sailingbythelee @ sailingbythelee @lemmy.world

Posts

9

Comments

684

Joined

2 yr. ago

You are being obtuse intentionally, I assume, to make a point. Withdrawing support for Israel is not one of the options. Your choices are status quo or fascism. And if you choose not to choose, then you are still making a choice. Trump can be elected by a combination of active support and negligence on the part of those who could stop him.

So, what's your suggestion then?

Yes, you are confused, and you are also trying to confuse the issue with false equivalence. The outcomes of a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency are not going to be the same, either in the Middle East or more broadly.

Exactly

Is Tlaib suddenly going to be Biden's best friend after the Michigan primary? How can you vote for someone you've been accusing of genocide for months? No, the people she is inflaming simply won't vote. Or, maybe they'll even vote for Trump using the skewed logic that angry, hurt and frustrated people use. Either way, Tlaib is helping Trump whether she means to or not.

I think the point of the Turing test is to avoid thorny questions about the definition of intelligence. We cant precisely define intelligence, but we know that normally functioning humans are intelligent. Therefore, if we talk to a computer and it is indistinguishable from a human in a conversation, then it is intelligent by definition.

Started with Mint with Cinnamon on the desktop since that's the "beginner" distro. Then FOMO about Arch (btw) made me switch to Manjaro with KDE.

Then I got an older used server with 64 GB of RAM. I started the server journey with Ubuntu Server, which was fine. But since I was running everything in containers anyway and wanted to experiment, I switched to Proxmox and I love it. It is flexible and fun. All of my production LXCs run Ubuntu LTS for ease and consistency in updating, but I have a couple of other VMs for experimenting with other distros and dealing with FOMO. I also installed Proxmox on an old gaming PC I had lying around, so now I have a homelab cluster. Why? Haha, why not! Proxmox is a distro-hopper and tinkerer's playground.

One of the problems with lists that rate "greatness" is indeed recency bias. It takes a generation or two before a President's legacy is understood. Reagan's legacy is still volatile. Will Iran-Contra, voodoo economics, and the War on Drugs be considered significant in 50 or 100 years? Hard to know.

If Trump loses the next election and MAGA burns out, Trump will be remembered as a buffoon who lamely and unsuccessfully tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. If his actions eventually lead to the overthrow of the US constitutional order, then he'll either be considered the Second Coming or worse than Hitler, depending on your perspective. I think/hope the US constitutional order will survive Trump and that he will be largely forgotten by history, like other lesser known Presidents.

Israel is after the Hamas military forces that are hiding among and under the civilian population of Gaza. Israel has every right to seek out and destroy those who attacked them. Hamas is purposely exposing their own population to danger by hiding among them.

Absolutely true. What I find puzzling is the hesitation to support Ukraine. If the US wants to pivot to Asia, it will need to ramp up its war industry. No better way to do that than to sell or give lots and lots of war materiel to Ukraine. A war for Taiwan and/or an expansion of war in the Middle East will require a huge build-up of industrial capacity to mass manufacture ammunition, missiles, computer components, tanks, trucks, artillery guns, combat aircraft, surface ships, and submarines, plus the primary industries needed to produce all of the raw materials required. Also, where are we going to get business and consumer products if we support Taiwan in a war with China?

If people give it more than a minute of thought, they'll realize that we are utterly unprepared to defend Taiwan. I'm not sure if NATO could even handle a war with Iran right now, but it would certainly be much easier if Russia were first defeated in Ukraine.

All that is to say that any pre-Trump iteration of the Republican Party would have jumped at the chance to help Ukraine as a way of reducing Russia, supporting the military industrial complex, and readying for great power competition. Apparently, the Republicans don't care about foreign affairs anymore.

New to the internet, I see. LOL.

The kids are starving and dying while the Hamas "leaders" who purposely provoked this situation with their horrific attack on Israeli civilians are living in safety in Qatar:

https://news.sky.com/story/who-are-the-key-leaders-of-hamas-inside-gaza-and-beyond-13042603

Hurting his finances is arguably more effective. Going to jail makes him a martyr to his supporters, and he can appeal a criminal charge until he dies. Taking his money makes him a loser right now.

Also, doesn't a criminal fraud charge requires a victim, meaning a complainant that can show they have lost money as a result of the defendant's actions? I'm sure those people exist, but that's not what this particular trial was about. However, maybe others will come forward now that he has lost this trial.

Is that broadly true? Hillary is Hillary because "Clinton" would obviously refer to Bill, since he was President. She also embraced the first name reference in her campaign materials. What about other famous women? Margaret Thatcher is Thatcher, J.K. Rowling as Rowling, Angela Merkel is Merkel. On the other side Bernie Saunders is Bernie. Perhaps calling someone by their first name is a sign of affection, not disrespect?

This thread is an absolute riot.

I must admit that, despite reading about passkeys a bit, I still don't understand the actual practicalities. I seem to recall that Bitwarden can store keys, but can't generate them. If that's true, who generates the passkey?

There is no way that the Palestinians won't "exist" in a few years. The question is whether Isrsel and Palestine return to the pre-October 7 status quo, or if the two sides will be sufficiently motivated by the war to prioritize a two-state peace over their national ambitions.

Okay, I'll bite. It's complicated because Israel is now a fact on the ground. It is spear-won territory, whatever you might think of that morally. Israel was created by the UN, the existing Palestinian population was largely pushed out so that the Jews would be able to form a majority ethnostate. Naturally, the Palestinians and their neighbours weren't too happy about that. So, they fought four wars against the Jews, and the Jews won. The Palestinians continue the struggle using guerilla tactics and terrorism. The Jews, understandably, crack down harder every time this terrorism happens. And the harder they crack down, the angrier the Palestinians and their neighbours get. It's a shitty cycle that has been happening for decades. On top of that, the foreign governments and religious fanatics that support the Palestinians are also usually shouting Death to America and the Decadent West. And some of them then commit terrorist acts in the West. So, yeah, it is complicated for Western observers. If the situation wasn't complicated it would have been solved years ago.

I'm sure we all know the truth, which is that most people in the West are just tired of it. Yes, young people get upset about it for a while, but then they become just as cynical about the Middle East as the previous generation. We all know that the Israelis and Palestinians have to make peace. That can't happen until the fanatics on both sides are out of power. Atrocities have now been committed on both sides, and once grief has taken over from anger, those atrocities will have to be duly punished on both sides so that the pre-October 7 situation will be thoroughly discredited. Peace will only be possible if both populations simultaneously prioritize peace and compromise, and elect leaders who feel the same way.

Yup, fair enough. If I wasn't clear, I'm not necessarily arguing that I believe in the concept of inherent rights. I'm an atheist, so I have a bit of trouble with it, too. Nonetheless, it has a very long tradition and underpins the modern concept of rights. At least conceptually, we lose something when we say that rights are contingent rather than inherent.