Hegar @ Hegar @kbin.social

Mostly kind chonky weirdo. Gentle nerd freak of the pacific north west. All

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2 yr. ago

Fertilizer is what I've heard.

Long after the weight of ages has ground our works and bones to scattered dust, the changes we've made to the nitrogen cycle will stick out in the geologic record.

The jump from base levels of nitrogen to the obviously unnaturally higher amounts that would remain in layers from our time just wouldn't have any explanation other than something did it on purpose. There's basically no way for that level of increase to occur in what is geologically the blink of an eye without industrial capacity. Or that's what I've heard.

They controlled the channel didn't they? It was the IDF publishing their killings. If there was something especially incriminating they could just not publish it.

moslty it was horseshit

Yeah, that seems about right. I agree that treating all news as propaganda is good advice, and there's a certain resolution of detail that we'll probably not be able to get right for a while if ever.

But I think it's dangerous to dismiss the possiblity of getting to the truth at all.

Public humiliation, yes. Dehumanization efforts, yes. Publicly deniable torture of prisoners, seems very likely. Official distribution of graphic violence, we've seen that.

But creating wide spread video evidence of tortured prosoners and leaving it amongst random civilians where they have no control over it? That just doesn't seem like the same thing.

Maybe the videos will surface and I'll be proved wrong.

Unless you are there you wont really know

I disagree, I think that journalists can get accurate reporting out of war zones. With some critical reasoning and wide reading an accurate enough - if not complete - picture is possible.

I do not support the brutal actions of the IDF. But this particular story smells funny to me.

What possible motive would the Israelis have to seed evidence of their own crimes?

Videos of this held by civilians are at high risk of being leaked or hacked off phones by a technically competent opponent like Iran. That could only possibly add pressure to the US to rein in their wayward ally.

Maybe my instinct is off, that's totally possible, but this seems like all risk and no reward. I'm waiting for more proof or corroboration before I accept this.

"This is stealing and needs to be looked at that way,” said a property owner

😂

I don't know how many 'RoC is the real China' types are still alive. That was an increasingly untenable position since the Nixon visit in 72. In the 21st century it's laughable at best. The inclusion of a few RoC fossils and staunchly pro-PRC voices in the same party is one of the weirdnesses I was thinking of.

I lived in Taiwan 5 years ago, so I'm less comfortable talking about specific recent events.

That said, I think it would be fair to say that relations with the mainland are still the overriding question in Taiwanese politics. There's just nothing else as pressing or relevant, it colors most other issues.

The thing is that neither formal declared independence nor becoming a province of China are electorally viable platforms. Voters and opinion polls consistently show that they want the status quo: defacto independence, access to Chinese economic opportunities, and no invasions please.

Declared independence and reunification are both less popular than staying in the increasingly narrow space of having your cake and eating it too that is available without provoking an armed response.

It does though, the money earmarked for ukraine is mostly going to buy new stuff for us to replace the old stuff we give to ukraine.

The reason is just so obviously that trump is a russian asset and now so too is the republican party.

DPP wants to continue the defacto situation as is while pursuing greater cultural distinction from the mainland. They also have some openly pro independence types, and the much more numerous 'independence when it won't obviously get us invaded' types. They tend to be more progressive in general - gay marriage, marijuana legislation style.

KMT is contains most of the 'status quo with less cultural distinction from the mainland' voices. Pro-unification folks too, but that's a minority. Historically they were far right anti communists who ran the military dictatorship, so squaring that circle with pro-unification sentiment has lead to some weird positions. They're also more conservative, often crazily so. I had KMT supporters earnestly explain that Tsai Ingwen was actually a man in disguise.

Largely, both parties want some but differing degrees of economic ties with China. Any other position is impractical.

Indigenous voters are far more likely to be rural, which tends to coincide with culturally conservative.

There's also a very complicated history of ethnic politics in Taiwan. Multiple historic waves of migration from different areas of the mainland, along with the Japanese imperial period. The DPP have focused on Minnan speaking Taiwanese as a locus of independent Taiwanese identity, sometimes to the detriment of Hokkien speaking or other group.

Indigenous Taiwanese had been attacked, marginalized and treated harshly by these successive waves and during the Japanese period, so when the nationalists lost the civil war in China and fled to Taiwan to set up the military dictatorship, they were viewed as something like liberators by many indigenous people.

It's complicated.

That song is so fucking good. Just unreasonably good.

Pop songs aren't written by the singer and more of the writers are men.

There's no reason why we should be, we just are. Like everything else.

Last one for me was Batman something something. Arkham something maybe. Don't really care about batman, didn't enjoy the mechanics, don't remember if there was a story, no idea why I bought it.

I've since realized that if you just wait a year or two games usually a) work properly and b) cost less. Haven't had buyers remorse in a long while.

The best thing about the super bowl is that it's the christmas eve of not having to hear about the super bowl. The anticipation! It's so close!

I do find that very comforting.

It reminds me of a bit in the outer chapters of the zhuangzi that's talking about fearing death. It points out how bad a lump of iron would be if it demanded to only ever be a knife and never recast into anything else.

How am I to know that the current configuration of the molecules I'm made of is the best use of them? There will come a time where everything that's me is recast and put to better use.

Yes, he learned how to make bank on imperialism.