domain:rifters.com
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8m ago
True, but they don’t help beat the allegations.
It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.
But of course that would come at some cost in Israeli lives. Understandably not popular in Israel.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
16m ago
Under a very loose definition of "ethnic cleansing", the IDF forcing Jews out of Gaza in the 2005 withdrawal (in some cases unwillingly) fits the definition, but is hardly the central example you're looking for.
DirtyWaterHotDog
18m ago
- Hoh Rain Forest and the short hall-of-mosses hike is unmissable. If you had to pick one. It has to be this. There is no place in the US like Hoh-rain-forest. Olympic national park is massive.
- My 2nd recommendation would be Hurricane Ridge and the Hurricane hill hike. Great drive, great views.
- Rialto Beach-> Hole in the wall is the perfect long stroll. The day I was there, the Pacific was roaring. Gives you newfound respect for this behemoth of an ocean. No other Ocean compares to the Pacific. The hike doesn't end at any point. You can keep going forward, but be wary of the tides.
- Cape Flattery is a nice short walk. The drive is amazing, if a bit out of the way. The views at Cape flattery are beautiful. And for cookie points, it's the lower-48's north western most point.
- Mt. Storm king is a short but demanding hike. The views are unbeatable. The last section has ropes and is a bit vertigo inducing. Still recommend it. I generally love this area. There is kayaking near lake crescent. And Granny's cafe has good food, as does the lake crescent lodge.
Some tips:
There are nice waterfalls in Olympic, but Oregon has the best waterfalls in the country. So nothing I can recommend would impress (Solduc, Marymere). Definitely spend one day up the Columbia river in Oregon.
On the way down from the Olympic, stop by the world's largest Sikta Spurce and the Tree of life. They should be 5 minute stops each.
Don't stop by Forks, Washington. It was popularized by Twilight. I passed through it, and the town made me feel uneasy. It's probably safe, but has the air of a sad place that's been left behind.
faceh
18m ago
Ding ding ding.
If gambling was a "once in a while, for fun" activity, or people smoked weed in their house and NOWHERE else, or people would only eat McDonalds once a week at most, then we absolutely wouldn't need any kind of laws in place, legalize it all.
But our brains didn't evolve that way, we want to gorge on certain things because in the ancestral environment times of true 'abundance' was rare.
My vice is fuckin' sugar. Right now I'm stuffing my face with candy that has 19 grams of it per serving. I work out like crazy to keep it from making me fat, but I'm well aware its just my caveman brain telling me I need to store up fat for the winter or something.
If we could just accept the basic idea that "willpower isn't enough", then perhaps the next discussion is what the appropriate time and place for things are, and how we should intervene to help those who can't control themselves well enough.
daguerrean
26m ago
and how he (probably, likely, definitely) had undiagnosed/untreated mental illness for a long time
I don't understand how this makes him more likable or sympathetic. I find it odd that people treat mental illnesses as something separate from a person that isn't reflective of the "real" them. But this isn't like some parasite was controlling his brain, his mental illnesses, if they existed, were just as intrinsic to who he was as his good qualities. I don't see how this is different from me saying "I'm really a nice guy I'm just suffering from untreated assholeism"
magicalkittycat
27m ago
The strongest criticisms of Israel involve the parts of it which appear profoundly uninterested in doing so. There are more of these than I would like
That's basically the first example Bryan Caplan gives in missing moods about why he doesn't trust the war hawks defense of civilian death.
What he expects is more like "It's a sad but necessary drawback to the messy reality of war that sometimes peaceful civilians are swept up as collateral" and yet instead often sees stuff more like "Hell yeah let's wipe them out, the only good [nationality] is a dead one!"
SSCReader
30m ago
If we're going to allow people to teach their kids there is an invisible man in the sky who judges them, then you're going to have to allow this. You can brainwash your kid into almost any belief set.
Personally I'd take banning this in exchange for banning exposing kids to religion until they are 18, but I don't imagine that would be too popular.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
31m ago
Sorry, I meant that in the general case of media selection pressure, not for Ken in particular. It’s just another filter.
phailyoor
33m ago
Even though they're outlawed and abhorrent, reprisals are still a frequent though unfortunate part of war and occupation. They have happened in many cases without a significant genocidal or ethnic cleansing objective.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
40m ago
If you're an (American - also applies to some degree to other Western countries) progressive Millennial, assuredly one of your chief political formational points was the Iraq War, where, in addition to various other forms of propaganda, you'd be suggested to a huge assay of talking heads, "warbloggers" and the like piously intoning that this is all a part of a battle against Radical Islamic Terrorist and unless you want to support exactly the wars the Bush admin wanted you to support or a course even more radical, it meant that you loved and cherished not only cruel dictators like Saddam but also Radical Islamic Terrorism (and even neglecting to use this specific phrase might mean you're symphatizing with Islamists!) and all of this proved that you were a part of an eternal alliance of Islamists and Leftists and also that you were naive and America-hating and what have you. I'm not talking about the official Bush admin point of view, which tried to avoid direct implication of this being a war against Islam after a few false starts, but the general connected propaganda machine around the WoT.
Then it all went belly-up and Middle East turned into a fire pit and the people who made it happen never admitted anything. I suspect that offered quite an inoculation against similar rhetoric for many Millennials, lasting until now and giving flashbacks right now of similar rhetoric being used by people who were supposed to be a reaction precisely to Bush-era warmongering.
The conflict between various Muslim states and Israel (which, really, is what we're talking about when talking about "Muslims and Jews" here, since there's only one Jewish state) is rather more complex and goes back way more than the 00s War on Terror, but one of the reasons why they get jumbled up is precisely because Israelis themselves worked to jumble them up in the public view when they considered it advantageous to do so.
hydroacetylene
41m ago
You have described my feelings about marijuana. As with obesity, the real enemy is our culture’s allergy to moderation.
vorpa-glavo
42m ago
Your understanding of the bill and mine are the same, though I certainly see that I didn't word it correctly in the post you responded to.
But even reduced, uneven acces to credit is a form of oppression.
Like, are we going to pretend that the moment Esso started serving gas to black motorists nationwide in the 1930's, that suddenly black motorists were completely unoppressed as a group? Having to navigate an environment in which you can get an essential good from some firms, and can't get an essential good from others limits your options and often mean you're left with a worse set of choices.
hydroacetylene
42m ago
Degenerate alcoholics with the shakes mostly have enough tolerance that their trip home from the convenience store isn’t that dangerous. There are simply people who will not follow rules they can easily get away with breaking(and you can’t visually tell a coke can from a beer can at distance- nor can you tell if someone has poured it in a big gulp cup[and I see construction workers doing this on their way home, regularly, in gas station parking lots]).
netstack
Texas is freedom land
43m ago
There is a difference between men fighting one another (Hamas vs. IDF) and men fighting unarmed civilians (Hamas vs. Israelis; IDF vs. random Palestinians).
As much as I would prefer the former, it’s not on the table. Hamas can’t stop hiding behind civilians without getting slaughtered. Israel can’t stop killing civilians without giving Hamas opportunities to slaughter Israelis. Neither side is willing to let it “just be a fight.”
So yes, it’s teetering on the edge of ethnic cleansing. Not because of a psyop to claim righteousness, but because all the remaining options look an awful lot like killing noncombatants and driving them off.
gattsuru
51m ago
Trying to work my way through NoStarchPress's Computer Graphics from Scratch (caveat: got it deeply discounted during a Humble Bundle, definitely wouldn't pay full price). It's a little obnoxious because I've dabble enough in newer technologies that a lot of the early tutorials are annoyingly useless, but I'm also finding all the places I've missed conventions or misunderstood processes before.
faceh
56m ago
Gambling is very tricky for me because it doesn't usually create obvious externalities.
Other than being stuck in line while someone buys scratchoffs.
Its unclear what interest I have in whether someone is spending their money 'wisely' or not. There's an argument that someone who would gamble money away would probably do something else stupid with it, like play with options on Robinhood or fall for some crypto rugpulls, so really they might be better off giving up control of their money entirely.
But its increasingly clear to me that I don't WANT to live in a society where gambling is everywhere. I don't like the ads, I hate having the odds splayed across the screen constantly, I'm old enough to remember the time before this was ubiquitous, and sports gambling indeed had a sheen of shame on it.
The one time I went gambling in a Casino was a rush. I see why people get really into it, I felt an urge to return and try my luck for months afterwards.
The optimal amount of gambling in a society is (probably) not zero.
The compromise that seemed to mitigate the harms is to keep legal gambling relegated to certain geographical areas. This makes it easier to keep things restrained or dare I say 'regulated.'
Otherwise, every single business out there tries to inject some gambling aspect into their products and services to capture some of those sweet addict dollars.
And all THAT said, I'm also not in favor of having police raids on grandma for running a BINGO game out of her backyard.
charlesf
57m ago
I'm some places it already is illegal to sell cold beer for carry out. Indiana I believe, and maybe Oklahoma. Actually it looks like OK repealed it a few years ago. Some beer is also meant to be consumed at room temp, but the people that are into this type of beer are probably not drinking it in the car. Most of the degenerate alcoholics I've known, people who literally can't wait to get home and have to drink in the car, do not care in the least what the temperature is and have often also bought a half-pint which they downed in the parking lot before even getting back in the car.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
57m ago
Are autoandrophiles even a thing?
They undoubtedly exist, although they’re quite rare, partially because paraphilias in general are rare in women.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
59m ago
Fighting Hamas is a just war. Reprisals against civilians, on the other hand, are broadly prohibited. Since Hamas has a vested interest in entangling the two, it is very hard for Israel to keep its hands clean.
The strongest criticisms of Israel involve the parts of it which appear profoundly uninterested in doing so. There are more of these than I would like.
Regardless of intent, every dead civilian lets critics pattern-match to My Lai. That’s the kind of event which shaped the antiwar psyche.
wayfarer
1hr ago
Offered, not gave. He also offered gold statues of himself and night clubs with Palestinian woman providing sexual services (see that Gaza strip AI video posted by Trump).
I'm on the boarder of the midwest/upper south, so there are some hispanics here but not a large fraction of the population. Pickup trucks, however, are extremely common and popular. Some of them are work trucks, though vans are more common as actual work vehicles. The overwhelming majority of pickup trucks on the road here (I'd estimate 80%+) are single passenger commuter vehicles. 99% of their drive time is to carry their driver to and from their job that doesn't require a truck at all, or running errands. Nothing has ever been, nor will ever be, transported in the (tiny) beds, which generally have a hard cover of some type so they don't need cleaned. Many of them boast considerable off-road capabilities yet will never have a single tire touch dirt, short of occasionally hopping a curb to get out of a small driveway or parking lot. All of my neighbors, the men anyway, drive one of these as their primary vehicle. If they do find themselves actually needing to haul something, the more well off actually buy a second, usually older, truck to use for that, or they have a trailer. Trailers are very common and popular; nothing really fits in the beds of these trucks anyway. They are essentially lifted SUVs with enormous engines with the rear storage area converted into a semblance of a truck bed that is never used. Decades ago this same demo (their parents and grandparents) would have driven Lincolns and Cadillac sedans. The interiors of these trucks often have the same luxury options as the current Lincoln/Caddy offerings. More offroad vehicles like jeeps and hummers are also popular with the younger men. These are slightly more likely to be used for their ostensible purpose, especially if they've aftermarket alterations, but I'd guess at least 50% of these vehicles are also single passenger commuter vehicles. The locals who are fans of offroading/mudding disparagingly refer to both types of vehicles as pavement princesses or mall prowlers. As mentioned down thread, all of these commuter trucks are in impeccable condition, regularly washed and kept away from any scenarios that might scratch or ding them in any way.
As to the question why? They are men, and men drive trucks. There isn't much more introspection than that. A non-trivial amount of women use pickups as their primary commuter vehicle too, but they also tend to prefer jeeps, or the jeep pickup, which I'm seeing more of, or just regular giant SUVs. Many of the wives of the men who own the giant commuter trucks near by me have nearly identical black Cadillac Escalades with the silver trim. I have a Lincoln Navigator personally, I think Ford makes better vehicles, at least right now. I also have a Nissan pick up that is used as a farm truck mostly, and looks like it.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1hr ago
Kevin Spacey did this to both American Beauty and House of Cards for a lot of people pretty closely. So great analogy.
I haven’t read Ellison so I can’t really say, but it has consistently been true that among many artists of all types, suffering, restrictions and angst leads to great art (or at least, the reverse is true, conditioning on great art). The real question is, how often does art in general present actual worldviews rather than merely challenge them, or throw out fascinating ideas that we then grapple with and fill in ourselves? Quite often! I think that’s partially the point, that new ideas, perspectives, and filters can be intoxicating and intriguing. And honestly I view sci-fi writing as more art than science or engineering or something, despite the reputation and being more “cerebral” (not a bad thing). As visionary as art can often present, I think most art is actually overwhelmingly reactionary on both a personal and societal level. It’s just how art is. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, and it shows up everywhere.
So in that sense I do wonder if you put more expectations on his art than any art merits. At the same time I deeply sympathize and more specifically you might not be wrong (again never read him)
guajalote
1hr ago
Christians generally believe humans have free will that enables them to act contrary to God's will. Those bad actions are still "part of God's plan" in the sense that he anticipates them and "plans around them" so to speak, but those sinful actions are "contrary to God's plan" in the sense that he does not want them to happen.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1hr ago
I think a lot of the bias in the pro-Muslim direction is a lack of lived experience with this stuff.
That probably applies to zoomers, but I don't think it explains why the progressive movement (which is dominated by millenials) axiomatically favours Muslims over Jews. I'm pretty sure AOC remembers 9/11.
I am not watching the video, but I notice that the tweet said:
The Assad regime did not end because Israel drew the US into a regional war. The US did fuck-all to bring about its end. In a nutshell, Israel took out Hezbollah, Turkey sponsored the Jihadists who defeated Assad and Russia did not offer less than usual military support to their ally because they were otherwise occupied.
More options
Context Copy link