JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
20hr ago
being ostensibly natural for them to take this opportunity to set another trap for the Western coalition.
What kind of trap could they be setting? They have no military resources deployed there, and whatever they could ship is at complete mercy of Israel air force now that they have full aerial superiority. Nobody is trying to invade Iran on land, so Russia's favorite strategy of sending 10x people in and having 5x killed but still coming ahead on the numbers is pointless there. Not to mention even the most hardened Russian patriot would find confusing why exactly he must go and get killed by Israel in Iran and how it is vital for Mother Russia. Russia would gladly sell Iran any military equipment they could, but the things they are better at than Iran - e.g. air defense systems - are pretty useless by now, as existing ones have been destroyed and new ones are hard to deploy in any useful way in the middle of the war where the enemy owns the air.
On the other hand, they have some very vulnerable projects - like Busher reactor - which are technically not military, but given how Iran already hit many civilian targets in Israel, the case can easily be made for it to be infrastructure and thus fair game. So far, Russia made the opposite deal with Israel - we stay out of it and limit ourselves to blowing hot air, and you don't bomb the shit that makes us money. Since Busher, as far as I know, has little military value, Israel is fine with leaving it alone for now.
On the third hand, is Iran manages to really piss of Israel and it will authorize taking out Iran's oil facilities, guess who would be the only supplier of cheap oil to China. And who would benefit from the oil and gas prices inevitably raising.
So Russia is being very smart right now and doing exactly what is their best interest is - talking big game (in case ayatollahs pull through and there would be business to be done with them in the future) while not doing anything that would cause them to bear any costs. Trump has nothing to do with it - that kind of situation existed long before him, Russia had always been reluctant to mess with Israel directly, and Israel had always been willing to take Russia's interests into account as much as it is possible without hurting the main goals.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
Possible, but not the only way. As recent events showed, dropping large bombs from high altitude is not the only way to deal with things, and Israelis are pretty good in employing different modes of warfare. We'll soon see if they have any ideas about underground targets like Fordow plant.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
I have a hard time believing Israel’s opening attack wasn’t the best they can do
"Best" is a meaningless term here, it's not a competition. It's a military campaign, which is not finished yet. And the supply chain to make a working nuclear weapons is long and requires multiple high-tech processes - the ingredients of which are being destroyed now. Full reports on it aren't available yet (Iranians would certainly claim almost nothing is destroyed, and Israelis may also not give you true picture in the middle of military campaign, they have other priorities). But with almost complete aerial domination Israel enjoys currently, I think a lot of things getting knocked out. Some things - like Fordow - are too deep to be easily knocked out, but I'm sure Israel thought about it for many years and they have some ideas.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
As in - is it easier for Iran to rebuild, than Israel to replenish it's offensive capabilities?
No, it's not. Making a bomb is easier than making an uranium enrichment factory. Most expensive stuff on Israel's side is capital investment (like planes) which is not consumable, and consumables are relatively cheap. Certainly not free and at some point you could only make so many bombs, but you can build new bombs faster than you can build high-tech factories.
But you can't expect this gift to keep on giving forever.
If they stop being stupid, by virtue of that they'd also stop trying to invest so much money in destroying a tiny country which would gladly forget they exist if only they'd let them. Iran literally gains absolutely nothing from messing with Israel except stupidity points. It's literally the stupidest fight ever for them - they have no territorial dispute, they can gain no resources, they can not make more money or destroy a competitor - nothing. If they were smart, they'd do what Qatar or Saudis do - say "fuck them nukes", make peace with the Jews, buy American fighter planes and use the oil money to bribe half of the world into submission. They may throw a bone to the islamic terrorists to go fight Jews from time to time, just for the old times sake, but they wouldn't get into an open fight that gains them nothing. Israelis are not too proud, they know how diplomacy works in the Middle East - you can yell "death to the Jews" all day long, but if you don't do much to back it up, it'd be fine. But Iran government are stupid and blinded by their ideology, so they are.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
Maybe deescalation would have been possible but was seen as too risky, or undesirable for reasons that elude me
The reason is simple - all indicators point to Iran being committed to reaching nuclear strike capability, and considers all the talks and agreements as a sideshow, while remaining strategically committed to this goal no matter what. Iranian government also confirmed multiple times that their strategic aim is to destroy the state of Israel. For Israel, with it's tiny territory and high population density, even a single nuclear strike - even via a smuggled small-scale device, for example, let alone a ballistic missile hitting practically anywhere - would be absolutely devastating, extinction-level threat. Israel does not see any situation in which Iran could be convinced to genuinely desist from reaching this capability, so the choice is simple - either strike, or place the very existence of the country into the hands of Iranian regime and hope the ayatollas are kind and gentle. I don't see how any de-escalation is possible until one of these factors change - either Iran changes its thinking or it becomes incapable of achieving its goal of nuking Israel, at least in the near term.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
The goal is not to overthrow the regime (though it'd be nice) but to set back the nuclear program (and ballistic missile capabilities while we're at it) significantly. Israel is well on its way to achieve that. Whether or not that would eventually lead to the regime collapse it's up to Iranians.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Where the first two felt to me like they were more mid-level urban fantasy fare
Yes, I agree more or less. "Mid-level" sometimes taken as damning with faint praise, but here I think it's appropriate and not negative - I mean he's not spectacular so far, but decent and enjoyable fare. Based on what you say, I'll probably get to Grave Peril sooner than I otherwise planned, thanks.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
If it's Israel and 2 years, then it's a "she". Males used to serve 32 months, now extended to full 3 years. Females serve two years (don't think it was extended).
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Started on Dresden Files. I watched the one-season series and liked it, so decided to try out the books. So far Storm Front wasn't bad, and Fool Moon is fine too. I wonder why they couldn't make a decent longer-running TV show out of it - the story and the setup is very cinematographic. Since there's a lot of book in the series I will probably return to it from time to time for a while.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
If a little child tells you, "When I grow up, I will kill you", when are you allowed to kill him in self-defense?
There are a lot of caselaw considering the question of imminent danger.
The case here though is more like the kid grew up, tried to kill you many times, with guns, toxins and explosives, and this time showed up at your door with some friends, all wielding firearms and shouting "we will finish the job this time!".
JarJarJedi
5d ago
Some people think "self-defense" can only begin once you already got punched, or stabbed, or shot. If somebody takes out a gun, aims at you, shouts "I'm going to kill you, motherfucker!", and tries to press the trigger, but you're quicker on the draw and shoot first - you're the "aggressor". Or at least they pretend to think so when Israel is concerned. Of course, there are also plain old antisemites for which Israel is bad in any case, and they are just need to find the reason why.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Depends on where it is. If it's like middle of nowhere and no chance of encountering The Law, then about 85-90. If it's in an inhabited area, probably around 75.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Never driven a German one (I could pretend it's because I'm Jewish, but the truth it there are just better options in the price segment I'm usually looking at, and the segment where they start getting good I just don't see a point to pay that much for a car in general). So I've driven Hondas, I've driven Toyotas, I've driven Mazda, I've driven Hyundai, I'm driving a Subaru now. No complaints really about any of them, they got me from point A to point B, didn't break excessively, didn't cost too much, and in general competently did what I needed them to do. I got into a highway crash in a Honda once, which duly sacrificed itself for my benefit and except for some bruises, I came out fine. The Subaru I have now is not fancy, but is comfortable, driving nicely and except for the entertainment system having brainfreezes occasionally (turning it off and on again does fix it) I am happy with it. Before buying it, I actually had some free money so I briefly considered buying something more expensive, and test-driven a bunch of fancy cars, including some German ones, and ultimately decided it's just not worth it and a boring middle-class car is exactly what I need.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
OK, at least from my POV the magic implied there is not how it works, so I think we agree on that. I don't think people who believe otherwise are stupid, and I don't think this warrants a conclusion "prayer does nothing". I don't even think it's really my business to convince them otherwise, beyond sharing my reasons why I think so. But I don't think "if your AV system is not working, just pray and it will fix itself" is how it works. I mean, as a professional programmer that deals with stuff mysteriously not working despite my best effort literally every day, I wish I could pray and those things just fix themselves. But unfortunately that's not what I expect to happen.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
But it is no magic bullet
That's what we started with, remember? No magic. So we are in agreement here.
While there are a lot of addicts who find salvation to be the way out, I have to imagine there are many pounds of dead bodies who tried it and found it lacking
Yes, sure, it was just an analogy, designed to address your argument that "if only affects the user, so it doesn't matter". I am showing there are a lot of things that affect the user and matter a lot. That's just one aspect, so once we're done with that aspect, the analogy does not extend further.
Tell that to the Creation Research Society,
Why should I tell them anything? They want to win studies, fine. Maybe they are bad at winning studies, that's fine with me too - a lot of people are bad at doing something they try to do, why should it bother me? I am not responsible for how they find their path to faith - even if that path looks completely wrong to you and me, and they are really bad at convincing people that there's an empirical evidence for Old Earth theory, why should it be a problem for me, to tell them anything?
Obviously some winning studies would be exceptionally helpful to the faith.
That's debatable. If it was about winning studies, then it'd be the Unseen University, not faith. For some people, probably, faith is just a technology. But it can't be just that, because then there's no point in having a separate category called "faith" anymore. If there's some aspect that is not covered by technology, then winning studies won't help much for that aspect, because that aspect does not rely on studies.
Most Christians are tired of losing the battle against science by now.
Are they? I'm not a Christian, so I don't know, but it doesn't seem like they are tired that much - and in fact, many of them don't even see it as a battle. Why there must be a battle? Who said good Christian must yearn to destroy science, or good scientist must yearn to destroy Christianity - or any other religion for that matter?
I can't say I get anything out of knowing that prayer has no material effect on outcomes outside of yourself.
Didn't we just establish it isn't true? And didn't I just demonstrate even if it were true it wasn't a problem at all? I'm also not sure which theory you are trying so valiantly to disprove here. We already agreed there's no magic. So which other "plainly false" thing you are disproving? That there are many studies that show prayers are magic? Ok, there aren't. Anything else?
JarJarJedi
8d ago
It's just plain false that there is undeniable tangible evidence to anyone except the prayermaker themselves
Are you sure? If somebody prays and becomes a better person, father, wife, child, boss - it is only a selfish benefit or does it have a wider effect? If an addict stops being an addict, that's certainly not only a selfish problem - otherwise we as a society would not spend so much money and effort battling with addictions. Let's set aside prayer and assume we got a magic serum. If you are an addict and take this serum, you stop being an addict. Plain and simple. To avoid getting into the weeds, let's assume it's all true - every study ever done confirms this is how it works. Addiction just goes away, that's it. How much do you think such a serum would be worth? Billions? Would it have any effect on a society? Would you invest in a company that you know for sure is about to release such a serum? Would you reasonable claim "this serum doesn't really do anything" and not have people stare at you as if you have grown an extra head? Would you say "well, it's not really worth considering because it doesn't have any effect to anybody except the person who takes it"?
If it wasn't, all kinds of religious organizations would be falling all over themselves commissioning study after study.
You are assuming winning studies is the only goal anybody could reasonably pursue. For some people, it could be true. But it's certainly not true for all people. There's a lot to life beyond winning studies.
but there's only so much placebo can do for you once you know it's placebo.
There's only so much anything can do for you in general. It's not like you have a magic genie in a bottle that is ready to fulfill your every desire but a bunch of assholes around here try to convince you to abandon it and use the much inferior option instead. If you have something that works much better for you, sure, use that thing. If people claim there's a thing that works for them, you certainly can disbelieve them and think they are just stupid. But at some point you'd have to ask yourself - what exactly you're getting from believing so many people are stupid? Is that working well for you?
JarJarJedi
8d ago
What do you mean by "does anything"? If you see the prayer as an ATM, that you put the right card in, type the right code, and the stuff you asked for comes out, that most certainly does not work and can not work - that's called "magic" and you can read about it in any number of fantasy books, but that's not how our world works([citation needed], of course), and even more, as far as I know, most Abrahamic religions at least kinda frown on such things. Clearly, it's not intended to be the ATM.
If you are asking whether a prayer changes anything in the world at all, e.g. if the world post prayer is identical to the world prior, or you can observe something different anywhere at all, then obviously it does, there are multiple people who could testify to that. Is it just a subjective phenomenon? Maybe yes, maybe not. What knowing that would give you? If your answer to this boils down to "magic" again, then maybe that's not the right way to deal with the issue. You won't get magic from it. You can't just pray for winning the Powerball and become a multimillionaire (at least not in the sense that you can get $100 from your bank's ATM). If this issue bothers you, maybe the more productive approach would be to consider what people are getting from it, and what you would want to get from it - i.e. if it "did anything", what kind of anything would you want it to do? Is it magic ATM? Is it Prozac without side effects? Is it imaginary best friend? Is it something else? Maybe that's what people find in it.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
The two work in tandem. The first premise (or, in Dem's hands, anti-premise) is about when Dems are in power - they then would just ignore the immigration law completely and mass-import as many migrants as they can. The whole "illegal" thing loses its meaning because what's the point in the law is the government is refusing to follow it and the courts just shrug and stand aside? It's not a part of legal system anymore, for any practical purpose, just a mockery of what the law is supposed to be.
The second part comes in if Dems temporarily lose some amount of power on the national level. Then they fall back to the local level (there's such thing as "state rights" and contrary to popular - among Dems - opinion, it's not just a mindless Nazi slogan!) and ever if the law tried to reassert itself by temporary slowing down the intake and deporting some of the illegals, they would obstruct it on every level possible. The law is sacrosanct if it serves the Party's purposes, and completely ignorable - moreover, must be ignored - if it contradicts them. In other words, if they don't control the law and it's execution, it's not worth having. Of course, this must be accompanies with demanding the other side to follow every letter of the law (and some that they'd invent on the spot just to make it harder to follow) and exhaust every possible legal delay and perform every triple-checked verification before they take any action.
Taken together, these two parts form a ratchet, which make it very easy to move the policy and the action on the ground towards open borders, and next to impossible to move it to the opposite direction. Little wonder is the Republicans aren't exactly happy with this state of affairs.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
A good slogan should go from the ears to the mouth smoothly, without stopping in the brain. That's what Orwell called "doubleplusgood duckspeak".
Democrats are unwilling to accept any policy that might require being mean to someone.
Correction: "might require being mean to someone who isn't on the list of group identities that are allowed to be subject to being mean". They are just fine being mean to the deplorables.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
we got extremely close to compromise with immigration bills, but they all failed to pass
I am pretty sure at least 2/3 of the population and probably even 2/3 of Republican voters would be fine with pretty wide immigration and even amnesty, if certain conditions are satisfied:
- Whatever rules we set up, we actually enforce them and not make mockery of them immediately. This includes getting rid of clown shit like "catch and release".
- Shit like "sanctuary cities" which low-key secede from the nation and choose which laws they are going to follow and not follow stops like right now. You don't like the laws - vote for people that will change them, just ignoring them whenever you like should not be an option.
- People that follow the rules get it easy, people who do not follow the rules get kicked out (details debatable, but the principle must be kept)
- Current illegals suffer some consequences for jumping the line. Maybe not deportation, but something. Maybe like 10 years of permanent residency before they can apply for citizenship and voting rights, maybe fines, I dunno. Something.
- Anybody illegal with a criminal record GTFO. I'm not talking parking tickets, but any violence or other socially detrimental crime must be hard disqualifier, and it shouldn't take 9-0 SCOTUS decision to deport each one, it should be quick and automatic. They got the due process when convicted.
- Some kind of filter on the entry that at least has some chance for selecting on alignment with US culture and societal mores.
None of these sound crazy or extreme to me (obviously) but I don't see Dems agreeing (and honestly implementing) this kind of compromise, unfortunately. What they seemed to be offering was more of "we keep the current shitshow maybe with a tiny coat of paint and some money thrown in the general direction of Border Partol budget, and in exchange for that you get mass amnesty for pretty much every illegal that is not on death row for murder right now". Not sure how that'd be a working compromise.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Thanks, Atlas Obscura sounds interesting, though sometimes outdated - noticed some place there are actually closed or inactive. But certainly helpful as a starting point.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
It's not only the voting base. The census counts illegals too (Trump tried to change it and lost), and with thin margins of current Congress majorities/minorities, two more/less seats for California or Texas may decide who controls the House. It is also budgets - leftist NGOs were getting literally billions of dollars from the budget for "immigrant services". You need to have a crisis to get billions for "helping to solve" it. Plus, of course, there are a lot of businesses who wouldn't mind cheap labor force not covered by the myriad of regulations Democrats introduce - which is fine with Democrats, since they get less pushback from businesses for introducing those, as businesses know: in a pinch, they can always hire illegals. And, of course, this population now needs welfare/social services coverage, which means expanding welfare state programs (and attached NGO networks, again) - a dream for every Democrat. In addition to that, on the ideological level, the colonial powers need to pay for their past sins, and accepting unlimited migration is the prescribed way to do that. The West stole everything from oppressed people, now the oppressed people finally get to enjoy it. There are many factors why unlimited migration aligns well with the governance model Democrats are embodying.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Love aquariums, but not all cities have decent ones, and ones that do I've been to them already a couple of times. May be worth another visit though.
By every sensible measure? Income, GDP, opportunities, quality of life, technological advancement, etc. SK is a highly advanced modern nation, while Viet Nam is "developing". If you take pretty much every criteria that common people would use when comparing one nation against other, SK would come ahead.
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