Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Really if she chose any other option than lifting up the pot and throwing the boiling water toward the officers.
Do cops really have such shitty hand-eye coordination that they can't tell whether a mass of boiling water flung from a pot is going to hit them or not? It's a one-shot item; once she flung the water she was unarmed! What was the justification for not just leaving?
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
Nationalism which is the english word for ethnos, without ethnicity, doesn't make sense.
Someone tell France that they really ought to be Bretons, Acquitanians, Burgundians, etc. etc. After all, until fairly recently they didn't even speak mutually-intelligible dialects of the same language, let alone share common ancestry! The Bretons are Celts, the Ile-de-France folks are Germanic, and the Languedoc is Mediterranean!
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Reducing the speed limit on all roads to 25mph will reliably reduce traffic deaths
It really depends on which roads you're talking about, and who's using them. Reducing the speed limit to 25 on the DC beltway at rush hour won't do anything because no-one's going 25 to begin with. And reducing the speed limit to 25 in rural Mauretania won't do anything because no-one has a car anyway.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Yes, it's called nationalism.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I refuse to debate you further about the exact technical definition of "purpose" and whether it exists objectively or just subjectively, no matter how much you want to have that debate.
Okay, I don't particularly care about technical definitions; I was asking because I didn't understand what you were trying to get at with "not just a sense of purpose but an actual purpose," which seem to me to round to the same thing.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I don't think so, because I don't know what an "objective" purpose would even be, hence my original question. An omniscient being would be aware of an infinite number of perceived purposes for a person, but that doesn't make any of the purposes non-subjective.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
I don't care to litigate the proper definition of the word "purpose". So long as you agree that the concept exists, I think we can agree that it's a different thing from the perception of it, which is my point.
I'm not sure I do agree that the concept exists independently of an observer/interpreter, either external (as in the case of someone reading code), or internal (as in a person asking "what is my purpose").
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
It's the same as the difference between a perception of anything and the thing itself. The map is not the territory.
There's a difference between applying that statement to a physical object, vs. to an intangible trait or quality.
When I write code, the code has no sense of purpose at all, yet still has a purpose.
Wasn't the community just arguing over this with Scott's piece on "the purpose of a system is what it does"? This doesn't clear things up any. There is your intention as the author; there is the result of the code as it functions; there are various interpretations of the code by outside observers/users...none of which necessarily overlap or align. Which is the objective "purpose" and what is the reliable method for determining it?
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
"Merit" is not defined as "the person with the largest pile of money at death."
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Yes, it's called "democracy." Vox populi, vox dei. Or something.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Ashkenazi Jews - the stereotypically neurotic ones - are also white. Especially so in the Larry David/Woody Allen-esque liberal NYC progressive-assimilated jew type. Those sorts of jews overwhelmingly are in or the product of mixed marriages.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Yeah my comment was more along the lines of a neutral point of information. Any excuse to tell the weird story of Ian Samuel (RIP First Mondays; you were a good podcast while you lasted) and plug ALAB, which is wrong about most things but funny.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
The rationing systems during WWII I think were a success.
Yes, but the objectives of the market change between war and peacetime in highly relevant ways.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, author of "On the Consolation of Philosophy," which is referenced in the same post.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Yeah, I couldn't quickly find all that many contract murder cases, and so generalized out to provide examples.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Yeah, that kind of grasping behavior is not virtuous of the acquaintances. Asking a friend of means if they are able to help is not wrong; implying that you are owed it is bad manners.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
People do not universally experience the same relations in the same valence.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
De gustibus nil est disputandum. shrug
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I actually don't know if we're in that situation. It would not surprise me if the Secret Service took incidents involving a Dem VP significantly more seriously than incidents involving Trump.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
How many attempts have been made on Harris's life, again?
Ideally we wouldn't know even if the answer was greater than zero, to avoid inspiring copy-cats. The press coverage of the Trump assassination attempts is good for transparency and public discourse, but does have costs.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
why don't we torch the whole legal system? It has been misused by bad actors from time to time, I think we could both find examples of this.
As a lawyer, much of it is in need of torching, or at least disassembly and reconstruction.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I've heard historians argue that the british government's legal counsel had advised that the 1839 treaty could be worked around. And in any event the UK went in before the invasion of Belgium - Grey's famous speech to parliament is all based upon assumptions and diplomatic insinuations, not any concrete actions by the Germans. Once the Brits were in, there was no incentive for the Germans not to go through Belgium.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
While I think there's some validity to the claim that they'd just do it elsewhere without Israel, I think all those other laundering operations should be shut down as well - so the claim that it would be them if it wasn't Israel is just a non-starter.
I mean, I agree that it's not good, and we shouldn't do it. That kind of graft is really dumb - if we want to give an ally military gear, just give them the gear. If we want to give them money so they can buy the gear they want, give them money. I don't see how agreeing on a need for Foreign Aid and Pentagon Procurement reform does anything about the prevalence of current practices, though.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The 2008 law merely codifies longstanding US policy. Said policy helped drive Israel's Arab neighbours towards the Soviet Union (who would sell them military equipment).
To my knowledge (though I'm not an expert) the first time the U.S. provided military aid to Israel was '73 under Nixon, and Nasser didn't need any push to be pro-Soviet; it fell right in line with his third-world-ist, anti-colonial rhetoric. Even then, we were the ones to step in and save him from the Brits, French, and Israelis. But for the U.S., there's an alternate world where the Suez Canal is still run by the Brits, with Israeli troops and settlements on the eastern side. Surely that's a world where the Jews have a lot more power than the current one - so why did we intervene? Why didn't the Jews win on that one?
Your own link says that $330 Billion went to Israel. The budget for 2023 was $6 trillion, so the real answer is 5% of the 2023 budget.
Thank you for the correction; I am sloppy with math. I have edited the post to reflect this.
$330 billion is a lot of money.
Over 40 years? On the brobdignagian scale the U.S. does military-industrial things with? Maybe it's the last couple administrations, but I have a hard time getting worked up about US overspending on things to make defense contractors (or, more recently, community activists) rich. It's just a cruddy fact of life.
Still more was lost as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo, stemming from Arabs angry with US aid to Israel.
Yeah, that one stung in the 70's, but it's 50 years old. OPEC doesn't have that kind of power any more, not since the shale revolution.
There is no reason to give foreign countries grants to buy equipment.
Sure there is; it funnels money to defense contractors, but it also ensures that the equipment is actually used in a conflict so we can get data back on how it performs.
Funnily enough the rivers of gold only opened up when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, in 1978
Yes, this is the "carrot" part of "carrot and stick" diplomacy. You reward friends for doing what you want, and punish enemies who do things you don't want.
Jordan has no supply routes worth caring about
Sure, because letting that country collapse and become the personal playground of the irredentist Palestinian national movement - a movement which even in the 70's showed a marked proclivity to actions harmful to western interests - wouldn't have any negative consequences for anyone except Israel.
There's a big distinction between speciation and a nation that didn't even speak the same language in the 1800s. Almost like gross overgeneralizations are full of holes.
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