assassin_aragorn

@assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

assassin_aragorn,

This seems like an excellent way for the governing party to lose big time in elections.

Russia says U.S. is responsible for deadly Ukrainian attack on Crimea (www.reuters.com)

MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed at least five people including three children and injured 124 more....

assassin_aragorn,

Putin has a history of false flag operations, so it isn’t impossible.

assassin_aragorn,

Russian news sources really can’t be trusted, but assuming it is true, it’s certainly a tragedy that civilians were hurt. And I wish they hadn’t been.

The solution though is for civilians to leave Crimea. They are on illegally seized land, not wholly dissimilar to Israeli settlers. It isn’t their fault that their children died of course, but they need to leave the area. Issue is, Russia probably won’t let them, because they’d prefer civilian casualties to occur.

It’s also kinda rich of Russia to complain about this after they’ve bombed, killed, and orphaned countless Ukrainian kids. They’ve even kidnapped some of them. And from what I recall happened in Mariupol, they might’ve even done ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t excuse Russian civilians being killed, but Russia has absolutely no legs to stand on here.

assassin_aragorn,

This is how I felt about Roe being overturned several years ago. It would unleash hell on Republicans and make them incredibly unpopular, but it would not be worth the cost of women suffering.

And unfortunately, I was right. It has proved utterly disastrous to Republicans, but a lot of women have suffered. People have had to go through pain and experiences that no one should ever have to – except perhaps the conservative SCOTUS justices, Trump, and Republican senators.

US lawmakers meet with Dalai Lama in India's Dharamshala, sparking anger from China (apnews.com)

A bipartisan United States congressional delegation met with the Dalai Lama Wednesday at his residence in India’s Dharamshala, sparking anger from China which views the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism as a dangerous separatist....

assassin_aragorn,

said it reaffirmed American support for the Tibetan right to self-determination

This is a subtle stab at China. The CCP loves talking about sovereignty and self determination as a defense for their actions, but it’s also projection for their actions in Tibet and the South China Sea.

assassin_aragorn,

There is a terrible trend of people blaming Jewish people overall for what Israel is doing – and ironically, some of Israel’s sharpest critics are Jewish.

Some people are incapable of realizing that Jewish people are not the same as Israel, and in doing so, they play right into Netanyahu’s hand. Antisemitism is completely separate from criticism of Israel, but Netanyahu would love for people to believe it’s one and the same.

People who want revenge against Jews in the West for what Israel’s doing are no different than those who interned the Japanese in WW2 or demonized all Muslims after 9/11. It’s collective punishment and it’s wrong.

assassin_aragorn,

You haven’t posted any articles about Israel’s genocide either. Should I presume you tacitly approve of what Israel is doing?

Articles like this are important, because they illustrate an awful human behavior we need to condemn. Jewish people are completely separate from Israel, and antisemitism is completely separate from criticism of Israel. By conflating the two, you push Netanyahu’s agenda. He’d love nothing more than to say Israel is the same as Jewish people and any act or criticism is antisemitic.

Should there have been no criticism or discussion of the US internment of Japanese during WW2? Should there have been no coverage of abuse and harassment against Muslims after 9/11? What about the spate of anti Asian violence during Covid?

Fuck that. Collective punishment is wrong. It’s difficult to change the policies and actions of a different country, but it’s easier to call out reactive domestic shitheads and policies and demand change there. Human history is full of collateral/collective punishment like this when a shitty group of people do something awful – and it falls on good, intelligent people to recognize that it’s evil of the shitty group and of the reactionaries, and to call out both.

Don’t assume everyone here is an idiot. We’re capable of recognizing this event as awful while simultaneously criticizing Israel. And we can condemn this act without becoming sympathetic to Israel.

assassin_aragorn,

I think they use passive headlines over concern about being sued for libel, but I agree. They really need to call the bluff, because if a party sues for libel, that party has to prove it’s a willful lie. And that would be a very interesting discovery process.

assassin_aragorn,

Yeah he was absolutely tortured to death. Fucking disgusting.

assassin_aragorn,

I don’t understand his angle here. He clearly has some sort of agenda, but I haven’t figured it out. Maybe he’s betting that this will turn some Democrats and moderates against Biden? But that requires believing that Netanyahu is telling the truth, which I don’t think a lot of Israel supporters necessarily do.

Either way, this is weird. Maybe he’s talking about the bombs that weren’t sent for Rafah? But getting pissed about one halted shipment out of everything they’ve been given is just fucking hilarious.

My guess – he’s aware his support is dwindling, and he’s trying to salvage it by blaming everyone else. Or, he’s daring the US to stop all shipments, but that would probably destroy his remaining support too.

assassin_aragorn,

Frankly it’s in Xi’s best benefit to not invade Taiwan, because it would cause a collapse of the One China policy. China benefits considerably from the current policy that’s ambiguous on recognizing Taiwan. The moment they invade though, that goes away, and it becomes inevitable that Taiwan gains international recognition as independent – presuming the US helps repel an invasion.

If there’s anything we’ve learned though from the last few years, it’s that seemingly intelligent world leaders can make idiotic decisions that go against their best interest – namely Putin and Ukraine. Xi strikes me as the type of person to keep yesmen like Putin, and that means he could make just as foolish a mistake.

assassin_aragorn,

You don’t understand how the US government works. This comment makes that incredibly obvious.

The filibuster is in the Senate. Not the House. That should be obvious to anyone who pays attention to politics.

assassin_aragorn,

One thing I quite like about Lemmy is that it’s very easy to recognize individual users and the type of comments they usually leave.

assassin_aragorn,

Third parties rarely run for Congress. This is actually how you can tell that the US has no serious third parties. None of them make Congress even a remote priority. If they somehow won the presidency, they wouldn’t be able to do anything because they have no Congressional support.

You’ve inadvertently highlighted why your only options are to vote Democrat or Republican. No other party is serious about trying to win. If they were, they’d be building up a local presence in all 50 states and winning local elections. Then they’d look at state legislatures and governors. Then Congress for the House and Senate, and then the presidency.

That’s a lot of work though, so they’d rather run presidential candidates and grift for donations. The argument typically goes that they’re trying to bring awareness to their party through the presidential election – but how exactly is that going for them? It’s readily apparent that strategy doesn’t work, and they’d be better off putting in the hard work to become actual political contenders.

If you don’t like how Congress represents you, support your desired representatives and senators in primaries, and then vote for the person you dislike least in the general election. Or, encourage a third party candidate to run who has statewide recognition and plenty of political experience.

Democrats and Republicans are the only options because all the other choices are batshit insane or just want to steal your donations.

assassin_aragorn,

Yeah they’re pretty much the only group that seems to understand this. They have other struggles though with having greater appeal – mainly from what I can tell, there’s a lot of discord between different chapters.

That said, there actually is one socialist who did win a state legislature election, in Virginia. And they were able to get an insulin cap bill passed because they worked cooperatively with democrats.

This is the model that people need to follow if they want to move beyond Democrats and Republicans. This single socialist legislator in one state has done more than the entire green party combined.

assassin_aragorn,

We have been using puberty blockers for a long time. They were around when I was prepubescent. They’re established medicine, and doctors deem whatever the side effects are to be worth helping the children’s mental and physical health.

All medicine is like this. Very little medication has no side effects at all. Yet we give children medicine all the time. Because it does more good than harm.

Who decides if it does more good than harm? Medical professionals. Not laymen on the Internet.

assassin_aragorn,

That’s what I can’t fathom. This is such a big boost for children’s mental health. It heavily reduces their depression and suicide risk. They’re happier.

Maybe this is controversial, but if a parent isn’t willing to do that for their kid, I believe it’s neglect and endangerment. They aren’t fit to be a parent, and the state should intervene. We don’t let parents with batshit religious beliefs deny their children lifesaving treatment. We shouldn’t let parents deny their children treatment that would vastly improve their mental health and reduce their suicide risk.

assassin_aragorn,

This isn’t a disease - many of the things you listed are psychological and the result of how family and friends treat that person.

The DSM entry on Gender Dysphoria disagrees.

assassin_aragorn,

It takes a strong and wise person to admit they were wrong and change their mind for the better. I applaud you for that. Given how prevalent calling things gay was when I was a teenager, I think a lot of people changed their minds for the better when they realized their friends and family were gay. And then some realized they were also gay, funny enough.

I agree that we need more time before we institute any sort of policy or mandating, but I do think we should eventually do that.

It’s interesting, I think a lot of conservative beliefs come down to the idea that children cannot be autonomous people with their own beliefs. They don’t believe that a child can have an independent thought, and that whatever they say is indoctrination from parents or school. It says a lot about their worldview.

If someone fully believes in the independence of children to form their own thoughts and beliefs and opinions, I don’t see how they could support any sort of anti LGBT ban.

assassin_aragorn,

Oh lovely. Now when they ram a bunch of fishermen from the Philippines in international waters, they’ll also kidnap them.

assassin_aragorn,

This is common strategy to the right – they try to convince everyone that there’s violent criminals everywhere that no one’s taking care of.

assassin_aragorn,

Simple example – lets say you’d lose 2% of your inventory per year to theft if you did nothing. Your gross income would go down by 2%, so you compensate by raising your prices by 2%.

Now let’s say instead you want to lose ~0% to theft. You’ll have to hire guards, or more likely, contract out to a security company. That’s now going to add to your annual expenditures, let’s say 5%. If you want to compensate for that, you’d need to raise your prices by 5%.

So, here’s the question – what’s actually the better option for the company? It’s hard to say without real life numbers and estimates. But basically, it wouldn’t be worth beefing up security if you’d pay more for that versus what you’d lose to theft.

And that’s only the monetary side of things. Having very public incidents if the thief doesnt cooperate would be bad for business. Worst case scenario, the thief fights back and has a weapon. You’re going to lose waaaaay more in sales than you would’ve if you just let them keep the contraband.

This is why a lot of companies are more lax on shoplifting these days. It just really isn’t worth it. Plus, a serial shoplifter is going to show their face again anyway, and you can quietly accost them preemptively.

assassin_aragorn,

It isn’t worth the effort to punish in most cases

assassin_aragorn,

Please proceed, Mrs. Alito.

Seriously though she’s just exposing more and more how the Court is an absolute sham that isn’t even close to impartial. It actually convinces me that long terms are a bad idea for everyone – including the judges’ family.

The Supreme Court must be impartial, and that binds not only the judge but their immediate family as well. It’s unrealistic to expect people to show political impartiality for that long, and the way that it should work is that judges effectively give up their right to free political speech while serving. They cannot be allowed to express political opinion whatsoever.

With that in mind, shorter terms with a much larger body of justices feel appropriate. There also needs to be a new check on the Supreme Court so that their word isn’t final – the very idea goes against our idea of Checks and Balances. 2/3 of Congress, or a simple majority of Congress plus the President should be able to override the Court.

Anyway, what I remind myself when I get pissed about this – reform will happen. These cretins have made it inevitable. The only question is when, and each time they spew their vile hate, the justices and their spouses bring us closer to reform.

assassin_aragorn,

Nah conservatives will be eager to put Asians in the “not white” category at the drop of a hat.

assassin_aragorn,

Excellent job by Lauren Windsor. A full mask off, candid discussion that shows blatant partisanship is a step up from the other wrongdoings we’ve heard of Alito and Thomas so far.

Republicans are a craven mafia family so they’ll do nothing, but this is still a very important news story. Change to the Court will only come once the public passes a critical threshold of distrust for it, and this story brings us closer and closer to that tipping point.

The Court will be reformed in our lifetimes. It’s gone too far and will be course corrected. It’s just a matter of when. And I can only hope it will be while Alito and Thomas and McConnell are all still alive so they can see the consequences of their partisan actions.

assassin_aragorn,

Oh I saw CNN air this. They had absolutely no pity for the tears and the anchors basically said “sucks to suck, doesn’t exactly inspire sympathy”

assassin_aragorn,

Man, I don’t know how I could stomach that guilt. Knowing that your rescue came at the cost of many more innocent civilians killed and wounded, including children. I don’t think I’d be able to look at any of the victims who survived in the face, let alone grieving family.

What’s really twisted is it isn’t the hostages’ faults either that all those people died. I don’t know if I’d even blame the kidnappers for those deaths. Surely the IDF could’ve done more to prevent civilian deaths.

It would take a monstrous person to not feel considerable guilt after this. I guess we’ll find out the type of person these hostages are.

assassin_aragorn,

For the 200 deaths today

assassin_aragorn,

That would require Hamas to care about Palestinians. Their leadership is a bunch of wealthy shitheads living it up in the UAE. They hold a dictatorship over Palestine and refuse to have elections.

To actually get Hamas there, you probably need to target the rich people giving orders.

assassin_aragorn,

Maybe the Palestinians themselves devalue their own lives compared to Israeli lives.

What the fuck

assassin_aragorn,

50 civilians killed indiscriminately per 1 hostage freed. And that’s not counting everyone that’s already been killed in this war.

I think anyone with a shred of morality is heavily conflicted by this. Saving hostages? Great. Killing 50x as many people as those saved? Not great. Not great at all.

It naturally leads itself to the question we’re all thinking – was it worth it?

And I think many of us have the same answer, although we may not like it – no. It pains me to say it, but it would’ve been better to let them stay hostage for longer while developing a plan which wouldn’t kill civilians.

assassin_aragorn,

The big question on all of our minds – was this worth it?

No. It probably wasn’t.

assassin_aragorn,

No, but I’m fully aware I’m a hypocrite there. I think most people are when it comes to their loved ones. If I was family of the hostages, I wouldn’t care how many innocent people died to get them back. I’d support the IDF.

If I was the family of the nearby Palestinians, I wouldn’t care about the hostages, and I’d let them die if it meant my family would be safe. I’d support Hamas.

This is why geopolitics can’t be personal. The best decision is not one that you insert yourself into, because you have a much higher threshold for acceptable collateral if it’s your own family on the line.

At the same time though, this is also a lesson in why a ceasefire is crucial. You put yourself into everyone’s shoes, and you understand why this needs to end. Everyone’s families and loved ones are dying or in captivity, and it’s perpetuating a cycle of violence. It needs to end. Israel has the power to withdraw from Gaza and pursue purely diplomatic means, and it should.

assassin_aragorn,

Engineer here, I just use whatever’s convenient. It’s handy to know both.

That said, I did confuse a poor coworker of mine this week when I was using bar for tank pressure and psi for the safety reliefs. That’s totally on me though.

assassin_aragorn,

To be clear this was a conversation over the phone, not a tech review or something. And I was explicitly naming the units, it was just jumping all around that had him confused.

Official documentation and programs should always be explicitly clear on what units are being used, especially pressure.

assassin_aragorn,

I’m pretty sure I read earlier today that the national Republican party was urging Republicans to vote to protect contraception so they could argue they weren’t that extreme and Democrats were being over the top.

And right after reading it, I thought about how Republicans were absolutely not going to pay any attention to that guidance. The inmates are running the asylum, and it’s time to let them burn the party down.

assassin_aragorn,

This article should make it even more patently clear to everyone that the situation in Palestine would get much worse if Trump wins.

assassin_aragorn,

Something tells me that if Warren was the option you’d still have a litany of complaints about why you weren’t going to vote for her

assassin_aragorn,

Weren’t you just criticizing someone for invalidating your experiences? That’s exactly what you’re doing right now to the person above.

If they say shit is much better for them and their loved ones right now, don’t say they’re just pretending that’s the case. If you want to be respected for saying things are personally no better for you, don’t tell someone else they’re just pretending if they say things are better for them now.

Otherwise you just come off as an incredibly disingenuous asshole.

assassin_aragorn,

“If he just says mean words about them they’ll come around! So will Republicans! He just needs to loudly criticize him!”

“But he’s done that”

“HE’S NOT SAYING THE RIGHT MAGIC WORDS”

It’s quite interesting how it always comes down to this argument, that Biden just needs to be mean to Manchin and Sinema and then they’ll do everything that Biden says. Some extend the same logic to Republicans, which is just hilariously laughable.

assassin_aragorn,

Could you explain what specific actions Biden could take to achieve these without needing Congress?

assassin_aragorn,

Biden could have put massive pressure on his party to pass the Equality Act to safeguard the rights of people of any sexuality or gender. He could have done so fiercely and publicly, and campaigned in the home states of those like Manchin and Sinema to threaten their seats if they did not comply.

Somehow I don’t think “be mean to them!” would’ve made them suddenly fall in line. I find so often that arguments get distilled down to this, that Biden just needs to say the right words and then everyone will agree with him.

That’s not how it works. If it was, Sanders would be president with a House and Senate that were 100% progressive. The uncomfortable fact is that there is no malicious self sabotage here – it just wasn’t possible.

Regarding Roe, there have never been 60 Democrat senators in favor of codifying Roe, or 50 Democrat senators willing to overturn the filibuster to codify it. Progressive senators needed to be elected, and weren’t. If everyone who wanted abortion to be an unalienable right went out and voted for a progressive senator in 2016, 2020, or 2022, it could’ve easily been passed. But people didn’t bother.

Perhaps those Senate candidates should’ve fiercely campaigned and denigrated pro abortion voters who refused to come out and vote? After all, you claim it’s a magic cure all strategy to get people to do what you want.

assassin_aragorn,

You should take your own advice instead of screeching at everyone. I must admit though, you’re quite right, my head does hurt from reading your awful mental gymnastics.

Don’t you think your constant rage at everyone is a sign here that you’re doing something hypocritical and wrong?

I’m guessing probably not, but people have come to epiphanies of self growth from even less likely situations.

assassin_aragorn,

If you cannot exercise enough self-control to keep your mouth shut, I am not responsible for that.

You’re the one who’s posted two replies within a few minutes lmao

Regardless though, I thank you for your response. It isn’t often that someone proves of their own accord that they’re completely unhinged.

Feel free to keep responding though. You’re just proving the point further and further, and I doubt that’s going to end. Go ahead, keep projecting. I’m enjoying the free entertainment.

assassin_aragorn,

I don’t know how many of their comments are still visible, but hoo boy. Tantrum is a mild way to put it. They’re utterly unhinged.

assassin_aragorn,

What do you mean by forcing himself on his knees to suck the other guy off? It comes across as a subservience thing that sucking dick makes someone lesser.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines