So let me get your stance correct: you think that because Israel is currently committing genocide that they don’t have the right to exist as a country?
This is not agreeing that Israel is allowed to continue committing genocide. This is just saying that country is allowed to exist as a country. Or do you think that once a country commits a horrific act that they should no longer be allowed to exist?
Then that’s your own issue. Germany is a sovereign country who can choose who it wants as citizens. They have chosen to not allow in their country the kind of people who actively work against the right of a certain type of person to exist. Maybe you aren’t that kind of person and are just opposed to the creation of Israel in the middle of someone else’s country without their consent (which I agree was very wrong to do, but at some point we as civilized people need to move forward and figure out how to live in peace instead of constant fighting), but the vast majority of people who say Israel doesn’t have a right to exist are the kind of people who deny the holocaust and think Jewish people don’t have the right to exist. Germany doesn’t want any MORE of that kind of person in their country.
Now, the inverse SHOULD also be true where they require people to say that Palestine has the right to exist as a country, but that excludes most of the world right now.
But people are conflating recognizing Israel as a sovereign state with approving and condoning their actions. If all countries were held to that standard, there wouldn’t be any countries around. The shit my own country does would exclude us from being recognized as a country under that standard.
Because Germany has a history that they want to put behind them. The already have way too many citizens who are white power, neo-nazi assholes who still call for death to Jews, so it’s somewhat logical that they decided they don’t want any more of that mindset as citizens who can vote.
Who is the government? Is it an elected body? Who elects them?
Because either you appoint a government that is made from basically Hamas (that’ll be peaceful!), or you open elections for a new country where Jewish people are 73% of the population… so basically Israel again but now with officially more territory.
I never said I was against that. I’m just trying to figure out the much harder act of implementing that very simple view of the world. If you just say, “here’s a new country that’s fully democratic with equal rights for all… but it now includes both Gaza and West Bank and is 73% Jewish,” you have effectively given Israel an even larger country. Hell, in the US we have universal suffrage and equal rights for everyone from the ocean to the ocean… but only theoretically. Ask a black man how equal he feels in the US, even though he has all the rights and suffrage of a white man. That’s how Palestinians would be treated except probably way worse.
The details beyond that are what is actually difficult and why peace hasn’t been achieved. It’s all fine and good to say, “we should all be happy brothers” but it ignores how hard that is to do when the two brothers want each other dead. I’m in favor of a two state solution along with reparations, but that will also be very difficult to achieve, as evidenced by the many times it has been attempted over the decades.
Do the ultra-orthodox support what is happening in Palestine? Are they pacifists who want the killing to stop?
I’m all for letting people refuse to fight if they are sincerely anti-war. But if they are out there cheering the genocide that’s happening, then make them put their necks on the line.
It’s one thing to have hotels in the city do this for the millions of tourists, but to force this on the highest performing athletes trying to achieve peak performance at the absolute most important competition of their life is kind of shitty. It’s a two week event for about 11,000 people. I’m pretty sure the AC from that doesn’t put a dent on the AC from the rest of the tourists from the event or the tourists throughout the year in freaking Paris.
Mixing kids who are simply in government care with ones that are violent, was never a good idea though.
That’s the issue here. There’s a huge difference between the kids in state care because they are orphaned and the kids who get sent to juvenile detention centers or even what we call in the US “alternative schooling.”
Yeah, the main story was pretty terrible. The console controls for broom flying were also criminally bad.
I really liked the combat, though, and exploring the world was nice. Playing some of the puzzles was also fun. Even though the collect-them-all achievements were extremely vast (so much so that I didn’t even both trying for any of them when I found how ridiculously tedious it would have been to go after them), it wasn’t a deep game. But it was fun for a short time.
Nah, the situation is way different in the US. The construction quality is way way better due to building codes and actual enforcement of that. Though some construction does fall through the cracks, it’s a good bet that the vast majority of construction here is safe. There is a pricing bubble here, but that’s for different reasons. And renting here is nowhere near as cheap as this person says. They said it would take 114 years to pay back the cost of a house compared to renting. In the US, rent is usually slightly more or even much more than a mortgage and goes up over time, so your worst case scenario is less than 30 years.
Tell me about it. I’m in the middle of construction right now, and the various hoops I’ve had to jump through and mazes of codes I’ve had to navigate are insane. And it all makes things so much more expensive. And the number of inspections and permit plan check meetings I’ve had to do has taken so much of my time.
I probably shouldn’t have tried to GC this myself.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years, so I think I have seen what construction is like in California. And I have family in other states who work construction, so I also have an idea of how much stricter the building codes are here in CA (including how much stricter the building inspectors are). Almost everything you complained about is about workmanship or level of finish, not actual build quality. It might not be very sound proof, but it almost definitely won’t fall apart under normal use (there’s a reason that condo in Miami was such huge news). Also, if you are able to fall through a wall with 16" on-center studs and 1/2" drywall then you must be way more dense than I am, since I would have to run fast to get enough speed hitting shoulder first to break through, let alone a slow speed fall into a vertical surface. I’ve never been to China, so I can only repeat what I’ve heard that the quality is much lower than in the US.
As far as you rent vs buy example, you took the extreme case of Silicon Valley. Even in Los Angeles you can buy a single family home for $1.2M that rents for $6k/mo. You don’t even have to look at Detroit. Your example is also off. A 2b 1b apartment rents for $3700, but a condo of that size is $600k not $1.2M. And the mortgage on $600k is roughly $3200/mo plus $600/mo in taxes. If you look at single family homes, yes you are starting at $1.2M, but those are minimum 3br (or very large 2br) and absolutely not renting for $3700/mo. If you go away from the extreme case of SV and somewhere completely normal like the nice suburbs of Indianapolis, you can buy a small house for $300k that rents for $2000/mo.
I can link things too. The house you linked was last sold 40 years ago for $126k, so the person who owns it is renting it out for many times more than their mortgage. You might not be able to rent out a place for more than a mortgage today in that specific city, but if you own it for 5 years then you might be able to. Also, 2br 1ba single family houses in San Jose are fucking weird. If you start looking at 3br 2ba houses in that area then it gets a little more normal. If you look at 2br 1ba condos, the prices are also more normal. But you ignored what I said about Silicon Valley being an extreme case.
90% of the country you can buy for less than renting. You asked why anyone would rent when buying is cheaper. And the answer is because buying is hard. You need to have a lot of money saved up, which most renters can’t do. You need to be able to pay for repairs, which most renters can’t do. You need to know you aren’t moving jobs any time soon, which a lot of people don’t know. And nowadays you are bidding against corporations and investors who are bidding full cash, and sellers would prefer to do that instead of waiting on a mortgage approval that might fall through.
Yes, it’s actually quite simple to answer your simple question because there are so many simple reasons that are simple to understand.
People also care more about eating dogs than other animals. Similar thing here with whales acting more human-like than animals we eat.
Every species of whale is at risk of becoming endangered or extinct. Nearly every other animal that humans are OK with killing aren’t in this much danger. Nearly every animal that is endangered gets people to care more about killing them than other animals.
Whales are giant, peaceful creatures (outside of some orcas that are just dicks). People like large animals, like tigers and bears and elephants, but this is a large thing that is also harmless.
Whales are intelligent and show signs of culture, society, memory, and strong feelings.
I responded that way because you were “just asking questions.” It was a gotcha question that you either already knew the answer to (which is why I answered the way I did, because how could a person not know those answers?), or wouldn’t believe the answer to even if it was explained simply and rationally.
That looked far better than I expected. It had a lot of Horizon Forbidden West vibes to the gameplay, but the graphics definitely felt like being in the Star Wars universe.
indicates that a lot of people at least here have a lot of trouble classifying Hamas as bad people
Oh fuck off with this delusional bullshit. Nobody calls Hamas good people or has trouble saying they are bad people. 99% of the world would happily let every person in Hamas die. The only people who think anyone is supporting Hamas are the same ones who think it’s OK to blindly kill 30,000 civilians in response to 700 civilians being brutally murdered.
It’s not news because everyone knows that Hamas is evil and doing/saying evil things.
German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has said he regrets that the government led by Olaf Scholz did not allow Ukraine to deploy Western-supplied weapons to strike military targets in Russia sooner....
Yes, I’m quite confident Russia will choose to attack 1) one of their biggest trading partners, 2) a NATO nation, 3) a nation with compulsory military activity and relatively high governmental spending on defense, 4) a neighbor to a nuclear nation who also is part of NATO.
I bought a Steam account back in 2007-ish. I wanted to play HL2 but didn’t want to create a Steam account. I thought then, and still think now, that I shouldn’t need to create an online account just to play an offline game.
The guy gave me his login information, and then I went in to change the email and all other info to generic info. I’ve been using that account for 17 years, but I did eventually have to give them real info to buy new games.
I read that this is being called the “Russia Law” or something like that. It’s a way for Russia to reduce western influence on Georgia by paying off politicians to silence orgs that aren’t Russia-friendly.
An unknown number of orcas have sunk a yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the strait of Gibraltar, Spain’s maritime rescue service has said, in the latest in a series of similar incidents involving the animals....
While whale watching in Sea of Cortez, they were saying one small pod of juvenile orcas are straight up dicks. They will attack anything and everything, including taking down blue whales.
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will stand alone and “fight with our fingernails” in defiance of US threats to further restrict arms deliveries if Israeli forces proceeded with an offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah....
It’s not just designer goods. They also have liquor stores that advertise on Instagram and sites that “sell” very hard to find collectors’ items that are available now.
So wait, how is this not ransom? They committed a crime and completed their punishment plus paid a fine. Now they are being held against their will and can only be released after their families pay money that wasn’t directed by the judicial system. I know this is India and not the US, but that sounds exactly like unlawful confinement and ransom to me.
Watching that as an adult is so much different than as a kid. When I was young I thought, “haha, they are in trouble now!” Now I see the worst thing that happened was them having to ballroom dance.
I just learned that Xbox Live Arcade was a service that first started on the original Xbox, not Xbox 360. You had to order a disc online that would let you access the XBLA store. Here’s the wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Arcade...
I had the original Xbox with Live to play with friends, and I played XBLA on the 360; but I didn’t know about the Arcade function on the original. I don’t remember hearing any of my gaming friends talk about it, either.
Essa Al-Nassr, a member of the Qatari legislative Shura council, spoke on Monday at an Arab League session, received ovation making bigoted accusations against Jews and promising the end of Israel.
This is honestly one of the stupidest fucking retorts I’ve read in awhile. That’s like saying “Christians nuked Japan in WW2.” While factually probable (I don’t know the religious affiliation of the dudes in the plane who dropped the bomb), it is tying a religious affiliation to a state organization. The US dropped the nukes on Japan, and the religion of the people who did it is irrelevant.
People have a problem with government of Israel, not Jewish people. People have a problem with the actions of West Bank settlers, not Jewish people. People have a problem with the IDF, not Jewish people. It’s almost like we are able to separate the actions of people from their religious affiliation. Now, countries in the Middle East that are Muslim governments have a problem with Jewish people as a whole, but that isn’t who you are arguing with here.
The point is that it doesn’t matter if they were gay. Straight priests were also sexually repressed by the church. It’s the sexual repression that matters, not the sexual identity of the person. But you led up to your conclusion with a big story about gay people, which implies that gay people were somehow more inclined to acting out on repression than straight people.
Pyongyang Says It Will Send Support Troops to Ukraine Within a Month (www.kyivpost.com)
New German citizens required to affirm Israel's right to exist (www.middleeasteye.net)
Israeli court rules ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted for military service (www.theguardian.com)
Paris wants an AC-free Olympic Village. Team USA and others aren't so chill with it (www.npr.org)
How Sweden's youth homes nurtured killers, creating Europe's gun crime capital (www.reuters.com)
The killer was only 14 and had lived in youth homes as a ward of the authorities since he was eight....
Heads of churches say Israeli government is demanding they pay property tax, upsetting status quo (apnews.com)
Oldest wine ever discovered in liquid form found in urn with Roman remains (www.theguardian.com)
Reddish-brown liquid found in untouched 2,000-year-old Roman tomb is a local, sherry-like wine...
China's Xi accused the US of trying to trick him into invading Taiwan, but said he won't take the bait, report says (www.businessinsider.com)
Xi Jinping accused the US of trying to trick China into invading Taiwan, the Financial Times said....
Hogwarts Legacy fans rejoice as new Harry Potter game officially announced for September (www.gamingbible.com)
China’s glut of idle property causes headache for the government (www.theguardian.com)
The industry that has traditionally powered about a quarter of GDP has been in a downward spiral that policymakers have struggled to halt...
Chiquita found liable for financing paramilitary group (www.cnn.com)
Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Official Gameplay Reveal (www.youtube.com)
Iceland issues license for 128 fin whales to be hunted this year (apnews.com)
Biden considering separate hostage deal with Hamas, potentially bypassing Israel (www.salon.com)
Star Wars Outlaws: Official Gameplay Showcase | Ubisoft Forward (www.youtube.com)
What Hamas Called Its Female Captives, and Why It Matters (www.msn.com)
So to recap the events of a couple of weeks ago:...
German officials regret not lifting ban on Ukraine striking targets in Russia sooner (www.pravda.com.ua)
German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has said he regrets that the government led by Olaf Scholz did not allow Ukraine to deploy Western-supplied weapons to strike military targets in Russia sooner....
Is it possible to safely "give away" a Steam account to a stranger?
I’m pretty sure I’m done with Steam gaming, haven’t launched a game in almost a year, and generally want to move away from DRM....
Riven | Official Launch Trailer | Available June 25th (www.youtube.com)
US museum curator temporarily detained in Turkey airport with 1,500 scorpions and spiders in luggage (www.usatoday.com)
Georgia defies EU and backs law targeting ‘foreign agents’ (www.politico.eu)
Brussels warns new curbs on civil society flout “European values” as protests grow in Tbilisi....
Yacht sinks after latest incident involving orcas in strait of Gibraltar (www.theguardian.com)
An unknown number of orcas have sunk a yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the strait of Gibraltar, Spain’s maritime rescue service has said, in the latest in a series of similar incidents involving the animals....
‘We will fight with our fingernails’ says Netanyahu after US threat to curb arms (www.theguardian.com)
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will stand alone and “fight with our fingernails” in defiance of US threats to further restrict arms deliveries if Israeli forces proceeded with an offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah....
Chinese network behind one of world’s ‘largest online scams’ (www.theguardian.com)
Vast web of fake shops touting designer brands took money and personal details from 800,000 people in Europe and US, data suggests...
Indian prison demands 50,000 rupees to release Myanmar refugees imprisoned for illegal entry at end of sentences (eng.mizzima.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/20747975...
The Taliban are working to woo tourists to Afghanistan (abcnews.go.com)
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South Korea radical Christians warn of “homosexual dictatorship” after opposition wins (www.lgbtqnation.com)
I just learned an interesting piece of gaming history that most people might not know about. (Xbox Live Arcade on original Xbox)
I just learned that Xbox Live Arcade was a service that first started on the original Xbox, not Xbox 360. You had to order a disc online that would let you access the XBLA store. Here’s the wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Arcade...
Qatari official: Jews are murderers of prophets; October7 is only a 'prelude' (m.jpost.com)
Essa Al-Nassr, a member of the Qatari legislative Shura council, spoke on Monday at an Arab League session, received ovation making bigoted accusations against Jews and promising the end of Israel.
Exclusive: U.S. pier attacked during construction work off Gaza coast - I24NEWS (www.i24news.tv)
Spain approves plan to compensate victims of Catholic Church sex abuse. Church will be asked to pay (apnews.com)