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2mo ago
Yeah I'd say personally I have more sympathy for the average Gaza resident than I do for the average Israeli and yet I also think the overarching war is just and largely blame Gaza for poking the proverbial tiger
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2mo ago
Yeah they're willing to deal with smaller countries through belt and road if there's a clear rationale, but the post-Cold War status of the USA having tentacles and responsibilities everywhere isn't something they want.
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2mo ago
Exactly short of the US actually meaningfully conducting themselves in a way to present an existential threat in the short term, momentum on most relevant factors is probably going China's way
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2mo ago
Exactly. Give me any sort of semi-stable foreigner welcoming Iranian government and I'd love to visit Tehran. The Persian diaspora generally way more functional and pleasant to deal with than the Arabs.
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2mo ago
Exactly. Iranians are far more capable of established self governance and have a fairly strong overseas diaspora
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2mo ago
Modern birthrates might make it a bit more effective when replenishment takes significantly longer
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2mo ago
Yeah the Shia/Sunni split is a huge catalyst and the local residents aren't particularly peaceful people at the best of times.
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3mo ago
My understanding is that it was some combination of the weird College Football detour, perceived arguments with the press and his professional career ending on a sourish note. Maybe the young girlfriend is some part of the press/vibe weirdness, but I think the other dot points are doing the work
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3mo ago
As somebody who mostly watches Tennis from the POV of a bookmaker I do kinda prefer Women's tennis having more of a Calvinball quality to it.
Yes there's less ridiculous Giraffe servebots than you'd expect but also breaking service is considerably more important for male success even if the Opelkas didn't inherit the earth
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3mo ago
I've met MTF trans that are able to pass, generally those fortunate enough to have an already feminine, petite and neotenous racial background. Admittedly that may be my ignorance, as for instance I can probably recognize say 50% of Thai ladyboys on sight and my friend's Thai girlfriend can bat at 99%.
I've also met FTMs who pass, but generally it's more through the 'nobody really cares about this short round dude beyond the first glance' way than in the 'attempting to perform peak feminity way' that MTF aspire to.
Nonetheless the majority are easy to clock, especially outside of Asia.
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3mo ago
I do kinda feel for mannish and/or tall women on dating apps these days. I remember when I was on the apps a few years ago I'd always have a vague twinge of concern when those profiles popped up.
Also the amount of clearly trans profiles that were doing their best to hide that fact felt like potentially cruising for a bruising from somebody desperate who didn't know how to read the cultural norms.
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3mo ago
I'm pretty sure the average Mottizen by virtue of educational status and exposure to mild autistic hobbies like Themotte.org is massively more likely than the true average of having run into trans people.
Also 'yaddayadda influencer passes' is generally in the context of an aggressively curated media suite of videos and photos from particular angles.
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3mo ago
Okay being a sex worker and/or a major political agitator as a black/brown person in a third world country is dangerous. Yet the average rhetoric implies that the average university-educated white/asian trans person has a vast threat of targeted violence.
In Australia right now there's a medium news story at the moment focused on hardcore Islamists luring gays on hookup apps to beat and rob them. Yet similar dishonesty is being implied as if random White Australians
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3mo ago
Genocidal intent also has to differ between 'If I had a button that would instantly delete Group A, would I press it' and actual committed violence.
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3mo ago
Also my understanding of most Trans violence statistics is that they tend to be more illustrative that being a sex worker is very very dangerous than anything.
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3mo ago
Yeah but a lot of the Palestine narrative is built around lending sympathy to fairly radical islamics who should be less preferable than Jews.
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3mo ago
The extant Epstein files are just such a nothing burger. Meanwhile random lunatics are asking like it's videos of child sacrifice to Satan.
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3mo ago
Especially at the smaller scale where there's a ton of emotive considerations and people are infrequently engaged with the legal system.
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3mo ago
Also it feels that the nature of case law means that over any reasonable amount of time there will naturally be erosion of the original intent.
Which due to sheer population, judge polarization and information sharing circa today is going faster and faster
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3mo ago
I've fooled around with AI chats for like DND-level RP and found the inherent 'yesman' aspect making it hard to have a genuinely adversial interaction. They're fine for cursory NPCs though.
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3mo ago
I didn't play it any real depth but recent Chinese triple A game Where Winds Meet did the AI chatbot npc thing I believe. There's some funny memes of people hacking them off topic but I think there are some enjoyers.
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3mo ago
The current market rate for prepared meals being approximately $10 is without economies of scale and assuming a decent profit margin. It should be within the capabilities of the government to make this more efficient, even if likely the pork would be barrelled.
You're also assuming that long-term healthcare isn't also largely being covered for the food stamp population by government spending. This thereby incentivizes some sort of adequate nutritional profile
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3mo ago
I'd say the attempted ICE shooters had a far clearer objective as well. Like I'm sure the average Jan 6er were there to broadly restore Trump but in a confusing jumbled vibey way
Also dancing/bar scene has bifurcated a lot more into 'people who love clubbing' than it would have been a couple decades ago when there were less entertainment options.
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