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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 02/10/2026

Also the small little "I plan on fleeing to Israel to escape the American justice system" detail?! WTAF

Do you think the Israeli people should give Netanyahu another term?

Well, I can only say that I'm not involved in politics anymore, except that we're popular—

You are very popular in Israel.

Like 99%! I think what happens is, in two and a half years, I go to Israel. I've done a lot for them. Done a lot. I've done a real lot.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Sorry for the rant on the dark topic. It's just... my philosophy blorbo was in the Epstein Files, and it's A Lot.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

I do wonder what we'll learn about him, cause this almost seems like a departure -- I'm not aware of a single whiff of him being anything other than a boring, generous man who was obsessed with his work, trying to do good (perhaps badly!), and devoted to his wife of 60 years during his peak fame.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Like, the very worst one (other than the love for WOODY ALLEN?!) is the comments on MeToo, which Epstein asked him about pointedly from no real segue (that we know of). What should Chomsky have typed? "fuck you", obviously. Jesus. But it's still a super strange, perfunctory response.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

I commented just to agree, but I will say: not many of his *words* appear in the Epstein files. That's another oddity that I feel this essay didn't convey -- namely, that the actual email exchanges are either A) clipped and awkward or B) trite pleasantries & scheduling from Valeria (his wife).

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Damn, never noticed those myself. That's grim -- hard to imagine a more *generally* prestigious name to have in your pocket for that, though the far, far slimier Marvin Minsky (another MIT figure) already covered AI & CS well enough. Epst was planning a cursed speakers series w/ him near the end...

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Finally: casually throwing out at the start that he founded a field and then never mentioning it again (*ad-hominem* is warranted sometimes...) and choosing not to mention a single moment of Chomsky's most impactful period ever (his criticisms of Nixon & the Vietnam War) seem openly biased. No?

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

> ...as if they are his clearly stated primary positions, neglecting to mention that these appear as little more than throat-clearing concessions immediately preceding a main argument devoted to downplaying and denial. Wouldn't that also match him being more nuanced & correct than they understand?

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Here's a point where something clearly goes over the authors head, I think (hope?): > One favored strategy is to selectively quote fragments of his own statements like “The record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial” or “the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime”...

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

- The idea that Trump's illegal wars are not propped up by a base of public support, even if it's a different, more fascist kind than what Chomsky had to deal with.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

- The strong implication that *Manufacturing Consent* is somehow lessened because it accurately describes mass media, which conspiracy theories tend to revolve around. - The idea that Chomsky advise us to withhold reporting and commentary on problems in leftist countries altogether.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

Regarding your quote in particular, - The idea that Chomsky's political theory was "a neat division of the globe into enemies and allies" is another truly baffling one. Surely it's clear that's a strawman? No one is denying "the world has several axes of power", here.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

- Worth saying separately: the idea that chomsky's focus on local activism "precluded any possibility" for international cooperation is the single most damning one, IMHO. I feel like that's pretty obviously not the case.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

- The idea that chomsky is contrarian as a strategy, presented with a completely unrelated concept as evidence. - The idea that acting local (in the country in which you hold *actual, literal* civic power) is a betrayal of anarchist ideals, or an endorsement of states & borders as they exist.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

I'm intentionally not trying to debunk everything (and the author is clearly great & in good faith), but just some hints: - The idea that those speaking up for justice are trying to "reprogram" the condemnible "masses". - The idea that complete statelessness is default anarchism.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

I fear anything that functionally ends up defending Chomsky will still register roughly halfway to "super fucking unwelcome", so... apologies if so. Ask me and I'll delete, I suppose!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 31/08/2026

I feel compelled to drop a note from someone who has been closely following all of this (and a self-avowed Chomskian, soo) that this article is *full* of logical errors and incorrect statements when you look for them, IMHO. There's huge discussions to have too, but I hope this is more welcome.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 17/04/2026

A story in two parts...

An interstitial "Three months later", and then a screenshot of a free press article titled "I spoke to the man accused of trying to kill sam altman" with a photo of a man hitting a large plexiglass door with a plastic chair.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 12/04/2026

Liberty mandates a belief in creationism (!), forces students to be evangelical baptists, bans all LGBTQ people across the board, and is mostly an online scam university a-la University of Phoenix. Notre Dame, OTOH, has been focused on secular scientific achievement since ~1881. Not the same, IMO!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

Sadly we can't ask Chomsky anymore :( For anyone not in the loop, he hasn't been able to speak or write coherently for over a year now. Hope he's comfortable, at least

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

All of this is a massive improvement from the original situation from a few years back when their friendship was highlighted, which was basically just "they both liked Woody Allen, and Chomsky refuses to elaborate on principle." Glad his name is cleared of the nastiest possibilities, for real.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

On the upside, they did help me find this email Jeff wrote to himself, which hasn't left my mind since. Supposedly this list of gibberish (barely coherent enough for an acid trip) was for *Steve Bannon*??? searchepsteinfiles.com/file/text/HO...

searchepsteinfiles.com

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

Well at least we can pretty definitively say that Chomsky (and his wife!) were just hopelessly-naive and not partaking in any horrific crimes. The emails between them oscillate quickly from cringeworthy (Jeff's friend arguing with Chomsky) to super cringeworthy (whatever this is)

searchepsteinfiles.com

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

Also my GOD wtf is this take. As I said it's usually bad, but this has to be the most shockingly-contrary reading of that paper I've ever seen. It's not "subtly different", and it's definitely not "did the machine think"!!!!!! I don't have enough exclamation points to express my disgust ;(

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

Of course, the actual takeaway should obviously be "Turing was holding out hope for supernatural telepathy being real"!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 19/11/2025

I cite this exact quote *so* often. It blows my mind how few people realize that that was the entire point of one of the most famous papers in all of computer science... I guess "Turing said we can test AIs for something" is the common takeaway, instead?

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 14/10/2025

So much more room for protestors!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 14/10/2025

Do you have the same objections to prewritten erotica? Or, hell, books in general? They're replacing human conversation, after all. Oh god this is gonna be one of those things you can't discuss without sounding creepy isn't it. I should drop this crusade in advance lol

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

When in doubt, blame the British! They have a rich history of winging it on taxonomy going all the way back to Linnaeus 🥲 Another British-derived tragic betrayal is how utterly meaningless “Bird of Prey” is. It’s not raptors — it’s just any bird that seems scary!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

SO relatable, even down to the source (thanks @wikipedia.org!) My personal fave: there is no such thing as crows or ravens as groups of species :(. Crows are *usually* the smaller corvids and ravens the *usually* the bigger ones, but there’s plenty of exceptions.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

Yeah but there’s a *ton* of edge cases where that loses meaning! Most notably, it’s questionably useful for one of the three domains of life, Archea. Taxonomy is a beautiful, useful, and inherently arbitrary undertaking, IMHO.

en.wikipedia.org

Archaea - Wikipedia

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

Ofc people will still have goofy mystical alternatives, but that also applies to “energy”, “entropy” — hell, even “gravity”! Shouldn’t stop a useful scientific consensus. Im also personally open to a Nussbaumian “let’s drop the C-word all-together” future, but it seems… unlikely.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

We Kantians do! Sadly it’s still in a bit of a controversial phase a-la climate change in 1920, but I promise, we’re working on it :)

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

I’ve got some answers on there already, but mostly along the lines of “lol noob, if you don’t like it, leave!” 😅 Would appreciate answers and/or vague-pointers-to-answers on here or there, if any of you have any! (Also, obligatory “Python rocks, regardless” 😊)

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 27/08/2025

Curious to see if any of the #python / #PyPI elders on here can share some stories about how packaging came to be (c. ~2015?), and specifically the mandatory support for multi-package distributions, something I’ve never seen in the wild. More details+background here: www.reddit.com/r/learnpytho...

reddit.com

From the learnpython community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the learnpython community

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 21/07/2025

Video and photographs are of course also the fascist aesthetic as they can be doctored. Also illustrations. Ban the lot!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 11/07/2025

First time on here in a while, honestly pretty nuts to see that this level of denialism still exists. People deny climate change so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, and yet... somehow I am!

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 11/07/2025

Probably infeasible with a big political topic like this one, but I feel like $20 of bot likes and some A/B testing with some of his old tweets could get you a long way on more niche issues...

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 11/07/2025

Ah very good point, didn't see it was using Twitter's native search syntax. I guess the trick would be getting your reply on the first page of replies to his tweets on the topic, along with some sort of impersonation. Maybe just reply w/ a fake quote and attribute to him?

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 11/07/2025

You're a hero, as always -- thanks for highlighting. That's beyond absurd.

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 11/07/2025

New prompt injection vector just dropped: just, like, tweeting stuff. Maybe tweeting under the name @3lonmu5k would be enough? Or just tagging him?

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

“And the inaugural ‘Best SciFi Poster’ award goes to…”

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

I really don’t think the French can or should brag about revolution frequency. They only had to try again because the past ones either failed in bloody horror, or succeeded in bloody horror only to be followed by a rapid collapse

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

We’ve literally never been in this situation before. “Republicans are too monolithic to flip!” is just completely baseless, IMO

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

We need to impeach this year — you can’t just pause a democracy for two years and expect everything to work out, especially when the violations are this extreme. Yes, that means convincing 16 GOP senators to elevate Vance. No, that’s not impossible just because Fox News or whatever

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

While we’re picking, I think Chavez is the natural choice. There’s a few establishment, selfish politician types like Bessnet, Burgum, and Rubio, but Chavez is by far the most nuanced of them AFAICT

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

Really tho hard to imagine a better case than a 91 y/o. Unless they give him a killer stimulant prescription and a copy of mein kampf??

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bbor @robb.doering.ai · 07/04/2025

More to your specific point: Pete Hegseth doesn’t give a shit about tariffs. They’re evil, not identical.

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