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remzem
10m ago
The missiles aren't sitting on the mountains, they are under the mountains. For some sites like fordow it's unlikely even the largest conventional bunker buster in the US's entire arsenal would be able to penetrate. We don't have the power to simply destroy entire mountain ranges. Not even counting nukes.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
11m ago
Leftist political argumentation baffles me, and looking at all the different ways to analyze things in a conservative way (textualist, originalist, etc), I fail to find any similar differentiation on the left side of the law. This isn't the first time I've felt this way about left wing judges. They seem to be far more activist.
Breyer wrote a book defending his "pragmatism"--you could read it and see what you think. I haven't read it.
I agree with your general point. The liberals on the court have a tendency towards viewing a case through the lens of "do I agree with the policy at issue," and then proceeding from there. The conservatives are more likely to come out all over the place depending on where their textualism or originalism takes them. When I heard him speak in the early 2000s, Scalia was quite critical of the "hippies" in Texas v. Johnson but thought the first amendment required that result. Thomas' dissent in Lawrence v. Texas noted he thought the law at issue was "uncommonly silly" and he'd vote to repeal it if he were in the Texas legislature, but that it was constitutional since there is no general right to privacy. That sort of "I don't like this law/conduct, but I think the constitution allows/protects it" conclusion seems to only come from one side of the Court.
Hadad
12m ago
Realistically, there is no international law that America disagrees with, and that especially includes a rule of "you must let yourself be overrun by undesirables". I would personally sign up for Trump's Golden Gestapo to mow down orcs by the boatload.
remzem
13m ago
Realistically they are bound by international laws about refugees that they are unlikely to tear up. Also considering both the UK and France have a nuclear triad you don't want to destroy one country just to end up with 2 new nuclear armed foes in a few decades.
Hadad
14m ago
In your worldview, am I to understand that the reason China doesn't start World War 3 is because it fears America will bomb Taiwan into oblivion, and thus, if at any point we seem like we can't glass the entire place, they will invade?
Hadad
16m ago
I'm more confident in this administration's ability to enforce our territorial sovereignty than previous ones. We don't actually need to let them in, no matter how many there are.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
17m ago
Hypothesized chain of causality:
America expends large numbers of munitions on Iran > this lowers China's risk of making a play for Taiwan over the next ~5 (10?) years > China makes a move for Taiwan > both juggernauts slug it out > during the conflict, global trade collapses > depending on who wins the conflict (or if it even ends, it might just turn into a stalemate with occasional explosions), global trade potentially never recovers, and the world bifurcates a lot > we all are worse off as a result
remzem
18m ago
Given how much damage the middle eastern refugee waves did to the US and Europe it would be nice if our Senator's knew that Iran's population is larger than Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria's populations (at the point of their regime change attempts) combined.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
19m ago
Same, but I'd prefer neither much more. I think the two of them have much more in common with each other than they do with our current system.
Hadad
21m ago
No. It is true. There is no "may". These things I mention being complicated and multifaceted doesn't mean there is a chance or a scenario in which population is not critical in their determination.
It remains "may", because as said, scaling a population up doesn't necessarily improve its military or state capacities.
America was superior to Iraq (2003), and Syria, and Afghanistan, and Libya. Did our intervention in these countries go well for America? No, they did not.
The wrong goals were pursued in all of these cases.
It does not matter if America is superior to Iran. It matters if America can achieve what Ted Cruz wants to do, in the way Ted wants to do it, at an acceptable cost. If Ted Cruz does not know basic facts about the capacity of Iran to impose costs, how will Ted be able to know what costs Iran can impose?
I asked this to another, I ask it to you: at what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz to handle logistics? This is not a Senator's role. The country's population numbers are not an important concern for him. They are trivia.
remzem
23m ago
and though Iraq now has a population of ~45m when we invaded in 2003 their population was only 27m, Afghanistan's was 20. So if it's relative to the points of our regime change attempts in those countries Iran has more like 4x the population. The potential refugee wave would be larger than Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
24m ago
Man I really have a whole talmud to properly internalize heh, thanks for the advice. I really like the idea of Ben Franklining here but that might be temporarily off the table given the current situation.
if a partner is fundamentally not interested in a woman as a person, if he gets no great positive utility from caring for her and knowing she's happy day-to-day, if he's not the kind of guy who can notice and spontaneously help if she or a kid are struggling
Well uh see, that's... kind of the crux here. I am very interested in her, I care for her greatly and derive a lot of satisfaction from my savior complex doing it (in fact I have inflicted quite a bit of my residual rat programming on the unwitting gal, to which she took pretty well even). The problem is twofold: I can't express it "visibly", and accordingly my acts of service as it were don't scan to her as explicitly romantic gestures (which she needs), even as she acknowledges the care in the same breath.
I know this is going to look like a massive red flag from her but I assure you I really am that oblivious, the anime comparison wasn't metaphorical, so at least some frustration on her part is warranted here. To be perfectly blunt, I am the type of nigga to be texted "please educate me :3" at night and respond with "actually I think you're taking your lessons well so far, good job!". This has not been bad enough in the past, but the rift is growing, even as she clearly still perceives me as a potential partner and continues to reject dates IRL in my favor.
This is not to say that I don't feel frustrated too; if the above sounds like mixed signals - yes they fucking are, so to some extent I stubbornly hope that if a woman sends you mixed signals, she herself is confused and wants to be told what to think about us, and that I can learn how to drill that into her before the rift is unsalvageable.
phosphorus2
25m ago
This all may be true, to an extent (it's obviously not as simple as adding people means more state capacity).
No. It is true. There is no "may". These things I mention being complicated and multifaceted doesn't mean there is a chance or a scenario in which population is not critical in their determination.
But again: so? I'm confident America is superior regardless.
America was superior to Iraq (2003), and Syria, and Afghanistan, and Libya. Did our intervention in these countries go well for America? No, they did not.
It does not matter if America is superior to Iran. It matters if America can achieve what Ted Cruz wants to do, in the way Ted wants to do it, at an acceptable cost. If Ted Cruz does not know basic facts about the capacity of Iran to impose costs, how will Ted be able to know what costs Iran can impose?
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
28m ago
I find it simultaneously hilarious and kind of sad that you think Trads are "anti-sex". You've clearly never interacted with a sincere Catholic or Orthodox Jew before. (Or Mormon for that matter)
You have the causality exactly backwards. Trads, as a general rule, are pro-natal/pro-family-formation first and thier disdain for the liberal mantra of freedom from consequence/responsibility and "soulless pleasure seeking" is a result of them being pro-natal not the cause.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
31m ago
Why can't people like me even be given the solace of hopelessness?
Because the hopelessness is a construct of your own making. With very few exceptions, most of romanceless men are not like someone with Down's Syndrome longing for a college education that is literally beyond his potential.
I am not religious, but I kind of sympathize with the Christian idea that despair is not just counterproductive, but sinful. Yes, it's comforting to escape into despair and hopelessness and just say "No matter what I do, it won't work, so no sense in trying." But sometimes things are hard and difficult but still doable, and you would just prefer not to do them.
I doubt there is something deeply awful and abnormal about you. Maybe there is, and if so I'm sorry, but I can't diagnose you personally. But I get that we are given a lot of really bad, if well-meaning advice, like "just be yourself." (I got that one too, and it did me no favors.) That said, when your life is not working out for you, contrary to the fellow I was just arguing with about how grand and free medieval peasants were, no one has ever lived in a period with more freedom to remake, reinvent, and choose our lives than today. That doesn't mean everyone gets to be happy and fulfilled and get everything they want, but every incel-type guy I've ever known has basically had no serious personal defects that would make him literally undatable, just a lot of bitterness and resentment and unwillingness to change or put in the necessary effort. Why do you see so many men who shouldn't "rate" (they are definitely not chads or three-6s) pulling relationships? Are they just blindly lucky? Or do they persevere with some luck and effort - maybe a lot of luck - but mostly persistence?
Hell, there is even the redpill- "Game" apparently works, though I personally dislike the manipulativeness of that entire scene.
I can't tell you not to give up and abandon hope, but I cannot honestly feel sorry for you if you do.
remzem
35m ago
Russian and Iranian cooperation seems more just to counter the western empire's expansion collaborate to avoid sanctions and so on. They share some military tech and iirc Russian trade with India is through Iran. Other than that economically they are less interdependent, and if the war went bad and Iran closed the strait of Hormuz and hit Saudi Arabia's oil fields it would put Russia in a spot to make a pretty huge profit and a lot of pressure for the west to back off sanctions to stabilize their economy. This threat is ironically probably a more effective weapon against the west than a nuke.
I think China would be far more likely to come to their aid. They are a huge energy importer and Iran is crucial to their overland trade routes. They recently committed to a half trillion dollar infrastructure project in Iran, etc. Already heard of a couple Chinese warships entering their waters and some cargo planes flying in and out. Guess it will depend on how things escalate.
Hadad
38m ago
And I'd argue it's a vast gulf. I'll take Christianity over Islam 100 outta 100 times.
JarJarJedi
38m ago
being ostensibly natural for them to take this opportunity to set another trap for the Western coalition.
What kind of trap could they be setting? They have no military resources deployed there, and whatever they could ship is at complete mercy of Israel air force now that they have full aerial superiority. Nobody is trying to invade Iran on land, so Russia's favorite strategy of sending 10x people in and having 5x killed but still coming ahead on the numbers is pointless there. Not to mention even the most hardened Russian patriot would find confusing why exactly he must go and get killed by Israel in Iran and how it is vital for Mother Russia. Russia would gladly sell Iran any military equipment they could, but the things they are better at than Iran - e.g. air defense systems - are pretty useless by now, as existing ones have been destroyed and new ones are hard to deploy in any useful way in the middle of the war where the enemy owns the air.
On the other hand, they have some very vulnerable projects - like Busher reactor - which are technically not military, but given how Iran already hit many civilian targets in Israel, the case can easily be made for it to be infrastructure and thus fair game. So far, Russia made the opposite deal with Israel - we stay out of it and limit ourselves to blowing hot air, and you don't bomb the shit that makes us money. Since Busher, as far as I know, has little military value, Israel is fine with leaving it alone for now.
On the third hand, is Iran manages to really piss of Israel and it will authorize taking out Iran's oil facilities, guess who would be the only supplier of cheap oil to China. And who would benefit from the oil and gas prices inevitably raising.
So Russia is being very smart right now and doing exactly what is their best interest is - talking big game (in case ayatollahs pull through and there would be business to be done with them in the future) while not doing anything that would cause them to bear any costs. Trump has nothing to do with it - that kind of situation existed long before him, Russia had always been reluctant to mess with Israel directly, and Israel had always been willing to take Russia's interests into account as much as it is possible without hurting the main goals.
Hadad
39m ago
I don't think China's going to collapse global trade if we bomb Iran too much. They're rather reliant on it, too, you see.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
41m ago
Collapse of the current global trade/finance system that massively benefits America would cause harm.
Our lives are subsidized in many many ways by this system.
Perhaps you think the current system has made Americans lazy and complacent consumers of trinkets (not wrong), but the violent end to the system will still cause a lot of harm to the people around to experience it.
Also yeah, losing the chip fabs (and the rare earth metals, and the pharmaceutical precursors, and the machine tools, and innumerable other inputs) would be devastating to scientific and economic progress. All those things could be onshored eventually, but that process would be unfathomably painful (and longgggg).
Also losing the ability to sell stuff to a massive fraction of the world's population
quiet_NaN
42m ago
Sure. Here is Practical Ethics (That PDF is kinda terrible, but it appears that libgen is down.).
On page 85 (pdf page: 98), Singer argues that people mean different things when they say human being. One meaning is
It is possible to give 'human being' a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to 'member of the species Homo sapiens'. The other is There is another use of the term 'human', one proposed by Joseph Fletcher, a Protestant theologian and a prolific writer on ethical issues. Fletcher has compiled a list of what he calls 'indicators of humanhood' that includes the following: self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future, a sense of the past,the capacity to relate to others, concern for others, communication, and curiosity.
Then he goes (p.87):
For the first sense, the biological sense, I shall simply use the cumbersome but precise expression 'member of the species Homo sapiens' while for the second sense I shall use the term 'person'.
In the following pages, he goes on about why being a person makes a difference for involuntary killing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
43m ago
A peasant from the middle ages is more free than you are in all the ways that actually matter to the individual experience of the world to a degree that is comical.
You cannot be serious. What's comical is your lack of knowledge about the lives of peasants and your idealization of some "free men of the soil" living like Hobbits in Middle Earth.
He pays less taxes,
Peasants paid whatever tax rate their lords set for them, which could range from bearable to crushing.
owns more space,
Peasants did not "own space" - generally they literally owned no land at all, and at best had tenure on it. The dwellings they lived in were tiny by modern standards.
has more social relationships,
Peasants "social relationships" were generally limited to the village they lived and died in. They had no other options and were often not even legally allowed to move to a city with more social relationships available.
works more for himself
Peasants didn't work for themselves, they worked for their lords, and had very little volition in what work they would do. Peasants didn't choose their careers.
doesn't have to spend much of his life in a school
Peasants didn't spend much of their lives in school because school wasn't available to them. Education wasn't available to them.
can't be conscripted into wars
Peasants absolutely could be conscripted into wars.
doesn't need to fill as much paperwork...
Peasants couldn't fill out paperwork because they were illiterate, and thus had no way to even know if any theoretical rights they had were being violated.
the list goes on.
Do go on.
But sure, if you would prefer to be a medieval peasant than a modern man, that route is available to you. There are many places yet even in first world countries where you can disappear, build yourself a cabin, and live alone in the woods.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
44m ago
I'd argue the difference between autocratic islam and autocratic Christianity is wayyyyy smaller than either side will ever admit
jkf
45m ago
You really can't think of any logical reason for somebody to oppose high levels of immigration? It's not a particularly important issue to me, and I can easily throw few lines of argument in the ring:
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<insert country> is overcrowded already -- bringing in more people is creating an inferior experience for the existing people in terms of overcrowding, cost of living, increased crime, etc. -- and is therefore undesirable to the current populace.
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If we are talking about immigration from less developed countries to richer western ones (which we usually are), and the pro-immigration interlocutor believes that AGW is a significant threat to the global environment (which he usually does), then bringing large numbers of people from a poorer, less carbon-intensive lifestyle to a more consumptive place where they produce more GHGs seems like an obviously bad idea.
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More spicily, if one considers the existing culture of one's country to be generally superior to that of other countries, then importing people from other cultures would dilute the existing culture, which would be undesirable. If this one is not logical enough for you, you will have no trouble at all finding somebody around here to make a similar argument based on extensively cited research around HBD -- it's not an argument I care to make, but seems to meet your criteria. (other than containing ideas that you undoubtedly disagree with of course)
A shame if the bunkers themselves are truly impenetrable. In that case, we'd have to destroy everything except the bunkers.
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