Crowstep
20hr ago
If the Israelis are trying to genocide the Palestinians they're clearly not very good at it
I roughly calculated that, before the ceasefire, it would have taken the IDF over 100 years to kill everyone in Gaza, assuming no population growth. Which must be the least competent genocide in history, given that the IDF is a modern military and their targets are kettled into a tiny coastal strip.
Crowstep
2d ago
I can't even imagine how Israel will look in a century
It's a fun thought experiment. On the plus side (for them), they are the only developed country with above-replacement fertility, they have tons of very high IQ people, rapidly growing GDP per capita, low (and shrinking) national debt, a strong national-religious identity and an extremely competent military. I can easily see an expansionist Israel annexing Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon and populating them with settlers.
On the other hand, their soon to be largest religious group reject military service, non-religious education and (to some extent) paid work, they are alienating the world with their treatment of the Palestinians, they are an extremely hot country in a heating world and their growing population is limited to a small sliver of land, even if they do annex territory from their neighbours.
The question is whether they can cream off enough of the Haredim to stop them turning the country into a giant yeshiva.
Crowstep
3d ago
Governments around the world have wanted to implement persistent online ID for a while. Companies know this and want to use it to build deeper moats as well as maintain relationships with the government.
Most internet users already use persistent online ID through their Gmail or Facebook universal logins and have done for years. This hasn't lead to governments using them for any nefarious ends.
Porn verification wouldn't even be a good way to do what you're claiming. People watch porn in incognito mode, and so aren't logged into their other accounts, and the age verification software almost always uses facial age recognition rather than ID card verification.
Governments that do have digital IDs invariably just use them for taxes and stuff, they're not persistent across the web.
Governments are looking to prevent kids from watching porn because...they don't want kids watching porn. Underage porn bans are extremely popular with the public (e.g. 69% (lol) support in the UK). There's no big conspiracy.
Crowstep
3d ago
But just saying "parents should do their jobs", while true (and frustrating, I assure you), is not really recognizing how drastically things have changed, on a technology + pervasiveness level.
The implicit argument that comes with the 'it's the parents' responsibility' position is that the status quo is the best we can hope for. We've had smartphones, social media, fast internet etc for years now, and we've seen what happens. Unless defenders are arguing that this is the best of all worlds given the technology that exists, then we need action beyond that taken by individual families. Whether that's smartphone bans in schools, age verification for social media and porn or whatever, if we want to move away from an anxious, depressed, isolated and screen-based childhood, then expecting every single family to unilaterally fight the flood is asking too much.
There's a reason the Amish reject technologies at a congregation-level. Doing it household by household is impossible.
Crowstep
6d ago
remaining environmental differences between black and white people
Could you be more specific? Are there any 'environmental' differences between Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans that aren't just a manifestation of the different IQ scores that blank slaters are trying to explain away?
But I want to see the genes
What evidence are you waiting for? We already have polygenic risk scores for intelligence. We know that intelligence is mostly heritable, and that this doesn't differ by race.
Surely the term has to mean something stronger than 'lots of civilians died in a war'? Because if it doesn't, then every large war prior to (and including) WW2 was a genocidal war, as well as many afterwards.
There's a reason we talk about Hitler committing genocides against the Jews, Slavs and Romani, but not against the French, British and Americans, even though the Nazis bombed London and shelled French cities (and the Allies committed similar violence against German civilians).
Activists aren't using the word 'genocide' because it is a meaningful description of what is going on in Gaza. They're using it because it's the worst word they know.
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