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In Tokyo, what initially seemed like a cakewalk at the start of the year is shaping up to be a real race.

Governess Koike Yuriko is seeking a third-term in the post - those challenging her include former DP leader Renho, Akitakata Mayor Ishimaru Shinji, and now far-right former Chief of Staff of the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force Tamogami Toshio. With the LDP endorsing her for the first time, the opposition smells blood.

“Governess”? Is she teaching them to read?

Furiosa is furiously good. Saw it in IMAX at the Metreon in San Francisco.

Tory vs Labour frontbench in rugby, who wins?

Private school advantage might come into play here:


Angela Rayner's definitely going to break some Etonian ribs before the end of the match though.

Lindsay Hoyle's the current president of the Rugby Football League so he could always stand in as an extremely unhelpful ref.

In 2020, there were quite a few notable political shifts that defined the election. Mainly:

1. Trump making massive gains with Hispanic, Asian, and lesser degree black voters
2. Biden making gains with college educated voters
3. Biden making gains in fast growing metros and their suburbs, especially in the sunbelt
4. Biden making big gains in the northeast/Atlantic corridor
5. Trump squeezing a bit more out of many white working-class communities where he saw massive gains in 2016

I think oftentimes people assume that most shifts between 2 election cycles will continue. I tested this hypothesis by comparing the 2012-->2016 Presidential shifts to the 2016-->2020 shifts by Congressional district, and this was the result:


(Note positive values indicates a leftwards shift between cycles, negative values a rightwards shift).

The correlation is a lot weaker than many might assume.

Interestingly there are a lot of contrarian districts in the top left of this plot that shifted hard left in 2016 (despite the Country shifting right) and then hard right in 2020 (despite the Country shifting left) - most of these were heavily Hispanic seats in the sunbelt states like FL, TX, and CA.

Still, you can see the large majority of seats seem to fall into a somewhat weak positive correlation. Basically all the seats that fall into the top right quadrant of this graph (seats that shifted left in 2016 and 2020) were those suburban districts, many of which have experienced rapid growth over the past decade.

In the bottom right, you have districts that shifted right in 2016 but then left in 2020 - quite a lot of districts fall into this category, following the nation at large. A lot of the districts in this area are relatively rural/exurban/small-city districts in the northeast.

Then in the bottom left, there are districts that shifted right in both cycles. This is a pretty interesting collection of rural and urban districts, but they're all districts that are relatively and have low college attainment, alongside many having a stagnant or shrinking population in the 2020 census.

In writing this, I'm noticing a theme between the districts that shifted the same direction twice vs the districts that shifted different directions between elections - demographic change vs persuasion.

The districts that fall into the top right and bottom left quadrants (double leftwards shift and double rightwards shift) are seats that mostly have a demographic explanation that explains a significant part of there shift both cycles. In the case of seats like GA-07, TX-03, or VA-10, all 3 seats have seen rapid growth since 2010, large increases in their non-white population, and increases in college attainment. These factors likely explain a large part of the shift - looking at vote totals backs this up. In TX-03 for instance, Trump 2020 got 205k votes to Romney's 154k, however Biden got 152k to Obama's 68k - that's well over doubling raw votes for Democrats even as Republicans gained more votes - growth is clearly a huge part of this reason why this district went from Romney + 39 to Trump + 14 in just 8 years. All else being equal, one should expect many of these suburban districts to swing to Biden again. On the flip side, many of the seats in the bottom right quadrant are losing population, often population that's favorable to Democrats. NC-01 is a good example - over the past decade the % of people in the district who are black has declined (alongside the overall population of the district), explaining at least part of the rightwards lurch this seat has taken. If all else was equal in 2024, we'd expect this seat to swing right by default from population changes.

On the flip side, the districts that have shifted because of large amounts of persuasion are a bit harder to pinpoint and predict because persuasion is much more fluid than population change. TX-29 is a great example - it went from having a 15% shift left in 2016 to a 13% shift right in 2020 - this was largely due to the district's large Hispanic population. There's sort of an irony here because despite the national swing, there were far more leftwards in 2016 --> rightwards in 2020 districts caused by persuasion which shows how persuasion on a more local level may not align with the national picture. Trying to predict swings from persuasion is trickier because oftentimes these swings are far more aggressive and volatile than swings caused by demographic shifts (swings caused by demographics don't rarely seem to exceed ~12% at the Congressional District level between given cycles). One thing that generally seems to be true about these types of persuasion congressional districts is they tend to have very unique cultural dynamics (Cubans in Miami, Mormons in UT, WWC in the Mahoning Valley) that may make them more susceptible to targeted messaging.

To be clear, these two types of swings can happen at the same place at the same time; in VA-10 for instance there probably were a decent number of colleges educated Trump-->Biden vote flippers, or in TX-29 the hard right lurch amongst Hispanics was able to overpower favorable demographic shifts to Democrats in the district, but you can still often find one type of swing to be more dominant.



TLDR; there are two things that power swings; demographic change and persuasion. Demographic changes tend to be pretty consistent between cycles and hence swings caused by demographic changes should be pretty consistent between cycles. Swings caused by persuasion are much more of wild cards, with large inconsistencies between cycles, and often causes swings of very large magnitude making the persuasion swings much harder to predict.

Guys Beet literally was a Trump supporter at one point LOL. Got to love the arguing with him, after he's also both been a Trump supporter and one of the most partisan Hillary supporters on the forum and insisted Tulsi Gabbard would be the 2020 D nominee.

Smooth looking dude.

37 years old. Has a line he uses of he's younger than Joe Biden's crime bill.

https://x.com/FordFischer/status/1794603534064689194

How is this thread 4 pages?

This story seems to be "NFL player gives speech and says things that some people don't like"

You posted 50 times in a thread about someone making a pair of shoes you didn't like

https://twitter.com/academic_la/status/1794838600041001106?t=sgI2X4pydY7wJ1AVkCp...

That’s horrible, no ifs, ands, or buts.  It’s objectively not genocide, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a horrific act.  And you can’t even argue that Israel was targeting such high-ranking Hamas officials that it was worth the risk or whatever.  These were not top guys.  This strike never should’ve been launched.

According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the area hit is a designated "safe zone".

This isn't the first time that Israel has hit a "safe zone" either.

Time to reconsider the "objectively not genocide" part.

That’s not genocide.  A war crime?  Quite possibly, but not genocide.  Words have meaning.

Maybe you think that I looked up "genocide" in a dictionary and using the term willy-nilly.

That is not the case.

When I talking about "genocide", I am using the term as defined in the Genocide Convention.

And I am going by the definition established by the Genocide Convention as well.  The difference is you’re using it in a wildly inaccurate manner.  Whether you’re doing so deliberately or due to genuine ignorance is not for me to say, but by that definition, Israel’s actions are clearly not genocide.  It isn’t even a close call.

We both know that the ICC bring charges against individuals not against countries, but it's not much of a stretch that the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant also applies to Israel.

Let's look at these charges.

• Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
• Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
• Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
  
• Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
• Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
• Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);
• Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).

Do they not sound a whole lot like genocide to you?

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:  

(a) Killing members of the group;  

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;  

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;  

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;  

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The only ones of those I think you could make a serious argument are occurring are starvation of civilians as a method of war as a war crime and deaths caused by such as a crime against humanity.  What I have yet to see is compelling hard evidence that this is the result of a deliberate, willful policy sanctioned by Netanyahu and Gallant.  I have not yet seen such evidence, but if such comes out (and again, I’m talking compelling, hard evidence not some rando on Twitter or at an NGO saying “there is a famine, this must be deliberate; looks like genocide to me!”) then this would be a very different conversation.  If such evidence emerges then I will adjust my views accordingly and I think that’s perfectly reasonable.

Let look at what Netanyahu and Gallant themselves have said.

“you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”

- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu was referring to the genocide of the Amalekites at the hands of the Israelites.

IDF soldiers heard the message from Netanyahu loud and clear.

They were coming to Gaza to "wipe off the seed of Amalek" and there are no "uninvolved civilians".

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1733116719668113618

“[Israel is] imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

- Defence Minister Yoav Gallant

This one is self-evident. Nothing was left for interpretation.

Some gross demagoguery, but no more than that.  Pretty sure Netanyahu is simply talking about Hamas as I believe the Amalekites tried to wipe out the Jewish people and if so, then I have no problem with that tbh.  Wiping out Hamas is what wild success looks like here from a military standpoint.  The “human animals” bit of the Gallant quote is pretty bad though, no two ways about it.

The Israeli soldiers chanting that are bad people, but actual actions and/or written evidence (ex: government or military documents, memos, etc) speaking to the intent and direct knowledge/sign-off of specific individuals is far more important than words, even odious words like Gallant’s (which I am in no way defending, to be clear)

>Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

That sure as hell isn't only talking about Hamas.

Apart from that, the gap between us is not going to be bridged by further discussion.

Fair enough. We can wait for your next iteration.

I agree that the legal case against Israel for genocide is….highly dubious (at best!). But what of it? They are still guilty of horrific war crimes and quite possibly crimes against humanity. This is more important than debating the details of the genocide definition.

A lot of pro Israel folks would rather hairsplit about definitions than talk about the war crime in Rafah the other day. It's a coping mechanism for sure.

"Well yeah, we're doing awful things but you called it a genocide so you're antisemitic and worse than us. Look over there! Focus on that guy!"

https://twitter.com/academic_la/status/1794838600041001106?t=sgI2X4pydY7wJ1AVkCp...

That’s horrible, no ifs, ands, or buts.  It’s objectively not genocide, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a horrific act.  And you can’t even argue that Israel was targeting such high-ranking Hamas officials that it was worth the risk or whatever.  These were not top guys.  This strike never should’ve been launched.

I believe I was also one of the first in the thread to argue that what happened yesterday may very well have been a war crime.

I actually wasn't referring to you, you have been pretty consistent here. A good number of folks, both on and off this forum, haven't.

Fair enough, can’t really argue with that sadly.

At least you do admit it's a war crime. While not enough, you're far from the worst in this thread... sadly enough

There are users here who are more zealous here than Bibi himself...

Some are banned right now, one or two have been permabanned but yes, it's extremely disturbing.

Still many users like Lief, OSR, Ray Goldfield, Meclazine, etc. who continue to sheer on the war crimes or talk about how the hostages... is worse without any word on Palestinian lives. They are supporting genocide and from the first bench with some popcorn.