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CrashedPsychonaut

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joined 2022 November 17 22:26:19 UTC

Spirituality is entirely fake until you make it real


				
User ID: 1884


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
CrashedPsychonaut


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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					joined 2022 November 17 22:26:19 UTC
				


				
					

					
Spirituality is entirely fake until you make it real



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 1884


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Personally, I really do feel that the Arab nations are not civilized, so they play by different rules. It ticks me off more when a nation pretends to be of a superior sort, but then not actually live up to the supposed superiority.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a possibility for something truly great that would shock the world here: do nothing. Just beef up defenses around Gaza so they don't catch them with their pants down again, but actually demonstrate what the high road looks like. Perhaps some will claim they have taken the high road many times, but I'm not so convinced.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That actually is the truth yeah, I didn't have a particularly strong opinion on this, though I suppose I was never pro-Israel. I'm not pro-Hamas either, although, to be fair, I don't know who has the moral authority to actually punish them. Possibly only the Palestinians themselves. Reading up more on the history of Zionism prior to the partition, I'm increasingly of the view this was a bad idea. Two of the quotes came from The Intercept article I linked to, Netanyahu's from this thread, and the Sam Kriss article I read months ago when it came out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Curtis Yarvin wrote about this clusterfuck: Gaza and the nomos of the earth. It makes some humorous connections between American foreign policy and dog fighting pits, and visualizes a world where America stops trying to meddle and just lets "might makes right" rule:




But this is how might makes right. Now, picture this victory—the victory of force and order over turmoil and chaos—worldwide, cleaning up all the world’s open sores. You are picturing the fall of the American empire—and realizing that, like the USSR (if much better), the GAE can actually fall upward. Almost all the problems it supposedly exists to solve will rapidly solve themselves as soon as it is gone.




Curiously, he's arguing for the US cutting Israel loose, militarily and diplomatically, but that this would lead to Israel finally sorting out the Palestinian problem, through force. I say curious, because I'm not sure if Israel is actually strong enough to stand on its own without the US supplying weapons, but if they are, well, I say Israel is illegitimate, but so be it: I don't believe in wandering into a barbaric hinterland to impose one's sense of justice or civilization, which is a big point of agreement between me and Yarvin.


Definitely felt called out hard by this line:




Are you addicted to Anglo-American missionary imperialism? Test yourself with two easy checks. Do you genuinely, emotionally, care about the plight of the Palestinians? Do you know where Stepanakert is? If your answers are “yes” and “no,” you need help.




I need help I guess, except I don't believe in militarily intervening in favor of the Palestinians.


I wonder what is the proper relation of a civilization to the barbarians. Yarvin says:




The basic way for a country to be neutral in a war is, as Hamilton observes, to trade freely with both sides, but not sell weapons (“contraband of war”) to either.




And yet, so much of the world is barbaric. Kinda makes you hope Better Angels of our Nature is true.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hell, my best friend and I used to get drunk and make free online texting numbers just to bother his ex-gfs, when inevitably the new boyfriend would text back threateningly, we would issue a florid challenge to fistfight and then give him an address at an empty house we'd find for sale online in the wrong town. Only two of them were ever dumb enough to actually show up, then text the fake number to call his putative opponent a pussy. It was great fun, normal human behavior.




This seems pretty douchy and childish.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You know, I can understand him just fine with my paltry 115 IQ (as estimated by the Wonderlic). I once wrote something that it seems @naraburns, who is much smarter than me, didn't understand (others did though), so I'm wondering if there is some writing that is meant to be apprehended by faculties other than reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Order and Progress
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Order and Progress is, if you think about it, the central conflict of the Culture War, so it's really very funny that the Brasilians put it on their flag. I explore this conflict for a bit and speculate on a possible resolution.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But did anyone understand those is the real question? Because there were quite a few people who understood what I wrote.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Pretty interesting analysis of the complex systems fuckup that the Hamas attack was:




Some former members of the IDF who served on the border have in recent days testified on social media that the fence really was a technological marvel. Not so much as a stray cat could get anywhere near the border without setting off alarms, they recall. And the government and military certainly seem to have believed it was indeed impenetrable and really had changed the reality on the ground; hence partly why, by the start of this month, they had redeployed most of their regular military forces to guard the West Bank and northern border instead.




...




In any case, Hamas was able to begin their attack with the element of surprise. This was aided by an initial early-morning barrage of rocket fire, which was a relatively routine experience for the Israeli garrison forces, but which survivors recall sent most of their number hurrying as a standard precaution into fortified bunkers where – critically – they could not physically observe the approach to the border. They would normally have instead relied on the surveillance cameras to monitor the situation. Hamas, however, used small, off-the-shelf drones rigged with mortar rounds and other explosives to attack and disable the communications towers powering the network. These drones were too small and low-flying for radar to detect, so would have had to have been spotted by eye and ear. Without the cellular data link provided by the towers, the cameras did not function, and neither did the sensors and alarm systems.






With the surveillance and communications systems down, Hamas commandos then used their now infamous paragliders to simply fly over the fence. There they faced little armed opposition. The remote-controlled machine gun emplacements, if they could even operate without wireless data, had also been destroyed by drones. Now isolated, 23 high-tech observation posts each manned by a single soldier – all of them young women – were ambushed and rapidly overwhelmed by the first attackers. Those who tried to report the attacks would have found they couldn’t easily communicate. Meanwhile Hamas used bulldozers and wire cutters to quickly level around 30 sections of the fence without resistance. All of this took only a matter of minutes.






Operational command and control of the IDF division guarding the border had been concentrated into a single centralized base close to the fence. As some 1,500 Hamas terrorists surged across the now open border, this base was quickly overrun and the senior officers there killed or captured. They likely received little-to-no warning, given pictures circulating of scores of soldiers having been shot while asleep in their barracks, many still in their underwear. The subsequent sudden absence of central leadership and breakdown in the chain of command, along with the communications problems, meant that the scope and gravity of the overall situation could not easily be pieced together or communicated to either local forces or to national-level military command. Thus in the end it took hours for leaders to fully grasp what was happening and for reinforcements from elsewhere in the country to be successfully contacted, mobilized, coordinated, and moved to the south to confront the threat.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But that guy doesn't need to tell anyone he's a Republican. I'm not American, but I talked to an American colleague about this recently, and he says no one will ever know who he votes for. My dad takes that attitude as well.