Lies about the Talmud

I've stated in general terms the same thing before, but a Reddit poster gives a lengthy rebuttal to some of the common tropes about the Talmud:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/18fz2h2/a_response_to_arguments_containing_false_talmudic/

Where it is claimed the Talmud calls non-jews 'beasts,' the actual term is 'worshipper of stars' (contextually meaning polytheistic idolators).

The passage cited is actually an argument as to why visiting non-jewish graves does not require ritual purification.

Now that's not to say the Talmud is not without good criticism, I've made those before too.  While in fact the Talmud says that to save a non-Jews life is more important that all but 3 things: murder, disallowed sex, and idolatry, it does not in fact call for equality for all people, it calls for fairness to non-jews, and more-than-fairness to Jews.  That's where the supremacism can creep in.  Though it doesn't necessarily have to, I've never experienced any myself, Jews have always been more-than-fair to me personally, and I can see numerous historical examples (eg Jonas Salk).  And hardly any other religion offers equality for all (only such as Unitarian Universalism) anyway.  

But what we've seen with Zionism and Israel is disgusting, and in my mind a complete negation of both the Talmud and the Torah.  Zionists have utterly lost their Judaism in all but name only.  They have become the idolators of death and destruction, genocide, and not just statehood (which would be bad enough, actually, to qualify as an an idolatry, even if it could be done without death and destruction, just merely by the slightest unfairness--which is still against God's rules--and it's obvious this is not humanly possible...hence not surprising the Talmud and Torah both say Jews must wait for the Messiah).  But such is the modern infotainment reality, Zionist Jews can live in their own bubble of lies and be fine with the death, destruction, and genocide Zionism requires in the name of idolatrous statehood.  

I love my hobbies, but I don't murder, steal, lie or do anything unfair to pursue them.  I always try to be as fair as I can be, or more than fair.  Fairness is a good idea in business and banking too.  That's how you get good will.  And that's what the Talmud is supposed to help people learn.  It was fairly successful in that for over a thousand years before the rise of Zionism, which sadly it was unable to stop.

Though the Talmud (seems to?) denounce Jesus (I wonder if in fact it is denouncing Paul, the real inventor of modern Christianity and in my view that denunciation is just about warranted), it seems to me the story of Jesus is a perfectly fitting illustration of both Torah and Talmudic 'values'.  Jesus was quoting Leviticus when he said to love others as yourself.  The New Testament figures were themselves all Jews, including Jesus and Paul, and many of their followers as well.

Warner Bros Discovery

Warner-Bros Discovery is one of the five big Hollywood Studios, has a wealth of classic films, and is the #3 streamer.  It's already as big as any such thing needs to be.  All the previous mergers and acquisitions which produced the present entity led to a decline in production and production quality.  And yet, the Board savors more.  Why?

It's already been at the point where it can collect ever greater monopoly rents.  The board is hoping to merge it to become an even bigger monopolist, which raises the present value of the current monopolies (if nothing else).

IOW, what they're selling is monopoly itself.

This should, of course, be illegal.

And then there's Netflix and Paramount, which ought to be forbidden from buying rival giant companies in the hopes of even greater monopoly than they already have.  Netflix is already the top streamer, who would be buying the #3, and then they'd own all the content other streamers rent from Warner-Bros Discovery.  Paramount would put half of Hollywood under one right-wing family.

For a long time, anti-trust enforcement relied on the bad doctrine that where greater size yielded greater efficiencies, it should be allowed.  We've seen that disproven time and again when resulting companies lose the qualities which originally made them special (like Boeing, who made the most reliable planes).  But restoring proper antitrust enforcement (in which the existing companies like Warner Bros Discover would already seem to be monopolies whose very size limited public choices--an inefficient outcome for consumers) would only be a small part of the de-financialization which needs to occur in the US economy.

Finance needs to be boring, and only then can everything else become exciting again.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/netflix-is-trying-to-buy-warner-bros

AI is the digital asbestos we'll be digging out of our walls for decades

Cory Doctorow at his best, incredible, I couldn't have brought this all together in one essay said any better.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

Cory dismisses all the garbage claims and worries, and gets to the heart of it all.  AI is intended to cost middle class thinking and creative jobs, like computer coding, that's why so much is being invested in it.  The plan is to lay lots of those people off,  Then what about them?

Well, if AI delivered what it promised, this might well make consumers happy.  Why pay those people if AI does the job better?  But it won't.  It will make things go bad quickly.

Unlike earlier technologies which empowered people, creating centaurs like a human driving a car with the car doing the muscle work, AI creates reverse-centaurs, where humans are reduced to the function of monitoring the AI that does the "original" thinking.

The problem here is that people don't monitor things very well.  They are much better wired for actually doing things, including the original thinking.  Monitoring AI's thinking, when AI is designed to always choose the next most probable choice which always looks fine on the face of things, is an impossible task for people to do.  Especially the less experienced and less well paid people corporations plan to hire after the mass AI layoffs.  The basic problem is well known already and called automation blindness.

So we'll be left with shitty everything, delivered to us by corporate monopolies that offered us no choice, with mass unemployment and underemployment like never before.  And no easy way back.

Producers AND Consumers must unite to fight this monster.

Maybe after the bubble is popped, some of the developments and capabilities will be useful in limited ways, Cory details this too, but nothing like the investment going into them.  It won't be as simple as the WorldCom bust, which actually left useful fiber in the ground still being used.

I'd encourage people to never abandon real thinking and skills.  I myself continue writing blogs and computer programs the old fashioned way.

Cory also expounds on something relevant to this blog.  Cory says he writes parables and not forecasts.  That's what I do also.  It's like, if we keep doing business as usual, the climate in 2100 will be devastating.  But I don't know if we'll continue to do 'business as usual' by then.  I hope we don't, and at some point people accept the correct ideas, I'm hoping to create some here, and steer away from the greater disaster.  Then suppose 2100 arrives and disaster doesn't happen because of great social changes were made, similar to those I've suggested, to prevent it.  It would seem by then that my prognostications while wrong were useful.  And that is the point.  Not to foresee the future but to help guide it, by helping to illuminate the entire view.