anti_dan
13hr ago
Hard disagree. Obama or GWB or Clinton could have all gotten honest capability assessments from the military/intelligence community. So could Trump, if he wanted. I am not a fan of the CIA, but I do not think they would push a president they dislike into a bad war just to harm him domestically. I also do not think their median employee is a pink-haired lesbian with a gender studies degree.
This is where I think you are wrong. I don't think capability assessments are the issue here, its all about willpower assessments, which long time employees and generals appear to be the worst at.
There is no way to think there exists some "deep state" (for lack of a better word) general or civilian in the DOD circles would have told Trump that if Iran pirated French vessels in response to airstrikes the French would do nothing. Who would have been that guy? Such a person with such a low opinion of the French would have been driven out by the establishment years ago. They'd never make general while openly stating that NATO is a bunch of wimps who would rather just mail Iran nukes then lift a finger to stop them obtaining nukes.
While Obama and GWB have fired some high-ranking generals, under Trump 10% of the top brass was fired or sidelined. I surmise this is not conductive to an atmosphere of honest feedback. "Mr Hegseth, I think engaging Iran on this scale will not result in regime change, but drag the US into a long-winding and unpopular war" is unlikely to be received very well -- probably he would tell you to get your testosterone levels checked because you are lacking the Spartan warrior spirit or something.
I agree this feedback would be risky under trump and hegseth, but I just disagree that it is relevant. The Iran war is a military success despite having no real end date. In fact, if the question is the lack of end date, it is the lifelong employees that will be advocating against the best ways to bring about an end date, such as destroying power plants, Kharg Island, "bridge day" as it was once floated as an idea, etc.
And on the other side, its not like there was a lack of people telling Trump not to do the war, almost all reporting indicates that Vance was opposed to the war on the grounds it would be unpopular.
anti_dan
13hr ago
And NATO was not going to help either, as they don't feel any inclination to help dig trump out of the hole he created.
I think this understates the problem. I think a large part of the failures of the Iran war were predictable, but probably not by people in the mainstream, and probably not people in the Trump admin. I have very large outlier views on the matters of Iran and Iran's relations with other countries, which I think would have been necessary to predict what actually happened.
Because yes, NATO not helping is predictable, they barely ever do anything.
What no one in just about ANY mainstream, left or right, warroom would have predicted is that France, Germany, England, etc would be just fine with Iran pirating boats destined for their countries and/or flagged to their countries and/or crewed by people from their countries. Which is what we have seen. Iran bombs a tanker bound for Germany, and Germany just shrugs, or even more derangedly, blames the USA. Its like blaming the SWAT team when a highjacker intentionally kills a hostage during the raid. But this is Europe's mentality now. And IMO not predictable by any mainstream people.
Unless you understood the JCPOA as I did, as tacit approval by all the signatories for Iran to obtain nukes and continue terrorist operations while obtaining nukes for the purpose of deploying them against Israel and ultimately the USA. If you think that is what all those countries actually wanted, then you understand why they act so limply while their ships are bombed by a hostile power.
anti_dan
1d ago
If he really just had the flu he would have been posting daily vlog updates. There effeminately is a coverup going on, its just not the coverup the crazies first latched onto.
anti_dan
2d ago
it won't help Trump
This is kind of irrelevant. The investigation's purpose isn't to help Trump, that isn't what the Trump DOJ does. It had pursued a few vindictive cases like Comey on direct orders, but largely the Trump DOJ is not political in its investigations and prosecutions. They probably didn't even start this investigation which likely started as some Dem-on-Dem squabbling.
anti_dan
4d ago
"Public entertainment" is the least charitable way to frame it. It is mostly public informing. People should see the states' actions clearly.
anti_dan
4d ago
Ececuting a murderer should be an exciting day for the people. Properly, there shouldn't be that many murderers in their community. This is complicated in that we now live in a multi billion person world with many multi million person cities, but the base truth is the same: If someone kills a person or persons in good standing in your community, that evil persons execution is going to be a day of celebration. The defense and appeals bar has ruined this by delaying execution for decades at this point, and a nationally seen execution is historically unheard of, but... arent the victims of Islamic terror all of America? Shouldn't we all have the reminder that Sharia is evil and the enemy of America just as a small town of 900 people in Massachusetts in 1830 would have been reminded that killing the butcher is evil? Shouldn't we be able to rejoice in evil being exterminated just as they did when a rapist in 1910 was executed?
Or must we go along with the people who's role in the world is fighting biology and reality and deny that we think killing bad people is good and pretend to cry when bad people go to prison? Should we keep letting dogs die so coyotes can live?
anti_dan
9d ago
I concur.
I have been railing against the consent framework for sex for years at this point. And what is this case but yet another example of its complete failure and inability to deal with tricky cases. Lets be clear how bad this case is for the consent framework: Even if everyone involved was wearing body cams and every room was equipped with security cams, you would probably not be able to determine consent for any of the encounters beyond reasonable doubt.
Obviously since none of that is even available, the case is even trickier, and shows how consent fails so hard as a system. Consent is soft and subjective. For something as serious as rape you need a hard and objective system. If you are a trad, something as hard as marriage only. If you are a licentious inclined person something like, "entered a bedroom without force and allowed the door to be closed" works pretty well.
Consent, just never works. Or rather, it works well in all the easy cases, but EVERY system works well in the easy cases. And consent fails most often in the hard cases.
anti_dan
11d ago
Ukraine is petitioning to be a vassal state of the EU, which means its leadership wants wokeness (long term) and demographic replacement (long term). There is no other result of being in the EU.
anti_dan
14d ago
Infants are much different than toddlers, yes. OTOH, my infant ninja kicked his way out of his way out of a bassinet at 4 months.
anti_dan
16d ago
As someone who was in a bleeding edge content guild during TBC I have often been tempted by that sort of thing, but really, I just wish I could have my old guild back and heal with my dwarf paladin. Starting over doesn't interest me much. Maybe if I had a dedicated 5 man squad that we re-rolled horde (which I've never done seriously) and just did dungeons till endgame and then started a guild. I guess? But how would I even do THAT when I have a kiddo that now thinks his bedtime is after mine?
anti_dan
16d ago
This is almost certainly a performative move to keep the eye of sauron (the feds) off him. The current admin is very philosemetic and has been suing people left and right for letting muslims and their supporters harass jews. Whether on campus or otherwise. I expect the left wing antisemites to return to having a backbone on hating jews domestically when another Democrat takes the Oval Office.
anti_dan
17d ago
Weren't the frat houses set up by a Christian monoculture nation ? This is extreme, but frats taking advantage of drunk girls who wake up with no memory of the night before is incredibly white christian coded.
Frats are explicitly Greek, or one could extend that to Greco-Roman, the other side of the western canon that sometimes works with and sometimes against the Christian side. In any case, the modern frat culture emerged in the 60s and 70s, deep into the feminist era, when savvy pervs realized being male feminists = getting laid.
anti_dan
17d ago
Killing someone in a bar fight is not murder in most cases. And certainly not in just cases. Murder requires intent, as does sex crime. That is why they are so charged. Its possible to be a lil too drunk and punch a guy a little too hard and he hits his head on the table. Its not possible to be just a lil too drunk and get your penis hard then trip while trying to kiss a girl and end up with your penis inside her while she struggles until your completion without knowing.
But this is, of course, why the consent framing of sex is a complete failure with these edge cases (and edge cases are the only hard ones, which deems the whole consent framework a failure with regards to sex crimes). People imagine sex crimes as intentional acts of violence and sexual penetration, but the more common sort of allegation is an act of dubious intent with no objective indicators of violence.
anti_dan
17d ago
However, when it comes to actual, concrete accusations, things come apart. Circumstances are usually far more ambiguous than "creep jumps out of the bushes", accused rapists are often otherwise respectable members of their community, and different people have radically different views around consent and sexual ethics. You've got very stringent views of consent, where both parties need to be sober and vocally assenting. And on the flip side, you've got very loose views (the extreme cases being things like "being alone in a room with a man is consent for whatever happens next" or thinking that women secretly want to be raped).
Sex crimes are certainly some of the hardest to prove from a prosecutors perspective. While I was a prosecutor, I had a brief stint in sex crimes (a bit ironically against my wishes) and there are only two cases I touched that I'd describe as slam dunks. One was a CSAM case were the guy left his phone with the material on it at a bar, on camera, and had thousands of texts etc soliciting, purchasing, etc. The other was a case where a kid was raped in a public bathroom on a secret camera set up by the rapist that a 3rd party found the camera and called the police. The rest, I think I know what happened, but it is certainly hard to prove.
anti_dan
19d ago
Nathan Fielder is involved with this. This immediately makes it questionable how much of this is a documentary vs. a movie and what genre it is, also how much Holmes is involved in the "joke." If you don't know who Nathan is I really recommend looking into it, a few YouTubers have multi hour long videos that make you question reality. The guy is doing some really interesting performance art and/or is a wild person.
Indeed. Nathan For You vibes are strong with the teaser.
anti_dan
22d ago
Its a supply demand things currently. The demand is high because they see the large Hispanic % on the census. But most of those are pretty crappy. So they give big bonuses
anti_dan
22d ago
This feels like more of a dumb question but why did we have any significant amount of affirmative action for Hispanics in the US?
Because Affirmative Action is about satisfying a perceived aesthetic. Colleges thought diversity in line with population percentages was aesthetically a good, so they pursued it, and really didn't care if anyone was "cheating" or they weren't actually achieving their perfect brochures IRL on campus. They wanted the stats to look like their perception.
I don't think there really is much more to it. If there was we would have seen much more sophisticated systems compared to just giving free points (which were explicit in the UMichigan case in the early 2000s, and only since have become hidden, but with the same results). Its not like ADOS were getting lots of points while Nigerian sons of oligarchs were not, or Mexican daughters of construction workers were getting more points that the grandson of Peronist leadership. Its just all paper aesthetics, with a bit of an extra f-you thrown in for white rural and urban males.
anti_dan
27d ago
Former member of parliament and considered far right even in Israel. Greaaaaat example. It's like citing Jamal Bowman as indicative of median American views on taxes.
anti_dan
28d ago
I am anti-Anthropic because I think Anthropic is clearly run by and staffed by people who are deranged, and thus couldn't produce an aligned AI under any circumstances (same for open AI of course). Thus anything that leave a possibility of them being supplanted is good, and regulatory capture would stop that possibility, whence it is bad.
anti_dan
28d ago
Think about your nearest urban center. Then think about how it would look if 80% of spaces in it contained at least one valid target. A weapons cache in every mailbox.
There isn't much single family housing in Gaza. I'd expect almost every apartment building to have a cache or combatant in it, yes.
Each store clerk a combatant
This is pretty much true IMO. People vastly underestimate the popularity of Hamas and terrorism amongst Palestinians. Plus, how is this store being stocked? By Hamas handouts from what they get from NGOs. There is no domestic production of good in Gaza so the only way you can run a store is if you are cozy with Hamas, you probably let them store weapons in the larder from time to time and fund their operations with your sales as well through kickbacks and bribes, otherwise they cut you and find a new store owner that plays ball.
Multiply this over the ~100 km2 controlled by Hamas. Would it look like the pictures?
I was, charitably to myself, excluding the already destroyed/abandoned parts, and I guess the camps where people are frisked before going in.
See, that 1% makes a big difference. Americans have the privilege of being choosy about our involvement. Support for Palestine is almost entirely predicted on whether one thinks the collateral damage is avoidable.
I dont think it is, but this also isn't about being picky about involvement, if America and Europe went to true neutral status Israel would be significantly worse off WRT to America, and slightly better off WRT Europe, but Gaza would just die on their own without Israel having to do anything. You have to be actively pro-Gaza to get to this point!
anti_dan
28d ago
Much longer than Gaza would. And fairly irrelevant to the point I am making.
anti_dan
28d ago
What is your disagreement with my factual assertions regarding the armament status of the hospitals and schools of Gaza?
In a directly causal way, this is true. Iran realized it could do this thing only because they were so desperate.
In the real world, Iran could always do this thing. Ever since the Euros basically sanctioned it we have seen it proliferate through the mid east. Imagine if Israel shuts down Suez Canal traffic after a Gazan Hamas attack. Will the French blame Hamas then? You and I both know that is silly.
We had hundreds of years of countries enforcing maritime norms abandoned because Euros are wimps now.
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