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hark

@hark@lemmy.world

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hark,
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Are people actually making excuses for Israel?

hark,
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Half-assed support from the US isn’t because of ammunition shortfalls, it’s because the US will only give just enough to drag out the war and drain Russia as much as possible.

hark,
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and Israel did even worse. Your point?

hark,
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Did it hurt?

When I shoved this cake right up your arrogant ass.

hark,
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But that would make me a tryhard.

hark, (edited )
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the TV scenes of Arab soldiers gunning down fleeing Israeli civilians, ripping down the flags in Tel Aviv amid burning corpses, taking city after city, fighting a 20-on-1 dogpile of a war that would end with Israel erased from the map forever, guilty and the innocent alike, would get played on American TV in campaign commercials for 50 years. If it happened under Biden, the Democrats wouldn’t win another election for at least a generation. Probably more.

But if footage of what’s actually happening to Palestinians right now is shown then nothing happens? Their lives aren’t worth anything in the eyes of Americans?

hark,
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Are these the job creators I’ve heard so much about?

hark,
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It also means Democrats are more likely to listen to voter pressure, you know, if there was some kind of emergent thing going on, say… in the middle east.

Then why haven’t they been listening?

hark,
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They think that because I donated to Bernie years ago that it means I want to donate to any shit democratic candidate they put in front of me. The lesson I learned is to never donate to a political candidate ever again.

hark,
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That only makes things worse.

hark,
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People in denial are downvoting you, but you’re pointing out reality. Obama had a chance to do something about it but said it was not a top priority. Politicians love their bargaining chips, but actually solving problems would mean fewer bargaining chips, so they don’t tend to solve problems.

hark,
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Are Chinese subsidies really excessive compared to American subsidies? Tesla owes its entire existence to the government giving it carbon tax credits among other subsidies. Every single qualifying electric vehicle has been getting thousands of dollars in the form of tax credits all the way up to $7500 and it’s only been more generous now since it can be used as a rebate right at the dealership. American car companies have taken that to mean they can jack up prices by those thousands of dollars and even more, because they still treat EVs as mainly premium products.

If you want to talk about artificially out-competing competitors, the 100% tariff is a prime example. The US has dragged its feet on technologies like EVs so they can juice profits and now it’s crying and shrieking about competition being “unfair” for providing customers with a desirable product in a desirable price range. This protectionist policy not only sets back the fight against climate change, but also tightens the screws on customers who are already feeling the weight of inflation, just to continue the record profits by the auto companies.

hark,
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Uber’s costs are because of oversized compensation packages for executives and lots of R&D put into autonomous driving. The bulk of the actual cost of operation is on the shoulders of drivers who wear down their vehicles for the sake of Uber. All Uber does is provide an app, which is laughably cheap by comparison.

hark,
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Why is the US so worried to the point of applying a hilariously high 100% tariff? Don’t claim security concerns because if that was really the case then they’d outright ban them instead of resorting to tariffs.

hark,
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I won’t say no to cheaper games. The 30% cut was settled upon in the days where physical copies were the norm and Steam was still under heavy development. Given how established Steam and digital distribution in general is, it’s not really fair to developers to dedicate almost a third of the price of the game to a hosting platform. Yes, exposure is important, but that’s a service provided passively due to the fact of being the largest platform. Reducing Steam’s cut hurts no one except maybe Gabe’s ability to buy another yacht (and even then, not likely). Even if customers don’t see lower prices if Steam were to reduce their cut, it’d be great to see the actual developers getting more money from the games they put all the effort into making.

hark,
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Momentum. Steam was among the first on the scene and provided the best experience. Thankfully Steam has kept the momentum going instead of enshittification (thanks to being a privately held company), but almost a third of the price of the game is still ridiculous if you consider the effort that goes into making a game vs maintaining a mature platform.

hark,
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The end of my post is where I address this. Publishers have the option to use their bigger cut to reduce prices, but even if they don’t, money is moving closer to the people actually making the games possible instead of a platform provider. There are also a lot of indie developers. It’s not just all greedy publishers.

hark,
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I was thinking the other day about how Spore would benefit from modern hardware. Spore came out when multicore processing for gaming was still relatively new and memory amounts were a handful of gigabytes at most.

hark,
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Just keep jacking up rent, then you’ll be “producing” even more.

hark,
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It really wasn’t. Of course it’s always had a premium over home cooking, but the premium has exploded over the last few years.

hark,
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A refugee camp isn’t much of a home.

hark,
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Maybe you’re right, the world tries to negotiate with israel all the time to no avail.

Day After UN School Attack, IDF Brags About Striking Another Refugee Camp School (truthout.org)

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombed a UN school-turned-evacuation center in Al-Shati refugee camp, near Gaza City, as they carried out an intense series of bombardments on Friday. Palestinian officials have reported that three Palestinians were killed and 15 were injured....

hark,
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There was the uncommitted movement for the democratic primaries, but democrats screamed and shat their pants in anger over people daring to challenge party unity. Reminder that these uncommitted votes were just to send the message that biden should stop supporting genocide which should really be a no-brainer and even then democrats threw a fit. The political parties have their primary processes clamped down and completely controlled. If trump threatened the moneyed interests at all, he would’ve been shut down during the party primaries like Bernie was.

hark,
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“jUsT vOtE” wasn’t the solution. It required the opposition parties to work on getting those votes. If the democrats in the US wanted to learn a lesson, it’d be that they shouldn’t just lean on “sure we suck ass but trump is worse!!”

This excerpt is key:

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Note the first point hitting on the economy. Democrats have gone with “actually everything is great and you not being able to afford things is just your feelings”.

hark,
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That’s what happens with complacency. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to dismantle the fascist machine, but it requires sustained full commitment and effort from the opposition. Think about how bad things were with george w bush. Democrats were able to seize that opportunity to get in and do some good things, but they were mostly fine with the status quo and this is what gave us trump.

hark,
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We’re in full agreement here and that was my point when I argued against the “just vote” talking point. Democrats need to change their tactics and apply pressure using what works. Currently their only tactic is pointing out “we’re not trump” and they’re putting their full force behind that tactic and it’s not working (or at least not well enough to enact meaningful change). One key problem is how we get democrats to change their tactics and clearly “just vote” isn’t cutting it because they’re not fazed by threats to withhold votes, so it’s not like they actually care if you vote for them beyond getting them into office. It does nothing to change democratic party policy.

hark,
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How does this help in the defense of Ukraine?

hark,
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Ukraine sends more people to Syria -> fewer Ukrainians available to defend Ukraine.

hark,
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I can’t believe joe biden would “both sides” us like this!!!

hark,
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Very low bar to clear. Wish we had higher standards for presidential candidates.

hark,
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Probably because things are getting worse but liberal parties are more concerned with keeping up the status quo than actually improving things, so you get a lot of apathy and people taking a gamble which will not pan out well.

hark,
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You mean the presidential power that biden has been using to bypass congress to maximize weapon shipments to israel?

hark,
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Compared to the $1.7 trillion student loan debt crisis he was key in creating? Actually yes. When it comes to future students who have to take on massive amounts of debt, he’s also doing nothing there.

hark,
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Right, instead he has applied a 100% tariff on electric vehicles coming from the country making the most electric vehicles out of anyone and has applied a 50% tariff on solar panels from that very same country.

hark,
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Maybe you’re satisfied with biden shitting all over your face and then wiping away a bit with one finger, but most people aren’t. Nobody is mad that he’s not perfect, they’re mad that he did active harm and then does barely anything to fix the problems that he himself has created.

hark,
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Causing a massive problem and then chipping away at maybe 10% of what some people have had to endure from it while not addressing the continued existence of this problem for people in the future is not big at all actually. This isn’t problem solving.

hark,
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I’m well aware of the excuses given for it, but climate change is too pressing an issue to play these stupid games. Does biden think climate change is a regional issue? We have to work together globally to fight it. Insisting that the solution must be American-made is trump-esque, and in fact biden had criticized trump for his trade war with China. Since then, he’s kept trump’s trade policies and even expanded upon them. These tariffs will do nothing but let American companies sit comfy with fat profit margins and adoption of these technologies in the US will slow to a crawl.

hark,
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There was an opportunity to change things, in fact there is still plenty of opportunity to change things, but that would upset the current power structure so you’re supposed to be satisfied with this empty gesture instead:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4b333613-4a53-4b12-ab36-b84a7ce8f67f.jpeg

hark, (edited )
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Is this the new defense? I ask because I’ve also seen people here defending biden by mocking people for not liking him “because he’s not perfect”. No one hates these slimeball politicians because they’re a little less than perfect, they hate them for doing heinous shit like supporting genocide. We all saw how hillary laughed after she was key in destroying Libya. She was a favorite of billionaires and gave well-compensated speeches to big banks. She’s a garbage out-of-touch politician who threw her weight around in the democratic party and in the media to shut out Bernie, who was an actually great candidate who would’ve beaten trump.

In her mind, it was her turn for the presidency and you can see how bitter she is about that loss because she still won’t shut the fuck up about it to this day and she loves to insert herself into conversations. So yeah, thanks for giving us trump, you selfish asshole. At least we all can point and laugh at you for your repeated embarrassing public displays of bitterness over never achieving your power-hungry dream of becoming president. Pokemon go to hell.

hark,
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Hell, we were supposed to have learned with W.

and this is why I have no confidence in our system. With how bad bush was, it should’ve completely destroyed the republican party then and there. Instead republicans get worse and democrats do nothing except insist that they must only be slightly better than republicans so that elections get as close to 50-50 as possible.

hark,
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I’m curious why it doesn’t make up a bigger share of energy generation in China then. I assume China doesn’t have the same issues with NIMBYism.

hark,
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I wasn’t sure how much NIMBYism was a factor but either way, solar and wind seem to be growing a lot faster than nuclear: ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/…/china/

Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden (www.theguardian.com)

Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer....

hark,
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Wage increases on the bottom are somewhat higher on a percentage basis, so if you made $10/hr one year and then $11/hr the next, that’s a whopping 10% increase, but given how prices have increased that’s really not great. These sorts of gains would have to be sustained over multiple years (like how inflation has sustained over multiple years) to make a good difference.

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