This is the effect of having an authoritarian in charge. The propaganda that gets produced is done to convey a sense of power of the person/party, its popularity, and the scale of the internal and external “enemy threat.”
I think a lot of people have their fingers crossed on this one.
I really think there are two different aspects to the classification of the threat. It’s actually pretty analogous to the Afghanistan War.
First, neither Al Quaeda nor Hamas represent an existential threat to their opponents. The US hasn’t really faced a believable existential threat since the collapse of the USSR, Israel hasn’t really faced one since the 80s. Countries in Eastern Europe face an existential threat from Russia. And so on. Killing 1200 (or 3000) people, no matter how brutally or unjustified or evil it seems, it does not threaten to destroy the state of Israel. It is, of course, now an existential threat to Netanyahu, which is one reason why it’s being pursued with such enthusiasm.
The second aspect builds from the first and questions whether the solution pursued by Israel (and the US) were both efficient (ie proportional to the threat so as not to divert attention and resources from other threats) and effective. They have to be expected to achieve specific and measurable goals and timelines.
The ability to pull off an Oct 7th might have been equally well but more efficiently and effectively with intelligence and commando units, and Israel would have been given free rein by most of the planet to do so.
Supporters say the new law aims to stop men from poisoning pregnant partners in order to induce abortion without consent.
Any time they make up this kind of excuse for passing onerous and unnecessary legislation - whether it’s abortion medication or drag shows or bathroom bills - we have to ask two questions:
How common is the behavior that this is intended to address?
How much do you expect this to go down as a result of the legislation, and how long should it take?
If they can’t answer that, they should face having their legislation blocked as failing to establish an evidence-based argument.
Nothing that you’re saying about INR is remotely true. They’re academics and specialists who produce long form research and in depth studies. They’re not “in charge” of anyone.
Up until the post-9/11 shuffle, the US intelligence community (IC) was led by the director of the CIA, and the IC comprised CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, INR, defense branch agencies, and others. CIA and DoD were the ones with operational branches alongside analysts, the rest were pretty much analysis-oriented or technical (eg cryptography). Although there is some overlap, the individual agencies largely have complementary missions.
Foreign actors were already at work in the Palestinian elections. Netanyahu spoke about how his administration was supporting Hamas as the best way possible to avoid having to establish a two state solution with a stable Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank.
Instead of arguing why you seemingly want to lay all of this at the feet of INR, due to some hatred towards Hillary Clinton you’re trying to get out of defending your assertion by criticizing IS foreign policy as a whole. That’s not arguing in good faith, and you’d be better off just acknowledging that you didn’t read the article and have no idea what you’re talking about.
Is that supposed to be a gotcha? I’m asking because you entirely dodged the fact that he’s grifting the republicans, which calls your point into question.
It would be stupid if the Dems didn’t also fund third party candidates. That doesn’t change the fact that Kennedy and Stein are grifting Republican money to try to run as spoilers. You’re so all in on the line about democrats being evil I really have to question whether you’re arguing in good faith.
On the other hand, the US is fairly well allied with Jordan, KSA, and states in the gulf.
The problem is that the US has become inseparable from Israel on foreign policy. I think the war on Gaza should never have begun and that its prosecution will become the current high watermark for absolute brutality.
I don’t want any single religious ethnostate running from the river to the sea. I want to have a two state solution. It is impossible with Netanyahu in power - and Netanyahu worked to secure and supply Hamas for exactly that reason. He knows that if the PA or another organization were to come to the table, he wouldn’t be able to push back.
I’m sure John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and the victims of Veritas and the regular Fox and the other right wing propagandists would have loved to use this one simple trick.
So does this get brought up in debates? Does the press force him to justify his two-faced stance? Or does this just disappear down the memory hole with an AP article?
Can we get an ad from the “Bobby Newport has never worked a real job in his life!” guy?
This is something that the CIA actively engages in. It’s not quite at the covfefe level of “we meant to get caught,” but they do occasionally put out the word that they like it when they’re perceived as ham-fisted bunglers as it makes it easier to get away with stuff.
There’s a tsunami of layoffs in the gaming community, and in tech in general. A lot of the time, it’s entirely unjustified as the positions being laid off are often quickly put on the market again, and it’s usually not the top engineering talent (the most expensive) because they’re harder to replace. It’s often focused on lower tier jobs/support teams, and the cost of re-filling a position (sourcing, interviewing, hiring, training) would far offset any kind of salary reduction. It’s like the tech management version of a Michael Scott vasectomy.
I wish someone would compile a list of companies acting in extraordinary bad faith so I could consider that when making purchase decisions.
I guess it doesn’t matter now that Trump said no, but if she ran in the primary (or was registered as a candidate) she may have been required to sign a “no spoilers” agreement to not run as a third party. I don’t think all states have it, but I know that at least some do.
This is known as the Whorfian Hypothesis, aka Sapir-Whorf theory. In generalized-to-the-point-of-inaccuracy terms, the idea is that language constrains thought. It’s one of those ideas that we can perceive as intuitively correct but that does not stand up to experiment.
There are, for example, languages that don’t have words differentiating green and blue, and others whose counting numbers don’t include specific words for numbers larger than two. Some languages have no words for cardinal directions but use terms like “mountain-way” and “ocean-way.”
Experiments do seem to support a weak version of Whorf - people from cultures with “missing” words can differentiate between green and blue for instance, but it seems to take a bit longer. There’s also a paper indicating that people who don’t use cardinal coordinates have a better innate sense of orientation when, eg, walking corridors in an enclosed building.
I’d personally fall between the weak and strong position because I do not believe in free will and do believe that semantics are a significant driver of behavior, but that’s a step beyond where most of the current research is. There’s research into free will, but none that I’m aware of that pulls in cognitive semantics as a driver.
Probabilistic curves are pretty much the opposite of what we normally mean when we say “free will.” If the assumptions were correct, we’d tend to use the term “non-deterministic.”
I tend to lean in the direction of Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky who believes that it is deterministic but not predictable due to the complexity of the parts and their interactions.
I’ve never been out in Russia, but I know we’re persecuted there. Same for Poland. I’ve never been out in Uganda (I haven’t been there yet), and although I’ve been to India the social circles I moved in meant I didn’t encounter anything like what the community members find there.
What I find curious is that Americans use this as a lash particularly against Islam, while at the same time a large part of their population not only supports LGBT-phobic legislation in the US, but also the evangelical community that actively lobbies for the death penalty for being LGBT in Africa. I can sympathize with the plight of Russians under the violent and murderous dictatorship of Putin without saying that the average Russian is correct on their opinion about the LGBT community. If Russia were to invade Uganda and kill 50k civilians, there would be an outcry against it and anyone who said “But they hate The Gays” would hopefully be ushered peacefully out of the room, as the two are orthogonal.
Is Israel killing 40-50k people to secure gay rights in Gaza? Or have they been supporting Hamas because it allowed them to avoid a two state solution?
Trust me - we are not strangers to the idea that other oppressed communities have parts that are still prejudiced against us. That neither justifies genocide nor does it relieve us as individuals from acknowledging such extreme moral wrongdoing. If an unarmed person shot by police turned out to have opposed marriage equality, that doesn’t excuse the moral requirement to oppose that action.
So unless you think that anti-LGBT legislation and violence justifies terrorist activity including the slaughter of civilians within the US (it does not), I respectfully suggest you review your premises.
Biologist here. The main problem with this argument is that Rowling is trying to win her argument through scientizing, and is not only doing it in an inept way, but in a way that’s completely ironic.
She’s invoking biology, but infortunately she’s adopting an approach that incorporates a high school level of biology. When we start teaching science, we start with highly simplified presentations of the major topics, then build both in breadth and depth from there. If you really want to get down the rabbit hole of sex determination (and multiple definitions of genetic and phenotypical “sex”), you really need to get into molecular biology, genetics, and developmental biology. She’s been advised of this multiple times by multiple experts, so at this point it’s willful ignorance.
The painfully ironic part is that she’s relying on an area where she has no expertise in order to make her point, while ignoring the fact that, as a world-known literary figure, she should know that the applicable part of the definition of “woman” is linguistic and semiotic - which is to say it’s cultural. The definition of “woman” was different in the 1940s South, among the 17th century pilgrims, the Algonquin tribes, cultures throughout sub-equatorial Africa, and so on.
There’s entire branches of research on this, but I think one of the easiest ways to approach it for starting out is to think of the word “womanly.”
having or denoting qualities and characteristics traditionally associated with or expected of women.
I would strike the word “traditionally” from that definition since we’re talking about a comparative and differential analysis and concentrate on the “qualities and characteristics” part. Although most people in the US today wouldn’t think of it this way, imagine the perception of a woman army officer commanding male troops in 1845. You can take the same approach when looking through history or across cultures. What roles, qualities, and characteristics are associated with “women” and how do they differ and evolve?
There’s some complexity when you get into the details - indigenous cultures change when they come into contact with, say, colonialism, and the people who studied them might themselves be observing through their own prejudices. History is replete with examples of British colonialists being unable to properly deal with things like the egalitarian democracies of the northern indigenous peoples or the matriarchal social structures. Picture the used car dealership where the salesman still insists on engaging with the man even though it’s the woman buying the car.
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, and semiotics is the study of symbology. When we’re talking about these things, we’re talking about how the ideas and symbols associated with the idea-token “woman” differ.
The reason why this is important is that this is the crux of the transphobic argument. Their argument is cultural, not biological (although like I said, even their biology is sketchy).
I think a great study that includes cross cultural anthropological analysis of the role of women, as well as politics and economics, is David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything.
So if the water is holy, does that mean in addition that the evaporated water is also holy, or does the holy get left behind, making future batches even holier?
If the former, does that make the air containing the water vapor holy? Is holiness a percentage thing - the more holy water humid it is, the more holy? Could you take out a nest of vampires simply by boiling a pot of holy water and letting the place steam up?
At one point, many years ago, I read that earth’s water cycle is such that, at some point, you’ve drunk Napoleon’s urine. The author didn’t show their math, but let’s assume it’s true. We can take the same approach to holy water.
We might make the assumption that all water on earth has holy water mixed in with it, like cosmic background radiation. Now, obviously it doesn’t have sufficient holiness to be considered fully holy water - it doesn’t damage such creatures as vampires, possessed children, or Jews - but it’s necessarily present in at least trace amounts. And it would increase as a function of time.
Lemmy is small enough that “brigading” doesn’t feel entirely appropriate. Maybe “platooning?”
In any case, we know from other sites that downvotes increase the probability of getting more downvotes, and nasty comments increase the probability of getting more nasty comments. The same goes for upvotes and positive comments. It’s just social dynamics. Some subs on reddit existed almost exclusively to call out other subs, but I think that Lemmy’s user base is small and spread out enough that it’s not a major contributing factor in voting.
I think it’s mostly just people scrolling along, running across a hot take, and interpreting it according to the voting.
In any case, I would suspect that people would be more impacted by hurtful comments than downvotes.
Women lost their rights to their own bodies because of the 2016 election. What else can a Trump take from us?
Women, the LGBT community, immigrants, and ethnic minority communities have lost considerable ground in both public opinion and in legal rights, particularly at the state level. Loss of abortion rights at the national level. Loss of marriage equality. National level restrictions on the trans community. Just because we lost ground doesn’t mean there’s not more we will lose if they get Congress and the White House.
Trump owns (iirc) about 58% of the shares in the company. He wants the price to go up. He at least wants to have the price up when his sell window is open (although a big sell off will crater the price because it both puts more shares on the market and because it signals disinterest/lack of faith).
Short sellers don’t own shares in the companies they’re shorting (with a couple of exceptions for hedging purposes). They borrow shares via their broker to sell XYZ at $50 and then buy the actual shares when XYZ hits $40.
The short interest in the company is insane, from everything I’ve read. It seems like most of the market is betting on it going down in flames probably this year.
Still, Trump’s going to walk away with what’s at least a billion or two. We need better regulation.
Robert Earle Parry (June 24, 1949 – January 27, 2018)[1] was an American investigative journalist. He was known for his role in covering the Iran–Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking in the U.S. scandal in 1985.
Putting abortion rights in as a federal law isn’t stronger than having it as a constitutionally protected right. There are multiple times when the republicans held both chambers to the degree that they could have passed a law that counteracted an abortion rights law. They couldn’t do so because the right was found to be constitutionally protected.
The strongest protection would have been to have the constitutional protection on the broad right and then federal laws establishing individual guidelines ensuring that there wasn’t variability between the states. But simply having a federal law wouldn’t have ensured abortion rights - anything passed by one Congress can be undone by the next.
The mistake was not voting for Hillary in 2016. Anyone who did not vote for her was implicitly saying they don’t care if abortion rights are taken away. I was (and am) a Bernie supporter, and I have been since before he hit the Senate. I still voted for her, even though I’m in one of the bluest districts in a blue state.
This will very possibly drive a Biden victory as well as a Gallego (D) for senate victory. Polling is tight right now, but post-Dobbs putting abortion on the ballot has not only served to secure abortion rights but has caused multiple upsets. Polls are based on expected turnout based on historical analysis, and abortion is an important enough subject that it causes a deviation from historical behaviors.
Also, it should count as flipping the seat since Sinema isn’t a Democrat.
Evolutionary biologist here. I’d argue that, in the same sense as we see homosexuality in animals, we see trans animals.
Some animals physically transition - there are fish that will change their physical gender based on the current gender mixture in their local environment. Some behaviorally transition, with males taking on female roles. Sometimes a whole species is trans - like the female hyena developing male appearing genitalia.
Sexual orientation in the animal kingdom is not strictly analogous to that among humans (which has a much stronger social construct), and the same is true of gender (that is, human gender is a social construct). Because the range of adaptations are so diverse and so widespread, I’m very sure of the fact that they have different causes from each other as well as from humans, but the same is true of animal sexuality.
What makes sense to me is a sentiment classifier that could measure how negative or positive a given story is, and look for the centroids of the positive and negative clusters.
You can’t sit there and vacuum money out of a country via decades and centuries of the virtual theft of natural resources and labor, and then not expect the people living there to go to where their money went.
All too often, taking the “evil” path in RPGs just locks content. Most of the NPCs end up against you and you lose side quests rather than getting additional ones to compensate.
I think the Elder Scrolls games did well with the Thieves’ Guild and Assassins. There was a fair amount of content that was unlocked, and depending on your playstyle (and how much you roleplay in single player RPGs) you could still do major quest lines.
It’s just that, after decades of playing computer RPGs, I will tend to default to an paladin type character until I get the lay of the land.
Okay, I’m not a believer of free will, and so I’m not in favor of a justice system that’s used to punish rather than rehabilitate.
However, given the current system, it seems odd to me that they give credit (if we can call it that) for pretrial detention based on detaining the person attempting to flee. It recalls Jean Valjean, who got a tremendous amount of extra time in prison for his attempt to escape.
On the other hand, I believe that Germany has a legal policy to not consider attempting to escape from prison a crime, because wanting freedom is a very natural state of mind and shouldn’t be criminalized. I am, not surprisingly, more in favor of Germany’s philosophy on this.
But its examples like this that make me appreciate Robert Sapolsky’s position that it’s really challenging sometimes to have to keep your scientifically derived ethical position in mind when faced with a crime that really gets to you.
The reason people are terrified of an authoritarian regime isn’t because a dictator Republican is going to force lower taxes on people. It’s because of the state and private violence. I may have hated Reagan and W because of their policies, but neither of them would have tried to overthrow the government of the US and replace it with a dictatorship. If either of them lost their election, they would have conceded. Neither of them promised while running for office that they would enact a dictatorship.
The problem with your question is that you’re assuming that what we have an issue with are republican policies. It’s true, we do. That’s not the biggest problem with Trump, though, and the linked article makes that quite clear.
To be honest, I wish Obama had been more successful in passing a national healthcare program. I hated that he had campaigned for Lieberman (because the default position is to support the incumbent) rather than his from-the-left challenger in the primaries, and that L went on to tank the public option. But I wish that Obama had used every ounce of political power to ram it through, or had thrown L to the dogs and went all in on getting a more liberal senate. I don’t wish Obama had dictatorial power.
I don’t even particularly favor having an executive branch that’s separate from the legislature. I think that parliamentary democracy is a better approach (although it has its issues too).
I understand what you’re saying, but it’s not a new idea. What you’re proposing is (as far as I can see) the Platonic philosopher-king. They would rule fairly and wisely - since they agree with me and I am fair and wise.
But let’s make sure we are being fair here. It’s not “democracy” that allowed for an armed insurrection against the government. Armed insurrections against governments occur in totalitarian regimes all the time. I can recommend a 400 page biography of Che if you want a reference. British democracy allowed the IRA. Iranian dictatorship allowed for the Islamic revolution. There are multiple civil wars going on right now around the world under multiple systems of government.
I absolutely don’t believe that all people have equally valid opinions. I don’t even believe that people have free will. I agree with Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky that everything people do is predetermined. I’ve gotten very deep into that in other conversations on here so I don’t want to repeat all of that, but I can say that democracy allows for more dynamic adaptation. My position on free will makes these discussions more nuanced - human behavior is determined but not predictable - so I prefer to think of it in terms of information flows.
So let me do my thing as a theoretical biologist. Do ants have democracy? I’d argue that they do, in a very real sense. Emergent behaviors - where each ant’s activity influences others’ activities - is a coordinating action. The queen ant isn’t the brain of the colony. She’s the reproductive organ. The brain of the colony is the ants themselves, the ants whose genetically driven programs respond to their environment and peers in a way that is responsive.
Shark, as long as we are on land. I’d just outrun him then call coup by hitting him with a stick while he’s gasping for air. I guess at that point I could take on a blue whale, but that would just make me feel like a dick. I’ll stick with the shark. Any shark, any time, 1.5 miles inland.
This was possibly the most offensive episode from TNG.
I have pushed back hard on the idea that the Ferengi are space Jews (the Bajorans are space Jews, the Cardassians are space Nazis). The Ferengi are space capitalist Americans - Riker even called them “yankee traders.”
I’ve defended, somewhat, the sexist aspects of TOS by saying it was the 60s and they were trying. They probably did more good than bad.
I know that LGBT-phobia (or concerns about it) made them back off on how Garak was played. I know the Troi stuff ranged from cringe to rape culture, and I know that having Riker being neo-Kirk with the ladies was… a choice.
But the Irish episode was the closest thing to blackface I’ve seen on Trek. I can’t even watch that episode.
I fully agree with you on your response. My attempt at being brief (as a perusal of my post history will show I have a really hard time with), I sacrificed accuracy for brevity.
And just in case you’re hitting your weekend and bored, I am also able to have a full scale discussion on the semiotics of pick up trucks and the surrounding culture in general.
RNC website featured image of Ho Chi Minh City instead of Milwaukee (heartlandsignal.com)
India’s early election results point to rebuke for Modi and his party (www.washingtonpost.com)
Hamas no longer poses major threat to Israel, Biden says (www.politico.com)
Louisiana Banned Abortion Pills. It Also Faces a Maternal Mortality Crisis. (truthout.org)
Trump reportedly considers White House advisory role for Elon Musk (www.theguardian.com)
Texas Democrat who joined GOP in supporting ban on gender-affirming care for minors loses primary (apnews.com)
Why the State Department's intelligence agency may be the best in DC (www.vox.com)
After Libertarians reject RFK Jr., what does success look like for third-party candidates? (www.cnn.com)
One explanation for the 2024 election’s biggest mystery, a theory for why Biden is struggling with young and nonwhite voters (www.vox.com)
As ‘The Apprentice’ Seeks Cannes Sale, Trump Team Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Block Film’s Release (EXCLUSIVE) (variety.com)
GOP candidate for NC governor blasts public spending as his family nonprofit rakes in taxpayer funds (apnews.com)
Overthrow a Government and Install a Puppet Dictator? The CIA will do it for Bananas! (slrpnk.net)
“They rolled me in margarita salt”: Anthony Scaramucci on surviving the Trump White House (www.salon.com)
How would you decorate this room? (lemmy.world)
F1 Manager developer accused of “dehumanizing” layoffs and mismanagement (videogames.si.com)
Trump campaign considering Nikki Haley for VP (www.axios.com)
Language (lemmy.world)
The Palestinian activists fighting for LGBTQ+ rights against a neverending backdrop of war (www.lgbtqnation.com)
That feeling when even Elon Musk thinks you're insufferable (lemmy.world)
God damn it (lemmy.world)
rule (lemmy.cafe)
Why these Black voters in a key state say they won’t vote for Biden or Trump (www.cnn.com)
Trump Media stock erases all gains since it began trading as DJT shares fall again (www.nbcnews.com)
Israeli Doctor Blows Whistle on War Crimes (consortiumnews.com)
Can Abortion Rights Voters Turn Florida Blue? (newrepublic.com)
Arizona Abortion Rights Amendment Garners Sufficient Signatures for 2024 Vote (truthout.org)
“Things just got very real”: Legal experts say Jack Smith appeal threat “puts Cannon on notice” (www.salon.com)
ur(ul)equited friendship 💔 (lemmy.cafe)
A Legal Pot Pioneer Was Busted in Idaho With 56 Pounds. He Has a Plan. (www.nytimes.com)
Hustle tip (lemmy.world)
Amazon, SpaceX and other companies are arguing the government agency that has protected labor rights since 1935 is actually unconstitutional (theconversation.com)
Elon Musk has fully bought into the ‘great replacement’ (www.theverge.com)
Higher temperatures mean higher food and other prices. A new study links climate shocks to inflation (apnews.com)
Playing as an evil rule (lemmy.world)
Geophysicist who attempted to flee US after Capitol riot sentenced to 5 years in prison (www.wusa9.com)
If America Were a Trumpian Autocracy (tomdispatch.com)
What animal could you take in a fight? (lemmy.world)
Possibly a double-standard? (lemmy.world)
Small car problems rule (lemmy.world)
That bumper is eye level with me. He could have probably decapitated me if he reversed with enough determination....