** Not going to rehash the usual "counter-arguments" on this board - has been done to no avail. But if you view the issues of either Israel or Ukraine same as Putin's troll Effeteposer, you suffer from bizarre cognitive dissonance and should know where and how these propaganda memes have started and continued ever since:
en.wikipedia.org - Agitprop

For example, ridiculous 'apartheid' meme started by KGB after Soviet Union lost 4 major proxy wars against Israel since Day 1 of its existence, and was picked up by the left, including some in Israel.

www.researchgate.net - THE KGB AND ANTI-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA OPERATIONS - 2019

www.meforum.org - Israel and the Great Powers: The Unsung Cold War Role - 2020

Not surprisingly, anti-Israel contingent on this site is about the same as those enamored by "socialism" and, in the light of fall of Soviet Union and failed socialist states worldwide, they are trying to redefine and rebrand "socialism" as prosperous ("free and universal" healthcare and other goodies which in reality are neither "free" nor "universal" in access, as not an "all you can eat" system, as CHS in Canada, NHS in UK and several other European countries has shown) and "happy" - based on clearly faulty, inconsistent or made up criteria, like "Cantrill ladder"-based lists of "World Happiness Index" - just so some countries at the top of such surveys could be branded "socialist" and that few selected policies necessary for nations to be 'happy.'



There is no cure for docta ignorantia ("learned ignorance"), when facts are ignored, dismissed, and drowned out by constant [social media] reinforcement of confirmation bias and ressentiment.
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Abridge is just one of many vertical healthcare software companies known as "ambient AI" - they integrate various client-facing "AI" processes with the usual back office software functions, like automated scheduling, billing, organizing data and analytics : www.heidihealth.com - What is Ambient AI? Ultimate Guide for Clinicians

|------- ... 5 of the Best Ambient AI Tools for Doctors
Healthcare professionals prioritize patient care quality above anything else. To foster relationships with patients, ambient AI tools lessen their workload by listening in the background and taking in clinical information. Thinking broadly, the "always on" concept of ambient AI provides a wide range of use cases in healthcare, including:

1. Ambient AI Transcription and Dictation
Medical transcription is the first and major feature common among ambient AI providers. Hospitals and clinics can now easily reduce human error in documentation by using ambient AI scribes.

An ambient AI scribe, such as Heidi, offers live transcription of patient conversations, capturing speech word-by-word. This transcript is visible in a panel, and Heidi's AI-enabled note generation streamlines your workflow even further. ...

4. Automated AI Billing & Insurance ...

5. Ambient AI Practice Management
The future of ambient AI in clinics will handle everything from appointment scheduling to staff coordination and logistics. It will take care of smart staff shifting and recommend available slots with data from clinicians' AI-assisted notes.

Heidi Comms automates routine phone calls like follow-ups and appointment confirmations so physicians can focus on patients. ...
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Part 1 covers what you described in your #1 post:
~will you allow AI to record your conversations with the PCP so that the PCP does not have to spend time typing in your responses?~

My response was:
It's a basic speech-to-text, which is now on almost every phone or most devices with microphone. It's been available for quite a while and used to produce transcripts in medical and other industries to save time and/or labor, and has nothing to do with AI.

Some of your records will be processed by computer software, with or without the help of "AI", for billing, insurance and, if needed, provide assistance in diagnosis, course of action, etc.

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Not everything that glitters is gold; not everything that today's marketing people call "AI" is actually AI.

Some articles that could be interesting for you to help understand the marketing hype vs reality:

www.forbes.com - What 'The Pitt' Gets Right And Wrong About Generative AI In Medicine - Forbes, 2026-02-03

www.wired.com - The Pitt Finally Offers a Stark Warning on AI in Medicine - Wired, 2026-02-19
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www.latimes.com - Trump never actually had a plan - Jonah Goldberg, LAT / Dispatch, 2026-03-31

|------- ... How could the man they've defended as a genius for so long make what is in their eyes such a monumental blunder? ...

For some ... blame lands on the Jews, or Israel... This is how Joe Kent explained it. It's Tucker Carlson's explanation too: We're in this war because Israel's prime minister "demanded it." ...

Now, I think some of these arguments are ahistorical, antisemitic, deranged nonsense (i.e. Joe Kent's fevered anti-Israel paranoia). Trump has said "no" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than once, including during this war. But some claims have a patina of merit. If you buy the claim the war is a disaster, then the people around Trump have some culpability.
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Reality is quite different. Netanyahu was reluctant to involve Trump again - MBS of Saudi Arabia, seeing Iran weakened, wanted to "crush" Iran and end the longest war in human history - 14 centuries of war between Sunni and Shi'a:

www.nytimes.com - Crown Prince sees a "historic opportunity" to remake the region, according to people briefed by U.S. officials on the conversations. - 2026-03-24

|------- Prince Mohammed, the people familiar with the discussions said, has argued that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government. ... -------|

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www.joemygod.com - Lindsey Graham "Giddy" About Having Coached Netanyahu On Convincing Trump To Start Bombing Iran - 2026-03-07

|------- To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks... He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. -------|

Here's one conservative nailing what Trump is:

thedispatch.com - Trump Is Anything but Unpredictable - 2026-04-10, The Dispatch

|------- I have been advising observers not to make the mistake of overcomplicating Donald Trump...

He's a simple man whose actions are most directly and accurately described as the ordinary daily application of his vices: laziness, vindictiveness, greed, vanity, arrogance, cowardice, and, above all, stupidity. He is a rage-addled dimwit with a savantic gift for manipulating lesser fools and a vulnerability to manipulation by men who are similarly vicious but more capable: Vladimir Putin, J.D. Vance, Stephen Miller, even one or two of his idiot children. Stronger men can push him around, and weaker men succeed by flattering him. His enemies can manipulate him at least as easily as his allies.
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From www.bbc.co.uk :

|------- 30 March 2026: Israel's prime minister has said the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem will now have "full and immediate access" to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, after police earlier prevented him from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass there.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, had been asked not to enter out of concern for his safety as Iran had repeatedly targeted Jerusalem's holy sites with missiles. ...

Israel's police later said it had agreed a "mutual framework" with the Latin Patriarch for Easter celebrations. ... in a later statement, released on Monday, Cardinal Pizzaballa's office said the matter had been "addressed and resolved" and expressed "sincere gratitude" to Israel's President Isaac Herzog ...
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**** Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Rejects the Gospel of Christ for the Doctrine of Genghis Khan ****

Better take on the story : revdocgeek.com - Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church:

|------- April 1, 2026 by Avril Hannah-Jones

... I am grateful to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. I do not know if you caught it, but Mr Netanyahu recently caused quite a stir by talking about Jesus. He was paraphrasing a secular historian, William Durant, and he said, 'History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.' ...

He was making a political point, not a theological one. ... On the other hand, maybe as he understands the world, Mr Netanyahu is right. Genghis Khan lived for some sixty-five years; Jesus for about half that. Genghis Khan died the ruler of large parts of China and Central Asia; Jesus was executed as a common criminal, put to death in a way so shameful that Cicero considered it bad taste to mention it in polite company. Genghis Khan killed millions; the Roman forces of law and order, the religious leaders of Temple Judaism, and a howling mob, all combined to kill Jesus. ...
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Meanwhile, Christians celebrate in Jerusalem, Gaza and Tehran - apnews.com - April 5, 2026

And Ukraine (85% of population are Christian, more than 68% in Russia) is cooperating technologically with Israel (which donated 3 Patriots to UA in 2024) and signing agreements to provide tech and training assistance to Arab states in the Middle East to defend against Iranian / Russian drones.

www.fdd.org - Ukraine Agrees to Mutually Beneficial Defense Deals With Gulf Arab States
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According to Rossing Center en.wikipedia.org - Violence against Christians in Israel, violence (including spitting, verbal abuse and property vandalism, but no fatalities) has been increasing since October 7, 2023 and in 2025 consisted of 111 incidents, i.e., a rate of ~0.06 per 100 of Christian population, about the same rate as a year before and two years before. No hard data provided by the report on increase in violence against Jews and Muslims in the area, except noted increase in rate of violence (including fatal) against both groups in the same period from the same event.

So, another sensationalist headline based on univariable, unilateral, unremarkable report.

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#12 | Posted by Corky at 2026-04-03 08:22 PM
... the fasted growing Christian Churches in the world are... Iran.

And not far behind Iran is, unsurprisingly... another Islamic country, Afghanistan - both with less than 1% of population.

"Fastest growing" is one of the most overrated and abused univariable metrics, as it is subject to quirks of The Law of Accumulation and "The Law of Small Numbers (Kahneman, "Thinking Fast and Slow") - it's obvious that any minority religion in a country could be "growing faster" from a very small number "over decades," even despite repression.

In Sudan, however, the number of Christians is dwindling fast due to genuine genocide based on religious faith, which even UN, otherwise busy with near-daily Israel-bashing and 3 retracted false accusations of "starvation policy in Gaza," couldn't ignore:

persecution.org- Genocidal Militia Continues to Persecute Christians Across Sudan - 2025-02-11

What wasn't much in the Western media :

Massacres of Allawites (former ruler Bashar al-Assad's sect) in Syria, when new Syrian government forces and Turkish-backed militia of other tribes exacted retribution and at least 1700 were killed in just a few days.
"www.uscirf.gov AAUS Report on Violence in Syria By Community.pdf" - Report on Sectarian Violence in Syria

IDF protecting Syrian Druze population when they were targeted by Sunnis of Syrian government - www.fdd.org - "Israel is committed to preventing harm being inflicted on the Druze in Syria..." - July 2025

That's one of the reasons why Israel refused to establish diplomatic relations with new Syria government.

Lebanon was largely peaceful and "Westernized" and still has largest Christian population of any country in the ME (37%), even after a large number of Christians left the country after the PLO in Lebanon was attacking Christians and instigated Civil War (1975-1990)... and then Iran-backed Hezbollah took over and still runs the show because Lebanese army is reluctant / not capable to disarm them.
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Which could be easily avoided by explaining to such individuals before they want to change their gender that they will not be able to play competitive sports after transition - and let them decide if it's a small price to pay for their psychological well-being, which is the reason why they presumably want to change gender in the first place. Or they can wait to transition after their sports careers are over... e.g., like this one:
"Caitlyn Jenner opposes trans girls in women's sports as unfair" - www.bbc.co.uk

If "progressives" keep treating it (and some other issues) as a 1960s "civil rights" issue, they'll keep missing the point by a mile - the issue of "fairness" and gender in sports is very different from color of skin and gender in everyday life.

Many Democrats - moms and dads - and their daughters participating in competitive sports are turned off by and are against the trans in sports, as was polled and demonstrated in 2024 elections.

Democrats should be the first ones to understand and explain that fact to activists who don't get it. Or keep losing voters and easily won elections, because they still haven't figured out [the Pareto Principle of] 80/20 percent issue rule in politics, and have been on a short end of this on several issues in recent elections. Even CA Gov Gavin Newsom tried [awkwardly] get on the overwhelmingly winning side of this issue after elections.

transcripts.cnn.com - Trump: "And people would say they're 80/20 issues. I say they were 97 to 3. I would say 97 to 3. ... This is the best issue of all."

As bad as Trump is with percentages, as a populist (and a lifelong scammer) he got 80/20 rule down cold long ago:
podcasts.apple.com - "Trump's 80-20 Strategy... Trump's focus is on the 80-20 issues that are widely favored."

You can't always get what you want, especially in politics at the expense of millions of votes. Or Dems can keep at it and Let It Bleed.
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www.thetimes.com - Jeffrey Epstein took a leaf from Vladimir Putin's playbook
Amassing embarrassing photos and damaging information was strikingly similar to Russian kompromat operations - 2026-02-06

|------- Polish, French and British intelligence agencies are scrambling to establish whether this was, indeed, the "world's largest honeytrap operation": how much dirt Epstein amassed on whom, whether he did so for Moscow's benefit, what that material may have been used for and how much profit he extracted from his many Russian connections.

There are grubby Russian fingerprints all over the Epstein files, which contain 1,056 mentions of Putin and more than 9,000 references to Moscow: requests for flights to take escorts and models from Moscow to Paris and New York; a 2012 message to Epstein offering "2 Russian girls for you to meet, one 21, another 24. One skinny, another curvy and super cute"; a dinner companion offered to Prince Andrew with a recommendation that she was "Russian, beautiful and trustworthy". (The former prince denies any wrongdoing, as does everyone else mired in this swamp, including the Kremlin.)

... Epstein visited Russia multiple times and made arrangements to meet Putin (it is unclear if he ever did). He arranged Russian visas for others and left the bulk of his fortune, two days before his suicide, to a mysterious 36-year-old Belarusian dentist. His links to the Russian elite were many, varied and highly dubious.
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www.yahoo.com - Epstein's Russia connections, explained - 2026-02-05

dossier.center - Jeffrey Epstein's Russian Connection: Billionaire's ties with FSB Academy graduate revealed - 2026-02-14

unherd.com - Russia loves the Epstein files Nationalists delight in Western debauchery - 2026-02-04

|------- The honeypot approach is still used because it's blunt but effective. It uses kompromat sometimes in exotic, outrageous forms, but just as often in banal, almost bureaucratic ways that resemble those of the Soviet era. ...

Russia does not primarily seek to attack the West by surgically extracting targeted information, as traditional espionage would. Instead, it seeks to embarrass, humiliate, and degrade Western societies into destroying themselves by widening existing political fissures and disagreements and watching as a story-hungry media and viral social media storms do the hard work.

From Moscow's perspective, it doesn't matter so much whether the latest poisonous claims in the Epstein files are true. Even if the most sensational claims about who is (or who isn't) a Russian agent collapse under scrutiny, the story itself will please Putin immensely. It will fuel suspicion that, regardless of their political orientation, the rich and powerful in the West can commit moral aberrations with impunity, and that institutions will shield them from consequence, instead of investigating them.

...

Dr. Ian Garner is assistant professor of totalitarian studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. His latest book is Z Generation: Russia's Fascist Youth
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Epstein was collecting compromat for Russian FSB and himself.
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Trump is cosplaying President (again, same way he was cosplaying "successful real estate tycoon" on Apprentice just as his real estate and casinos "empire" was crashing down) and needs to constantly deliberately create crises in order to 1) "solve" them and take credit and brag about "solving" them, and 2) distract from previously self-created and real "unsolved" crises, hoping that people will forget about them and "move on" (en.wikipedia.org).

He's never been sufficiently punished or paid real price for all his scams and misdeeds, avoided accountability and was given benefit of the doubt too many times by too many people, escaping personal bankruptcies and prison, hiding behind frivolous lawsuits and NDAs - so, as his superiority complex and dementia grew, he now believes he is a genius and cranks up crisis level to 11, because he wants to be "consequential" and is trying to outdo whatever he thinks previous Presidents couldn't accomplish... obviously, caring not a wit about actual consequences or anything but himself - apre moi le deluge style.

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein

"Genius is knowing when to stop."
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www.cnn.com - Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome - CNN, 2026-01-13

|------- The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources briefed on the matter.

A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defense Department, according to two of the sources. Officials paid "eight figures" for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number.

The device is still being studied and there is ongoing debate " and in some quarters of government, skepticism " over its link to the roughly dozens of anomalous health incidents that remain officially unexplained. ...
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If you've seen several 60 Minutes reports on the subject of Havana Syndrome, you may now understand why USGOV was reluctant to confirm the weapon capabilities, as officially the "investigation continued" but was for the most part "dismissed" as psychological in nature.
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nypost.com - Trump-backed deal to 'save' TikTok faces lingering security questions for Congress: 'It's a smokescreen' - NYP, 2026-01-23

In any case, the importance of TikTok has never really been its ownership ("China, China, China!") or that the user data could've been exploited by CCP (again, "China, China, China!") because all their servers and pipes have been either in the US or under US datacenter companies control for years.

That panic was artificial, mostly part of Putin/Trump-generated zeitgeist, in their campaign to deflect and misdirect from what Trump unsurprisingly calls the "Russiagate hoax."

The real reason Trump wanted to "save" TikTok in the US is that Trump's 2024 campaign realized its importance and value, as they used the ability to have TT's "influencers" spread Trump campaign ads in "info-news" format and misinformation amid very important category of young, first-time voters who were/are getting their "news" from the platform.

This can be - and was successful for Trump - on mostly unfiltered, unmoderated, algorithmically viral platforms, regardless of the ownership.

This is something Biden/Harris campaign completely missed, as they completely mis-read the economy and people's mood, in their zeal to recruit media and entertainment celebrities (whose followers couldn't care less about politics even if eligible to vote) and run a mostly conventional campaign.

Here's how it was done in 2024 and likely for at least few election cycles - Dems better figure this out and adapt to it fast:

www.wired.com - The Most Powerful Politics Influencers Barely Post About Politics | New research shows that social media creators have enormous influence over their audiences' politics " especially those who don't normally share political content. - 2025-12-17

www.wired.com - A Visual Guide to the Influencers Shaping the 2024 Election | From Hasan Piker to Logan Paul, this interactive display maps how online personalities on the right and the left are using their massive followings to influence the US election - 2024-08-15

www.wired.com - This Was the Year of the Influencer Political Takeover | Politicians fully embraced the creator economy in 2024, blurring the lines between punditry and journalism. By 2028, the lawmakers could become creators themselves. - 2024-12-27

Here is why TT's is so addictive, and why so many "creators" want to be "influencers" on that platform:

www.theverge.com - Stop, Shop, and Scroll - TV, 2025-12-08
Behind every influencer is an army of the influenced, many adrift in debt and mass-produced clutter. The platforms need influencers and influencers need audiences " but what the influenced need is not so simple.
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www.cbsnews.com - Bank of America may introduce credit card with 10% APR - 2026-01-23

|------- Bank of America is weighing whether to launch a new credit card that would comply with President Trump's push to temporarily cap card interest rates at 10%...

Bank of America already offers credit cards with initial average percentage rates below 10%. For example, its no-frills BankAmericard offers consumers a 0% introductory APR for 18 months. Once that period ends, however, the APR rises to between 14.5% and 24%, depending on the cardholder's credit score. ...

The banking industry has criticized Mr. Trump's proposed cap, saying it could hurt consumers by reducing their access to credit and steering them toward riskier lending products. Reduced consumer spending would cut into economic growth...

Bilt, a financial technology company that offers credit card rewards for customers who pay their rent and mortgage payments on time...
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IOW, mostly you will get a 10% CC if you don't ever pay interest on your CC... pretty much what you have now.

There are always exceptions, but the rule of thumb is: if you have to look at the interest rate on your CC, you can't afford it. CCs are for convenience and streamlining of expenses only.
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