rudig
10mo ago
Sorry, didnt specify, but immigrant in Norwegian statistic is someone who immigrated themselves or have 2 parents who have immigrated. Norway does not really have a big non-white population outside of this group
This seems like an isolated demand of rigor. Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?
rudig
2mo ago
I always suspected she covers her hair mostly out if vanity (she suffers some form of alopecia based on old photos).
rudig
6mo ago
The total amount of displaced Syrians was much higher though. Over 5 million are still refugees abroad.
rudig
10mo ago
No one seems to have mentioned sperm quality and physical fitness. While I cant guarantee how much it will raise the birth rate, its very obvious that much fewer children are born by chance today than in the past. I think this is likely due to lower sperm quality and lack of physical fitness in both genders. In addition many people go through costly infertility treatment, again often due to environmental factors that lower fertility.
So my suggestion are:
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Make childhood obesity a borderline crime, meaning if a child is overweight, the CPS/medical support systems gets involved. These children get sent to specific schools with focus on healthy food and exercise. The family gets support and educational help, but if nothing helps, the get fines and eventually the child can be taken from them.
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Make computer games illegal, or heavily regulated. Control the internet so its boring and people cant spend hours entertaining themselves on youtube.
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Take a serious look at chemical factors that can be causing the fall in sperm count/testosterone, and outlaw them.
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Children are tested for physical fitness, and if they are too unfit, they are sent to digital detox camps with focus on physical fitness.
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Make housing developments in the most attractive areas only available for families with children
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Give plenty of support to students who become pregnant, also the single ones.
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Affirmative actions for both parents AND grandparents. If a grandparent wants to move jobs/houses to be closer to their kids to help with childrearing they get preferential treatment. Many of the most high status jobs are only available to people with children (the medically infertile can adopt).
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Make being young and/or a single parents less stigmatizing. Students who have children get their student loans forgiven.
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UBI for children, maybe something like 500 USD for the first 2, and then gradually lower it.
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Some sort of matchmaking for gays and lesbian couples so they can have children together. Similar types of matchmaking for singles over 30 who want children but dont want to be in a relationship.
rudig
1yr ago
Mt Gox and the Dao hack were bad, but there where so few people involved compared to now, and those that got burned where more ideologically committed. Now with the implosion of Celsius, Luna and FTX a huge number of normies are getting burnt, and they (and their families, friends etc) will never look at crypto again and always think of it as a scam.
it seems to me that the acquittal was the correct decision; armed or not, if the person who was killed was running after the killer with clear intent to harm him, then the killer had every right to defend himself with deadly force.
Even when the shooter was armed (+ with a friend) and the victim was unarmed and alone?
When I was growing up there were some teenage boy in my school who used to blow up the postbox of a grumpy old neighbourhood man (I have no idea if he wad grumpy before or after they started doing this). And everytime he used to come running after them and they would run away as fast as they could. I guess by this line of thinking, if one of them had a gun, they could get away with shooting him because he had "clear intent to harm".
rudig
1yr ago
7% of the population being south Asian but only 800 000 hindus is a bit strange. The number of Sikhs would suggest the south-Asian immigration to Canada has been disproportionally non-hindu. Is this likely to change or will Hindus become bigger and bigger share of the population?
rudig
1yr ago
I think you´re wildly exagerating how often people die from falls. Im a medical doctor and have worked many yours in emergency rooms where people came in after all kinds of falls. Very rarely did someone actually die from a fall. The only ones I remember where people who fell from the top of staircases. Freak accidents obviously happen, but would be a bit strange to use to make legal precedent.
By the same logic you could say that the old man that the two young men where harassing could have died from a heart attach in trying to get away from them (the were high on methampethamine and armed).
but the polling that showed 50/50 support for Israel vs Hamas among younger voters, was likely bad polling
This poll, asking people to choose between Israel and Hamas, with no option of "neither" og "dont know" had major "you're with us or you're against us" vibe. I imagine a big chunk of the people who chose Hamas, were just annoyed at the options and decided to say "f*ck it, I guess I support Hamas then".
The LGBT-thing doesnt make the least bit of sense to me. I am probably to the left of the majority of the people here on gay and trans right, but I never use that as a measuring stick for who is morally in the right in a given geopolitical situation. Nor have I ever met another person IRL who does the same. For example, I have no idea who is more socially liberal of Armenia or Azerbaijan, but I dont need to know that to decide that the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh was wrong.
I feel like this is the right-wing version of tankies who cant understand why anyone who is liberal would support Ukraine when they obviously have a massive problem with far-right elements in their country. Ukraine can love and revere Stephen Bandera and the Azov Batallion, while still being in the right in resisting the Russian invasion, and this is no different.
rudig
6mo ago
The picture that have been shared on reddit as "israeli with a blood stain after being raped is this https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1821309/israel-teenager-hamas-attacks-kidnap
But to me it looks more like a stain of feces on her backside, not blood. Loosing control of your bowels would be a very common reaction to extreme stress.
I philosophically 100% on board with this.
However, when I step out of the philosophical realm and into the practical world, and when I forget about the rest of humanity, and just focus on my own little family, I think its obvious that some outcomes are a little bit better. All else being equal it is better to be taller and with a lower risk of diabetes and heart disease. This is true even if none of those things will change the course of history.
Christians in Lebanon are mostly anti-Israel, and a majority of them supported the October 7th attacks. I'm not sure they blame Muslims for their diminishing numbers in Lebanon.
Israel is a strong ally and the main weapon exporter to Azerbaijan.
So the big question is, why are christians in the west so eager to support the country responsible for bombing christian churches in Gaza and help a muslim country ethnically cleanse one of the oldest christian communities in the world? The whole thing has a "chickens for KFC" feeling about it.
rudig
6mo ago
Nr 2 is certainly my impression too. Support for Israel is very bypartisan, whereas Jewish politicians are clustered on the democratic side. I'm not sure LGBT rights actually plays a big part here, more than general geopolitical alignment.
I actually suspect that Anthony Blinken is somewhat unsettled right now. He has no choice but to offer full support to Israel, but I think his idea of what is a proportion response is in this case, is very different to the current Israeli government.
rudig
10mo ago
Oslos immigrant population is 33%, granted some of the biggest immigrant groups are western European. But if you add up non-euro immigrants (the biggest of which is pakistani and somali) the number is still over 20%.
I reckon the majority of Muslims will show up for Biden out of self interest. However Michigan in particular has a big levantine Arab community who care alot about this conflict. They are also mostly 2/3rd generation so wouldn't be affected by Trumps muslim ban.
With the razor sharp margins Biden got in several swing states, this could make him really vulnerable. He won Georgia with 12 000 votes, and the state has more than 70 000 Muslims.
I also wonder how this focus on Israel will play with other minority groups, like blacks and Hispanics. I think the feeling that your president and government is beholden to a foreign government you don't really care about can be alienating to alot of these voters. Particularly when Biden is not delivering on bread and butter issues.
rudig
6mo ago
Israel has repeatedly bombed the Rafah border crossing (the only border crossing to Egypt) in the last few days. There is plenty of international citizens in Gaza who can't get out either because apparently the crossing is not functioning from the Palestinian side.
rudig
9mo ago
So is Birdbox, where two black men and one asian man sacrifice themselves so that a white lady and two white kids can survive in the end.
I was somewhat aware of this position of Singer, but still horrified when reading this position out loud.
rudig
6mo ago
This narrative is awfully convenient from a pro-Israeli perspective, but if this was all motivated with holy war and religious bigotry, how come the Palestinian liberation movement was broadly secular before the 1980s? The leader of PFLP was after all a christian born Palestinian communist. And how come Israel had to help Hamas along in its infancy, to counter PLO? If this was all motivated by religious hatred, surely the islamist organizations would be at the forefront since the very beginning?
http://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html
rudig
8mo ago
Point taken, and I think you are right about the average women. But again, these are not average women, but women who are still single at 35. In my experience they come in 3 groups:
- Hideously ugly/morbidly obese
- OK looking, but go for men who are out of their league.
- Dont mind being lonely, and are therefore not willing to lower their standards to match with a man who will have them.
My friends are a mix of 2. and 3. I think for nr 2 there is a psychological mechanism that keeps people from seing their own shortcomings. For what its worth, I think men who are single at 35-40 also fit into these categories, but with slightly different cutoffs. The typical example would perhaps a short immigrant male with an advanced STEM degree who cant understand why white girls are not attracted to him, because in his mind having a good degree and a well paying job is the pinnacle of male achievement. In the same vein, my friend is an avid runner, but objectively she lacks raw femininity and with skin that has aged quite poorly due to sun damage. She cant see this, because in her mind being a skinny female runner makes a woman very attractive.
I am not American, so cant comment on the exact tone of US media. But perhaps they bought in to the whole "only democracy in the Middle-East" and "most moral army in the would" slogans. After all, Hamas is roundly condemned as a terrorist organization by both sides of the political establishment in the US (and nearly the whole of Europe), so perhaps it doesnt really make sense to make moral appeals to them?
I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender. While I agree that Israel is likely to win a decisive military victory, I think Hamas so far is winning a slight PR victory and a perhaps even bigger political victory. I dont have any illusions about how Hamas value the sanctity of life, either Palestinian or Israeli, so I think the chance of a political victory is much more important for them in the long term.
It would be an understatement to say that the pre October 7th status quo was dire for the Palestinians. With between 700 000 - 800 000 settlers on the West Bank gradually encroaching on more and more Palestinian land, and talk of annexation of the West Bank becoming mainstream in Israel (Netanyahu had this a campaign promise in 2019 and won the subsequent election). This was all happening with the tacit approval of the US (and probably also most Arab countries), the dream of a two state solution was more or less dead. With this as a back drop Palestinians were witnessing Arab countries pursuing a politic of normalization with Israel, while giving lip service to the Palestinian cause. From the ground in Palestine the status quo probably looked a lot like a slow moving ethnic cleansing. Palestinians gradually getting more sympathy in the US and Europe did not seem to help their case at all, and as we saw earlier this year, having the sympathy of western populations did nothing to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh against being ethnically cleansed by a western ally.
Now fast forward a couple of months to today, the plight of Gaza is front and centre again. The US is finding itself increasingly isolated on the global stage as Israels guardian angel. Arab countries had to distance themselves at least optically from anything Israel does. Behind closed doors many of them are probably wondering if a normalization will be possible at all with the current Israeli political scene. We are also in a situation where there is a real chance that Bidens reelection might be in jeopardy due to his support of Israel. Just the perception that this is a possibility is an unprecedented win for the Palestinian cause, and we now have Blinked take some symbolic steps to be seen addressing Palestinian concerns, such as sanctioning violent settlers.
If we assume that there are countries pulling the strings of Hamas, perhaps Qatar, Iran and even Russia, the case for a political win becomes even stronger. Did anyone even notice or care that a female Iranian dissident won the nobel price just now? Does the liberation of Iranian women even register to people when 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza are being bombed daily? However no country has had a bigger PR win over the war in Gaza than Russia. Not only is the attention towards Ukraine diminished, the passion in the "slava Ukraini" camp has been decimated. Many people who thought they where "on the right side of history" and supporting the little guy Ukraine against the bigger aggressor, are having second thoughts about the morals of their side, which is cheering on the Israeli offensive in Gaza. I clearly see this among my normie friends in Norway. People are seeing the Ukraine conflict more in term of realist politics and not absolute morality, and if you are being a realist, perhaps it makes sense to let Russia keep the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine for a ceasefire.
In this scenario the death of many thousands more Palestinian children seems like a small price to pay for what Hamas has achieved.
"So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.
I dont see how potential future terrorist attacks are worse than the carnage we are seeing in Gaza today, unless you value Israeli lives much higher than Palestinians. Which I totally can understand that Israel does, but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We are after all talking about the safety of a nuclear armed country with the near unconditional backing of the worlds most powerful state, against a terrorist group that according to Israelis themselves consists of 40 000 men controlling a piece of land under naval blockade and without an airport.
The question here is different. On the 2nd on it's Hamas, not Palestinians.
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