State violence is there to enforce rules, conquer territory or achieve political goals. Terrorism is there to create fear.
Many terrorist attacks were and are part of a campaign with explicit political goals, often including taking territory.
The IRA's political goal was to remove northern Ireland from the UK
The Taliban's political goal was to enforce a strict interpretation of Sharia law
Hamas wanted to establish a Palestinian state
We just don't call these behaviors terrorist attacks when they're perpetrated by a state.
Russia's bombings of Ukraine
Israel's violations of the Geneva convention in the Gaza strip.
The United States' air strikes on Venezuelan ships
I'm not advocating for violence by anyone, but your argument buys wholesale into every state's argument for why they should get to have a monopoly on it.
When a non-state actor does it, we call it "terrorism".
When a state does it, we call it "state violence".
But the killing is the same. The desire to strike fear into opponents is the same. The goals are the same: to get power and control, or to keep it.
"Terrorism" is a word used and abused by state actors against smaller non-state actors, so that they can destroy it without having to negotiate (and possibly give concessions).
Trump is trying this now with Venezuela. If it's a corrupt government, you still have to engage in diplomacy. If it's a cartel, you have carte blanche to air strike Venezuelan ships.
The Taliban succeeded and now control the state of Afghanistan. Now that they're a state actor, violence against civilians has not stopped, we just stopped calling it terrorism and seeing it in the news.
Signal CEO Whittaker said that in the worst case scenario, they would work with partners and the community to see if they could find ways to circumvent these rules. Signal also did this when the app was blocked in Russia or Iran. "But ultimately, we would leave the market before we had to comply with dangerous laws like these."
Atlantic New Yorker articles have always (for me, at least) been long-winded and rambling. I still can't tell what the thesis statement is for this one.
But I do agree that the Democrat Party needs to retire its performative Old Ones.
Ultimately, the substance of the fight might not matter for congressional Democrats so much as having the fight at all: Schumer, in particular, lost a lot of credibility after he was perceived to have folded to Trump in March, and the Democratic base has been clamoring for the Party’s leaders to do something; whatever the merits of a shutdown, it’s become increasingly hard to imagine Schumer and Jeffries surviving another preëmptive climbdown. It’s unlikely that the Democrats will “win” this shutdown if winning means policy concessions; at some point, they’ll probably have to retreat. But making noise for a bit could revive an oppositional force that, as I wrote last week, appears fractious, distracted, and, ultimately, moribund. There’s an asymmetry in the vein of political analysis that emphasizes the power of Trump’s energized base while chiding Democrats whenever they stray from some perceived middle ground; sure, marshalling the base, on its own, is rarely sufficient, but is necessary. Maybe winning, here, is showing it a pulse.
And yet the Democrats’ lack of forceful, unified opposition, at least up till now, has put the pressure on the Party’s leaders to resort to a tactic that is politically risky, and, more important, will substantively harm federal workers and American citizens. Funding the government is a natural leverage point when you lack any institutional control but can gum up the path to sixty votes in the Senate. Still, it’s possible to imagine an alternate world in which the Democrats had opposed Trump more consistently already, and thus had more reputational leeway not to close the government now. Toward the end of his essay, Klein acknowledged that he was not “absolutely sure” that it was a wise path and that he’d welcome a better plan—but “if the plan is still nothing,” he wrote, “then Democrats need new leaders.” The plan, this time, was not nothing. But a shutdown isn’t everything either. And at some point, the Democrats will indeed need new leaders.
Launching October 1st, Gemini For Home is a suite of new AI-powered features for Google’s smart home hardware and software.
The biggest change: Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on all of Google’s smart speakers, all the way back to the original Google Home speaker. This LLM-powered upgrade, announced at Google I/O, will be available through an Early Access program at first, with a wider rollout planned for next year.
On smart speakers, Gemini brings an entirely new voice assistant that uses and understands natural language, can interpret context, and can pull in more real-time information. You still activate it with the wake words “hey Google,” but Google Assistant has been evicted.
“Gemini for Home is the intelligence for your entire home,” Anish Kattukaran, head of product at Google Home and Nest, tells The Verge. “It’s not going to just replace Assistant on speakers and displays, but it’s going to upgrade your other devices as well, your cameras and doorbells, where you interact with those devices, and bring those smarts collectively to your entire home.”
I'm not excited for Apple to invent smart homes after this, completing the duopoly of LLMs being in everyone's homes even harder than before.
earthworm @ SnoringEarthworm @sh.itjust.works Posts 12Comments 74Joined 3 wk. ago 
Is the argument that it's okay for states to have a monopoly on violence as long as they're consistent about it?
I'm not sure I want that, either.
You can consistently do the wrong thing.