domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
About as insightful a comment as "Eh, they are not 'free Palestine' raped yet" would have been about Oct 7th.
There are several parallel subthreads already discussing to what extent the starvation actually affects Hamas, and you choose to ignore them and instead post this Twitter-level dunk.
Sunshine
1d ago
It isn't necessary to starve Hamas, merely to deprive them of money. Hamas's allies in the various NGOs and aid organizations help them steal most of the food that comes into Gaza, far more than they can eat themselves. They then sell that food to the starving civilians at high prices, which nets them millions of dollars to fund their war effort.
Israel is under no obligation to help the UN finance a terrorist organization.
Instead, Hamas is not affected by starvation at all, because where they are in control they will obviously take what food they want.
That's exactly why Israel needs to do it: it is impossible to prevent civilians from starving because Hamas takes all the food. Israel taking the food affects only Hamas (although there are plenty of civilians to point to, who will be starved regardless of what Israel does but who can be blamed on Israel.)
Starvation is a bit like firing a machine gun towards a Hamas militant hiding behind dozens of rows of Gazan kids
Which you may have to do (at least to the extent of getting blamed for killing them). Hamas hiding behind civilians and forcing Israel to kill them, or to look like they're trying to kill them, has been a ubiquitous tactic already.
dj_girthquake
1d ago
I'll start with some comments on your review.
Made in Abyss: Great worldbuilding and it has a very nice visual style. I don't love the writing though, and veers heavily into misery porn, where it tries to create emotional depth by simply taking the characters through as much fucked up shit as possible, making it feel emotionally manipulative. Still, the world is really unique, detailed and fascinating and I am fairly curious about why the abyss is there.
One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100: One Punch Man is great and I agree with the recommendation for season one, but I definitely think Mob Psycho is the better series of the two. One Punch Man is a lot of fun, but I think Mob Psycho is much better written, with more interesting characters and character dynamics. The last season of Mob Psycho in perhaps not quite as good as the rest, but I still rate it as one of the best (and perhaps the best written) anime series I've come across.
Some further recommendations of my own:
Dorohedoro: The main character is a man with amnesia and a lizard head and the story follows him and his attempt to figure out who he is. It is set in a beatiful and detailed cyberpunkish city where the people are oppressed by magicians who live in a parallel dimension. This is an amazingly weird and funny show, with a unique world, that it populates with characters that turn out to be very different and much more interesting than the initial impression suggests. It sort of reminds me of early 2000s New Weird fantasy (think China Mieville), and it also has a lot in common with Arcane, but without being a complete, borderline unwatchable, cliche fest. Only one season so far, but the second season is expected to be released this year.
Golden Kamuy: This show is set in northern Japan shortly after the Russo-Japanese in 1904-05. It follows a war veteran and a girl who belongs to the local Ainu hunter gatherer population, and how they get drawn into a hunt for a huge golden treasure, trying to find it before the yakuza or the military. This show is simply great. It is well written, with really strong, complex characters and it manages to combine a unique setting with humor and an interesting and unpredictable plot. If I were to recommend one anime, I think it would be this one.
Heavenly Delusions: This is a slow-burn postapocalyptic show that follows a boy and a girl on their travels through a Japan almost completely destroyed by a mysterious disaster. This is a well written show that does something that is way too uncommon in anime: it actually has subtle exposition and doesn't take every chance it gets to over-explain everything in excruciating detail. Instead it trusts the viewer to figure out what has happened to the world and who the main characters are without too much handholding. On top of this it has some of the best art I've seen in an anime series. There is only one season so far, but I'm looking forward to see where this show goes.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
Israel is a small country, and they can only afford spending this much of their economic power on military before they would start looking like North Korea. This whole narrative that the aid isn't actually necessary because our allies are strong and can win on their own just fine (but we must urgently Do The Right Thing and send more of it!), seen also in the context of Ukraine, is among the more intellectually galling aspects of Western propaganda.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
That's because they have a country that isn't going to suddenly decide they don't belong there.
Except, you know, that millions of eastern Europeans literally did find themselves in that situation at various times between the end of WWI and 2022.
I get what you're trying to say but altered borders so that Russians find themselves outside Russia, or Poles outside Poland, has been a pretty constant problem.
2D3D
1d ago
Why is Palestine entitled to Israeli food? They can't pay for it, and actively stymie distribution of any food that arrives onshore. Thefts are unattributable because Hamas keeps its uniforms only for parades not for enforcement or fighting Israel - which it has largely stopped doing only because its proximate threat is the Gaza clans that now have a chance of fighting for their own slice of the narrow pies.
However you slice it, the governing body of the Gaza refuses surrender yet demands food for its own people from the Israelis it swears to destroy. When Armenia held Nagarno it supplied the enclave, not the Azerbaijanis. Israel ceded occupying power decades ago, yet the Gazans have expected Israeli water food and electricity without any expectation of paying for it even when waging war. If Gazans want to not starve perhaps kicking Hamas out might help.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
I have argued before that the morally obvious solution after WWII would have been to create the state on the territory of the Axis powers. The Gdansk/NE German corner would have been the obvious choice given how much of a Jewish homeland the South Baltic already had been, and the German population was already getting purged from there either way, but if Soviet buy-in could not be obtained, then Holstein (putting them on the bloc border as a tripwire) or even Swabia (putting them next to neutral Switzerland) would also have been a reasonable option.
(I know @Southkraut hates this idea for obvious reasons, but there is a causal path from Israel in its current borders to US Middle East policy to refugees being generated and from insufficient direct German atonement after WWII to German self-loathing to refugees being accepted. Would giving some clay to the Jews back then really have been worse than slowly giving all the clay to the Arabs now?)
Besides, even for broadly the current location, there would have been better solutions (proper ethnic cleansing followed by the establishment of a firm border, not the current slowly expanding blob with partially incorporated territories).
(Also @ZanarkandAbesFan)
I don't know London pay scales but as someone angling to be a VP next year married to someone job shopping for a psychiatry job I can say the pay is comparable with maybe advantage to the doctor.
The absolute minimum for a VP in a first-tier London investment bank would be £100k including bonus, and that is in non-revenue-generating roles (quant, risk, IT etc.). Corporate financiers or traders are usually going to be earning £150-200k at the point of promotion from associate to VP. In both cases compensation will be rising fast if they continue to perform.
Compare a newly-promoted NHS consultant on £108k including a small London allowance, with no possibility of a large payrise for 3-4 years after that.
Both the newly-promoted VP and the newly-promoted consultant are going to be about 30 if they are on the standard high-performer career track.
Interestingly, a quick Google suggests that a newly-promoted attending in the US would be on an about $170k, which I would say is also at the low end for a newly-promoted bulge bracket VP - the difference is that the US doctor has much more upside potential and can reasonably expect their income to rise to the attending average of c.$300k after a few years. Still not as much upside as the banker, of course.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
DM'd!
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
I do actually know that there isn't just one VP haha, but yeah, that could be better phrased.
I can say the pay is comparable with maybe advantage to the doctor.
Really? My friend claimed that his sister, who isn't a VP yet, makes ~75k, I'd assume the guy would make significantly more. I make closer to two-thirds of that, and so would most psych residents.
I looked up figures for actual VPs, and the range seemed to be well north of 85k and if in investment banking, >165k! (not to mention bonuses greater than 225k)
Even accounting for COL, that beats me or most doctors senior to me.
I don't recall if you're British, or living there, so trust me, doctors here absolutely do not make as much as their peers in the States :(
incognitomaorach
1d ago
The UK was doing well, or at least okay, until the middle 2000s. It was growing at a rate somewhat comparable to the US, or at least other Commonwealth Anglosphere nations. A British person could, with a straight face, claim to have a comparable standard of living.
Britain was exceeding the US standard of living in the middle 2000s. This was largely an artefact of exchange rates and over financialisaton but it was common place for middle class families to not just holiday in the US but specifically go there for shopping trips. Semi-regular trips to Florida, shopping in New York and so on was within reach for swathes of the PMC and even upper-blue collar workers as the exchange rate was 2:1. I distinctly remember video games that would cost £30 costing $30 (and thus being half price). This era, combined with the standard "free healthcare and no shootings" mantra that Europeans love, meant we could genuinely argue for a better standard of living than our cousins over the pond. This all collapsed from 2007-2009 and never recovered. Obviously it was an unsustainable period in retrospect, fuelled by sell offs and credit, but you didn't hear of people leaving to go to Australia and such in that New Labour era. Now that world seems a million miles away.
incognitomaorach
1d ago
Asahi in the UK is actually brewed at what was/is the Fuller's Brewery site in West London. Now I thought that Peroni that we got in the UK is imported from Italy directly, although I've seen some conflicting information that it might be brewed in Scotland. Regardless, I don't think that the Asahi-Peroni identity holds true in Britain at least. All the other "foreign" supermarket lagers (except some of the Czech ones) are brewed in the UK, mostly up near Stoke and in the North West.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Amazingly enough, what is permissible conduct in wartime has varied greatly based on tech levels. "So after we won, we killed all the males and forced the women into marriages with us" was SOP a few thousand years ago, yet today it would be considered a war crime. For millennia, the sacking of cities involved the looting, murder and rape of civilians for the crime of living in a city which had not surrendered.
Before railroads were a thing, food logistics were often a big operational factor. The only way to move a large army to the land without them starving was to "forage", which meant sending out looting parties to nearby civilian settlements to steal their grain supplies and likely condemn them to starvation. Sieges fall into the same time.
But civilization marches on. Wartime rape is considered a war crime. Food logistics are not a big issue in most contexts. International humanitarian law recognizes that starvation is no longer a valid weapon of war.
Most damningly, just about nobody believes that starvation is effective against Hamas. If for every kid which starved to death, a Hamas militant also starved to death, I would grudgingly grant you that this might be a better way to defeat them than bombs. Instead, Hamas is not affected by starvation at all, because where they are in control they will obviously take what food they want. "Join Hamas, feed your family" is probably a great recruiting tool. Assuming they have food stashes, you would have to starve most of Gaza to death before the shortages will really affect them.
Starvation is a bit like firing a machine gun towards a Hamas militant hiding behind dozens of rows of Gazan kids. While you might claim that the actual goal is to hit the Hamas guy, it is very predictable that all your bullets will hit the kids and be stopped long before they reach the baddie.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
America and to a lesser extent Britain are enabling Israeli strategic incoherence, providing air cover.
If such aid was not given and this was signaled well in advance, do you still think they would need to wrap up quickly, or could they just have spent more on military and gotten the same result?
FtttG
1d ago
The "completely unruly" part is doing the heavy lifting here. The only reason Hamas and the broader Palestinian movement keeps waging its pointless self-destructive war against Israel is because of its quixotic belief that Israel could ever be defeated militarily. As Richard Hanania argues, Israel must crush Palestinian hopes. 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. If Israel can achieve a durable peace in the region without having to resort to genocide or ethnic cleansing, I'm sure they'd vastly prefer that over the alternative.
Corvos
1d ago
My area is broadly split between the locals who bought houses before the price jumped and the non-doms who bought the houses with oil money. The non-doms follow rhythms I don’t quite know but I believe they aren’t here all the time, they come for the fashionable seasons.
This particular block of apartments is aimed at upper-level workers seconded for a few months from places like Dubai. English people wouldn’t and couldn’t pay the premium, they’d either buy or go somewhere more affordable.
I would love to get a drink if you’re up for it. Possibly other Motte Londoners might be interested, or they might prefer to preserve OpSec. Let’s PM to arrange?
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
1d ago
This hugely depends on the degree of association between the group messing with Americans and the government of the territory they operate off. The Taliban were clearly happy to host Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Quaeda training camps and they got regime changed, but the US was never willing to engage in total war against Afghanistan. Mohammed Atta actually planned 9-11 out of Germany, but nobody supported punitive operations against Germany because he was very obviously operating without the support of the German government and people.
The 7th October attackers were not uniformed Hamas soldiers, but only because they were perfidiously fighting out of uniform. Hamas publicly praised the attacks and boasted about its responsibility for them. That level of involvement is closer to "Japan did Pearl Harbor" than "Afghanistan did 9-11." And the US was absolutely up for total war against Japan after Pearl Harbor.
Thoroughlygruntled
1d ago
Man achieved barbecue perfection with the invention of the Weber Kettle in 1952. If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Great write-up. Thanks for putting in the considerable amount of time it must have taken. I read Mere Christianity many years ago a few times along with whatever else was in the small box set. The Abolition of Man, The Problem of Pain, and I think Screwtape Letters, and eventually A Grief Observed, and all were extremely readable in a way I have often wished other writers, more prone to a desire to be clever or profound, would mimic. Now I feel like I should read them again.
Edit: Or, perhaps, listen
Israel may do what it pleases (as is the right of a sovereign state) but it doesn't necessarily follow that Israel should be given tens of billions in supplementary US military aid, on top of already existing military aid. I don't accuse you of calling for this but Israeli strategy can only sensibly be considered in context, just like how one can't look at Hamas or the Houthis as sole actors. $18 billion in just one year, more since then. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-military-aid-for-israel-tops-17-9-billion-since-last-oct-7
America and to a lesser extent Britain are enabling Israeli strategic incoherence, providing air cover and munitions. If it weren't for US munitions the Israelis would need to wrap things up quickly because they would not be able to prosecute this extended, bizarre campaign.
What is this military aid buying? It's buying enemies in the Islamic world, it's depleting Western arsenals of air defence missiles. Years of THAAD and SM-3 production down the drain defending Israel. In the short term these air defence missiles are priceless, there's no capacity to quickly ramp up production.
It makes no sense to send aid to Gaza so they can survive and send munitions to Israel so they can kill them. Better to do nothing at all.
If the best you can say in favour of this country that it offers its citizens better survival rates than the civil war Iraq or Syria
Actually, I can do better. It has the 20th highest life expectancy in the world, ranking above numerous European nations including many in Western Europe. Its intentional homicide rate is marginally higher than most of Western Europe, but given that these murders are overwhelmingly concentrated among the Arab citizenry, the country seems to be doing a pretty good job at its stated mission of serving as a safe haven for Jews in particular.
Notice the discontinuity with your comparison.
Hamas invaded Israel, committed a bunch of war crimes, and now has no method nor seemingly intention of feeding their own people. Which apparently is Israel's fault?
You're comparing Hamas' crimes to their incompetence, and in so doing illustrating my point.
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