thrawn @ thrawn @lemmy.world

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282

Joined

2 yr. ago

HFY (humanity, fuck yeah) was a sub for short stories about humans being cooler than aliens. Not in a self congratulatory way, but like how humans could feasibly have good or useful traits that alien species might not. Such as creativity or physical prowess due to being top of the food chain in a competitive ecosystem.

There’s a Lemmy alternative but not a lot of traction.

Yup, expressly worse exactly like what Boris did. See, Boris didn’t take the only expressly worse slot in the whole world. Iran can also go cause harm for nothing.

We can whatabout all day and it doesn’t change that Iran “intervening” has no benefits. It’s clear that people disagree with me here, but not once has anyone attempted to express any upside to Iran inserting themselves in the way the article is detailing. You’re getting caught up in everyone else doing bad things that you… want Iran to do their own bad things, kill more people, have their people killed, and achieve nothing?

Don’t feel the need to respond unless you have something besides “but what about [the next horrible act]?” I’m not here defending everyone else’s crimes. I just think it’s stupid for Iran to add to the bodycount for no reason, and that purposeless violence should be avoided. I’m not on Lemmy to pointlessly argue on the internet like the olden days and I don’t want to waste your time either. I fully respect your concerns about other people doing bad things but they have no effect whatsoever on the topic set by this article, and whataboutism has never led to an interesting discussion, so if you want to talk please try something engaging. If you don’t have other thoughts, don’t feel the need to create one just to respond either, real conversations shouldn’t be forced.

And like I said elsewhere, please don’t take any of this as hostile. In recent years I’ve tried to remove negative emotions from my internet usage (we should all be here for a good time) and oddly I think it made me sound less friendly.

I feel like even in that first comment alone I repeated that I’m against this specific case of intervention because it would be “committing atrocities of their own” despite “zero chance that Israel would back down,” and that adding “more violence with absolutely no chance of preventing loss of life”.

That’s three separate quotes from three separate paragraphs, very narrowly commenting only on Iran’s proposed intervention. I’m not sure how I could have made it more clear that I’m only against the pointless killing this specific intervention, the one indicated by the article would lead to? Like even now I don’t see how it could have been clarified, and I’m genuinely interested in knowing how. This thread isn’t even about intervention in general, just the exact instance I was commenting on.

Apologies if this sounds even the slightest bit hostile— I genuinely don’t mean it to have that tone, and I haven’t gotten into a single argument on Lemmy. I just cannot see how it wasn’t abundantly clear when I paid extra effort to comment very very very narrowly across three paragraphs in the first comment alone.

Iran is an uninvolved third party poised to add to the bloodshed with no possible gain, unlike with Ukraine where lives in the future may be saved. I’m not saying there should be no third party interventions in general. Simply that Iran coming in to make things expressly worse— I think we can all see there will be absolutely nothing improved by their intervention— is of unparalleled uselessness and would result in pointless loss of life. If they could contribute, all power to them, but they cannot do anything but make it worse.

They might not be wrong about Israel committing atrocities. They would be wrong to add to it by committing atrocities of their own. The article certainly doesn’t seem to indicate they’ll “intervene” in a benign manner, and their track record is as blemished or worse.

This is doubly dumb if Israel is like they say. There is zero chance Israel would back down if Iran intervened; really, they’d probably have no issue extending the rampage to Iran as well. More people will die horribly.

It’s not right to sit and watch everyone commit various crimes against humanity. But adding your own violence with absolutely no chance at preventing loss of life, as Iran is implying they will do here, is somehow worse than apathy.

Oh, also do the immigration paperwork online. Ezpz and saves you time on arrival. Give some leeway for learning transport, a lot of Americans don’t have or use public transport and my first time I struggled to get places on time.

Someone else said you can’t bring some meds, make sure to double check what you can and can’t import to and from. There are things you can’t bring back (e.g. agriculture like potted plants or seeds) too.

It’s pretty easy like they said, doesn’t require a lot of planning or thought. Restaurant reservations for some places can be difficult to acquire if you don’t know locals though. You’ll have to go through your hotel concierge

I personally recommend avoiding touristy things. I’ve found they’re invariably kinda mid. Depending on how much time you’ll have, and how many times you plan to go, I would suggest spending a few days to a week in single cities and not overdoing it with activities. Exhausting oneself isn’t necessary if you’re going to go back, and you don’t really experience it to the maximum if you’re on a strict itinerary with limited time

Wasn’t the JR pass made uneconomical recently, maybe even this month? I haven’t used the pass in a while but back on Reddit I feel like I heard about an incoming 70% or so price increase. Some commenters there indicated it would no longer be worth the price.

My last visit I paid for all the trains individually and didn’t come anywhere near the $500 or so it would’ve cost for a short two week visit on the new pricing. At the time it wasn’t in place yet, but it should be now. I like to visit just a few cities at a time though, so maybe if you’re trying to pack a lot in the pass may still be worthwhile?

Every government seems to know the people won’t actually do that anymore. Peaceful protest was encouraged when the alternative was violence, but now that it’s not, it can be safely banned. The French are ironically a great example— they are notorious for their protests and revolution, yet when the government ignored them and raised retirement age, nothing happened.

I’m not saying this is good or bad, nor calling for action. It’s merely an observation. I further observe that perhaps this is the humanity tamed enough for governments to once again put the people last, but with the firepower to enforce it eternally. We need good people seeking public office to prevent this, and other solutions.

It’s not really about Hamas being a real threat, I think it’s primarily PR. Changing the head of state like that causes uncertainty and chaos. Plus they’d probably want him to absorb maximum bad press that could otherwise be directed towards a successor.

For the people in power, keeping him there for now is ideal. Forcibly removing a head of state during wartime would cause obscene concern from how unusual it is, and some of them probably don’t even want him gone at all. Now if I was a potential successor I’d worry that he would somehow stay in power if the bad PR blew over, but pushing for his removal now is probably bad for your chances of seizing the seat.

This is of course from the perspective of opportunists in power. It’s rare for the people to override their wishes, especially in wartime where people typically rally around the head of state, so this is my thinking on why he’ll stay there. That said a handful of people really taking a stand could probably boot him.

Unlike scenarios aside I believe this time is better used establishing the narrative that he will be gone soon, with a definite end date or event. It’s almost impossible to get him out now, but it is possible to lay the groundwork that makes near-certain he’ll leave later.

Booting the head of state during wartime leads to some transitional difficulties

The operating word is “would”. If it served their needs, they would. Not that they’re going to right now, obviously.

Pretty weak reasoning. It just as often “or” like this/that. If not more— who’s actually looking at fractions that often? I’d argue the punctuation attached to that specific date format shouldn’t be the basis for the order itself, and dashes or periods are common too.

The better reasoning is that the day is typically more relevant than the month. A downside though is that it’s bad for sorting: YYYY-MM-DD is the best way to automatically sort by date, and ease in digital sorting is arguably the most important factor in date formatting. It’s kind of a silly thing that people don’t care about outside of memes otherwise.

No yeah he got a six pack. Specifically six. It was weird, and kind of hard to tell they were meant to be abs. Even weirder, that was the sole change, he was otherwise visually identical.

I mentioned he got a full redesign for the fourth movie. For that one, he got huge pecs and a bodybuilder physique.

07 yeah. He got a different design every single movie now that I think about it, whereas Prime only got abs in the third then a total change in the fourth

I agree that the hamster wheel of infinitely increasing profits is bad. But even in a better world where companies weren’t expected to report record profits every single quarter, an 80% drop would still be rather alarming.

Wow that’s just awful, hadn’t heard about that. It’s been years and the FAA investigation appears to either be ongoing or silently killed? Hope they’re still working on it.

Also I wasn't saying Delta is an angel obviously, it’s an airline. They suck too, especially recently. I don’t want to defend them at all and, if I could choose, I’d dissolve the whole company and start anew to make a better airline.

That said, Delta didn’t direct their pilots to do that, it could have been any of them. Same with the doctor beating incident. But United’s vile CEO vehemently defended the beating and tried to paint the victim as deserving, while I haven’t seen any indications that Delta’s corporate leadership tried to back up their idiotic pilots. United feels toxic, which is a shame because I also have status with them from a partnering company. Whereas Delta simply feels like garbage, though it may be because I missed all the bad news about them.

I’m not downplaying it— Flight 89 caused far more damage than the doctor beating or some lost baggage. It’s easily the worst of any airline scandal I can think of. Just feels like it was luck that Delta hired those pilots when they could have been on any plane, and the CEO didn’t go around saying “the schoolchildren were belligerent and the crew followed procedure”.

If you fly just once a year with a companion it’s worth keeping, just not worth spending on especially after the recent SkyMiles gutting.

Imo Delta’s still decently better than United and American but costs disproportionally more, to the point where it’s probably not worth it anymore. I also have a personal dislike of those two for suing Skiplagged (so sleazy) though so I continue to fly Delta. Plus United beat up that doctor and American has a high baggage loss rate.

Hm yeah, that’s fair. I wonder if limiting it to indoors pests, specifically the big two invasive species, would have prevented that. To my (very limited) knowledge, bed bugs aren’t eaten by many things. Bats? German roaches eat them but we don’t want them either.

I’m not overly attached to DDT though, a public health program of Alpine spraying indoors would probably do the trick. I doubt anyone has the political capital to get it done, but the return of bed bugs will be disastrous

Speakership is voted on by House members, not party. A simple majority of votes is all it takes. If someone is absent, the amount of votes required goes down.

The Democrats are nearly half of the house, so if a few Republicans did not vote or joined the Democrats, their candidate would become Speaker. Because the Speaker can be anyone, not just a current House member, they could nominate not-McCarthy Paul Ryan and feasibly succeed. Ryan is likely not interested though.