Carrolade

@Carrolade@lemmy.world

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Carrolade ,

US aid accounts for about 15% of the Israeli military budget. They can carry on without it, unfortunately.

Carrolade ,

https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Carrolade ,

Presumably you're going to talk about additional aid sent since Oct 7th.

My counter-argument would be that there are more inexpensive ways to kill Palestinians than using expensive munitions, that are well within Israeli capability to attempt.

Regardless, the point of the article is Israel doesn't need us, so we should start backing out now. Just don't expect that to magically stop Netanyahu, who can just switch to lower-tech warfighting.

Carrolade ,

So, they would change tactics. They're doing things the way they are because they can and it is advantageous for them to do so. It does not mean it is absolutely required for them to do it this way, and nothing else could possibly work. People are capable of adaptation.

There are multiple options for accomplishing goals in life, and Netanyahu's situation is no different. He is choosing the one he finds most beneficial to him, but others do exist. It's not like Israel cannot borrow money or raise taxes or reduce expensive expenditures. Missile barrages will kill people, sure, but not destroy the country or topple the government.

All that said, we should not be assisting what is happening over there, I think we have a moral obligation to cease, and to force him into other methods. This would not save the Gazans in the short term, Israel would not collapse nor would the food blockade lift. But it might save the Gazans in the long term by further mounting greater and greater pressure on Netanyahu and his nationalistic nut jobs.

Carrolade ,

I guess it just depends if you have all your teeth or not.

Carrolade ,

"Concerned" is pretty much the most mild-mannered diplo speak there is. Personally, I am not concerned about statements of concern.

Carrolade ,

Closing border points and instituting a blockade of food is fairly inexpensive, they could and probably would continue to do that without our bombs and shells.

Carrolade , (edited )

Yeah, you hear that conspiracy theory crap a lot. "Shadowy string pulling" instead of getting into the nitty gritty details of the specific treaties Congress made back in the day that aren't so easy to wiggle out of.

Money lets you put pressure, but it does not give you mind control powers, or any kind of medieval fealty.

edit: Hell, medieval fealty wasn't even that reliable, as any perusal through European history will give lots of examples of a King's subjects fucking off.

Carrolade ,

If you're going to operate with a tightly controlled information space for security reasons, it's going to naturally stifle innovation. It comes down to prevailing attitudes, where a pattern of generally challenging old assumptions and ideas is either encouraged or discouraged. You can either be loyal to entrenched ideas, which slows progress but encourages stability and predictability, or you can not give a fuck about them, which speeds innovation at the cost of more instability and unpredictability.

You can't really do both at the same time though, since it all traces back to the core attitudes of an individual person and how they operate within some sort of organizational structure, where they have superiors. You can either challenge the superiors or bow, but not both.

Carrolade ,

My theory is that as people get more success in life, they tend to get "busier". They have families, careers, hobbies they've invested time in, money to take travel vacations, etc. They just do more "stuff". This results in less time and interest towards getting into arguments with randos on the internet.

The internet is extremely accessible and economically inexpensive though, so almost everyone can get on here if they want, regardless of any personal degree of any sort of life proficiencies.

Together, these factors result in it being the mass of humanity with some of the cream skimmed off. So that's what we tend to see around us, the internet is the skim milk of humanity. Then to avoid all the watery garbage so prevalent everywhere, we further clump into more segmented communities where we can find more like-minded people to associate with, simply because that's more enjoyable.

This is one of the reasons I think it's important to actually put effort into interacting on here, to try to help prevent it from worsening before we can address some of the underlying technical problems it has introduced into our societies.

Carrolade ,

The guy on the right, if he be so wise in the ways of science, should be using the word "massive" instead of "heavier".

Carrolade ,

Meme faces are really going downhill. Is this some attempt to be a play on "genetic health" or something? They used to portray emotions, not exaggeratedly malformed bone structure.

A burger being "100% Beef" is not a good thing

My whole life I've always hated burgers that you get from fast food/restaurants. It's just a bland beef patty with a bunch of toppings that make it a pain to eat. These places advertise their burgers as being "100% Angus Beef!" or whatever, like that makes it appetizing... Why is this the norm? Do people just not know any...

Carrolade ,

Surprisingly large amount to unpack here. First is just marketing techniques, which are not really intended to speak to people's rational minds. More often its about influencing people's feelings by taking advantage of people's looser impressions, in this case the one of purity = good. This isn't strictly rational, it's just a feeling, and the marketing is designed to target this subconscious impression with a quick and easy hook.

Next, from a culinary perspective, a pure ground beef patty does need to be cooked properly, and that's harder than it sounds. You want high heat and a quick sear to get a good crust on it, these Maillard reactions are what you're going for to develop a robust and complex flavor in your beef. Also need a generous salting. Most places fuck some part of this technique up, but when done well it gives the straight beef a certain degree of depth that many find appealing. It's actually counter-productive to this process to add anything with water content, as the extra water will inhibit the beef from quickly reaching the necessary temps along its exterior to get these crusty bits, just by virtue of water's low boiling point.

But, in the event you want complex flavor without having to muck around with very specific cooking technique, you can add complex flavors in other ways. Onion can provide sweetness, Worchestershire can add depth, something like smoked paprika, chipolte or liquid smoke can add a smokey component etc, all of which can add deliciousness. This all has the added benefit of extra nutrition and stretching the more expensive meat into more patties as well. This method is far more certain in its results, since the extra flavor components are already there, making the whole thing much more forgiving when it comes to the actually cooking process. All this really costs you is a few minutes of extra prep work and having to deal with burger purists potentially talking about meat loaf sandwiches.

So, at the end of the day, several viable techniques exist that can produce solid results, and have their own subtle pros and cons. This more elaborate understanding does not fit well from a marketing perspective, however, where the advertiser just wants the quickest and cheapest way to create an impression in your brain, accurate or not.

Thus, ultimately, I fully agree with you.

Carrolade ,

It actually did accomplish its goal of preventing the Germans from punching through from that direction. It just wasn't sufficient when recent technological and organizational advances were taken into account.

Carrolade ,

The govt's job is not to prevent crime from happening, that's dystopian-tier stuff. Their job is to determine what the law is, and apply consequences to people after they are caught breaking it.

The job of preventing crime from happening in the first place mainly belongs to lower-level community institutions, starting with parents and teachers.

Carrolade ,

... not helping.

Carrolade ,

Nobody is ever 100% at fault, life doesn't work that way. People are interconnected with each other in ways we can never fully disentangle.

The question is how best to move forwards towards peace. And that, is not helped by continuation of violent conflict. 8 rockets towards the Israeli seat of govt isn't "fighting back", not vs their air defence. It's "not enough people have died yet".

Carrolade ,

Yes, sometimes. Though I try to remember that one of the reasons for that phenomenon is just that new people are entering the environment every day, something that will never end. It's easy to think it's always the same people arguing, but it's not. There's just a lot of different people in the world.

When I think it's possible to try to improve the discourse over what we've seen in the past, I'll sometimes make an attempt. When I have the time and energy for it anyway, I don't always.

Carrolade ,

Oh, is this the new Scientology doctrine now?

Carrolade ,

Seems like there's another one of these every week now. Glad our intelligence services have finally seemed to get their acts in gear.

Carrolade ,

How about just Feds? I have to admit that would amuse me somewhat.

We're literally the Feds.

Carrolade ,

Can't it just be transmitted over to France, Austria, Poland and Denmark?

Carrolade ,

Ukraine drops mobilization age by 2 years and suddenly gets big influx of new weapons.

Putin: Okay, how about a ceasefire?

Carrolade ,

a^2 + b^2 = c^2???

Lies.

Carrolade ,

Wouldn't you want a pediatric hepatobiliary surgeon? A four month old is going to be a tricky case, I'd think.

Carrolade ,

This almost makes me think they're trying to fully automate their publishing process. So, no editor in that case.

Editors are expensive.

Carrolade ,

This is correct. The 60 vote threshold is to break a filibuster. Filibusters having become steadily more common since they changed the procedures for them that removed the requirement for a filibustering Senator to actually stand up and talk the whole time, which put a functional, biological cap on the potential duration of a filibuster. That cap no longer exists. This is sometimes called a "no-talk filibuster".

Carrolade ,

Looks like 1975.

Seems it was an inadvertent result from a rule designed to allow the Senate to pursue other business during a filibuster, so it wouldn't hold up all Senate business.

Here's a couple links, and there's also a long wikipedia article on it.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/filibustering-in-the-modern-senate
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/filibuster-explained

Carrolade , (edited )

There's unfortunately more to it than that. It is on peaceful protestors to make sure they're not supporting violent organizations. Just because I say something, and someone else says the same thing I say, does not make that person automatically my friend and ally.

Everyone who fights against some evil is not automatically a good person. It's just not that simple in real life. Evil fights other evil all the time, look at gang wars and cartel violence.

There's more to this than a simple smear campaign, and if we just try to brush it away as one, we are only hurting our own cause.

edit: We don't want to be the equivalent of a "good cop" that covers for other corrupt cops, just because they're "on the same side". It's hard, but we have to be better than that.

Carrolade ,

I don't understand why that would call for the evacuation of a building. Sounds like a stunt to me.

Carrolade ,

I just don't see how closed vials could threaten the lives of anyone, much less an entire building. It's not a loose powder or something. It probably was a threat, but those are common these days. They wouldn't evacuate if it was a letter with some generic "gonna kill you" threat written on it.

When I say stunt, I mean the evacuation was a stunt. Threats are a dime a dozen, if they evacuated for every one they wouldn't get much done.

Carrolade ,

They must not pay much attention to most protocols, because I seem to remember lots of threats flying around the past couple years with no mention of big evacuations.

Carrolade ,

The tiny home movement is a lot older than that, but yeah, more or less. Only distinction is that people usually want more of whatever given product, except with homes, where upkeep means having "too much house" can be a real life pain in the ass. It's just more hours out of your day, having to upkeep any given room from weathering and getting dirty. Then it just comes down to personal preferences.

But they are definitely liked due to being cheaper, no question.

Carrolade ,

You sorely overestimate how easy it is to get a trained animal to walk in a perfectly straight line. They do not get magical perfect-line-walking powers just because they are animals.

Carrolade ,

It's really not that wild. You win elections by appealing to voters. You could take a gamble that you can inspire the younger generations enough to vote in larger numbers, or you could try to appeal to existing older swing voters. You can't always do both simultaneously though.

Carrolade ,

I guess I've just seen it enough times that it is no longer wild to me. It just looks like typical cold calculus and risk-averse behavior.

Carrolade ,

It's a coalition, and like all coalitions, it has a wide variety of sorts in it. We're not together because we like each other, we don't like each other. Nobody says we do, that I have heard anyway.

The two party system allows them to shift further right though. The further right the GOP goes, the further right the dems can go to try to vacuum up disaffected voters. I'm pretty sure parts of the GOP coalition know that too, and it factors into their strategy of getting some of their way even when they lose.

It's about casting the widest possible net though, not lasering in on any particular subset and trying to make them happy. I don't think anyone is perfectly happy currently, damn near absolutely no one.

Our solution is to try to make our positions more popular with the public, though. Not to try to pressure the party apparatus to appease a certain inner faction and pretend it won't cost them with others. It will cost them elsewhere, the best we could do there is try to argue it might be worth it. But would it? Can that be guaranteed? Because if there's one thing I've gauged about Biden, it's that he doesn't like taking big risks.

Carrolade ,

I think your feelings of resentment are clouding your judgement.

The essence of your argument seems to be that progressive policies will strengthen the hand of dems in a large number of elections. Can you back that up with data? Because when I look at electoral maps of the country I just don't see it. It would strengthen their hand in progressive regions, no question, but those aren't where the battle is being fought.

I would love it if you were right, but having lived in middle America often enough through my life, I just don't see it reflected in the attitudes of locals.

Carrolade ,

Israel's survival is not threatened by anything short of large-scale pre-emptive Iranian nuclear barrage, or civil war.

Claiming your actions are necessary for survival is a very old trick, commonly used by authoritarian regimes as a convenient excuse.

Carrolade ,

And strategic depth in case of a ground invasion. You know, like Russia, because that's clearly not enough, as anyone can plainly see.

Carrolade ,

Hey, a semantic argument. Yay.

This is why I think the term ethnic cleansing is underused. It's much simpler and has less history.

Carrolade ,

Good luck getting any of that through the Senate.

Carrolade ,

It's much easier to say that an intentional blockade of food is leading to starvation, and that is a clear war crime. Very simple argument, easier to prove.

Talking about a bombing campaign is more difficult when soldiers are mixed in with the civilians. We may be able to point at the situation and say "that's clearly fucked up", but courts don't work that way. They have to acknowledge that in a war, the army is allowed to destroy the combatants of the enemy. A certain amount of collateral damage in the form of innocent lives lost is allowed by international law. This makes it all much murkier and more difficult to prove what is or is not a genuine war crime. They can't wing it, or guess, or go by what it "looks like", they have to prove it, which again, is difficult.

Starvation and depriving food aid though, very easy to prove.

Nicotine addiction isn't that bad - tobacco companies encourage the belief that it's more severe to keep people smoking

Tobacco companies had to own up to the fact that smoking is harmful in the 1960s when undeniable evidence came out. People struggled to quit because it is somewhat addictive, but mainly because they enjoyed it....

Carrolade ,

Cigars and beer? Eugh. That's like a really nice, high percentage dark chocolate and marshmallows. Or a big, beefy red wine paired with chicken breast. A cigar needs something equally strong and complex to punch back against it.

I mean, maybe like a really good stout at room temp or something might be decent with a mild cigar. Really though, I'd want an oak-ey liquor of some sort.

Carrolade ,

I think the term ethnic cleansing is underused. It's a strong term with a clear, unambiguous meaning that people can still stand against. It does not run afoul of the fact that when many people hear "genocide", they don't think of formal definitions, they think of WW2, trains and gas chambers, and attempts at thorough extermination at a large scale.

Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, begs simple questions, like, what is the ethnicity being cleansed from? Simple answer: their land. How are they being cleansed? Killed, driven away or assimilated into another culture. What, exactly, is being cleansed? That group of distinct people right there, their name is whatever.

It's clear, concise, and very hard to argue with from any sort of semantic position.

Carrolade ,

... I don't care how you try to strap that thing to your body, it's going to be annoying.

Carrolade ,

NATO is based around its Article Five provision: An attack on any one NATO member becomes an attack on every single member of NATO.

Is Ukraine a member of NATO? Would they perhaps like to be?

Carrolade ,

A fabrication to manufacture outrage? But ... who would possibly be willing to do something like that?

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