ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
How the AP decided to describe joint US–Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran’s retaliation, as a war
The Associated Press is using the word “war” to refer to the joint U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran’s retaliation. This reflects the scope and intensity of the fighting.
What does the AP consider?
The Merriam-Webster definition of war is quite broad: “A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations,” or “a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism.”
Even though none of the countries have officially declared war, the attacks by the United States and Israel, combined with Iran’s retaliation, meet those criteria. The decision by the Trump administration and Israeli leaders to attack and the subsequent destruction and casualties are enough to call the actions, and Iran’s response, a war. Trump himself has used the word war to describe the conflict.
Why does it matter?
It’s important to use the correct language to describe military action between sovereign nations.
Sometimes a one-sided attack occurs without further action, or a conflict starts but doesn’t escalate. Using “war” to describe those situations could diminish the word’s importance. Then, when actual war breaks out, people might not understand its significance.
What are previous examples of conflicts where the AP issued guidance to use the word ‘war’?
The AP provided guidance on the attacks on Iran by Israel in June 2025, using the term “war” to describe the conflict in the days after the initial attacks and Iran’s retaliation. The war lasted 12 days, and Israeli and American strikes greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program.
The AP also began using the term “war” to describe the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas in the days and weeks after fighting began.
In those cases, editors considered the number of casualties, the intensity of fighting, the involvement of each party, and what each country was calling the conflict.
Could the guidance change?
Decisions on how AP uses the term “war” happen in real time. AP’s news leaders and standards editors will continue to monitor developments to see whether changes are necessary.
At this point, the level of fighting constitutes the countries being at war, no matter what happens next. If fighting were to end soon, AP would continue saying the countries had been at war.
More Americans supported Palestine than israel in a poll for the first time in the US.
Citation requested.
Forty-one percent of Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle East situation, while 36% sympathize more with the Israelis. The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant [the margin of error appears to be ±4%, but I'm not sure I'm reading the documentation properly], but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years.
ToaKraka
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3d ago
YouTube's recommendation algorithm just informed me of the existence of The End Is Nigh, a pseudo-sequel to the infamously difficult platforming game Super Meat Boy. I'm not too interested in the game itself (currently on sale for four dollars). But the game's soundtrack is composed entirely of remixes of classical music—and it's currently on sale for just one dollar!
Other video-game soundtracks that I have purchased:
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Shantae: Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse
Note that all these soundtracks are DRM-free. (I've seen people complain that at least one soundtrack sold on Steam actually does have DRM, in that it's playable only through an executable file. I don't remember which game it was for.)
Some older Paradox Development Studio games also have soundtracks of classical music (licensed from Naxos), which you can copy out of the installed files.
ToaKraka
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4d ago
Fun pastime for lazy people: In your favorite Paradox game (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, etc.), go into "observe" mode (typically with a console command obtained from the game's wiki) and just watch a "hands-off" campaign progress at maximum speed. If you feel like it, you can temporarily exit observe mode to make minor nudges (e. g., forcing an otherwise-AI-controlled country to declare certain wars, annex certain subjects, or pass certain laws) without going to the trouble of actually playing the campaign yourself. You also can make your own mods and see how they affect events.
It's my understanding that some sports games (e. g., EA's NFL series) also allow the user to watch AI-only matches.
Premise: You can use numbers (1, 2, 3), letters (a, b, c), and symbols (asterisk *, dagger †, double dagger ‡) to denote footnotes. The footnote reference in the main text normally is superscript. The footnote heading typically also is superscript, but if you're a weirdo who wants to maintain consistency with main-text and list-item headings you'll make it full-size (1, 2, 3, a, b, c, *, †, ‡).
Problem: You're a weirdo, and one of these things is not like the others. The asterisk already is superscript by default—in order to make it full-size with formatting, you have to give special treatment to it.
Solution: Instead use the "low asterisk" ⁎ ⁎, which is not pre-superscripted! Consistency has been achieved.
Problem: Annoyingly, the HTML named character reference "lowast" is misnamed and actually refers to the separate "asterisk operator" ∗ ∗, whose Unicode category is not "Punctuation/Other" like the ASCII asterisk but "Symbol/Mathematics" like the multiplication symbol.
Solution: If you're using XHTML (without any of the public identifiers listed on the linked page), you can simply repurpose "lowast" as your own custom internal entity that points to the correct character. LOL! (If you're using normal HTML or that disgusting middleware called Markdown, you've got to look up the low asterisk's hexadecimal code, "204e".)
ToaKraka
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6d ago
Two chats (Telegram and Discord) are "recommended" in the sidebar of the front page (which is not visible if your browser window is too narrow, including mobile browsers).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6d ago
To be fair, it is a random piece of custom software, rather than something with actual tenure and documentation.
ToaKraka
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6d ago
It appears that @ZorbaTHut has been using an LLM for recent changes to this website's code. Perhaps that is the culprit. ;-)
According to "the World Gold Council" (an association of mining companies):
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