Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees
donuts @ donuts @kbin.social Posts 4Comments 673Joined 2 yr. ago

Modartt's Pianoteq is a nice Linux native, physically modeled piano plugin.
In my experience yabridge is fantastic. With a bit of initial setup, it's the closest thing to a native experience that I've come across.
You do control it with a CLI interface, so you need to be comfortable with that.
You also need to have already installed the Windows VSTs manually using WINE or whatever, and so there's a bit of a typical "how well does this work under wine" crapshoot and a bit of a learning curve there.
And then after two months they turn the genocide machine back on?
Wait, did you think that a ceasefire meant that neither side would ever fight again, and that they'd all live happily ever after?
If that was the case, Hamas wouldn't have brought an end to the last ceasefire on October 7th, 2023.
Don't worry, Trump's gonna claim foul play no matter whether he wins or loses and by how much.
So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don’t support it
No, the accusation is meritless because there is little evidence to support it:
"This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life," South African lawyer Adila Hassim
There are upwards of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza alone, and if Israel's intention was to inflict destruction of Palestinian life, wouldn't there be far more than 20,000 of Palestinians dead? And, if the goal was genocide, why would Israel be only focusing Gaza and not the West Bank where there are upwards of 3 million? Not to mention the population of ethnic Palestinians who live or work safely and peacefully inside of Israel.
The world has seen genocide many times, from the American genocide of Native People, to the Armenian Genocide, to the Holocaust. Jews know first hand what a ethnic genocide looks like, and this ain't it.
It really doesn't matter who does or doesn't support accusations, or who are allies with who, because legal matters are not democratic and instead based on evidence.
Now when it comes to Hamas, on the other hand, they have made it easy by writing their genocidal intent directly into their founding language. They said their quiet part out loud on day 1, and while they've tried to legitimize themselves by moderating their official language, they clearly haven't moderated their actions. Their allies and backers have made it equally clear that their intent is the complete destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such: (Genocide Convention, Article II)
Please don't omit the parts that hurt your argument, it's a waste of time and it doesn't work or help.
Remember when you said:
it’s not a, “two-way genocide,” if only side can actually commit genocide, right?
[...]
Genocide isn’t just a declaration in a charter, it is a specific series of actions against an ethnic group,
The Genocide Convention does not support your original claim that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide because they aren't capable. The part that you omitted is very clear that intent is everything.
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check);
What? By that definition alone, every war in human history could/should be labeled a genocide.
That doesn't pass the smell test, and its why you're not doing a service to your argument by omitting inconvenient parts of definitions. It's doing these things "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" that meets the criteria for genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check);
I'm not sure what you're citing here, as it links to an entire CNN news feed.
Not that it's relevant, because as we've just established, you've omitted important language from your mischaracterized version of the definition.
But to get back to it, it is Hamas whose intent (as expressed in their founding charter and many times since) and actions (as perpetrated on and after October 7th) most certainly meet the Genocide Convention standards for genocide that you've (at least partially) listed here.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening.
...You seem to have lost the thread on your own argument: that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide as the don't have the capacity to pull it off. (Which, again, is an ass-pull and not consistent with the Genocide Convention definition in the slightest.)
Hamas, combined with its allies and backers, absolutely have the capability to murder massive numbers of Israeli civilians. They have also all expressed genocidal intent against Israel at various points in time. Israel is facing attacks from multiple Islamic militant groups as we speak.
These are not opinions, but facts.
If not for Israel's ability to defend itself from these very real attacks, a direct result of $130 Billion of US military aide since its inception, we would be seeing massive numbers of Israeli civilians dead from the very real attacks on Israel during this war.
The fact that Israel is able to defend itself from most of Hamas attacks, has no bearing on the classification of this war as a genocide. American investment in Israeli defense has helped save countless lives of innocent Israelis from a daily volley of missiles from openly genocidal, Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
A) Glad you were eventually able to edit your post to more than a single emoji
It's only fair, I was just short on time.
B) You know that Palestinians aren’t Hamas, right?
Not all Palestinians are Hamas or even sympathetic to Hamas. Not all Israelis are IDF or supporters of Netenyahu.
Every single innocent person on either side of this war is a victim.
C) You understand that it’s not a, “two-way genocide,” if only side can actually commit genocide, right?
This is a stunningly bizarre point.
We've already established that the founding mission of Hamas was a jihad in the name eliminating Israeli Jews. To take it a step further, nations like Iran, who back Hamas, have openly called for "wiping Israel of the map" on multiple occasions. So not only is the intent real and well documented, but the actions of Hamas, including the war crimes of taking civilian hostages, are consistent with those original goals. Hamas leaders are still openly talking about a one state solution today, as are most of their supporters, even in the west.
But to your point, that intent doesn't matter and only capability matters.
I find that quite ironic considering the thousands of missiles fired from Gaza into Israel by Hamas as part of their coordinated terror attack. The IDF estimates (grain of salt, best number I can find right now) there were 2000 Hamas missile attacks on October 7th alone. There have been continuous attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah since then.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-rockets.html
The only thing stopping those missiles from hitting Israeli civilians was the American Iron Dome missile defense system. Had it not been for American support of Israel, it's very possible that the combined forces of Hamas and Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran and Russia, could have very well been capable of waging an all out genocidal attack on Israel, as they have repeatedly stated is their shared intention.
In that regard, are Israel guilty of simply being able to defend themselves better than Hamas could defend Gaza? Would it have been better if Israel hadn't had Iron Dome and been hit with some thousand missiles from multiple different Islamic militant groups on multiple fronts?
Of course not, which is also why the "accusation" of genocide against Israel has been rejected by every key member of the UN as baseless and without merit or evidence.
We don't get to simply refine words until they mean what we want them to mean. Hamas and Netenyahu both wanted war, played off each other for political power, and have both openly called for a unacceptable single-state solution "from river to sea". Which, as a worst and most cynical interpretation, can be seen as a call for genocide from both parties. Neither should have ever been given political power, and neither should be allowed to hold power in the future. But it does take two to tango, and Hamas' intent and actions do matter here as well, especially when they are not helpless and have used plenty of potentially lethal force towards Israel. (And again, there is the war crime of taking civilian hostages.)
This is on them, not the United States, who have (thanks to Iron Dome) protected the lives of countless innocent Israelis and who have called for the IDF to show restraint and to work towards a two-state solution with an autonomous Palestine that Hamas are unfit to rule over.
Doesn't matter if it's Biden, Bernie or FDR's ghost in the Oval Office, America will continue to support its most important ally in the middle east, especially as they take heavy fire from all directions by groups whose state intent has always been their annihilation.
Good for him. Nobody should be forced to fight in a war they don't believe in.
The world's first two-way genocide 🙄
The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews
Hamas Founding Charter, Article VII, 1988
https://sunnah.com/muslim:2922
For all of his progressive economic accomplishments, FDR also interned in the Japanese and allowed for the creation of one of the world's worst toxic waste sites.
The point being that I don't expect inhuman levels of perfection for my political leaders, and I don't think you should either. There was much more to FDR's administration than the New Deal, and when it comes the historical comparison Biden may have fallen short on matching the New Deal (although objectively he passed the biggest infrastructure and progressive economics bill since the New Deal), he has an undeniably better track record than FDR in terms of human rights, civil rights and environmental protection. There's really no comparison.
(FWIW, it's also worth noting that FDR had a significantly stronger Democratic backing in congress, with IIRC, a large supermajority in the Senate for multiple years. Historical political context is also important.)
Like it or not, It's just a point of fact that Biden is the most progressive president we've had in at least 50 years, if not a century, when looking at the entirety of his record so far.
I'm not sure if AI is going to revolutionize anything good, but it's certainly going to revolutionize election interference.
Are you aware that New Hampshire decided to unilaterally put themselves first in the primary schedule based on some nonsense in their state constitution?
"The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a date selected by the secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier, of each year when a president of the United States is to be elected or the year previous," the law says.
But last year, the Democratic Party, supported by President Biden, announced it would be changing its primary calendar to prioritize South Carolina and move up battleground states such as Michigan and Georgia. New Hampshire's state government, controlled by Republicans, refused to comply with the DNC's new rules and scheduled the primary for Jan. 23, leaving it first.
As a result, Mr. Biden is not appearing on the ballot, although his campaign has launched an aggressive write-in campaign. Democratic candidates participating in the unofficial primary on Tuesday will not win any delegates, so any victory will be symbolic.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-new-hampshire-primary-first-in-the-nation/
As I'm somewhat a fan of democracy, I think that South Carolina is a much better first primary state than New Hampshire for the simple reason that it better represents the demographic and ideological makeup of that party.
I agree with the commenter above, you've inventing shit to be mad at.
Reread the comment that I was responding to.
That's fair. You're right.
I just thought it was funnier than going point by point through that incoherent nonsense to try to correct it, because sometimes I feel like it's better to laugh than it is to try to engage with political talking points that are so mired in bullshit that they are hard to take in good faith. It's also flawed to assume that everybody who is engaging in conversations around American politics are American citizens acting in good-faith, based on what we know about the history of foreign meddling in global elections, but I digress.
It's possible that you've taken it more seriously than I meant it to be, but ultimately I said something that may have been offensive and exclusionary to ESL speaking people, and for that I'll just say sorry.
Feelings aside, Biden is objectively one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we've had in modern history.
[Bernie] Sanders said that some of the early goals that the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress were able to accomplish in the first two years of Biden’s presidency were progressive victories, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
“I think the American Rescue Plan that we passed early in his agenda, in the midst of the terrible pandemic, the economic collapse, was, in fact, one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the working class in this country, in the modern history of America,” Sanders said.
No. I do expect coherent and factual arguments from those who do, however. I've had my fill of word salad for 2024 already. Am I asking too much?
Biden leaves much to be desired, and waited until election year to mention price-gouging, even try to contend with border red states and abortion. Facts are, both establishment parties are on the same Team Gazillionaire, which isn’t us, and they don’t want it to ever be us. It’s time we wake up that one party is just more sneaky about it, and they’re really not that sneaky. And the EC is still in place.
You can't convince me that a native English-speaker wrote this.
So it’s amazing to me that the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election, especially really fucking important elections
Can you elaborate on what you mean that "the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election"? Are you unaware of the fact that Biden is the incumbent President?
He was nominated by a wide margin against a dozen other candidates (including over my preferred candidate), and elected with solid EC majority and a record number of individual votes.
To suggest that he was somehow appointed by the party establishment, when he's simply running for reelection like almost every incumbent President in American history has done after their first term seems like a very disingenuous statement. It's interesting that nobody leveled that argument against Trump when he ran for reelection in 2020, not to mention every other time it's happened, considering it's been the norm for decades.
Way insulting to whales, imo.
Microsoft basically tied with Apple for the title of richest company in the world, by the way.