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So I'm planning a trip to China this December. It's a gigantic place with a lot of history and I find myself a bit paralysed with indecision as to where I should go, I've drawn up about five or six different plans in multiple different parts of the country and can't choose between them.
I'm not sure how many people on this forum have actually visited China at all (there's at least one I guess), but anybody here have any recommendations to share? Any parts of the country in particular stand out to you?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Nah. People have been trained to see “we should do nothing” as being equivalent to “we should support the oppressors”, it’s a tactic that they’re very used to dealing with.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
I did some googling and actually much less than I would have expected. Common L for clickbait media. Good to know though, kinetic deaths feel slightly less gruesome.
I guess I'll amend my sentence above to "and then you look and Gazan civilians are being killed at close to a 30:1 ratio, with no clear end in sight and a guarantee that once the newest generation of traumatized kids grows up, this will happen all over again".
ControlsFreak
2d ago
You cherry picked historical examples of cultural shifts to prove the possibility.
No. I just went through a wide variety of things, some which shifted, some which then didn't shift. We could keep generating a very very very long list, but I figured it was better to not have a 5k word comment that is just a silly list.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell" is a way to frame the discussion to throw out the need to discuss. It's similar to consensus-gathering but for an argument.
Frankly, this is bullshit. As evidenced by your statements:
People did argue that slavery was a societal good (if only because no one wants to be the villain). They argued that back in Africa black tribesman were either lazy or fighting each other, and over here they are productive and safe (so long as they don't provoke the master of course). If you could bring a southern man from the past here he'd probably look at urban black culture and tell you they were better off slaves.
If I had told a pro-slavery person, back when being pro-slavery was ascendant, that mayyyyyyybe they should be sliiiiiiightly open to the idea that it's poooossible that slavery won't stay ascendant forever, would you be there saying:
"Sometimes it's hard to tell" is a way to frame the discussion to throw out the need to discuss. It's similar to consensus-gathering but for an argument.
Would you be there saying:
You cherry picked historical examples of cultural shifts to prove the possibility. The theoretical possibility was never in doubt, the question was over whether the odds are high enough to be worth discussing. It's theoretically possible that in the future society decriminalizes murder, but I'm not about to make a writeup exploring the possibility.
?
no-fault divorce
???
AvocadoPanic
2d ago
We're supplying the knives to some of the children.
As I said in another response, we should let the quarreling foreign tribes fight.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
And yet they did so in Gaza, and all they got for it was Hamas on their borders, shooting rockets.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
idk I'm not the guy above, I just wanted to offer the thought that they don't only retreat
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
Yeah the Israeli government is acting to its incentives, I get that. Every action has tradeoffs and consequences. This is the action-set that the Israeli people (and by extension their government) have chosen. I don't envy their choice, it's a nightmare.
But the consequences of their choices is permanent conflict around them, and a world (which to an extent they depend on) that is steadily losing sympathy for their plight.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. This conflict is so fucking long and there's so much bad blood, I don't ever see it ending unless someone rips the band-aid off and ends it with a final... solution? But that won't happen so instead it'll just limp along. At this point the Israeli's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
So their "monomaniac" obsession applies to only one particular spot. It's not settlements in the West Bank which pisses off the Gazans.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2d ago
Gaza also bans abortion and IIRC limits birth control pretty heavily, in addition to promulgating pro-natal memes, even if they are "eventually outnumber the [redacted]."
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
I'm not saying Iran isn't an idiot for being in this situation. Their hostility to Israel is a massive, profound, and decades long unforced error. Although hard to blame them about being mad about the Shah. But we've done worse to countries and now we're chill (Vietnam, Germany, Japan) so if they'd suck it up they'd be better off.
I'm talking about the situation at hand though. Iran and Israel have beef, is it stupid? Yes. But it is real, and Iran getting nukes is bad. And clapping on Iran makes them want nukes more, I think that's also bad.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?
This is what gets me. At a certain point once the conflict spans generations and over 100+ years, "who started it" is the most useless question/discussion topic.
Every time someone tries to dunk with "well X did Y so the current Z situation is their fault" it is just so laughable.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
2d ago
I'm not sure how that would work? Wouldn't their obvious reply be that the Palestinians (and the Israelis) were begging the international community for support and aid?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
It's hard to fault Isreal for blowing up its hostile neighbors. They're hostile after all.
But it's also hard to fault Isreal's neighbors for being mad about getting blown up.
Iran is not a neighbor of Israel, and Iran has been attacking Israel through proxies almost since the start of the Islamic Republic. Despite that, Israel supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program then. Iran attacked Israel twice directly last year. It's REALLY easy to fault them for being mad about getting blown up.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
Doesn't matter, Hamas would already destroy the US given half a chance.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
That said, I also think nuclear weapons are overrated, and while it's likely worthwhile to launch delaying tactics... once Iran has the bomb, what exactly are they going to do with it? Iran already knows that Israel has sufficient nuclear capacity to glass Iran
Israel does NOT have sufficient nuclear capacity to glass Iran. Israel is small and Iran is big, and that counts for a lot in the nuclear game. Certainly Israel could make Iran suffer with their dying breath, but they would still exist afterwards.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
I think it's very unlikely the IAEA action was caused by anything Iran did. Normally they bend over backwards not to find any violations. So I suspect pressure was applied to get them to make this declaration in order to provide justification for the desired bombings.
thejdizzler
2d ago
Well the Israeli government tried to do something about it in the 1970s/1980s. But turns out it's mighty unpopular at the ballot box to bulldoze the homes of your own people after you just won a war.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
But never their settlements in the West Bank, which do a lot of the heavy lifting in pissing people off.
faceh
2d ago
At a certain point, this market is not going to clear. We have reached that point.
Yeah.
One thing about the sexual marketplace for women. They're both an inelastic good... AND there's a fixed supply.
The supply can't increase very quickly, and heterosexual men will still have high demand for them even as the price creeps up.
Now we've got a large portion of women who have effectively set a 'price floor' for themselves that is above what many men are able to provide, and in many cases what men are willing to provide, given that many of the options on offer are also 'damaged goods.'
Throw in the evolutionary pressure on men to reproduce and there's just huge amounts of underserved demand.
The market is trying to provide substitute goods like porn, prostitutes, AI girlfriends, but I think the problem is that a good woman is a 'package' or 'bundle' of goods in one.
And most women now want to provide only a couple of those goods/services while still demanding the complete package on the other side.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2d ago
I was met with a question regarding my own stance on the matter.
I find if your goal is just to change the subject, saying that the history of the Mandate means that our input is uniquely unwanted by both sides, and that we should take the hint and butt out, works brilliantly. NPCs on both sides are horrified but have no comeback because you are off-script. It's like playing the Sicilian back in the days when everyone was taught opening theory starting e4 e5.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
In the United States, The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974, and was the bill that allowed women to get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative.
No, this was the bill that made it a Federal legal requirement that women could get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative. The idea that the opposite was universally the case before 1974 is a recent fabrication.
Sure, but per the generalization of @Hadad's claim, he would consider them "wholly justified in destroying" the US.
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