Sasha Senderovich 🌻

We are war criminals. And not for the first time, either.

Look what just came in the mail! “Reclaiming the Ladino Left” by my UW colleague Devin Naar — as a winter gift for subscribers of @jewishcurrents.bsky.social. Can’t wait to read (and trying singing, too)

Eileen Keenan, a waitress at 1203 Restaurant, a restaurant owned by Ukrainian immigrants, in Washington, D.C., puts up a sign for “Free Borsht in celebration of Stalin’s death” on 6 March 1953, a day after the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953.

Happy death of Stalin day to those who celebrate, as I do! It’s always best when people like this meet their end from natural causes, speedily and in our days, preferably covered in their own piss, if you know what I mean.

If only our own Democratic elected officials could speak like this.

…. seems to have had no plan beyond that is very clearly stated as a U.S.-Israel joint venture? Mad king Bibi fulfills his idiotic dream, and I’m 100% convinced that the timing is deliberate to give him the Purim-fantasy-as-reality talking point. Gut yontev, I suppose! 2/2

Bibi has ruined Purim forever, hasn’t he, turning the fantasy of revenge of a minority peoples into a real-life resolution of his decades-long obsession with Israel, a sovereign state, bombing Iran? Note how this war that now got rid of the ayatollah but …1/2

And now we learn that Anthropic thing was just posturing / a charade. AI literally kills.

Speaking of artificial “intelligence”: now it’s pretty clear why Hegseth had the deadline of Thursday for Anthropic to surrender, isn’t it? Anthropic, mind you, wasn’t objecting to the use of its tools in bombing people overseas, but the key thing for Trump with this new war is gonna be to expand domestic surveillance — wars are *great* for that — of everyone who opposes this insanity and here Anthropic suddenly had moral quibbles. But OpenAI stepped in right in that moment, a couple hours before the bombings of Iran began, handing Trump some more tools to go after Americans as he bombs Iranians. Tl;dr: artificial “intelligence” is a civilization-ending set of tools, hope all its cheerleaders enjoy the show.

And now the whole business with pressuring Anthropic and then OpenAI’s collaboration with Hegseth on the particular timeline that transpired this week makes sense, doesn’t it?

An accurate way to describe why Trump is doing this.

When it’s “the Onion” but is quite likely not really just “the Onion.”

Not untrue.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth: "If there was ever a time for Republicans to find their spines, it's now, when the Commander in Chief readily admits that he is choosing to put our troops' lives at risk without a legitimate imminent threat to our homeland or our citizens."

I was right

Omani FM:

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.

Netanyahu has an election and wants to retain power. Trump has a congressional election that can spell the end of his presidency and he wants to retain power. This is what this war is about, two crooks and criminals trying to stay out of jail fighting for their survival.

Almost certainly true, and another opportunity to remember that Netanyahu would willingly trade away the safety of every Jew on earth to save his own political career and avoid going to prison for his crimes.

I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.

To recap:
Anthropic refused to do killbots or mass surveillance. DOD trying to destroy company.
Altman: we are now working with DOD, who totally respect safety and oppose mass surveillance!
Why would anyone trust a word Altman says after this?

Seems so long ago now but there was a while where most tech luminaries were just sorta awkward weirdos and not full-bore Bond villains.

Yup.

Late in the evening on a Friday, like all such news, with outrage about it to be swept into the weekend. Waited until a competitor is out of the running and went for it. Fuck AI, it will destroy the world.

Nazis all the way down.

Exciting news to read while visiting the U.K. this week!

Looking forward to this on Sunday March 1!

Summers To Resign From Teaching Appointments, Relinquish University Professorship Over Epstein Ties | News | The Harvard Crimson Former Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year, relinquishing his University Professorship — Harvard’s highest...

About twenty years too late, but still. Kudos to the student journalists @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social for breaking this and other sordid Larry Summers stories. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Tomorrow: @returnstosender.bsky.social's talk at UCL about his and Harriet Murav's new @stanfordpress.bsky.social collection of Soviet stories about the Holocaust. Free event, registration required.

Attendees can also purchase the book with a nice discount.

A hero, obviously.

Rep. Al Green was holding a sign that reads "Black People Aren't Apes" at the State of the Union:

Rep. Al Green was holding a sign that reads "Black People Aren't Apes" at the #SOTU:

Teaching Guide to In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union | In geveb The stories gathered in In the Shadow of the Holocaust offer distinctive vantage points on how people continue to live after a catastrophe. We suggest some aven

For @ingeveb.bsky.social, Harriet Murav & I wrote on teaching stories from our new translation. Some ideas are how we imagine the book could be taught, others come from the practice of teaching a number of these stories in draft form in recent years. We hope it’s of use. ingeveb.org/blog/teachin...

Looking forward to this! Planning to rest well on the plane ride over — this talk is just a few hours after I’m scheduled to land in London.