fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
8d ago
Totally
I don't blame the Israeli people for being mad. I just don't think disproportionate violence is okay, even if provoked
I understand why everyone feels how they do, but as the peanut gallery I'm pointing and judging
fmac
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8d ago
I actually don't know a ton any them so I'd love to hear why?
Their air dominance over Iran was pretty gangster though. SEAD is not easy.
fmac
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8d ago
The Viet Cong didn't win, the Americans got tired of fighting and gave up
That is winning. It's a shitty unglamorous way to win, but they accomplished their objectives, and America did not. The Americans could have stuck around and stamped them into oblivion with unlimited political will, but they didn't have it, so they left.
Ergo, the Israelis have no choice but to continue fighting.
I agree but also don't. Money and political will aren't infinite, they'll have to pull back and scale down eventually. The only way this really ends-ends is genocide, and they can't do that, so they'll have to give up eventually.
fmac
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8d ago
Yeah it's an absolute mess. At this point I honestly think both sides deserve each other. They've built an incredible human suffering machine and now they get to ask wallow in it.
I feel awful for the children though, they didn't choose this.
fmac
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8d ago
That's true
Less of a long painful history though.
Also both Germany and Japan had much better cultural scaffolding for bootstrapping back into friendly productive 20th century neighbors.
fmac
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8d ago
If the current generation of Palestinian children are raised under the understanding that Israel will never be defeated (and hence they might as well learn to play nice with them and stop being completely unruly), that serves everyone's interests.
I think that 1) that is totally true and 2) this is profoundly unlikely given the long history of these two peoples and human nature to say "fuck you don't tell me what to do" with a side helping of Isreal being unable to keep its hands to itself re: settlements, etc
We shall see!
fmac
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8d ago
Why is Palestine entitled to Israeli food?
A combination of "with great power comes great responsibility" and "you break it you bought it".
They're not entitled by default, but given the amount of control Isreal likes to exert over the strip (and who can blame them), they are now de-facto responsible for the outcomes.
If Isreal decided "fuck it, Gaza's borders are open. We're just gonna sit behind the border wall and do our thing, the people of Gaza are free to do whatever" then yeah, I would assign them zero responsibility.
They don't like having rockets shot at them (fair), so they don't do this. But because they chose to do something, they get to inherit the consequences.
fmac
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8d ago
I feel like you're also approaching this from the assumption that the Canadian attack is an unprovoked sucker punch against an innocent America. In which, yeah, fuck them.
How would your feelings about this change if America was on its 20th(ish?) year of controlling Canada's borders, the country was absolutely destitute, and America kept pushing the border further into Ontario? Also I guess in this metaphor America is also pumping the water out of the great lakes as fast as they could, regardless of how many Canadians used it to drink.
Further continuing this absolutely tortured metaphor, how much responsibility do you assign to the roughly 50% of the population who if I remember correctly, is under the age of 20? These children were born into a world of shitty poverty, have absolutely no freedom to leave their shitty poverty city, and are profoundly aware that the reason they can't have nice things is the hostile mega-power that gets to decide things like "how much food and medicine they get on a monthly basis". They're propagandized too by Hamas sure, but the Isreali's don't exactly make Hamas propaganda job hard.
In some ways, Isreal has developed Gaza into one of the world's foremost Jihadist factories. I have a hard time imagining a setup that would radicalized young people born into it better than the current status quo.
fmac
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8d ago
"Join Hamas, feed your family" is probably a great recruiting tool.
So is "hey your baby/sister/mom/friend/polycule member starved to death in your arms, want to blow up the people we feel are responsible?"
fmac
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8d ago
The fact that they're too weak to have any chance of victory
I'm sure the USA thought the Vietcong were too weak to have a chance of victory. Or the British/Russians/USA vs their flavor of Afghani opposition.
I do actually agree with you in this case, but it's kind of a funny claim to make when we have no idea how this ends.
Anyone making confident calls about any of the insurgencies I listed above partway through ended up very wrong.
fmac
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8d ago
Even without Hezbollah, it was very close to major disaster
This is such funny hand wringing. What major disaster? 1000 more Israeli's die (that would suck sure)?
How are a bunch of dudes in pickup trucks and paragliders ever, EVER going to credibly threaten one of the most sophisticated armies on planet earth? Yeah they'd do more damage, it would take longer to root them out sure. But airplanes and tanks > ak's and pickups, it was always going to end like this.
"Omg Hamas almost overran Isreal" is straight melodramatic bullshit. Even if the whole gang pitched in Isreal would have won, it just would have been more like Yum Kippur and less like every other middle eastern insurgency wack-a-mole
fmac
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10d ago
Karma repost/farming bots have been happening for so, so, long
Like way before COVID, probably close to a decade ago
They were rampant on AskReddit when I was in university
fmac
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10d ago
Other than that Reddit-like sites have past their peak
What is replacing them?
fmac
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11d ago
Safety, safety, safety, safety
Driver assist features
Energy efficiency (in terms of input energy to distance/speed moved)
In this case, the fact it runs on electricity and not gas
Reliability
In this case especially, but in many cases, way better performance of the engine.
The fact it can Bluetooth to my phone to play music
The fact it can show a map of where you're driving
Significantly better AC/heat/creature comforts like fancy seats
Probably trunk space
Are you seriously trying to pretend 2020s cars don't absolutely fucking blow 1970s cars out of the water in every single possible metric? Because lmao
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
11d ago
I have no idea.
They live in cities more? They can't afford cars?
I also think income/wealth inequality is a massive issue, so I'm very comfortable saying both "our society en masse is richer than ever" and "the distribution of this wealth is completely fucked"
fmac
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11d ago
Totally agree with you.
I just think saying "medicine has barely improved since the 1950s" is ludicrously wrong and anyone saying that should be pointed at laughed at for being profoundly incorrect.
fmac
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11d ago
Defensive is a hilarious word to use in this context given were rapidly approaching year 100 of this conflict (or 1000, depending on how far back you want to play the grievance game).
I don't think it would be very difficult to come up with an argument that the Palestinians are on the defensive due to $PREVIOUS_ATTROCITY.
Also quite funny to call it defensive when there's a 1000:1 military power ratio and one side has killed 6x the people of the other.
If the credible threat against you has been defeated in the field for almost two straight calendar years, are you really on the defensive?
fmac
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12d ago
It never stops making me laugh that anti-immigrant Americans fucking despise the immigrants but not the Americans who pay them illegally for their labor, which is why they're in America at all.
fmac
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12d ago
"no you don't understand, my based right wing fantasy world is SO MUCH COOLER than the soy poet fantasy world"
fmac
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12d ago
This is so unbelievably wrong I don't even know where to begin
The sheer amount of surgical techniques, mechanical/robot assistance, and drug development alone. Not to mention computerization and millions of other improvements neither of us know about too.
How can you be so blatantly and confidently wrong?
It is end of life care
The stats on this are eye watering though
fmac
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12d ago
So they need to work 38% more hours to get a car that is like, 500% better?
I think we're in the rich society
No disagreement here. They could cause a lot of damage sure. Israel is crazy fragile.
But Israel has a lot of heavy gear. They'd win after a few days if they weren't worried about hostages (which in this scenario, they'd allow them to be collateral damage, I would)
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