domain:mattlakeman.org
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
14hr ago
Why does Israel need an imperial patron?
Because Israel's geography and productive economy aren't able to sustain their population and current level of social complexity. Their incredibly challenging security environment necessitates immense military investment, and their internal politics require them to support and feed a growing population of useless eaters who just study the torah all day (the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service). Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.
In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).
Do you mean when their imperial patron was the UK?
It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.
A growing population isn't a good thing when you are already importing food - but it becomes ruinous when you have an extremely dangerous security environment which would add significant difficulty and expense to those food imports. Currently, the US is spending a lot of money to make sure the Middle East is survivable for Israel and they can continue to import food, and Israel just isn't capable of stepping up to the plate by themselves to ensure that food security.
But energy independent? LOL
Israel currently produces 5% of their oil consumption domestically, with approximately 220 thousand barrels imported each day. Petroleum is currently irreplaceable as an energy source - there is no alternative with equivalent energy density or existing infrastructure investments that can take its place (i.e. even if they discovered a perfect new energy source which they had in abundance, it would take a long time and huge investment to set up the infrastructure required to distribute and use it). Oil is used in farming, transportation and of course in the military - so if those imports were halted due to a conflict, the food situation would very rapidly become extremely dire and the military would be hamstrung by lack of access to the fuel which powers all of their tanks etc.
Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?
These are the questions which convinced me that Israel would not be able to survive without an imperial patron, and I haven't seen any convincing arguments otherwise.
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
15hr ago
Is that actually happening? Do you have any reason at all to believe that we're not going to lose that functionality? The budget request says:
CSB duplicates substantial capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate chemical-related mishaps. CSB generates unprompted studies of the chemical industry and recommends policies that they have no authority to create or enforce. This function should reside within agencies that have authorities to issue regulations in accordance with applicable legal standards.
But those agencies don't do that. Their recommendations are well-regarded by the industry (see also the quote from the American Chemistry Council here).
I note that EPA's budget is being halved, and OSHA's is being cut as well; they're also eliminating EPA's Office of Research and Development entirely.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
15hr ago
Look, I don't doubt that some people get convinced they have diagnoses that, from your perspective or the broader medical perspective, they don't actually have. You seem to be really upset about that. I don't particularly care one way or another, because I have experienced first hand how ruinous it can be to your life to get debilitating, chronic conditions repeatedly misdiagnosed by the traditional medical system and spend a boatload of money for the pleasure.
The argument that the original article is making refers to a certain subtype of the population, often with some sort of serious chronic illness, that has a propensity to shift narrative frames more easily than others. I find that to be a reasonable argument that matches my experience in life.
From my perspective, instead of talking about this claim, you seem to be ignoring the original claim and zeroing in on complaining about cluster B women? Which is kind of confusing.
cjet79
15hr ago
Working on a new project. There is an old out of print book about my family. "The [family name] and their kin". Old copies run for a hundred or more dollars on Amazon.
There is a free scanned version of the book too, but the scan isn't great quality. Adobe was able to figure out most of the words, but there are some glaring mistakes. Typically a mistake every 50 words or so, which is far too common.
I'd like to do a reprint. I just attended the annual meeting of the "[family name] society" and there was interest from everyone there in getting a new hard copy.
I've been copying and pasting the text from the PDF into a grok window and having it make corrections, re-italisize, and de-format the text. Might be another 20 hours to get it all converted.
I've looked up some print options as well and think with about a hundred copies I could get per book costs to $15-30. Depending on options I select. Color / hard back / images / etc.
quiet_NaN
15hr ago
Since he said it in private
He gave a bloody lecture in front of a couple of hundreds of people. This is very different from having a private dinner with a couple of friends which was bugged by the guardian.
Thiel isn't going to be doing anything to the Antichrist.
There is a reason that western culture has evolved an allergic reaction to Christians accusing others of either being in league with the devil or the antichrist. The reason is that historically, most religiously motivated violence committed by Christians were preceded by such accusations.
If Thiel was giving lectures about the Eucharist and the guardian tried to spin this into "well obviously he is advocating for cannibalism", nobody would buy it, because while Christian beliefs about transubstantiation are definitely weird, Christianity also has an excellent track record as far as avoiding actual cannibalism goes.
From a stochastical terrorism perspective (which I personally do not like much), saying "X is the/an antichrist" is the right-wing version of saying "X is literally Hitler". Either has a mild priming effect on people who have a psychotic break and decide to murder someone, I would guess.
Suppose that instead of the antichrist, he gave a lecture on jihad. Would you go well, there is no way that a Western Muslim in 2025 would actually advocate for violence. Actually, what he really means is jihad in the sense of an inner struggle which brings you closer to god.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
15hr ago
Yeah, I probably should have included "and six-foundationers were winding up raised Marxist and/or hippie liberal and tried to extend these to fill in the missing foundations".
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15hr ago
I watched this one recently, too. A vibe indeed.
Good: Long, forlorn shots. Set design which may or may not consist of just finding shit lying around. Haunting use of silence and background noise. Getting the viewer to question the reality presented on screen. Surreality. This is a film where almost every frame is mundane, and yet you are certain that something else is at play.
Bad: incredibly long, forlorn shots. I can’t judge how much of each was actually necessary to achieve the good points. But my God, they just keep going. Much like the character monologues, some of which land, some of which don’t. The delivery is great, at least to my English-speaking ears. The actual writing is much less consistent. There are a couple bits of sound design that fall into this category, too, but I’m willing to forgive them.
Ugly: Anything resembling action. There’s not much of it, which is for the best, because it absolutely deflates the tension. The gate guards? The
I don’t know that I can call it good, but I recommend it.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
16hr ago
I don't think that metaphor really applies. The last time I read about Jewish life in Islam-controlled nations it was about the Golden Age of the Jews, which took place in Islamic Spain (the abuse actually happened afterwards when the Catholics came and massacred them). I'm sure it wasn't all peachy all the time, but it can't have been that bad when they consider a portion of the time spent under Islamic rule a golden age.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
16hr ago
I think that you and mister throwaway are being far too negative towards this subset of the population
You misunderstand.
We know that they misuse these tools/words/concepts that could have (and perhaps were originally intended to) helped us, in an intentionally destructive way. It's not Complete Asshole Disease Cluster B disorder, it's My Anxiety (and everything else I've Munchausen'd my way into today).
The article very clearly describes us, who are describing actual problems (and I can attest that the statements made in the article are indeed very accurate), and not just using them as a license to be selfish pricks.
It's difficult for the normies to tell the difference and depending on the situation sometimes there legitimately isn't one. They just have to trust us. And that is difficult, even for others like us.
Grant_us_eyes
16hr ago
Not quite. There's a sub-set of the right that's very, very much into hating Russia.
The left just glosses that over in place of the right who are sick and tired of involvement in foreign wars and go 'not my problem' and take that as endorsement.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
Whatever the talk there is about it being redundant, it's not being consolidated with something else, and its function will go unfulfilled.
Depends on whether or not they are actually duplicative. The proposal does not say that its function will go unfufilled; it says it should rest with other agencies with rulemaking authority.
I'd honestly love to be proven wrong and learn that the Hind Rajab and Mohamaed Bhar stories were just a bad dream
The fact that individual civilians were killed in a conflict does not prove that said conflict was a genocide. Even the fact that individual soldiers committed war crimes during a conflict doesn't prove that said conflict was a genocide. Pro-Palestine activists think they're helping their case by claiming that every civilian death is evidence of genocidal intent on Israel's part. But because civilian deaths are a feature of every war (especially wars in densely populated urban centres; especially especially wars in densely populated urban centres in which belligerents deliberately hide among the civilian populace), all you're doing is collapsing the distinction between "genocide" and "urban conflict" by carelessly conflating the two. Twenty years ago, the word "racist" was a potent one indeed and people would react to the accusation with indignation: after a generation of woke people abusing it to refer to any behaviour they don't like (no matter how innocuous), there are now plenty of people who react to the word "racist" as if you'd called them a meany doo-doo head. Do you really think it's a sensible idea to do the same thing to the word "genocide"? Because that's the way it's headed. Do you want more genocide? Because that's how you get more genocide.
But all that's almost beside the point. I don't think you looked at the facts on the ground of the current conflict and dispassionately concluded that Israel is conducting a genocide. I strongly suspect that if I'd asked you the same question on October 6th 2023, I would've got much the same answer. You're citing examples of Israel killing civilians in the current conflict, not because they support your argument, but simply because of the availability heuristic. Israel was being accused of "genocide" from the morning of October 8th, 2023, before the war had even begun in earnest; a bunch of Hollywood celebrities signed an open letter condemning Israel's military action in Gaza as genocide in 2014; I'm sure I can go back to the 2000s, the 1990s, even further and see the same accusation lobbed against them time and time again. (The first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the topic bluntly states that Israel has faced this accusation without reprieve literally from the day of its founding.) You explicitly compared Israel to the Nazis and demanded the state be "denazified", but the difference is that the Holocaust actually saw a meaningful (and steep) decline in the global Jewish populace. Strange, isn't it, how the Israelis have been accused of genociding the Palestinians for the better part of a century, and yet the Palestinian population only ever increases over time? It's the Shepard tone of genocides — which is to say, not a genocide at all. How many genocides can you name in which the genocidaires came to a dead stop as soon as the people they were genociding agreed to release hostages?
You apparently expect me to simultaneously believe that the vastly technologically superior, limitlessly bloodthirsty and nuke-equipped Israel isn't pulling its punches and is in fact doing everything in its power to exterminate every last Palestinian from the face of the earth — and yet are somehow so incompetent that they've failed to wipe out a technologically inferior opponent who almost entirely reside right on its doorstep? I'm sorry, but I cannot believe both of these things. It is beyond me.
Throwaway05
16hr ago
Alright I've repeatedly tried to be a bit soft here but to be blunt this is absolutely horseshit that seems to not match genetic studies, general research, or the gross consensus of individuals working in the field.
Some additional examples:
Gifted people have good life outcomes and contra to expectations are more attractive than average.
The "major psychiatric diagnosis" is just not true by any stretch of the imagination. It does not capture definitions of serious mental illness, inpatient populations, or most the most likely diagnosis (anxiety disorders are more common).
EDS has several known genetic markers and the one that all of the psych patients has is mysteriously the one that doesn't have genetic markers. Also women are more flexible than men and many women who are normal will claim they have EDS.
Additionally googling this person appears to show all the usual signs of questionableness and medical inaccuracy.
You are falling for pure ascientific bullshit quackery.
07mk
16hr ago
When people say “just kill fascists”, is the latter one what they mean?
Absolutely yes, based on my experience living with people who say things like this and along with people who are on the border of saying things like this. From my observation, the people who actually believe in fighting fascist in ways that involve specifically targeting individuals with power but are against blanket condemnation of wide swaths of people tend to not to be the ones who jump on to slogans like that one. The ones who are willing to carelessly embrace extreme or extreme-sounding slogans like that almost always mean it in the most extreme way it can be interpreted (usually more extreme).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16hr ago
I love you too my dude, even if you love Jesus more :(
hydroacetylene
16hr ago
Explosives factories can sometimes explode, you’re tinfoil hatting, and this kind of random terrorism on US soil would be an escalation for Russia.
They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals
If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.
You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back.
When did I say that?
But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.
How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
16hr ago
That's the thing; they're not just an extension of OSHA. Their primary focus isn't labor safety, or environmental quality, or industry standards, it's process safety, which touches all of those. Their role is inherently cross-functional, as you can see from the variety of organizations they make recommendations to.
Anyway, it's not being moved, it's just being destroyed. Whatever the talk there is about it being redundant, it's not being consolidated with something else, and its function will go unfulfilled.
Merits are merits; descent is descent.
Of course, you notice that the SJ position is the exact same as tradition but with the labels swapped. This makes perfect sense, because reversed stupidity is intelligence (or revenge, if you prefer).
What you have labelled as the Marxist position is just the classical liberal position, but with a class angle grafted on.
This is an obvious pattern to me- traditionalists and progressives have a... significant amount of inertia in their political philosophies, and while liberals might actually be able to accomplish the tasks at hand, they're also generally outnumbered so unless you have philosopher-kings in charge like the US did after WW2, you're stuck with either traditional stupidity or modern ytidiputs.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
16hr ago
"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."
I've actually already posted and discussed this particular story on the motte with multiple people - my apologies for assuming that this was just commonly accepted knowledge.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl
making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.
Actually it doesn't make that clear at all - and if that's the case, then the IDF was actually just extremely incompetent, given that the tunnels are still there and they're making noises about how important it is that they be let in to clear out the tunnels. They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals, and there are more amputee children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. If that was the goal then the IDF is incredibly incompetent - but they've demonstrated enough competence elsewhere that I just can't accept the claim that this was to destroy the tunnels.
I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.
Horrified? I'm not expecting that at all. You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back. But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.
Shrike
16hr ago
Quite possibly this was not an attack but I don't think it's a post-hoc claim; the warning that Russia would strike our infrastructure has been registered in some corners well in advance of this happening. Jack Murphy reported in 2022 that the CIA was conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russian soil and I've been operating under the assumption that the Russians would retaliate in kind (if the claims were true, which seemed plausible) ever since.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
Looks like they're only being targeted because they're "independent". Seems to me it would make sense to move them under the Department of Labor.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
16hr ago
Having better weapons makes you the bad guy?
No, that's not the point being made.
Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.
Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?
I don't think that argument would convince you to support the nazis, and it isn't going to convince me to support the Israelis.
Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet!
If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?
You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.
My position, which I have stated on here, remains that there should be a single state solution which includes the Israelis and Palestinians both.
I think this may be one of those things where you are looking into it from outside the medical community and going "huh that's interesting."
But what you are stumbling into is an appeal to the work of an alternative medicine practitioner whose work seems to be heavily cited by the "cluster-b but in denial of it" community to flatter their understanding of their own pathology despite clear instruction to the contrary by legitimate medical resources.
At the same time the reference seems to completely misunderstand the wide body of clinical and genetic research as well as basic understandings in terms as well effectively universal clinical consensus.
Attempting to fit some bullshit 2+2=5 stuff into an explanation of priestliness is a fools errand since what its looking to use is total crap.
Nothing about it makes any sense and ive rattled off several significant examples (that's not how mental illness categorization works, thats not how EDS works, thats not how allergies work....).
Additional people who work in the priestly cast do not have the personality attributes you associate with most of these line items.
Again none of this make any sense.
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