domain:rifters.com
anti_dan
4hr ago
It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.
I really don't think it would. I would describe their current conduct as studiously avoiding the general populace, but the nature of the place of combat means even an 'A' student is going to kill or injure a ton of "civilians" (a term I hesitate to use when the population has elected Hamas, and the only people who would have a chance if another election were held were people calling Hamas too soft on killing Jews).
DirtyWaterHotDog
4hr ago
For Hall of Mosses, remember to get there early. Parking can be tricky if you get there past 8-9 am.
ulyssessword
4hr ago
I've never seen a minivan on a jobsite here (working on new-built commercial/industrial buildings). It's all either pickup trucks or full-sized vans.
faceh
4hr ago
High Civilian death tolls according to whom.
I have such a hard time determining anything accurate here b/c both sides have major pressure to lie. And very early on Hamas got caught in an apparently blatant lie about a Rocket hitting a hospital, leading to civilian casualties. Note that Gazan authorities ALSO misstated the number of injured and dead!
So now I have to take all their claims with a veritable pound of salt.
Whoops.
And of course the October 7 event was specifically a bunch of Hamas warriors attacking, massacring and kidnapping civilians. So I'm pretty inclined to say "A pox on both your houses" for the duration of the conflict. Yes, I am aware that U.S. tax dollars and weapons are streaming to the Israeli side of the fight.
Finally, the incidents I CAN generally verify include a dude in the U.S. Setting Jews on Fire and another shooting two unarmed Jewish Embassy staffers.
Don't know of any incidents in the U.S. going the other way.
anti_dan
4hr ago
Caplan isn't that much older than I am, so he's mostly seen the same wars I have. These have been predominantly wars in Islamic countries, where his argument doesn't hold much grip on reality. We are talking about Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, now potentially Iran. These are territories where "Death to Israel" holds 90%+ popularity and "Death to America" is only a few clicks behind.
Mantergeistmann
4hr ago
Also, as I understand it, the government of Ukraine doesn't make it a deliberate tactic to hope their own population gets killed so they can get PR wins which bring international pressure on their behalf.
Mantergeistmann
4hr ago
I mean, you could say that avout any ceasefire. Most of them don't take effect immediately, and a lot of people keep their guns firing until the alotted time for various reasons (some professional, some personal).
Things will start to make much more sense once you understand that we are not playing chess (5-d, 3-d, or otherwise) Mr. Spock. We are playing poker.
ulyssessword
4hr ago
By my reading, only "officially", while the "true" agreement is for a simultaneous ceasefire as described in the previous sentence.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Hispanic men have a reputation for poor and/or reckless driving at times when the lower working class is going home from work(3:00-3:30 end times are pretty typical), but there's no real indication as to causation- driving in Latin America is notoriously poor(as everywhere else in the developing world) so it might be continuing cultural stuff other than the idea of cracking open a cold one on the way home from work. Presumably if that was the common thread DR twitter would mention the open container violations in their regular noting of an immigrant getting into a wreck in a school carpool line he had no business being in.
My intuition is also that 1) drunk driving accidents are disproportionately from 'not going home from a bar(think friend's house, family get together, etc)' because the barflies a) have a tolerance and b) stay later so there's fewer other cars to get into accidents with, and non-barflies are likely to have a plan for getting home safely from the bar and 2) far less drunk driving is due to straight spirits than you'd think because American heavy drinkers sensitive enough to cost to choose straight hard liquor are also sensitive enough to cost to not be doing their drinking in bars much. IME regular heavy drinkers seem to have a code to stick to beer or mixed drinks in social settings, and there's very strong ethnic patterns to drink of choice to begin with that override maximizing alcohol per dollar.
faceh
5hr ago
Of course, modern pickups are about as fast as sporty cars of the past: a V8 F150 in 2025 gets to 60 in about the same amount of time as a V8 Mustang from 1995. They're not exactly slow, they cruise at highway speeds and pull out no problem.
Can confirm. I've rented pickup trucks for cross-state drives, and when they're hauling nothing and you shift them into "sport" mode, they accelerate effortlessly and will blow doors on most other vehicles that aren't trucks or sports cars.
And since muscle cars are functionally illegal these days, a truck with a giant engine is arguably the only way you can GET that 'performance' for an affordable price.
But you have to be fair and also include repair costs in the delta between owning an efficient sedan vs. a big ol' truck.
That's the big reason I'd prefer to rent them for now rather than own.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
5hr ago
A: "Why is this marathon runner sweating so much? I would expect them to not want to be sweating. Do they not realize that sweating is unpleasant?"
B: "They're sweating because they are running a marathon. The sweat is an adaptive strategy that makes them better at running marathons. If they did not sweat, they would be worse at running marathons, and probably not be able to do so at all."
A: "Isn't that what I just said?"
B: "No. It really isn't."
IsItPleasing
5hr ago
I'm considering getting a truck as my next vehicle (currently have a crossover) because there have been a handful of times in the last year when it would have been convenient for moving bulky items. It would also open up a new world of possibilities - I could get into several different (manly) hobbies if I had the means to pick up the materials needed at my convenience (e.g. woodworking).
anti_dan
5hr ago
Concur. He legitimately got his first and most important prediction wildly incorrect.
WhiningCoil
5hr ago
One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.
Compounding on this aspect of the narrative, I see people theory crafting that Trump denied Israel their cause celebre to continue strikes against Iran. So they get ahead of Israel, without bombing any hospitals or apartment buildings, and then try to make it seem like everyone is even now, capiche?
I have no fucking clue how much of the theory crafting I see is true. I have no clue if this truce is even real. I've seen reports than Iran is reporting they know nothing about it, and other reporting saying it was back channeled through Qatar.
I've been trying to disengage from politics as best I'm able. Which isn't very. But an effort is being made. Largely because the information space is being too polluted to even be worth the effort of forming cogent or accurate models to discuss. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm waiting until the midterms. Either my life will be better or it won't. World War 3 will have begun, or it won't. Whatever day to day nonsense happens between now and then I'm powerless to effect, and seemingly being lied to from all directions.
I will say, re: the theory that Trump used the strikes to get ahead of Israel, if any of this shit is real, Trump is either the luckiest fucking man on the face of the Earth, or he truly is a 4d genius. If it's all bullshit, well, it's not that much different that Biden just announcing the that the Equal Rights Amendment passed with practically zero basis for actually asserting it. We're fully into Clown World already, and I'm not going to hold it too against Trump if he's bold faced lying and making shit up out of whole clothe like all the rest. At least he isn't trying to sterilize and mutilate children.
Gaashk
5hr ago
Interesting, I wonder if there's any way to tell whether that practice is contributing to crashes very much.
My intuition would be no, in comparison to drinking tequila or vodka at a bar, but maybe I'm wrong.
YE_GUILTY
5hr ago
Half an hour ago, Iran's foreign minister said no ceasefire. Fifteen minutes ago, Iran's foreign minister said ceasefire.
On the topic of premature declarations, the second would be a mightily overconfident thing to say if no agreement were actually reached, so it sounds like there's something real. But given how today's gone, for all I know, nukes could be flying before I hit "comment."
anti_dan
5hr ago
Trump, Johnson, and Thune are not closely aligned with the "woke right". Harris, Schumer, and Pelosi are closely aligned with the woke left.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
5hr ago
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
I see, regularly, construction workers(you can tell by the clothes- expensive boots not taken care of, everything else absolutely cheap and dirtier than you'd believe, often with things like sheetrock mud that you can only run into on a construction site. Super casual but very high coverage.) walk into the QT or 7/11, buy a soda and a cold beer, then pour the soda out and put the beer into its cup before getting into their car and driving home. That's not counting those who buy it in a can, open it, and then drive off. Cops tell me they enforce open container laws semiregularly.
It's definitely class and ethnicity coded- lower working class(you can tell by the vehicles) hispanic men are most of the offenders.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
I pray that it is real.
thejdizzler
5hr ago
The Jewish immigration to Israel began long before the British mandate. The first Allayah occurred when the area was still an Ottoman province. The British gave some support to the Jews, but the mandate administration was openly actually quite hostile to the idea of Jewish state. They were the only security council member not to recognize Israeli statehood before the War of Independence (or the Nabka as the sore losers like to call it), and cracked down pretty hard on immigration and weapons imports before 1948.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
-- I'm extremely personally non-violent, I haven't been in a fistfight in a good decade or more at this point and avoid personal violence, and politically I am typically anti-war; but we should vastly expand the legal and social acceptability of mutual combat and "fighting words" defenses to normalize fighting between men.
-- I'm anti-tariff, but I personally try to buy MiUSA (or at least MiFirstWorld) items, and think we should make it a goal to foster and preserve at least some American manufacturing across all categories of goods.
-- I'm in favor of high legal immigration, and of a fine-based or Jizya oriented path to citizenship for aliens already in the country; it's a national travesty to have illegal immigrants holding jobs and owning homes in the USA. Just not enforcing the laws and not living with the consequences of laws that have been passed is insane.
No, that's just how human psychology works
If he says "X happens", a response of "Yeah that's how people work" is an agreement that X happens, is it not?
Earnestly keeping in mind the pain suffered by the innocent in the prosecution of a just/necessary/Good war is just asking for your enemies to act like puppy-killing utility demons. That's what dehumanization is for, so you can fight and win without being hobbled and cripped (and eventually, raped, murdered and genocided) by your own suicidal empathy.
That can serve as an explanation for why they do it, but it doesn't dispute Caplan's claim whatsoever then, it's in agreement with it! That instead of taking a somber "sad but necessary" view, they appeal to collective guilt and laugh about it.
You frame your comment like a dissent, while the actual substance is the same just under a different framing.
You know. The deep state. Them. The powers that be.
More seriously, if Trump convenes the extremely serious military people and they present him a limited menu of military actions he can do that is basically the same set of plans they've had for 20 years, that's the MIC at work. The names and faces can change but the dusty binder from the drawer stays the same.
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