by a long drop-down menu of identity options, including “prefer not to say,” a choice that, for some of them, has none of the political weight that it might have carried right after Stonewall, or in the middle of the fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that were adopted by the American military in the 1990s. To evoke 1974 or 1985 or 1997 onscreen is, for a couple of hours, to allow older gay men to forget our contemporary diminishment and the minimization of our history — to return to a world in which we were at the heart of queer culture and discourse. There is, undeniably, drama in oppression and romance in fighting it. We were the cause then. Now, not so much.
May 13, 2025 at 1:18 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
The article is also bad.

This part for example makes me want to scream at him with the self-centeredness, even at the cost of trans lives:
Important part: For many younger queer people, coming out versus staying closeted is an antiquated choice, a form of pigeonholing with little resonance in a 21st century that’s more defined by a long drop-down menu of identity options, including “prefer not to say,” a choice that, for some of them, has none of the political weight that it might have carried right after Stonewall, or in the middle of the fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that were adopted by the American military in the 1990s. To evoke 1974 or 1985 or 1997 onscreen is, for a couple of hours, to allow older gay men to forget our contemporary diminishment and the minimization of our history — to return to a world in which we were at the heart of queer culture and discourse. There is, undeniably, drama in oppression and romance in fighting it. We were the cause then. Now, not so much.
May 13, 2025 at 12:56 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
The article is also bad.

This part for example makes me want to scream at him with the self-centeredness, even at the cost of trans lives:
For many younger queer people, coming out versus staying closeted is an antiquated choice, a form of pigeonholing with little resonance in a 21st century that’s more defined by a long drop-down menu of identity options, including “prefer not to say,” a choice that, for some of them, has none of the political weight that it might have carried right after Stonewall, or in the middle of the fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that were adopted by the American military in the 1990s. To evoke 1974 or 1985 or 1997 onscreen is, for a couple of hours, to allow older gay men to forget our contemporary diminishment and the minimization of our history — to return to a world in which we were at the heart of queer culture and discourse. There is, undeniably, drama in oppression and romance in fighting it. We were the cause then. Now, not so much.
May 13, 2025 at 12:55 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
This specific picture is key here:
For many younger queer people, coming out versus staying closeted is an antiquated choice, a form of pigeonholing with little resonance in a 21st century that’s more defined by a long drop-down menu of identity options, including “prefer not to say,” a choice that, for some of them, has none of the political weight that it might have carried right after Stonewall, or in the middle of the fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that were adopted by the American military in the 1990s. To evoke 1974 or 1985 or 1997 onscreen is, for a couple of hours, to allow older gay men to forget our contemporary diminishment and the minimization of our history — to return to a world in which we were at the heart of queer culture and discourse. There is, undeniably, drama in oppression and romance in fighting it. We were the cause then. Now, not so much.
May 12, 2025 at 11:13 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
I'm talking about their escape route by building artificial intelligence that would be good enough to make humans broadly useless and upload their minds to live forever in a digital utopia.

The problem is that they're willing to sacrifice billions of others, not on whether their plans are fantasy.
Inspired by the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.
April 13, 2025 at 5:32 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Picture here:
A graph showing how many robots will be made from the 2020s to the 2040s, and the red line is how many robots are necessary to displace the entire world's worker class.
March 31, 2025 at 12:44 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
Final example:
86% of Gazans and Palestinians in the West Bank believe that Jews (not Israelis, Jews) are only loyal to Israel.
March 18, 2025 at 4:52 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Another example:
94% of Gazans and Palestinians in the West Bank believe that Jews are responsible for antisemitism.
March 18, 2025 at 4:52 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Alright, I've unblocked to reply to you here, because while the original blood libel claim is not in evidence, other antisemitic statements are, and you can see pictures:
92% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that Jews caused most of the world's wars.
March 18, 2025 at 4:52 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Here's the picture to prove it:
92% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars.
March 18, 2025 at 4:24 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
You just passed through an example, and my point is that it's not even that secret, it's just not salient to you, you could slog through laws of congress, but understandably no one wants to do that:
Matthew Yglesias: But it’s interesting to note that the sense of gridlock derives in part from the fact that something like the stalled political reform bill has attracted dramatically more media attention than something like the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021, which passed in May and appropriated $175 billion over five years to upgrade public water systems across the country. If water issues garnered a lot of coverage, Congress wouldn’t look so gridlocked. But okay, water pipes are boring. And yet, the Biden infrastructure plan has garnered a lot of coverage with incredible attention paid to the ins and outs of every bipartisan meeting. Are water pipes not infrastructure? Did you know that while it makes headlines every time Shelley Moore Capito pays a visit to the White House, she also quietly co-authored the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 with Tom Carper that passed the Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously? Do you think it’s weird that legislation making Juneteenth into a national holiday passed last week with seemingly no warning?
March 4, 2025 at 5:40 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Part 2:

(This is a threaded version of a thread I made on great man theory vs structural forces)
Leo Gao Part 2: this doesn't mean that influential people have no latitude whatsoever to influence the world. when we're looking at the highest tiers of human ability, the efficient market hypothesis breaks down. there are so few extremely competent people that nobody is a perfect replacement for anyone else. if someone didn't exist, it doesn't necessarily mean someone else would have stepped up to do the same. for example, if napoleon had never existed, there might have been some other leader who took advantage of the weakness of the Directory to seize power, but they likely would have been very different from napoleon. great people still have some latitude to change the world orthogonal to the broader structural forces. it's not a contradiction for the world to be mostly driven by structural forces, and simultaneously for great people to have hugely more influence than the average person. in the same way that bill gates or elon musk are vastly vastly wealthier than the median person, great people have many orders of magnitude more influence on the trajectory of history than the average person. and yet, the richest person is still only responsible for 0.1%* of the economic output of the united states. *\ fermi estimate, taking musk's net worth and dividing by 20 to convert stocks to flows, and comparing to gdp. caveats apply based on interest rates and gdp being a bad metric. many assumptions involved here.
February 24, 2025 at 9:40 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
To give my take on the Great Man Theory vs structural forces of this debate, some of this is attributable to not realizing the relative vs absolute dimensions of influence.

My general view is that structural forces and great men matter, but structural forces matter more:

Part 1:
Leo Gao Part 1: there's an obvious synthesis of great man theory and broader structural forces theories of history. there are great people, but these people are still bound by many constraints due to structural forces. political leaders can't just do whatever they want; they have to appease the keys of power within the country. in a democracy, the most obvious key of power is the citizens, who won't reelect a politician that tries to act against their interests. but even in dictatorships, keeping the economy at least kind of functional is important, because when the citizens are starving, they're more likely to revolt and overthrow the government. there are also powerful interest groups like the military and critical industries, which have substantial sway over government policy in both democracies and dictatorships. many powerful people are mostly custodians for the power of other people, in the same way that a bank is mostly a custodian for the money of its customers. also, just because someone is involved in something important, it doesn't mean that they were maximally counterfactually responsible. structural forces often create possibilities to become extremely influential, but only in the direction consistent with said structural force. a population that strongly believes in foobarism will probably elect a foobarist candidate, and if the winning candidate never existed, another foobarist candidate would have won. winning an election always requires a lot of competence, but no matter how competent you are, you aren't going to win on an anti-foobar platform. the sentiment of the population has created the role of foobarist president for someone foobarist to fill.
February 24, 2025 at 9:40 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Dilan Esper gives a good argument for why they will follow final court orders to dissolve DOGE, in the end:
I am going to put myself on a big limb here, but there is no chance of the White House successfully refusing to comply with a final order of a court enjoining a DOGE action. People truly haven't considered all the various weapons judges AND the state have to force compliance. Dilan Esper
February 17, 2025 at 4:43 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
Most of the reason why it seems like grift is because current AI's main purpose is business/research, not exactly consumer tech, and thus there's a vast hidden face that you don't interact with:

x.com/GarrisonLove...
🚨 New piece in @TIME : AI progress hasn't stalled — it's just become invisible to most people. 🚨 I used to think that AI slowed down a lot in 2024, but I now think I was wrong. Instead, there's a widening gap between AI's public face and its true capabilities. 🧵 Garrison Lovely
February 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
GPT-4 and o1/r1 actually exist, and they are able to do some interesting tasks already, and an important effect that I think people are not getting is that these new AI models aren't really intended for consumer applications, but rather to improve AI research itself:

x.com/GarrisonLove...
🚨 New piece in @TIME : AI progress hasn't stalled — it's just become invisible to most people. 🚨 I used to think that AI slowed down a lot in 2024, but I now think I was wrong. Instead, there's a widening gap between AI's public face and its true capabilities. 🧵 Garrison Lovely
February 11, 2025 at 2:58 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
This advice is going to be extremely necessary for basically any anti-Trump person, and this is the part that's necessary:
Curate your media diet. You have the power to find the books, videos, films, and art that will bring life to your soul. And you don’t have to feed into the alarmist nature of following every action of the Trump administration, nor do you have to consume media that feeds his disastrous agenda. Find people that affirm you and share the same values. Meet with them in person regularly. Online spaces are increasingly becoming less secure.
February 5, 2025 at 10:47 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
This is a big part of why I didn't like this section of Talia Bhatt's post on The Question Has An Answer, because it tacitly assumes that liberalism is permanent, because otherwise there are easy counterexamples like fascism/communism, for example:
What liberal ideologies are worst at addressing, of course, are questions pertaining to their own violences, the injustices and disparities they promulgate, perpetuate, and thrive on, just underneath the facade of bringing all parties to the same table. They have never been able to confront the truth of how workers are far less free to negotiate terms than bosses, concerned more with the image of happy coordination than the reality of who has signed the dotted line with a gun to her head. - By Talia Bhatt
February 5, 2025 at 10:24 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
This is a big part of why I didn't like this section of Talia Bhatt's post on The Question Has An Answer, because it tacitly assumes that liberalism is permanent, because otherwise there are easy counterexamples like fascism/communism, for example:
What liberal ideologies are worst at addressing, of course, are questions pertaining to their own violences, the injustices and disparities they promulgate, perpetuate, and thrive on, just underneath the facade of bringing all parties to the same table. They have never been able to confront the truth of how workers are far less free to negotiate terms than bosses, concerned more with the image of happy coordination than the reality of who has signed the dotted line with a gun to her head - By Talia Bhatt.
February 5, 2025 at 10:19 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
This is also IMO a big problem re leftist dooming, though I'd argue Sean's explanation fits better:
I can’t remember who it was that said this, but highly neurotic, highly conscientious, highly disagreeable people used to be marginalized by society but social media enables them to band together and punch far above their weight class. By Sean T at RCP.
February 1, 2025 at 5:57 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
The only good news here is that his executive order was surprisingly un-trumpian, and didn't launch any new tariffs:
While many of Trump’s day one executive orders take effect immediately, his order for an “America First Trade Policy,” uncharacteristically, kicks the can down the road. Trump has talked about 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, across-the-board tariffs on all imports, and even more severe retaliatory measures targeted against China. But his executive order does none of these. Rather, it is an extended series of directives to different agencies of government on the feasibility of different trade and tariff measures. It almost looks like the work of a president who is serious about governing. The directives include reports on the causes of the chronic U.S. trade deficit, the possible creation of an External Revenue Service to administer tariffs, a tally of unfair foreign trade practices, the impact of the USMCA, currency manipulation, likely countries for bilateral or sectoral trade negotiations, the “de minimis” exemption, discriminatory extraterritorial taxes, impact of trade agreements on federal procurement, the results of the China Phase 1 deal from his first term, and a good deal more. Why this most un-Trumpian approach? First, someone has persuaded him that trade policy really is complicated. Second, his administration is divided between Wall Street internationalists and MAGA yahoos. It’s too soon to break out the (imported) champagne, but this pause at least slows down Trump’s most reckless impulses. –Robert Kuttner
January 26, 2025 at 2:45 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
My hot take for today is that a big reason why the left and right hate the Biden economy is because it proves that capitalism works, and it punctures so many bad takes:
By Chris Freiman: "One explanation for why so many on both the left and the right insist that Americans are becoming poorer despite the evidence to the contrary is simply politically motivated reasoning—admitting that the economy is doing well would mean admitting that neoliberalism works." By Chris Kausner: "Yes. And also admitting that: -America is good -the Fed is actually doing a fine job -we don’t need the gold standard -capitalism works -we don’t need MMT, LVT, or BTC -we don’t need social housing -the other side didn’t ruin the economy -my problems can’t be blamed on boomers"
December 16, 2024 at 7:12 PM
sharmake.bsky.social
This is also reinforced by the fact that the letter signed by hundreds of Jews claimed that Judaism/Jewishness can't be seperated from Israel, which is a massively unhealthy move as it raises the stakes immediately, which is very negative in such a severe conflict like I/P.
“Contrary to what many have tried to sell you — no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel,” the letter read. “Zionism is, simply put, the manifestation of that belief.”
May 23, 2024 at 12:19 AM
sharmake.bsky.social
A lot of Trump supporters are doing the meme from Community in which they can excuse racism, but not animal cruelty.
The meme shows an exchange between Britta and Shirley where Britta said the infamous line of "I can excuse racism but I draw the line at animal cruelty." on the Community TV show, and Shirley responds in an exasperated/surprised voice "You can excuse racism?!"
May 3, 2024 at 10:01 PM