anon_
6hr ago
So why are the initial numbers even reported if we know the algorithm they use will be wildly inaccurate?
Getting the exact numbers 3 months later is just not as useful as getting directionally-correct ones fast.
anon_
6hr ago
The Federal Emergency Management Agency stated in grant notices posted on Friday that states must follow its "terms and conditions." Those conditions require they certify they will not sever “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies” to qualify for funding.
I don't see any congressional approval for this condition anywhere in the statute, so I expect it won't last long in court.
To back up a bit, there is a whole area of law concerning when and how the federal government can attach strings to money granted to the states, because doing so can in some cases be coercive (see. e.g. SD v Dole). Since it raises constitutional concerns, the Court has said that Congress must do so in unambiguous terms. This is likewise a parallel with various other kinds of Federal preemption: Congress can preempt a variety of State laws, but respect for State's rights mean that if it wishes to do so, it has to legislate it clearly rather than having the courts infer preemption.
As I see it, this is just a totally illegal addition of "terms and conditions" to the spending that Congress didn't justify. It might arguably within the power of the Federal Government to impose such a condition, but seems very obviously not within the power of the executive, acting without a clear congressional statement, to do so.
anon_
3d ago
It’s the interiors and user experience that has always bothered me about Teslas. Fragile paneling, that big ugly screen
Must just be a different perspective. I have a fairly new Tesla (2022) and the interior is, in my mind, perfection. None of the stupid buttons everywhere. Just a clean invocation of what you need to drive. There isn't even an "ON" button because you don't need one. Get in the car, hold the brake, get in drive. No off button either, just leave, and it turns off and locks behind you.
By comparison, I got in my buddy's luxury car, and the saturation of useless controls is mind boggling. There is a dial for turning up and down the intensity of the fog lights. How in the world is this an affordance that needs to be in front of a driver? Why should that take up space?
It's not that I'm even against twiddling. But the beauty of software interfaces is that you can put all that stuff in a searchable place.
anon_
5d ago
If the IDF offered food and a trip out of Gaza for the family of anyone who accurately reported Hamas hiding spots I bet they would win fast.
I expect just as many Hamasniks would take the offer and report on some random guy too.
Still the point remains that they are ultimately civilians and should this be treated like bystanders and in an ideal world as equal value as humans, like any other human.
Of course. Just like the civilians at Nagasaki.
The core part of my entire set of posts is that we have to stop letting Hamas victimize those civilians. And the main way they are doing do is by continuing to fight a war that's so insanely lopsided and been like that for decades without even a shred of a path towards victory. Continuing to fight a hopeless war is fundamentally immoral. It's one thing to imagine civilians making sacrifices (even of their lives) to fight a war with some tangible victory condition. It's quite another let them make completely pointless sacrifices.
But over focusing on the Israeli hostages is probably a poor framing since most seem to believe giving up the hostages would do nothing to stop the war.
I mean, I agree. What would stop the war is an immediately and total surrender of Hamas and all their forces, just as in Japan.
anon_
5d ago
If it's really 100 hostages to each Hamas, I'd have long expected actually-starving Gazans to bum rush every gunman then immediately declare a total and unconditional surrender.
Then again, that's kind of the core problem. They're hungry, but they're not actually "surrender hostilities and return the hostages"-hungry.
anon_
5d ago
Sure. I just think there is far more incompetence at government contractors than your initial post let on.
anon_
5d ago
Because they are the folks with guns that have a near-monopoly on violence. Or at least were on 10/6.
Who does Israel themselves recognize as the rightful government of the Gaza Strip? At the moment only themselves.
No, they have been casting about for a responsible government for years.
anon_
6d ago
You can exclude people from entering your country, you can expel parts of your country (Malaysia/Singapore, India/Pakistan), but you can't treat certain people living in your country as non-citizens.
But they aren't any part of the country. Indeed the whole thing has been about denigrating Israeli territorial claims to the West Bank & Gaza and elevating the case of Palestinian sovereignty over it!
despite Israel's permanent control of the external policy of each enclave.
This is hardly Israels desire. They would like nothing more than to leave Gaza to Egypt and much of the West Bank to Jordan, provided that they actually were guaranteed that their neighbors would not permit the use of that territory as a launching pad for violent attacks. That's the absolute least any country can do for it neighbors in peacetime.
This whole thing is just another hack: "we'll launch rockets from the territory to force you to react, then when you control the ground we'll insist that now it's your sovereign territory and you are obligated to govern it".
anon_
6d ago
The largest opposition of population exchange here has been the Arab world.
It seems impossible to break in any sense, largely because they don't suffer any of the consequences.
anon_
6d ago
So there are new Hamas soldiers being officiated every day. But the officiatiation is not formal and organized. They join small cell structures (in all likelihood apolitical and religiously moderate, if not irreligious) who are then provided with weaponry (and ideas) by a small number of Hamas intermediaries (and these are the extremist ones).
If this is true it is a grave violation of the laws of war. The Geneva convention unequivocally requires that armed forces must be “under a command responsible for the conduct of its subordinates”.
That it should be totally impermissible to create a set of small cells without any independent command authority is completely obvious, especially in the current context.
In any event, they certainly aren't soldiers as the word is used in the field of international law.
anon_
6d ago
My friend, that's what the sales guy said. And by the way he's the cousin-in-law of the prison super.
anon_
6d ago
How much more suspicious activity and lucky coincidences would there need to be to convince you (if you're a current denier) that Epstein was murdered/"allowed" to kill himself?
I want to object to this conjunction. This conjoins two wildly different things.
Maybe let me set out a continuum
a. Epstein didn't want to die and (one or more) people made him not be alive x. Epstein wanted to die and (one or more) people removed safeguards that might have otherwise prevented his suicide z. Epstein wanted to die and managed to kill himself despite typical jail safeguards
Obviously we're going to have to draw the line somewhere between a/z on when it actually becomes a conspiracy and no long (as you say) "legit". I'm putting a finger on the scales here, but I think (x) is probably a lot closer to (z) here.
If we want to start moving closer to (a) here, maybe we could say
d. Epstein didn't want to die, but one ore more people convinced him that if he didn't kill himself, they would torture his family forever. They then removed the safeguards and encouraged him to do so.
Or maybe closer to x.
q. Epstein spoke with someone who told him (truthfully? who knows?) that there was no way to beat his charge and that no one would extract him from the justice system. He then formed an intent to die which he carried out.
t. Same as (q) but the someone also got the guards to look the other way.
We can go on and on. Anyway, I really don't like conjoining "Epstein didn't kill himself" with "Epstein had no option and decide to kill himself" and "Epstein killed himself and the guards let him do it". It's a classic motte and bailey.
I'll divulge my object-level feeling here:
- High confidence: Epstein formed, based in part on what he learned in that call, an intent and desire to die.
- Medium confidence: The information that caused him to form that belief was broadly truthful
- Equipoise/don'tcare: Someone caused the prison to allow this to transpire contrary to typical prison procedure/rules.
From there, I think I'm confident that we should call it a suicide in the broadest sense of "Epstein killed himself". Insofar as you want to get into the conspiracy theory of the last point, eh. It's fine I guess, I don't object, but I don't think it's really much of a conspiracy theory.
anon_
6d ago
They do not. They even removed Israelis from it in decades past.
But even if they did, the fact that Hamas controls it at this moment would mean that they are not responsible. A nation is responsible in humanitarian law for areas that one actually controls, not for areas that it makes normative claims.
For example, the ROC isn't responsible for Mao's starvation even though they still (remarkably) claim they are the sovereign government of all of China.
anon_
6d ago
I don't think the limiting factor for Hamas is recruits or manpower. It's not a binding constraint.
Meanwhile, the Japanese didn't have any trouble trusting the US even after we obliterated an entire city, hospitals and all. Or maybe they didn't trust us but realized that when one starts a war, one takes the chance that they will lose and be conquered, at which point they wouldn't have a choice one way or the other.
anon_
6d ago
International humanitarian law recognizes that starvation is no longer a valid weapon of war.
Indeed, which is why Hamas should stop starving the populace of Gaza.
Hamas, as the governing body (such as it is), is the one obligated to provide for their own people's food. This whole thing is predicated on the idea that feeding Gaza is the job of literally anyone else on the planet except the actual people who are responsible for doing so.
I don't think that's really the danger here. If the BLS statistics aren't trusted, some actors are going to do their best to fill in a trustworthy answer. The problem there won't be their honesty, but that the data are not going to be evenly available. We'll go back to information asymmetries rather than public knowledge.
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