ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
4d ago
Most monarchs still don't/haven't chosen the peasant life instead, suggesting being a monarch is preferable.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8d ago
Exactly. Watching Dr Grant see a sauropod for the first time is infinitely more impactful than any moment in any of the more recent films despite the much worse CGI in the original precisely because it's actually a superbly made film that understands setup and payoff.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8d ago
It's strange to me that anyone wouldn't get extreme uncanny valley vibes from films involving photorealistic anthropomorphic animals.
ZanarkandAbesFan
8d ago
Now whether you were genuinely promoting the idea, or using a Socratic method to pick apart the assumptions of the OP, that I failed to figure out.
The latter. Not that I'm totally convinced that OP's premise is wrong (and I don't really agree that it's an intractable problem) but my issue was more with taking it as truth to the extent that we can start thinking about what the broader implications might be.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9d ago
Would you say there are more French people or trans people in your office?
I've been reading The Library Trilogy, a fantasy series by Mark Lawrence. I enjoyed most of the first book, which felt like a bit of a cross between Garth Nix's Lirael and His Dark Materials, but it started to fall apart by the end and the second book, while readable, couldn't really rejuvenate my interest.
Something in particular that irritated me slightly were the somewhat clumsy allusions to real-world politics scattered throughout the books; most of the time I don't want to think about political issues and that's especially the case when I'm reading for fun. I also don't like the feeling that the author on some level presumes his readers will be smugly nodding in agreement with his fairly evident views on current affairs.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10d ago
Was this meant as a reply to me or OP?
ZanarkandAbesFan
11d ago
East Asian women were the first counter-example that came to mind for me. Do white women tend to win out over them when it comes to revealed preferences?
Is it generally agreed that Western Europeans (and people of WE descent) are more attractive?
ZanarkandAbesFan
12d ago
I guarantee you that every progressive, and Zohran Mamdani especially, 100% understands the "rules" for calling yourself African American.
Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate!
Happy Independence Day!
America is an awesome country filled with great people. It's responsible for many of the best things that have happened to the world over the past 100 years, and I say this quite genuinely as someone who doesn't live there. It deserves appreciation.
Someone should remind the North Koreans their 'GDP' is small, so they can't provide more shells to Russia than Europe (huge GDP!)
If someone told the North Koreans that having a higher GDP meant you could buy more foreign weapons, I'm sure they'd agree. In any case, I don't know how this supports your original claim that "merely shutting off aid would be catastrophic".
Israel gets the most advanced US weapons to fight a few Arabs, while Ukraine gets second-rate equipment, F-16s rather than F-35s, in a war with Russia.
Plenty of other countries also get F35s, like Belgium, who don't even have Arabs to fight.
The distinction is that all other US allies bring something to the table.
Israel brings plenty to the table, although I suspect you're too emotionally invested in a certain point of view to ever accept any evidence of this.
Britain, Australia, Canada will send troops to help America too.
Because they have mutual defence treaties. Such an agreement between the US and Israel would be drastically more in Israel's favour than America's, given how much more often Israel is attacked. Frankly if you want a single piece of evidence that America foreign policy isn't beholden to Israeli interests, this would probably be it.
They create enemies for America, they harm collaboration with the Islamic world,
Every vaguely functional Islamic country is already onside with the US (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, etc). Iran's hate for the US goes far beyond Israel. The original reason the US chose to ally with with Israel during the Cold War is because it wasn't one of the Arab states aligned with the USSR.
they sell military technology to China
This is the only legitimate criticism of Israel I've seen you make so far.
Suck up aid like a leech.
I'd advise you to look at those aid numbers again. They're small when it comes to how wealthy Israel is, and insignificant to the US. And I'm not sure why you'd consider Israel a leech and not Ukraine when Ukraine has been getting much larger amounts of aid over the past few years.
They even got the US to pay off their neighbours too, Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan get billions in aid for being nice to Israel, the aid started as soon as they signed a peace treaty with Israel.
Egypt and Jordan get money to keep their governments from falling apart. Neither poses anything close to a threat to Israel. The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was signed six years after the Yom Kippur war ended with Israel advancing on Cairo, because relations and with and recognition from the largest Arab state were worth way more to Israel than continuing to humiliate Egypt further.
If it weren't for Israeli influence, the war wouldn't have happened.
I doubt it, but it doesn't matter, because the claim that Israel caused the war isn't sufficient for your argument that the US almost always prioritises Israeli foreign policy over its own.
The US has bombed Yemen and Iran, given Israel munitions to bomb Gaza and Lebanon. US troops were infamously on the ground in Lebanon before getting blown up and departing.
On a scale from complete non-intervention to ground invasions in all the countries mentioned (which is probably what most Israelis would like to happen if they could choose), the US' historical actions in the ME are overwhelmingly closer to the isolationist side of that spectrum.
Just because the Israel lobby doesn't get everything they want all of the time
Didn't you start by saying something very close to this? The particular quote being:
Occasionally the US tries to do something that actually prioritizes American interests over Israel's, the Israel lobby usually nixes this in the end
In any case:
It doesn't mean their influence isn't excessive.
Is much more reasonable than the original position you staked out.
Forget GDP, GDP is just a number.
GDP is a number that correlates pretty directly with the ability of the state to purchase goods and services, such as military equipment, from other states, unless you’re going to argue that money is fake and that allowing Israel to buy arms from Lockheed Martin at market prices using a medium of exchange like dollars is some unexplainable act of charity on the US’ part.
It's not a liquid market, buying more can just make the price go up. Few countries make these things. Israel can't produce munitions at scale because they're a small country, they don't even have a domestic steel industry.
This feels like throwing out random tangents.
Furthermore, military aid always roars up whenever Israel actually needs it, it went up to about $22 billion in the year after October 7th. See here: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIsrael
Suggesting that the market for military equipment isn't as illiquid as you made out. In any case, I'm not sure this is any more evidence of Israel controlling the US government than Ukraine does, given the $61 billion of aid that the US gave them in April 2024.
No, the USAF and RAF literally, directly, provide air defence for Israel directly. US F-16s shot down Iranian missiles attacking Israel. Plus US warships nearby fire their expensive ABMs to defend Israel.
I don't know of any times the US has ever provided direct air defence for Israel beyond the two recent episodes when Iran shot missiles at them, and while they doubtlessly appreciated it, it’s no different to what the US would do if missiles were fired towards Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or any of their other middle eastern allies, and far less than what the US would be obliged by treaty to do if someone started firing missiles at a NATO ally. The US does less for Israel than it would do for Estonia in this context.
Saddam's Iraq was an anti-Israel force. Israel bombed their nuclear reactor in the 80s. In the Gulf War Iraq Scudded Israel. In 2003, the US invaded Iraq, in large part due to false intelligence about WMDs which the Israelis contributed. Plus a bunch of US policymakers talked about how the real reasoning was that Iraq was a threat to Israel. See my comment here: https://www.themotte.org/post/765/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/162796?context=8#context
I’m not even sure this is a motte and bailey, given how unlikely the claim that the US went into Iraq primarily for Israel’s sake, just a bailey and a slightly less rickety bailey. In any case, the claim that US foreign policy is mostly dictated by Israeli interests is so extreme that the Iraq claim could be true and it still wouldn’t be sufficient for your argument given that US hasn’t deployed ground troops to take out any the modern threats facing Israel in Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza or Iran.
Your question was:
Do you think that means they believe Israel is literally twisting the US's arm to do it's bidding,
And the response was:
I'm not dogmatic on whether it's arm-twisting or owning hearts and minds, there's a mix of both going on.
Stating that Israel does twist the US' arm.
ZanarkandAbesFan
15d ago
Occasionally the US tries to do something that actually prioritizes American interests over Israel's, the Israel lobby usually nixes this in the end: the Iran deal for instance.
I mean, the US has never invested ground forces in taking out any military group directly opposing Israel. There are/have been so many of these I'm not sure you could just label them occasional incidences of America not prioritizing Israeli interests at this point.
Merely shutting off aid would be catastrophic for their military,
I'm not sure you understand the actual numbers involved. US annual aid to Israel is $3.8 billion, not a small number, but less than 1% of Israel's GDP. That number has gone up during the recent hostilities, but not to the extent that it would be a catastrophe for Israel to have to pay upfront.
who relies on US provided weapons, satellites, communications and USAF for air defence.
Was this last bit about the USAF some sort of typo?
I'm not dogmatic on whether it's arm-twisting or owning hearts and minds, there's a mix of both going on.
@ArjinFerman There you go.
It's a bit of an extended discussion, but at the bottom of this comment I wrote:
The US started supporting Israel after their victory in the six-day war showcased their value as a military power in a region broadly aligned with the Soviets. By the time of the oil embargo keeping Israel on their side during the cold war felt like the right bet to decision makers in the US. You may think they were wrong, but that they thought this was the correct choice seems more plausible than that they were being controlled by a shadowy cabal who had between 67 and 73 achieved total control of the government.
To which the response was:
There is nothing shadowy about the cabal, it's blatant.
I did ask @RandomRanger a little later on to clarify his position:
I mean, maybe I'm being autistic and interpreting too literally your earlier claim that
I don't know how it's possible for the word ZOG to be problematized like it's some crazy, loopy theory when in the case of the US, it's literally true.
but again, if the position is that all US interests are subordinate to Israeli interests and have been since the mid 20th century, then Israel wouldn't face any threats at all (or at the very least, far fewer). Is what I just described your position, or have I misinterpreted it?
But received no response. He's welcome of course to jump in and make his stance on the topic clear, until then, draw your own conclusion; my interpretation is that if he doesn't think Israel is twisting the US' arm, it's only because Israel already owns the US government.
ZanarkandAbesFan
16d ago
I get the idea of using inclusive language in the UI, but I'm confused by what they mean when they start talking about how to name classes and other programming constructs. Am I somehow missing hordes of developers using racial epithets in their variable names?
ZanarkandAbesFan
16d ago
I understand that all that could apply in theory, but I'm quite sceptical that it explains this writer's behaviour. To be fair to Brown, I'm not actually sure she's publicly aligned herself with one particular form of feminism, but the usual way feminism is expressed by popular figures in the modern world always seems to include some form of "women should be empowered to do/look/behave as they want", so I - perhaps mistakenly - assume that position unless stated otherwise. My sense is that other schools of thought are much more niche and/or dated.
In any case though, the main reason I don't buy it here is the particularly personal way she wrote that passage about Sanchez - her description is pointlessly nasty and seem to come from a place of bitterness rather than of sober reflection. Less like some form of "what she's done to her appearance has negative implications about how women are expected to look to appeal to a man" and more like "I'm angry that a wealthy man would choose a stupid ugly bitch like her".
I think it's a perfectly coherent view - the point is that she (Sanchez) is condemning herself (and in a small way all women) to infantilisation.
I don't think there are many commonly used modern definition of feminism that directly involve policing other women's choices regarding their own appearances. I'd be surprised if Tina Brown has explicitly endorsed this principle.
In any case, this would be slightly more believable if the author had exhibited anything but total contempt for Laura Sanchez. I find it hard to believe Tina Brown is genuinely concerned about Sanchez's wellbeing.
Back to Tina's commentary:
Now that the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini, she’s exuberantly and unapologetically shown that the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.
Ouch.
This Tina Brown seems awfully bitter and judgemental about another woman's appearance for a supposed feminist. I wonder what her problem is.
ZanarkandAbesFan
24d ago
I think a lot of the bias in the pro-Muslim direction is a lack of lived experience with this stuff.
That probably applies to zoomers, but I don't think it explains why the progressive movement (which is dominated by millenials) axiomatically favours Muslims over Jews. I'm pretty sure AOC remembers 9/11.
ZanarkandAbesFan
24d ago
they won't survive when the blue-hairs start being elected to the senate.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. The senate has a conservative bias - I don't see them electing many blue-haired types in the foreseeable future. I agree that this is probably the friendliest administration Israel is going to have for a while but there's probably a lower limit on how strained the relationship is going to get. Unlike almost everyone else in the region, Israel is an actually useful country that's 90% geopolitically aligned with the US in its goals. What's the alternative to being allied with them?
I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.
I assume it's the media environment. Most legacy media is run by progressives, who will side with Muslims against Jews in any conflict, while newer media is either permeated with anti-western propaganda like TikTok or has no guardrails against plain old standard anti-semitic crankery like Twitter.
I lived in Israel in 2019, and as far as I could see, it was a country that would be worth preserving.
I genuinely hope to see you write more about this at some point.
I'm definitely much more liberal than a lot of people here, but this is one thing I just cannot stomach from my own tribe.
Agreed. I'm also more liberal than not (pro-choice, mostly pro-trans, etc) but it seems clear that liberalism as a movement has, IMO, ceded leadership almost entirely to people who don't believe in universalist principles or rights but rather have a strictly hierarchical view of the world (the infamous "progressive stack") where Jews/whites inhabit the bottom rung and black people/muslims are at the top.
ZanarkandAbesFan
25d ago
Watching the DR apply the same "America worst" logic formerly typically used by the antiwar left is certainly amusing.
The woke right strikes again.
Did you ever go back to university? I used to assume from your username (and that you live in Texas IIRC) that you were a chemical engineer or something like that.
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