atomicdevils
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User ID: 1770
atomicdevils
4mo ago
It doesn't matter, though. Young people don't vote. Who knows what their opinions will be when they're settled and married with kids and regularly voting.
Even if public opinion was vastly anti-Israel, that still wouldn't change anything - during the Iraq war the public was massively anti-war, that changed absolutely nothing. The Senate and the Executive are where foreign policy outcomes live, and those gears take a long, long time to turn. US foreign policy is remarkably stable from administration to administration, and this is partly by design. The people in charge know that in a few more months there'll be something else for young people to march around yelling about, perhaps a white cop will kill a black guy again or something...but something will take its place, and the youth will be bored of screaming about a country they can't point to on a map once The New Thing catches their eye. It just doesn't matter.
atomicdevils
4mo ago
Sure, I just don't see it in this case. Support for Palestinian terrorism has been a perennial hobby among young leftists - this most recent outpouring of support is nothing new. In the '60s and '70s many leftist groups had much stronger ties to Palestinian terrorism - Baader Meinhof gang even went down to train with them. In the end it all fizzled out, and I see no reason a lesser wave that doesn't involve the material commitment seen in prior decades won't also fizzle out.
Israel is an incredibly important ally of the US, they could glass Gaza and we'd still support them - perhaps with a wrap on the knuckles, but no more than that.
atomicdevils
5mo ago
From my perspective, the main difference with Islam vs. Christianity is that Islam was started by a warlord and the tales of his good deeds include beheading all the men of a Jewish tribe that had surrendered. I think this is going to result in a religion that is much different from one started by (either in reality or simply in story) a former carpenter who preached peace and turning the other cheek.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I disagree with what I think the thrust of your post is, namely that social pressures are artificially "restricting" or "repressing" female sexuality. I think it's pretty much entirely biological.
I would hazard to guess that in an imaginary society where female sexuality was completely unfettered and unstigmatized...that female humans would still want sex less than male humans, and would still be choosier in their partners than males. In every mammalian species this dynamic exists, especially for placental mammals - because the investment necessary during pregnancy is so high. Female humans have particularly invasive placentas, very risky pregnancy and birth because of head size, and particularly helpless young that demand an extreme amount of care relative to other mammalian young (even other great apes). It is not surprising, therefore, that female humans have been selected to be discerning rather than horny.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I would have thought that Apple giving the appearance of sticking it to Musk would have resulted in more cheerleading from those who'd like Musk to fail (or think he already is). I wonder if the relative lack of praise, from my perspective anyway, has to do with the rather nasty bit of news concerning Apple restricting air drop functionality for their Chinese consumers (one would think, at the behest of the CCP).
atomicdevils
1yr ago
If you wish people to understand current events they must understand the events that preceded them. It's really that simple. How can one understand what's happening in Ukraine without at least a little knowledge of WWI and WWII and Soviet Russia?
I put forth that understanding current events, at least a little bit, is important in democracies (but not dictatorships) because citizens must decide on representatives who will vote on many things having to do with current events - if they understand nothing of the context, they can't understand the issue, they can't make an informed vote, and democracy becomes more superficial.
atomicdevils
4mo ago
This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday.
So? How Christians have celebrated Christmas has changed dramatically over the last 2k years, and easter and christmas have sort traded places as most important holidays. It's entirely possible that easter will again become the bigger holiday than christmas
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I would put money on social contagion accounting for the vast majority of adolescent female trans identification. With adolescent males I think it's more complicated - very effeminate gay males may face discrimination to the point that transition is easier, males may be motivated by AGP etc. Suffice it to say that I think there are more reasons that a male of any age may choose transition, and fewer that a female may.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
A very general overview of adolescent cognition
puberty blockers cause IQ drop https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00044/full#B6
and "According to the results obtained through the cognitive evaluations, the patient presented a decrease in their overall intellectual performance after the onset of pubertal block, pointing to immaturity in her cognitive development (Table (Table11)."
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Since we know that puberty is required to mature the brain to its adult capability, and since we know that cognitive abilities that deal with understanding long term consequences only develop with puberty, and since we know that puberty blockers permanently retard brain development - how can we argue for their use? How can a minor without the capability to understand long term consequences consent to a procedure that will permanently retard their ability to understand long term consequences?
atomicdevils
4mo ago
I think this is why having a wife that's 7 to 10 years younger is generally a good idea
atomicdevils
8mo ago
get free opioids in a super boring and lame way that ensures no one will ever do it for fun.
But that's exactly why street dealers would still be popular.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Lower IQ isn't associated with less cognitive ability?
atomicdevils
4mo ago
I think you've got this very wrong. US foreign policy towards Israel won't change at all. Not one bit. Anti-Israel sentiment periodically rises, the pro-Hamas/pr-Palestinian protest cycle is very old indeed - decades and decades old. Did the previous protest cycles change US foreign policy towards Israel? No.
atomicdevils
9mo ago
I actually wish that I had done a bit more to try to prevent spread of the disease.
The only thing your increased caution may have accomplished is slightly delaying the date you became infected with covid. You couldn't have prevented covid from spreading.
There was never any chance that this thing would be controlled with quarantines or even far more effective vaccines if we had them - since covid infects non-human animals and now has undoubtably many natural reservoirs, we could never eradicate it like we did with smallpox (only infects humans). It's also insanely contagious - we'd all have needed new, fit-tested n95s for every time we went out and goggles to boot (your eyes are connected to your nose and throat - aerosols that land on them/in them can travel downwards and voila, covid infection).
For adults 18-45 covid was more like a bad influenza strain, if you look at deaths by age group it becomes very apparent that it was really a disease of the old with some obese younger adults thrown in. Look at this age stratification https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254488/us-share-of-total-covid-deaths-by-age-group/
2% (85+) of the US population made up 27% of the deaths!
atomicdevils
6mo ago
Doubtful, it does look like her mom has some false hope tho.
It'd take a lot to keep someone with that many massive fractures in their legs from bleeding out internally - and in some of the video of her she has what looks like a gunshot wound to the head.
atomicdevils
4mo ago
I wonder if you live in one of the few areas with a high % of Jewish residents, because I grew up in one and Hannukah was fairly high profile but now I live in a place without many/any Jews and there's no Hannukah presence which makes me feel as though there was no "astro turfing" but rather a natural reflection of the population of a place.
atomicdevils
4mo ago
Halloween was much bigger in the US than other countries, and still is. Different countries are...different. Suffice to say I don't think the presence of difference WRT holiday celebration/importance means much. There is no "true" Judaism from which all other Judaism must be compared.
atomicdevils
6mo ago
I also feel as though my experience is mostly the same, although I'm a "read only" twitter user and mostly follow art bots. The community notes have been generally great, and a good example of how the response to bad speech is more speech rather than censorship.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
A few weeks ago I got sick and stayed home for a few days. So many of my friends asked me if my covid test was positive - just assuming I'd been testing. They were appalled when I said I hadn't bothered, and that in fact I have never tested myself for covid. If the diagnostic result does not change/inform treatment, then what use is it? If I were sick enough to need hospitalization, they'd test me for various things at that point and treat accordingly. If I'm not sick enough to be hospitalized, what good does knowing exactly what bug I have do? We know Paxlovid has only ever been tested in unvaccinated individuals and appears to have no value in vaccinated people (and perhaps a downside of helping covid evolve to escape it when over-used in those who do not need it). So I did what we all did pre-covid, I stayed home and rested until I felt better. Maybe I had covid. Maybe I didn't. I don't really care.
I think you're right that people have begun to view the test as some kind of treatment, or at least somehow a responsibility as if the knowledge of which bug is making them slightly ill is of grave importance to society.
atomicdevils
6mo ago
The allies did terrible things in WWII, firebombing Dresden and killing many, many civilians. Does that mean that the Axis and the Allies were morally equivalent sides?
Hamas hides their bases inside hospitals and schools and apartment buildings. Israel cannot just let Hamas continue to fire rockets at them - so they retaliate, but because Hamas hides in civilian areas those civilians become casualties of war. This is very different from IDF soldiers going into Gaza, raping and killing Palestinian women and then parading their bodies around to cheers of "god is great" from fellow Israelis - which is what Hamas has video'd itself doing. Hamas is an islamist organization that wants to help build a global caliphate and genocide all Jews everywhere. It's easy to "pick a side"
atomicdevils
6mo ago
The arabs could have taken a two state solution in the original partition - they decided to attack the new nation of Israel instead. They could have had two states in 2000 with Clinton helping - nope, turned that down. They could have elected someone to help them build Gaza into something great, nope elected literal Nazi sympathizers who want to do a genocide. I mean, at some point, what can you do?
atomicdevils
8mo ago
I disagree. Lots of people are poor, very few are meth/fent addicts. Normal people don't end up living in a tent on the sidewalk and doing fent if they lose their job or have difficulty with housing - they rely on their friends/relatives or services available. Methfent addicts do not do this, because they've systematically burnt every bridge they've ever had through stealing and abuse and none of their former friends or relatives will lift a finger to help them anymore - in other words, the addiction came before the financial troubles and exacerbated them.
atomicdevils
4mo ago
I could be convinced if you could show me 40 years of polling results on Israel WRT youth sentiment, it'd be better by far if you could dive into how those numbers changed during times of conflict.
The US has never been Israel's ally because of oil, Israel is important because it's part of our containment strategy towards Iran (among other things).
Is walking difficult? It is slow, but seems pretty easy to me. Do people really find walking to be difficult?
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