domain:abc.net.au
2rafa
16m ago
How many nuclear strikes on Israel, are an acceptable price to pay for getting rid of him?
It’s an interesting question. Consider the following points:
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Half the world’s Jewish population lives outside Israel. Most are Zionists. Large reservoirs of highly fecund 6+ tfr Orthodox Jews live in the United States and indeed in Western Europe. It is unlikely that Iran nuking Israel would kill more Jews than the Holocaust, which the Jewish population will recover from in less than 100 years. The question is therefore some variant of “would a nuclear war between Israel and Iran spell the permanent end of (at least this iteration of) Jewish settlement in the Levant?”.
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Rich American and European Jews have the money to fund the reconstruction of Israel, which is possible unless it is overrun. If it is overrun then all reconstruction is impossible, since there are probably no mercenary armies capable of retaking it and even the US likely wouldn’t. However, Iran alone can’t mount a ground invasion of Israel and Iranian proxies have been badly damaged by the recent conflict. The overrunning scenario therefore involves a kind of organic jihad - post nuclear strike - in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, marching across into a ruined Israel and taking it. This is entirely possible and that should be acknowledged. However, such a march could be stymied by Western air support in service of a surviving Israeli civilian, military and mercenary force in theory, depending on the global geopolitical situation.
I think the answer is unclear. I don’t believe Israel would invite nuclear war. But that they would lose is not fully certain, even if it is likely for reasons of Israel’s Arab neighbors and Iran’s strategic depth and lower population density.
faceh
49m ago
That pushes it back a step, since I can generally guess at what she believes is 'pretty' when she dresses up.
gattsuru
1hr ago
It's an impact, but it's likely to end up a bigger impact in the sense that this is the first time a federal gun law has been actually rolled back instead of merely sunsetted or outdated.
A 200 USD tax isn't trivial for a gun accessory, especially an expendable one, and having zero tax might allow some manufacturers to start building out entry-level silencers so the cost-of-first-hit isn't 100+ USD on top of the tax. But while that's part of why the NFA was annoying, it's not the biggest or even a primary part. And I'm not even sure we'll see much drop in MSRPs. From the sellers side, they still count as 'firearms' for FFL purposes, you'll still need an SOT, there's still going to be a ton of legal risk, and there's still a hell of a lot of overhead. From the buyer's side you aren't any less afraid of 'oil traps' or accidental 'transfers' or the ATF giving you a free colonoscopy.
((Yes, theoretically zeroing out the tax should also make enforcement of the whole registration schema impossible, but we know how that goes.))
Meanwhile, the parliamentary stuff is pretty obnoxious. I expect a dem appointee to be biased, but Byrd Ruling modifications of a law that has been defended in courts as a tax literally dozens of times is appalling.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1hr ago
Citruline 8grams
Also your dick will get harder - best supplement in the business
Mix some with water and drink before you do your rucking
I get the 2lb bag on Amazon from Bulk Supplements
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1hr ago
Ribeyes I go higher so the fat renders. Salt pepper worshirshire.
I love making veggie baskets. Lots of mushrooms, red onion, pablano, sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, your choice of meat stick (kielbasa or some Latin American variant), oil and sazon seasoning. 5 minutes a side. You want some burnt and charred.
Portobello mushroom tops: oil, salt, pepper, top with feta, scallions, oil, salt, pepper - grill charcoal side for a few minutes then other side for ten or so.
Huge hits.
Fun, mildly interesting—what's the difference?
I think the Hussen case in particular is fairly funny. He submitted oodles of evidence, but the government still refused to believe that his marriage was genuine.
In addition to these two affidavits, Hussen submitted seven affidavits of family members and friends, many of whom had traveled great distances to attend the wedding, stating that the family members and friends had witnessed both the development of Hussen and Houndito’s relationship and the wedding. Hussen also submitted a copy of the signed marriage certificate and Islamic marriage contract, with the latter obligating Houndito’s family to pay a $10,000 dowry; numerous photographs depicting the wedding ceremony and honeymoon; a receipt for payment of more than $4,000 for his purchase of a diamond ring; copies of two plane tickets and a receipt showing that the couple paid more than $300 to fly to Miami for their honeymoon; a receipt showing that the couple paid more than $1,400 to place a four-night reservation at a hotel in Miami; a copy of a lease agreement they signed for an apartment in Virginia, dated three days prior to the wedding; a copy of an automobile insurance card that named both Hussen and Houndito as the policy’s insured; and finally, photos that depicted Hussen’s family meeting Houndito’s family in Ethiopia and the celebration that Hussen’s father hosted in Ethiopia to celebrate their marriage.
The BIA denied Hussen’s motion to reopen, stating that the standard to reopen proceedings to seek adjustment of status based on a marriage entered after the commencement of removal proceedings required Hussen to submit “clear and convincing evidence of the bona fides of the marriage.” While the BIA acknowledged that Hussen had attached photographs of the wedding, honeymoon, and gathering between families, as well as affidavits from friends and family and the couple’s lease agreement, it concluded that this was only “some evidence of the bona fides of [the] marriage” but was “insufficient to establish the bona fides of his marriage by clear and convincing evidence.”
Also, don't forget about the context of past discussions of marriage fraud on this forum (1 2).
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Did the bill deliver a large bonus to ICE? Offer houses, goods, women, special grocery stores?
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
You can build housing projects for benefits recipients to live in. They’ll suck, but you can do it. You can provide recipients with prepackaged meals- they’ll suck, but you can do it.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Look, I have more of a theory of mind for highly clerical religious prohibitions- there’s disassembled bombs held by the IRGC. Maybe ‘disassembled’ is the wrong word- it’s something that’s technically more of a lump of HEU but can become a bomb in about an hour, with a technician-not-engineer level of expertise.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Normally I like reading your legal dispatches, but I don’t see how these are fun at all!
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
1hr ago
What MAGA was/is against is yet more on-going foreign entanglements consuming blood and treasure for little gain. See Afgahnistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Et Al.
A quick surgical strike followed almost immediately by a negotiated peace is almost the exact opposite of that.
Gaashk
2hr ago
I think disability actually does work that way, but suffers from benefit cliffs that disincentivize some people from doing the work that they're able to do.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
2hr ago
Bang on. Really good programmers are a rarity and aren't building ai garbage at yc. "I'm at YC, if a guy working under me swindled me, then he must be good too" should be interpreted as "I'm at YC, if I get swindled this easily then I probably need to code more".
Indians defending this fucking pajeet ticked me off because I know two three who post here, live in the US and are doing very good work in startups over there.
YC is a popularity contest now, you can get in via multiple referrals. They keep taking more people in each year, everyone's building LLM APIs with janky Javascript as a service. These guys, no offence, are not good devs. They're young to begin with, my age usually or older and gravitating towards vaporware is a clear sign of decay.
What irks me is that he may face zero negative consequences for pulling off scams, whilst those affected will go and bat for him.
Tollund_Man4
2hr ago
Maybe I need to read more Roman history but all of the times this happened the general's army was already strong enough to contest everyone else in open war (even a less successful rebel general like Sertorius still controlled and defended Spain against Rome).
Even if they do become personally loyal to Trump, ICE isn't a real military force and it is still dwarfed by the regular military.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
2hr ago
I really wish that we could give support that prevented recipients from accumulating any sort of status goods while receiving said support. I'd be fine with giving away a relatively generous amount of benefits so long as the condition of accepting them was that they essentially had to drop out of any related status competitions as a condition of receiving that support.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
2hr ago
I think that's why I dislike it so much! Not because it's schizo posting, I've been a denizen of /b/ since duck rolling was used earnestly to troll. But because it's schizo posting that has way too much institutional support, which glows.
Ecgtheow
2hr ago
This seems to be missing the point. Iran doesn't need enough nukes to win, they just need enough to make the cost of a nuclear exchange so high Israel would never risk it. Think about Saddam Hussein in 2003, if he has 10-15 nukes would the U.S. be willing to invade? How many nuclear strikes on Israel, are an acceptable price to pay for getting rid of him?
I sometimes wonder if there isn't a political analogy to the idea that 'Science advances one funeral at a time.'
I think you could tell a story of the last 400 years as a time of massive upheavals in traditional ways of life, as the rate at which societies had contact with wildly different societies rapidly increased, better instruments and math led to better understand of and dominion over the natural world, and society began to change at a more rapid pace than ever before.
Different human societies have always been changed by contact with one another. Just look at Ancient Rome, which saw Cato the Elder rejecting Greek philosophy as an anti-Roman thing that Rome had no need of, only for his great grandson Cato the Younger to become one of the most famous adherents of the Greek philosophical school of Stoicism and a sort of secular patron saint of lost causes complete with a pseudo-martyrdom narrative. If we use that as a measure, it took at most 4 generations for the "anti-Roman" Greek philosophy to be Romanized and assimilated by the Roman elites. That's a glacial pace of societal change compared to modernity.
In the modern day, you can be exposed to different ways of life in a thousand different ways. If you want to go deep on modern China or India as Westerner, you can do so. If you want to dive into everything the Western world knows about modern "primitive tribes" you can do so. You can read about the history of every great Empire and every historical time period and people we have records for. In a way, a modern person is constantly reliving Rome's first serious contact with the Hellenistic other. I think for most people, it is too much too fast. It is impossible to maintain a stable "Romanitas" in the face of all this information.
While I view it with as much suspicion as any of David Graeber's works, I think the book "The Dawn of Everything" made me realize the double-edged sword of the European Age of Sail. Sure, Catholic missionaries were being sent to what is now Quebec, and trying to convert the native Americans, but at the same time they were learning the languages and ways of life of these natives and sending reports back to the Old World which were read with great interest. I mean, just imagine that you're an educated Frenchman and you're suddenly hearing a ton about a bunch of cultural practices, governments, and religions that are unlike anything you've ever heard about. Even if you start out with a firm conviction that your way of life is superior, it would be hard to not update your view of human nature and what makes for a successful society even a little.
I think that there are two basic orientations a society can have: a rigid, fixed view like the Amish which is slow and deliberate about change, and a more open, changing view which tries to update and assimilate all new perspective which are put to it. The problem with the first view is that in many circumstances it might leave you vulnerable to outside invasion by a superior foe. In one sense, the Amish are lucky that people mostly admire their way of life and don't consider them disloyal or "foreign", because if the United States military wanted to take down the Amish it wouldn't even be a fight, it would be a slaughter.
I also think that in some ways "Progressiveness" or a Whig impulse is kind of inevitable over the last 400 years. In the United States in 1790 around 90% of people were involved in agriculture, whereas today less than 2% of the population is involved in agriculture. I don't think there's any set of societal values that would survive a transition like that. A modern American city calls for a different approach to society than what works in a 1790's farm society. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply delusional. In 1790 there were no engines, no automated factories, no labor saving devices in the home, no video games, no internet. We didn't have modern antibiotics, automobiles, planes, mass surveillance, or a thousand other modern inventions. Frankly, it makes sense that society would change in response to those things.
I don't think we can start having a super viable "conservatism" again until the pace of technological progress slows down, and we artificially limit the number of "first contact" scenarios with very different cultures from our own, but I doubt that is going to happen. Instead, while we still haven't even ironed out all of the kinks of Modern Society + Smartphones and Social Media, we're adding Generative AI to the mix. We don't have time for healthy norms to develop, instead we just panic about the last problem while a new one starts rearing its head on the horizon.
JulianRota
2hr ago
I don't know if you're particularly interested in the "foreign resistance fighter memoir" thing, but I did actually read that book. In my opinion, it was a moderately interesting memoir with very little in the way of actual political opinions at all, aside from an opposition to Russian expansionism. I don't see any reason at all to "cancel" it besides ridiculous hysteria about "nazis".
Which of course completely reversed overnight when Russia did actually invade Ukraine full-scale, at which point Azov battalion suddenly becomes glorious heroes, regardless of how much Nazi imagery and terminology they use, and the Canadian Parliament gives an award to an actual Ukrainian Waffen SS member for fighting against Russia in WWII.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
2hr ago
Lichtenstein appropriated more than just the look, he stole the panels too.
https://nextpanel.blogspot.com/2011/08/roy-lichtenstein-plagiarist-or-art.html?m=1
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
2hr ago
You don't even have to be pro-Trump, you just have to be pro-'Murica. A bridge that Democrats are increasingly loath to cross. Hense the whole 1619 project and endless thinkpieces about how America isnt exceptional.
Grant_us_eyes
3hr ago
The reaction from some quarters of the online 2a community has been... eyebrow-raising, to put it politely.
It's getting to the point where I unironically suspect there's a fair number of bots and shills coming out of the wood-work to paint this as a loss and demoralize 2a advocates when it's clearly a win. Not the best win, mind you, but still a win.
Tanista
3hr ago
I don't think ICE officers lack a pension like legionnaires so it's a non-issue.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
3hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
What is the definition of an "enemy of the United States" though? Hamas is primarily an enemy of Israel, and though Israel and the US share a relationship that is as close as lips and teeth at the moment, "dump Israel and ally with Hamas instead" is a real political position that is represented by a non-trivial number of native actors in the American system. If against all odds those actors were to come into power and implement their agenda, should pro-Israelis be (retroactively) denaturalized? Would there be a way at all to get legally and irreversibly naturalised in a futureproof way without staunchly refusing to have an opinion on Israel/Palestine and perhaps also every other important geopolitical issue where the US may switch sides in the future, or perhaps at most enthusiastically participating in the current Two Minutes of Hate whatever the target?
(And then, what classes of enmity are we considering? For smaller-scope questions than foreign alliances, the government position may flip every four years. Can Democrats denaturalize "Latinos for Trump"?)
It's not interpretation (good/bad) of a regular law, it's interpretation (good/bad) of the constitutional assignment of powers.
It makes a huge difference. A bad interpretation of a law can be corrected by the political branches. So the stakes are quite different.
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