domain:furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
Counterpoint: two really huge bombs on Japan made them surrender unconditionally
Almost unconditionally; they insisted on keeping Emperor Hirohito, although this was not couched as a condition. Fair enough since it was Hirohito's personal intervention which resulted in the surrender.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Do you mean special forces or regular ground troops?
Because it takes ages and ages for the latter to even arrive. Back in 1990-1991 it took about 6 months for the US and Coalition ground forces to get ready to go and in many respects America had a much freer hand back then, along with more naval transport capacity. Airmobile assets won't cut it for a ground campaign in such a large country, you'd need the bulk of the US army.
Whereas I could believe that there are already special forces on the ground, just like in Ukraine.
Yeah, zoomers are brainrotted with tiktok slop and think the genocidal jihadis are oppressed. It's not a mystery, it's just a grim reminder we should have banned tiktok ages ago.
kky
2d ago
That sounds like it would only be enforced in major international tourist destinations - which could be a lynchpin argument for my long-term goal of never going to Tokyo or Kyoto again in favor of the places I actually like.
It’s been a bit of a mixed bag in craziness over the years. Ahmadinajad as president was a notorious “kill all the Jews” type but the Khamenei who always has ultimately held the reins has been a bit more pragmatic-ish. I personally think most of the allies they have promoted in the region were more cynical and self serving in purpose than religious. In other words ultimately they seem to genuinely care about keeping their own Islamic revolution going, but I don’t see them as super invasion prone. I mean 15 years anything can change but that’s the vibe.
However, theocracy type governments are particularly hard to consistently model - see for example some of the more extreme sects running out of control in Saudi Arabia and metastasizing to locations and purposes SA didn’t actually want.
anti_dan
2d ago
Wasn't one of the big complaints of feminism when it started that such jobs did care about the gap?
Yes, but it was another one of the complaints that was question-begged into existence. Woman at every peg of the promotional ladder already worked less than men. If you take 3 years off, even if you come back at 100%, you will have men 3 years younger than you next to you that are working harder than you were 3 years ago, and now you are 3 years older and even less likely to put in 60 hours while only obligated to do 40.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
The Houthis say they'll renew their anti US shipping campaign with the current strikes on Iran. And they have continued their anti-Israel missile/drone attacks throughout.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Would you even believe him if he threw up his hands, said "fine, I don't want to kill the Jews"?
Sure, but I'd still ask "Okay, then what do you want to do about them?"
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I'm not asking you to denounce anything. I'm honestly curious to know what you actually want to do about the Jews, and I am also annoyed that you keep dancing around it and then denying that you are hiding the ball.
hanikrummihundursvin
2d ago
I'm saying genocidal lunatics should be put in a box and locked away on all sides. Especially those who are somehow incapable of disentangling an 'existential' conflict between nations that exist on the opposite ends of the planet.
AvocadoPanic
2d ago
Even our 'friends' hate us, we just destroy them differently.
Perhaps we should try being less horrible.
anti_dan
2d ago
Do you think that our (now quite successful) treatments of childhood leukemia are as ineffectual as extending the unhealthy lifespans of the very elderly?
That's not the work of most doctors. Even the specialists administering the treatments are essentially just following protocols that were invented and tested by a very small number of people.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
The Islamist faction didn’t have huge popular support, it was (again, like the Bolsheviks) a minority faction that was very well organized and coordinated compared to the fractious mass of the other revolutionary factions. That’s why the current administration has such a domestic siege mentality and has to exercise a lot of top down force compared to say, Saudi Arabia.
SecureSignals
Training the Aryan LLM
2d ago
Seriously, like @Hadad said, I'm not your dancing monkey. I'm not going to denounce something I have never said. I stand by everything I have said, but I'm not going to play this game where you just invent positions that you claim I hold and demand I denounce them in order to try to convince you I don't hold them.
hanikrummihundursvin
2d ago
The Iranians chant death to America and have publicly gone to great length to explain that the slogan is not a direct wish for harm against American citizens, but a screed against their government and its belligerence and hostility towards Iran.
Which fits rather snugly as a contrast with the more Orwellian terminology of the west, like 'regime change'.
You are constructing a false equivalency. Iran and the US are not the same in their terminal goals towards one another.
There are hawks on both sides. People expressing animus towards other peoples via slogans or discussions on TV does not have to exist as a direct analog to what terminal goals governments have towards one another. But as far as I can tell, both parties want a government that is favorable to them, and would prefer not to torpedo their own political projects in a costly confrontation.
To that extent there is no false equivalency that doesn't rely on some drastic otherization and dehumanization. And it's hard to pretend that Iran is hogging all the religious lunatics when Americans have decades of failed Zionist adjacent policies laying in their backyard. Which happens to also be Iran's back yard. Along with theologians like Ted Cruz...
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.
This is not a huge mystery. If you're a left-leaning zoomer, you've spent most of your adult life watching right-wing Israeli governments take advantage of the US government to commit human rights violations while aggressively snubbing the Democrats and boosting the Republicans. You can invoke the history of the conflict or the gruesome spectre of a Hamas victory all you like, but you're contrasting ancient history* and lurid hypotheticals to current reality. If Israel had pursued a measured response to the Oct. 7th attacks (and especially if they weren't also constantly nibbling away at Palestinian territory), they would have been able to garner a lot of sympathy. Not from everyone - there are indeed people who think Israel can do no right - but from most. After all, it seemed like a vindication of the aforementioned lurid hypotheticals. Israel, however, does not do measured responses. And if the IDF's conduct isn't quite the war of annihilation their most vocal critics claim, it's still increasingly hard to argue that Israel isn't waging a war against the Palestinian people rather than simply going after Islamic terrorists.
Even if you're not left-leaning or otherwise sympathetic to the Palestinians, it's easy to feel like this is an incredibly one-sided relationship.
*which is not always especially favorable to the Israelis in any event.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
I'd be cautious there that a middle option is technically possible: Obama ordered airstrikes on Syria against ISIL, and there have been American boots on the ground there since (unclear on exact deployment dates and current status), but they've remained in a limited capacity as such without being a full-blown invasion a la 2003. It's possible the exact wording of your prediction may matter quite a bit.
Hadad
2d ago
Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?
I'm sufficiently white trash that the cultural norm of my people is to call out bullshit, but not so white trash I'm willing to cavalierly go to prison. I'd take a foam sword for myself, offer one to the kid, and ask if he wanted to play. If the parents seemed reluctant to let him, I wouldn't force it -- legally I couldn't -- but I would obnoxiously question why they're doing this to their son.
I'd willingly burn down every bridge I had with that family to force a social confrontation. If I ended up convinced the situation's abusive, I'd call CPS.
Hadad
2d ago
Demanding he denounce a position he hasn't staked out, no matter how much you might think he believes it deep down, is pretty obnoxious. Would you even believe him if he threw up his hands, said "fine, I don't want to kill the Jews, now hush"? Or would you assume he's just saying that to hide his power level?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
I find it somewhat amusing that the US has state-run education, and we regularly talk about how the $17k spent annually on the median K-12 student is too low (but is still higher than peer nations). But healthcare is (mostly) privately run, and we spend more than peer countries and in this case it's obvious that we should save by switching to a more centrally-run model. I'm not sure those positions really square with each other.
UwU
2d ago
No clear evidence that their nuclear program is knocked out, a pretty strong incentive now between the outcomes of Libya, North Korea, Israel and Iran for any country that doesn't want to be a colony of either the eastern or western bloc to develop nukes.
This would be true regardless of whether the US conducted this strike or not. One might argue that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons without any sort of kinetic response would have encouraged state actors to pursue nukes even more rigorously.
Hadad
2d ago
Their hate being warranted or not is irrelevant to our incentives. They do hate us. If they're deadset on going nuclear, we must destroy them.
Iran's only hope is to stop being so hateful. Even if they think it's justified.
Well it is a much bigger airstrike than the others. One hellfire from a drone represents maybe 100,000th of the resources invested in this one.
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