domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
Israel had 86.5% favourability for the IDF last year, seemingly up to 93% now but I'm only finding paywalled articles. Unfortunately there are rarely polls that measure trust in the system of government modulo the parts that it allows the public to influence (since favourability for the Netanyahu administration would more accurately correspond to something like favourability of the current Hamas leadership).
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
If they didn't fight, it would be October 7 constantly.
Well, that's the question. Hamas would certainly attempt October 7 constantly. But "Oct 7 was a fluke caused by an unforced error in the Israeli defense strategy, Hamas did not have the capacity to achieve regular Oct 7-level attacks and Oct 7 itself could easily have failed if Israel had put in a bit more effort" is a reasonable claim.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1d ago
Great news! Now that we established Israelis live long enough and we shouldn’t care about them dying of causes which aren’t statistically important, we can finally stop sending them massive amounts of direct and indirect aid. Imagine how many Africans can be saved from aids in exchange for stopping a single ballistic missile hitting Tel Aviv.
"Eh, they are not 'free Palestine' raped yet"
If Hamas had the military power to actually accomplish this, that would make their actions less pointlessly evil. The fact that Hamas' power is limited to terrorizing a few unarmed civilians and then scampering away in impotent terror when the real soldiers show up is, itself, the problem. The fact that they're too weak to have any chance of victory is the reason why their futile war crimes are so heinous. It's one thing to commit a necessary evil in order to liberate your people from oppression. It's another, much worse thing to commit a pointless evil just for the sake of doing it.
As Talleyrand once said of another act of self-destructive violence against civilians: "It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake."
5434a
1d ago
tried anything doughy
I'd never considered that you could smoke bread. This is going in my culinary bucket list next to pickled cheese.
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Why is Palestine entitled to Israeli food?
Well, human rights come to mind. Rather, they're the reason individual Palestinians are entitled to food generally, whatever it takes to get it to them - not Palestine as a political entity, and not Israeli food in particular.
Palestinians, whose relation with Hamas is between hostile and resigned for lack of better options... Israelis, who have a broadly voluntary and enthusiastic relation with their government
According to polls of Palestinians conducted between October 31st and November 7th, 2023, support for Hamas stood at 76%; for the Al-Aqsa Briagades at 80%; for Palestinian Islamic Jihad at 84%; and for the Al-Qassam Brigades at 89%. In 2023, Netanyahu's approval rating among Israelis stood at 47%.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
Honestly, if we had just donated Berlin or, fuck it, all of Germany north-east of and including Berlin to the Jews and considered ourselves quit of any debt after that, sure, fine, that'd have been a good enough deal in retrospect. Better than the near-century of guilt-mongering we had instead. But I doubt it. The propaganda game has taken on a life of its own even as far back as WW1, and Germany was going to be the villain for some time yet no matter what. With the Soviet propaganda and infiltration machine doing its thing during the cold war on top of the earlier propaganda, the WW2 propaganda, the holocaust narrative and the profound jewish self-interest in maintaining Germany as obliged to pay infinite reparations forever, there was no way in hell Germans could have gotten off with paying no matter how high a one-time price. Too many parties did too much to ensure that we would not be left off the hook. And, yeah, okay, I can kinda see their reasons for it too.
But in the end I stand by this: Giving away German clay to no matter who wasn't worth it, because Land - they're not making it anymore. And once you sell, you're never getting it back. And Germany wasn't going to be buying its way out of German Guilt in any event.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1d ago
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?
Israel was blocking the delivery of aid, and after begrudgingly letting some through they were shooting at people going from and to the distribution points. Yes, both of those are their fault.
If you think the two cases are asymmetric, the better difference to observe is perhaps that the Israeli government routinely engages in war crimes against Palestinians, whose relation with Hamas is between hostile and resigned for lack of better options, while Hamas routinely engages in war crimes against Israelis, who have a broadly voluntary and enthusiastic relation with their government. The average Israeli seems to deserve suffering for the Israeli government's crimes a lot more than the average Palestinian deserves suffering for Hamas's.
(And lest we go there, history did not start on Oct 7 2023.)
FtttG
1d ago
Over the weekend, I finished cutting things out of the first draft of my NaNoWriMo project. It now sits at about 113k words, 20k words (15%) shorter than the first draft. Under the assumption that the second draft should be no longer than 90% of the first draft, this gives me a "budget" of about 7k words to play with, to add in details that occurred to me since completing the first draft. I'm aiming to have the second draft finished by August 10th.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
As said, I've only read a sample, which probably amounts to the first twenty or so pages. The subject matter is very interesting, but the style in which the book is written annoyed me. It kept spiralling around key information without revealing it directly, semingly trying to build up tension. And I just don't need that in an educational book. Too many wasted words and repetitions, and far too much time spent on emphasizing how alien the profession of the executioner must seem to modern readers. Then an aside into how the guilds discriminated against executioners purely because of their members' economical insecurity, and that kind of historical materialism plus armchair psychology really turned me off. I had hoped that the author would simply go over the source material and provide additional context, but instead I got a newspaper-article-level clickbait narrative and a bunch of unqualified comments that were ass-pulls from the land beyond even speculation.
All that said, the author clearly did a lot of research and I would have liked to read about that, but not at the price of 15€ plus all the useless bullshit he packed into his book (or at least the early pages thereof that I read). So I'll personally prefer to just read the source directly, if ever I can find a readable version of it.
If you aren't a picky reader but interested in the subject, then it's probably a perfectly servicable pop-sci book.
stuckinbathroom
1d ago
One is also reminded of the increasingly-roundabout euphemisms for a second American civil war: it started with “the Boogaloo”, then moved on to near-homophones like “big luau” and “big igloo” before metastasizing into convoluted synonyms for the latter (cf. “ice housing of tremendous proportions”, “absolutely mammoth Polynesian festivities”)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
For one, citation needed. Eastern Europe might be behind the current trend, but the current trend definitely is that Europeans have no particular claim to Europe and deserve less rights than immigrants.
I think this is hyperbole, and to the degree that it's true, is it less true of European Jews?
For another, this reminds me of the claim that gay men are so prone to promiscuity because they've been denied marriage, and that giving it to them will moderate their behavior. Hasn't worked out for gay men, and the results for Jewish people are kinda mixed. I don't think Israel as a country or Israelis as a group, on average, can reasonably be described as "not paranoid".
That seems like a pretty specious comparison. I would agree that Israelis are paranoid, but they literally are surrounded by people who are out to get them! As for other Jews, well, they know people like our resident Jew-haters are around, loudly proclaiming what they think of Jews and less loudly implying what they'd like to happen to them. Are you paranoid if there really are people out to get you? And yet the vast majority of Jews are not "rootless cosmopolitans" with a dozen passports.
NGOs like ADL are also not helping the perception about Jewish people living in other parts of the world. Admittedly this skews results quite a bit, since normal Jewish people aren't going to open an NGO devoted to showing how normal they are, and how they just want to get in with their life. Either way I don't see it as straightforward as you're describing it.
Jews have historically generally been pretty leftist and involved in leftist organizations, including pro-immigration organizations. Is that because they hate white people, or because their religion tends to be a liberal-leaning religion? The "impression" that Jews are all disloyal parasites because of the ADL is no different from any other generalization constructed by taking the worst attributes of the worst people in the group you don't like and claiming they define the very character of that group.
Tractatus
1d ago
Right; "Revealed Preference" only counts when the goods are a) equally available, and, more importantly b) have the same effective "cost." This is never the case with marriage.
The first strike against this article is that it's only counting already-married men; we wouldn't rebut the assertion that women, in the main, don't "marry down" by pretending all the women loudly claiming they'd rather be single than marry "a loser" don't exist, and we should do the same for men.
Further, the data only shows men tend to marry within the same general socio-economic status, and just assumes that this must be by choice (women have no agency in the matter, I suppose). It ignores opportunity, propinquity, peer pressure effects (just how many men can truly ignore everyone in their social circle calling them a creep for chasing a girl half their age? This article isn't going to even bother asking the question, let alone tell us the answer).
Hilariously, it acknowledges that men prefer stay-at-home wives, and immediately claims that this is actually proof that men prefer ambitious girlbosses. This is RadFemHitler levels of copium huffing. Trash article is trash.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
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.
Yes, people get displaced by wars, but if you get what I'm trying to say, you know that this is different category of problem and not something that happened to them because their countrymen decided they weren't countrymen.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
You are implying the people in question were simply deranged and hated jews for being jews.
Oh, they weren't "deranged." Jew-hatred is centuries old. I realize you're in the "There's a good reason for that" camp, but like everyone else who says this, you never do more than wave at Jewish Communists and other Jewish leftists and imply that this is evidence of some inherent nefarious characteristic of Jewishness.
You can't both be a citizen and also exempt from service to the nation if the concept of a national is supposed to hold any relevance.
Were Jewish citizens of Germany exempt from national service?
If your alleged co-nationals are hoarding passports
You sure loved that anecdote about a few Jewish families with a dozen passports, but how common do you think that is, really? Do you think the average Jew (in America or elsewhere) has a dozen passports and is ready to flee the country if it faces a threat? Do you think Jews would flee in greater numbers than others? If a Jew doesn't have multiple passports and has in fact served in the military, do you regard him as a co-national like yourself? (Have you served?)
If you want to verbalize recognition for that fact using hyperbolic thought ending rhetoric... fine. But you are certainly not looking for rational discourse when doing so.
Random rhetoric expressing nothing.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
Btw... did you ever check this mod out? First Person Elden Ring
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
Agreed. All the teachers I know who ever indulged in corporal punishment were assholes, and not very bright assholes to boot. I could tell the majority were malicious.
(This is coming from a place where corporal punishment was nominally illegalized maybe 15 years back?)
The only people who I think ever gave me a spanking for my own good were my own parents.
Tractatus
1d ago
American soldiers wouldn't be shooting innocent civilians, especially unarmed children in the process of trying to obtain food; were they to do so, the backlash would make "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" look positively quaint.
If Andrew Anglin and his ilk want to convince the normies that Jews are all ethno-chauvinists who will excuse any atrocity committed by their co-ethnics, they'd just point to this thread, where Mottizens hilariously (and mendaciously) insist that shooting kids at aid stations trying to obtain food is completely justified because Israel isn't required to feed Gazans (wtf?!?!?! how does this even make sense to you?)
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1d ago
If it is damning of anyone it is damning of the Hamas militant. I do not recall any Western warrior mythos that would permit a warrior to hide behind children. At most it would happen once before the warrior realizes that the enemy is actually not bluffing, and then comes out to fight.
Jiro
1d ago
Outside of the Oct.7 attack, which was a defensive blunder, is all the manpower and material spent on this battle justifiable in any sense if we are comparing before and after?
If they didn't fight, it would be October 7 constantly. You are saying that there's no danger, so the military operation isn't needed. But there's no danger only because of the military operation.
JTarrou
1d ago
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.
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.
I'd have no objection to that, personally.
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