domain:asteriskmag.com
4bpp
このMOLOCHだ！
5m ago
Then unless you fall into your own bullet one above, you've got your justification not just for Israel's extremely restrained and humane war, but for actual full-on retaliation.
This description of the war does not match with my perception of reality, either based on casualty figures or the pictures that I see. Even the most dedicated pro-Israelis concede that Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones, but Israel's war is the "extremely restrained" one?
Either way, I think there is a basic asymmetry between unjustified violence and retaliation. If person A chops off person B's arm and everyone else around looks away and says that A is in their right to do that, then B has been wronged. If B then chops A's arm off in retaliation, B was justified in doing so. If A chops B's other arm off in retaliation for that, this is not justified, because justified violence does not beget a similar right to retaliation.
There is no ethical principle other than "Whites bad" (or other general Who, Whom?) that condemns Israel while not condemning not just the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the Arab countries for their historic displacements and exterminations of Christians and Jews.
Please exercise the minimum of good faith to grant me that I am not approaching this from an ethnic perspective. I don't see where Christians come into this, but historical wrongs committed by Arabs against Jews seem like a better candidate for something that would justify the actions around Israel's establishment. This is an area where I have to admit relative ignorance, but my sense was that the scattering of the Jews of the Levant was largely at the hand of "Western" powers, starting with the Roman empire, and that actually Arab suzerains treated them better throughout history than the crusaders that would occasionally insinuate themselves into the region; and either way, any hostilities experienced by remnant resident Jewish population were out of proportion with the injustices visited upon the resident Arabs by the invading European Israelis. Because of the disconnect between the principal agents of Jews' displacement to Europe (the Romans) and the current "targets of retaliation" (the Arabs), who moved into the post-Roman vacuum much later, I find it hard to accept that the latter would have any moral culpability for what the Jews suffered in the European diaspora.
As a calibration question, I'm curious what you think of the Allies's campaign in WWII. Do you sympathize with the modern Neo-Nazi arguments that the firebombing of Dresden was an abomination, that the mass destruction of civilian life is never justified, and thus Nazi resistance to Allied occupation was justified then and justified now? Were the lives of the German civilians that died in Dresden precious enough that the war effort should have been forestalled?
No, not particularly, because as I said above there is an asymmetry between first-mover violence and retaliation. Since I don't accept the Nazi argument that starting WWII was proportionate retaliation for Versailles, they are the ones who moved first, with the civilian population as both an intended beneficiary and enthusiastic supporter of their actions. I would go even beyond the publicity-friendly rationalisation by military need and say that the Allies would morally not be so wrong to murder those civilians out of pure revenge. (Though actually still a bit less so than the Gazans, because they had more options to make Germany and Germans pay available to them at the time than the Gazans had wrt Israel!) To dispel any attempts to put a racial angle on this, I would say the same about the firebombing of Tokyo.
"Jews are literally all organized criminal gangsters, down to the children."
Ugh, I didn't anticipate that using that particular metaphor would invite this interpretation. The only reason I reached for it is that mafia/police collusion was the first trope I could think of where the protagonist is subjected to injustice and can't get succour. What matters for the metaphor is not even the collusion among the mafiosi, but the collusion between them and the police (the US + vassals). Would you be happier if I changed the stand-in for Israel to be a single guy who has a small frontier town's police and judges in his pocket, with a single pampered daughter who had a cushy upbringing thanks to what he racketeered from some townspeople?
zeke5123a
7m ago
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Palestinians are part of my enemies (more broadly religious Islam).
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I’m not really opposed to colonialism. I think most places that were colonized were better for all involved under the colonial power. Generally the colonized people (with certain political restrictions) ended up with more freedom.
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The argument against colonialism (self determination) are never generalizable (eg should my state be able to split off, should my city, should my house?). It just seems like special pleading to say “west bad” when in reality “west was good.”
OliveTapenade
12m ago
Oh, I have no doubt that it's true that wealthy individuals pressured Columbia in this way, and the fact that the individuals in question were disproportionately Jewish is unsurprising, since for very obvious reasons Jewish people are disproportionately likely to support Israel and to oppose the Palestine protests.
But I'm not blind. I can see the way that coffee_enjoyer specifically framed this around Jewish billionaires, and given that he is one of the small group of people on the Motte obsessed with Jews, the implication is not exactly subtle. In the top-level post he quite explicitly presents this as support for alt-right theories about secret Jewish power manipulating Western civilisation and so on.
I'd just like to maybe go a week without a bunch of people blaming everything on the Elders of Zion, you know?
quiet_NaN
13m ago
Yes they do. Wikipedia points out that the force is (1/c) times the power, and helpfully converts 1/c to 3.34 Newtons per Gigawatt. The article also helpfully does the calculation for the solar radiation near 1 AU (i.e. Earth) and comes to a value of ten Micronewtons per square meter.
If one wants to use this force, the best thing one can do is have a very large and very light mirror, which is better than first taking the momentum of the suns photons on your solar collectors and then sending a small fraction of that momentum out in the direction you actually want to accelerate in. This is not completely hopeless: metallized Mylar foil might weight some 50 micrograms per square meter, so a space craft where most of the mass is in the foil might accelerate at 40 centimeters per second squared (though there are some constraints on the direction, similarly to sailing). Of course, having a spacecraft with two hectares of foil per kilogram of payload might be difficult from an engineering point, and micrometeorites might become a problem. I would probably play a Kerbal mod which adds Kerbol radiation pressure and giant sails, though.
Or you could actively shine an Earth- or Moonbound laser on your spacecraft.
In general, there is a tradeoff between getting the most momentum out of your propellant mass, which benefits from higher exhaust velocities on the one side (with photons being the optimal choice, and ultrarelativistic ions only slightly worse) and getting the most momentum per energy invested, which favors throwing out a huge mass at minimal velocity. For propulsions where the energy source is decoupled from the reaction mass, such as ion drives, the sweet spot seems to be at a mere 20-50km/s -- which is far away from the 300,000km/s you would get with photons.
hydroacetylene
14m ago
Decree 770 did boost the fertility rate, but it didn’t do so by paying women for motherhood- it did so by banning contraception unless you already had 5 kids.
hydroacetylene
16m ago
My friends with many children(I have many friends with normal-for-tradcaths family sizes) say that they have to buy special slim fit car seats to use a sedan for three children. I don’t know where these car seats are sold, and also wonder why slim car seats aren’t simply the default due to their occupants being, definitionally, small.
Of course no one is actually going to question a mother about the age of her children if there’s any room for doubt at all; my friends who do that pretty much all have 3 under five or something like that.
zeke5123a
18m ago
Like most things, the solution is freedom in normal situations and government regulation in monopoly situations.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
23m ago
When looking at Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, I'm reminded of the 20th century history of the Indian subcontinent, wherein a war drew borders between India and (a combined) Pakistan, which then had a second conflict dividing it into the two Muslim-majority states of Pakistan and Bangladesh. I haven't seen a "three state solution" seriously proposed by anyone in power, but it doesn't seem implausible to me.
hydroacetylene
24m ago
Argentina is not 97% white, it’s 97% white and mestizo combined. ‘Mestizo’ is Spanish for mixed and tends to be used mostly in reference to people with obvious white ancestry who can’t just pass as white. The actual breakdown is unknowable because in Latin America whiteness is high status, and so everyone downplays their non-white ancestry.
I don’t have a link right now, but IIRC the whitest parts of Latin America, based on hospital phenotypic data, consistently have parts of Mexico in the top ten. Clearly HBD does not dominate Latin American crime rates.
I love how social and mainstream media pearlclutching over Butker has pretty much catapulted him to being the third most famous Chief via the Streisand effect. I’d never heard of him before this.
I still have no interest in listening to his speech, looking into his opinions (they’re probably kind of stupid), or watching him or the NFL in general, but he’s making the usual insufferables seethe so I like him. I’ll just donate my ki from afar like he’s Goku charging up a Spirit Bomb.
It helps that most of his fellow NFL players have greater idpol protections and hold views that are even more politically incorrect about women and 2SLGBTQIA+ (views that are sometimes physically expressed to the former in a fiery, but mostly peaceful manner). However, they just don’t have the desire or ability to introspect on a worldview and go around giving speeches. So Butker likely enjoys some low-key solidarity.
The Chiefs as Superbowl champions in an OT victory and the biggest hotbed of drama, gossip, and lolcowery? Maybe the NFL is indeed fixed like boxing, instead of real like pro-wrestling.
JulianRota
24m ago
For 1, I'm skeptical about that. I think it's very common in the US at least due to the scientific and social influence of the I think 70s-era belief in the "food pyramid", that lots of carbs and some meat were the height of healthiness and all fats were bad. The perception and trend wears on even as we've discovered that that isn't really true and nutrition is far more complex. I think any feeling of fulfillment is more due to some combination of it being what people are used to and perception of social approval.
For 2, I think it's about the overall state of society, which means that perceptions of what is attractive are more malleable than most people think. If getting any food at all is expensive and hard work, then being fat signals that you are a high-status person who has access to plenty of food, therefore you are attractive, for both men and women. In our current society where food is incredibly plentiful and much of it is not great for your health, being fat is nothing special as far as status in society, and instead being thin is a better signal that you have plenty of resources and status, in the form of time and energy to find and purchase higher-quality food and eat it in measured quantities. It also tends to signal that you have the free time and energy to exercise for fun.
practical_romantic
27m ago
Also I dont think atlanata would be as good because it does not have access to the ocean which IMO is an important part of a GTA game. Having the ability to traverse land, water and the sky is what made vice city a game worth playing.
Atlanta is just too hip hop from my completely skewed lens. Miami Vice or 90s New York or LA are far far more appealing settings because. Miami in particular since you do see it in pop culture but not as much as the other two and the retrowave aesthetic seals it for me. A hip hop inspired inner city game happened and that was san andreas, Atlanta based GTA game would be worse.
ulyssessword
28m ago
What I'm confused about: why is this a story at all? Presumably, the main effects of this are to make him unemployable and perhaps cause some interpersonal issues.
The Guardian (Like the New York Times before it), was exercising its right to kick people in the balls:
suppose Power comes up to you and says hey, I’m gonna kick you in the balls. And when you protest, they say they don’t want to make anyone unsafe , so as long as you can prove that kicking you in the balls will cause long-term irrecoverable damage, they’ll hold off...
No! There’s no dignified way to answer any of these questions except “fuck you”. Just don’t kick me in the balls! It isn’t rocket science! Don’t kick me in the fucking balls!
In the New York Times’ worldview, they start with the right to dox me, and I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I’m the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. But in my worldview, I start with the right to anonymity, and they need to make an affirmative case for doxxing me.
And yet it is a story, and a story that gets me emotionally invested,
It is a story. It has plot, characters, setting, conflict, and all the rest. It just isn't news.
They've pulled a great trick: they (often) write newsworthy stories, therefore (all) stories they write are newsworthy. Heck, they're even called "the news", so anything they see fit to print must be real news.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
29m ago
He's almost got the face of the gigachad. He had to have done that on purpose.
NelsonRushton
30m ago
Respectively,
- Nothing is being molded by anyone. Petition for redress of grievances is business as usual.
- If it is illegal then it is newsworthy, but what law is being broken and by what conduct?
- BLM is not the other side from the pro Hamas protests; it is the same side. Both are illegal and both should have been dispersed by police immediately. If it was MAGA protesters they would have been.
4bpp
このMOLOCHだ！
32m ago
You and SecureSignals can keep telling yourselves that, but it's a strange narrative that ignores the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the first time the Arab states tried to push Israel into the sea.
I wasn't intending to ignore it (and I reject whatever you are trying to hint at by lumping me in with SecureSignals), but looking at the Israeli-side list of "commanders and leaders" on Wikipedia, some two thirds of them were straight up born in Europe, and the remaining ones were born during the British administration to parents who are listed as such. This parses as invaders being expelled, not as people defending their homes.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The people promptly elected Hamas as their champions, and Hamas used that power to make war on Israel by firing rockets. Israel basically just withstood this (and built Iron Dome) for many years, until October 7.
I am quite aware of this, but as I think I argued at length I don't see any moral obligation on the people Israel crammed into Gaza to not elect a government that loathes Israel and will lob rockets into it. This list does not look like "basically just withstood this" either; the list is punctuated with fantastically disproportionate statements like "Israel launches a 22-day military offensive in Gaza after rockets were fired at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed before a ceasefire is agreed upon.".
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
33m ago
What is this show and where can I buy the boxed set before it gets memory holed?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
33m ago
But they're very silly space opera books, lots of action with basically no deep thinking.
Eh, not really; a lot of them are basically "puzzle" stories, where the protagonist has to outsmart the berzerker.
Anyway, that's not a complaint you can make about the rather heavier in tone Greg Bear books. Bear may have called it a "vicious jungle" rather than a "dark forest", but it's the same thing.
Throwaway05
33m ago
It's worth noting that while some of the impetus for anorexia may come from social and cultural expectations and so on, it is very, very much a mental illness and has dysmorphic components. You can't easily reason your way out of it especially if people "feel" fat (while objectively being thin, it's somewhat of a psychotic process). "Yeah yeah if I was really skinny you might be right but I just have to shed these last few pounds to be normal" is a bizarre sounding but reasonable in their own mind response.
hydroacetylene
33m ago
It seems like ‘progressives’ are not a unified group on this question.
naraburns
nihil supernum
35m ago
Long form and relitigating every frame hinders the ability to develop models to apply to new situations.
Inflammatory comments and shorthand integration-by-reference hinder the ability to create a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
That's the goal--it's right there at the top of the page! Of course, the community is what it is; personalities and culture and such are bound to develop and play a part. The goal of moderation is to do what we can to preserve the foundation in the face of that.
sliders1234
37m ago
I got a couple upvotes on reddit replying to a post “with bad guy Butker whose the evilest player in the nfl”
Good Guy: Butker Bad Guy: too many to name
I am not sure if the Overton window of NFL player conduct has really changed that much. I think most Americans have always had some support for traditional values and even more support a religious community to do their own thing. Explicitly stating this publicly though was banned for a while.
This also has me thinking about the right to free association. Which has largely been deleted from the U.S. constitution. I largely support a right to free association but it feels like it does need some limits. I would like a company to be able to fire some one for any reason they want. If you get promoted to CEO and your personal view is that Indians are smelly vile creatures and want to fire them just because they are Indian I want you to have that right. And ideally those Indians you don’t like get scooped up by your competitor and build a better product.
Butker’s case provides the counter-point. If the NFL decided they don’t want Catholics playing in their league who do real Catholic things and fired Butker it would cause him real harm. Go start your own football league is not viable. This happens with a lot of product too. If Microsoft decided no Jews can use excel that would be an irreplaceable loss. Jews of course could build their own excel software, but since every other organization uses excel the Jewish excel would not be compatible with the Gentile Excel used by everyone else. They could not be accountants or investment bankers because all their clients would be using Gentile Excel.
Of course Courts can come up with tests to distinguish the difference for when giving free association is non-viable. The issue here is that if you are the wrong group at the time let’s say a Catholic kicker the court could declare it is viable for him to start his own NFL to be a kicker, but also find it’s completely not viable for Jews to create their own excel.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
38m ago
hydroacetylene
39m ago
My experience is that a pretty big part of the Christian left(which I was raised adjacent to) gets very into aliens as a replacement for doctrine. Now obviously ancient aliens are stupid in a not-even-pro social way, but they’re a fairly common replacement for taking certain passages in genesis literally.
This largely tracks with my understanding of the history of the region (plus a few new details), except:
My understanding was that the Arabs largely left voluntarily upon request by the surrounding Arab nations, who expected to wreak total destruction on those pesky so-called Israelis (in their opinion), and didn't want them to be in the crossfire. Possibly there was some small-scale local hostility and encouragement, but not anything that could be called a proper expulsion.
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