Today's Liberal News

Trita Parsi on Israel’s Nasrallah Assassination and Why Netanyahu Still Wants War with Iran

As the Middle East gets ever closer to an all-out war, we speak with Iranian American analyst and author Trita Parsi about Iran’s response in the aftermath of Israel’s assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The powerful Lebanese militia is closely aligned with Iran and is part of the “Axis of Resistance” of forces in the Middle East opposed to Israel that also includes Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

Gideon Levy: “Israel’s Barbaric Glee over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society”

We speak with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, who says the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday was met with “barbaric glee” by much of Israeli society. “We are getting down and down, lower and lower, believing more and more in only one thing, namely in killing and destructing,” says Levy, who warns that Israel is very likely to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon next and continue expanding the war as long as it enjoys unlimited U.S. support.

Israeli Assassination of Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah “Shocked All of Lebanon.” What Happens Next?

Israel is expanding its attacks across the Middle East, bombing more sites in Yemen and Lebanon over the weekend after carrying out a massive attack in the suburbs of Beirut on Friday that killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders of the militant group. Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was considered one of the most powerful figures in the region. Israel likely used U.S.

How CNN, ADL & Others Amplified Smear Against Rep. Rashida Tlaib for Criticizing Campus Prosecutions

We look at the smear campaign faced by the only Palestinian American in Congress and a vocal critic of Israel, Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib, after she defended the rights of student protesters. Tlaib recently criticized Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel over charges Nessel filed against 11 mostly students and alumni who were involved in a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Michigan.

Report from Beirut: Israel Is “Targeting Everyone” in Bombing Campaign, Killing 700+ in Just Days

We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

“Crisis of Faith”: Calls Grow for NYC Mayor Adams to Resign After Historic Indictment

On Thursday, federal prosecutors announced they are charging New York City Mayor Eric Adams for a bribery and wire fraud scheme spanning nearly a decade. Adams allegedly accepted illegal campaign contributions from corporations and foreign donors, including the Turkish government. Adams is accused of manipulating regulators for the Turkish Consulate and not recognizing the Armenian genocide in exchange for campaign donations and lavish gifts.

‘It’s an Earthquake’

As word spread on Saturday that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had been killed in his underground Beirut bunker by an Israeli air strike, people began quietly reckoning with the possibility that Lebanon’s political architecture might be about to shift for the first time in more than three decades. And that, in turn, raised the prospect that locked doors might soon open across the Middle East.

Even SNL Is All About the Vibes

Last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, the premiere of the comedy juggernaut’s 50th season, started with a battle of vibes. The lengthy cold open ping-ponged between campaign rallies for the two main presidential candidates, turning first to Vice President Kamala Harris (played by Maya Rudolph). “Well, well, well.

Amber

Illustrations by Miki Lowe
Eavan Boland is known as a poet of history, but she might’ve taken issue with that label. As she told The Believer in 2014, she was interested not in history but in the past. Boland—who died in 2020 at age 75—saw the former as the official narrative, telling the kind of stories that showed up not only in school textbooks in her native Ireland but also in the poetry of her contemporaries. These writings didn’t seem to reflect the private lives of ordinary people.

Does AI Actually Understand Language?

This article was originally published by Quanta Magazine.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but how many numbers is a word worth? The question may sound silly, but it happens to be the foundation that underlies large language models, or LLMs—and through them, many modern applications of artificial intelligence.
Every LLM has its own answer. In Meta’s open-source Llama 3 model, words are split into tokens represented by 4,096 numbers; for one version of GPT-3, it’s 12,288.

Israel Tries for a Knockout Blow

As a teenager, I took boxing lessons. What I learned from that experience—and I commend a bit of pugilistic training to all budding civilian strategists—is that you can take a punch and keep on going. But if your opponent can fire off a combination that connects—jab, jab, jab, cross, hook—you begin staggering, and then the blows will keep raining down until the coach calls an end to the round, or you throw in the towel.
That is what the Israelis have done to Hezbollah over the past two months.