@samrobotize / samrobotize.tumblr.com
Sam Appreciation Week: 3. Favourite Scene - 4.16 On the Head of a Pin
First he saved Castiel from Alastair, overpowered the demon and got the information needed. Then he killed Dean’s very torturer both in hell and those moments ago. And now here’s Sam being a fiercely protective brother, who also had figured out something was off about the angels.
As the assault on American higher education continues, I’ve been asked to explain why I believe this policy is antisemitic. A new video is above.
The Trump people claim to be fighting antisemitism, and the media often accept that framing. I believe, on the contrary, that these actions are antisemitic in intention and in execution. The use of the word “antisemitism” as a covering pretext for defunding education empties the concept of meaning.
I have talked about this in various public gatherings in the US and written about it here, but thought that a video explainer might be helpful.
My background: I have written two books on the Holocaust as well as an introduction to Borowski’s Here in Our Auschwitz and a good deal else on the topic; have taught Holocaust history for two decades; have helped to supervise the use of Holocaust testimonies for the better part of my career and spend time with these sources. I sit on the International Auschwitz Council and have been awarded the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Medal. I note that Professor Christopher Browning, the very distinguished American scholar of the Holocaust, is making a similar case. Please read his essay.
I have given these matters some thought, and I hope you will consider. Please feel free as always to share this video.
Exactly what caused the collapse of the mighty Roman Empire has been hotly debated practically since the fall itself. Was economic stagnation primarily to blame, or was it societal decay? Did political conflicts mortally weaken Rome’s power, or is its decline owed mostly to a series of invasions from abroad? Was it lead? In reality, the fall of the empire almost certainly occurred through a complex interplay of socio-political factors—but recent research suggests a brief climate crisis may have contributed more than we thought. The new findings were published on April 11 in the journal Geology by a collaborative team from Queen’s University Canada, the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security
https://whistlebloweraid.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2025_0414_Berulis-Disclosure-with-Exhibits.s.pdf
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.
A lawsuit filed in February accuses Tesla of remotely altering odometer values on failure-prone cars, in a bid to push these lemons beyond the 50,000 mile warranty limit:
The suit was filed by a California driver who bought a used Tesla with 36,772 miles on it. The car's suspension kept failing, necessitating multiple servicings, and that was when the plaintiff noticed that the odometer readings for his identical daily drive were going up by ever-larger increments. This wasn't exactly subtle: he was driving 20 miles per day, but the odometer was clocking 72.35 miles/day. Still, how many of us monitor our daily odometer readings?
In short order, his car's odometer had rolled over the 50k mark and Tesla informed him that they would no longer perform warranty service on his lemon. Right after this happened, the new mileage clocked by his odometer returned to normal. This isn't the only Tesla owner who's noticed this behavior: Tesla subreddits are full of similar complaints:
This isn't Tesla's first dieselgate scandal. In the summer of 2023, the company was caught lying to drivers about its cars' range:
Drivers noticed that they were getting far fewer miles out of their batteries than Tesla had advertised. Naturally, they contacted the company for service on their faulty cars. Tesla then set up an entire fake service operation in Nevada that these calls would be diverted to, called the "diversion team." Drivers with range complaints were put through to the "diverters" who would claim to run "remote diagnostics" on their cars and then assure them the cars were fine. They even installed a special xylophone in the diversion team office that diverters would ring every time they successfully deceived a driver.
These customers were then put in an invisible Tesla service jail. Their Tesla apps were silently altered so that they could no longer book service for their cars for any reason – instead, they'd have to leave a message and wait several days for a callback. The diversion center racked up 2,000 calls/week and diverters were under strict instructions to keep calls under five minutes. Eventually, these diverters were told that they should stop actually performing remote diagnostics on the cars of callers – instead, they'd just pretend to have run the diagnostics and claim no problems were found (so if your car had a potentially dangerous fault, they would falsely claim that it was safe to drive).
Most modern cars have some kind of internet connection, but Tesla goes much further. By design, its cars receive "over-the-air" updates, including updates that are adverse to drivers' interests. For example, if you stop paying the monthly subscription fee that entitles you to use your battery's whole charge, Tesla will send a wireless internet command to your car to restrict your driving to only half of your battery's charge.
This means that your Tesla is designed to follow instructions that you don't want it to follow, and, by design, those instructions can fundamentally alter your car's operating characteristics. For example, if you miss a payment on your Tesla, it can lock its doors and immobilize itself, then, when the repo man arrives, it will honk its horn, flash its lights, back out of its parking spot, and unlock itself so that it can be driven away:
Some of the ways that your Tesla can be wirelessly downgraded (like disabling your battery) are disclosed at the time of purchase. Others (like locking you out and summoning a repo man) are secret. But whether disclosed or secret, both kinds of downgrade depend on the genuinely bizarre idea that a computer that you own, that is in your possession, can be relied upon to follow orders from the internet even when you don't want it to. This is weird enough when we're talking about a set-top box that won't let you record a TV show – but when we're talking about a computer that you put your body into and race down the road at 80mph inside of, it's frankly terrifying.
Obviously, most people would prefer to have the final say over how their computers work. I mean, maybe you trust the manufacturer's instructions and give your computer blanket permission to obey them, but if the manufacturer (or a hacker pretending to be the manufacturer, or a government who is issuing orders to the manufacturer) starts to do things that are harmful to you (or just piss you off), you want to be able to say to your computer, "OK, from now on, you take orders from me, not them."
In a state of nature, this is how computers work. To make a computer ignore its owner in favor of internet randos, the manufacturer has to build in a bunch of software countermeasures to stop you from reconfiguring or installing software of your choosing on it. And sure, that software might be able to withstand the attempts of normies like you and me to bypass it, but given that we'd all rather have the final say over how our computers work, someone is gonna figure out how to get around that software. I mean, show me a 10-foot fence and I'll show you an 11-foot ladder, right?
before enshittified cars became the norm and odometers were only accessible in person, sleazy used-car salesmen would sometimes do the rollback trick - and often get caught, then face criminal charges for lying to the customer. let's bring back criminal charges for twiddling the things we buy
also, to hell with modern enshittified cars. parents need to start teaching kids how to fix their machines and keep them on the road again. and if you know how to self-repair, teach your friends how to do so (and share your tools)!
it's not only good for your pocketbook to fix it yourself rather than pay someone else to do so, it's way better for the environment to rebuild rather than buy a new car. it's also super satisfying to learn and use these skills. machines can always be fixed, electronics can be replaced, and cosmetic damage can be repaired and repainted
also, self-repair is punk
one good thing (!) to come out of the impending financial recession / depression is that people will learn how to fix things again, because we won't be able to afford to buy new
that one time Dean really was inside Sam. 4.15
All his adult life, Trump has been ripping people off. That is his modus operandi. Rather than a conscience, he has the habit of displacement. It is not that he is ripping people off. Everyone else is ripping him off.
Because Trump's policy is based on personal vulnerability, it is erratic. If someone makes him feel more vulnerable than he was already, he will stop. He will not, for example, impose tariffs on Russia, because he is afraid of Russia. On the other hand, if someone convinces him that he has won, then he will also reduce the tariffs, as has just happened. If he no longer feels that he is being ripped off, then he yields. Until the moment when his feelings change. To a person which such a obvious vulnerability, everything seems out of control. And so control is the only answer. Everyone is acting to rip me off. And so I must establish control by calling them all out, and making them deal with me from a position of weakness and ridicule. And so now the United States -- so goes the theory - will now negotiate individually with every single country of the world. We have broken agreements with many of them, and now we will sign new agreements, which will probably be worse: we lack time now, and patience, and focus. And we can never get back the trust of our closest trade partners.
Allowing our republic to be compromised has many costs, for example to our rights, and to our dignity. But it also has costs in a very basic economic sense. When you elevate the mad king, you elevate the madness.
