Debian – I just wasn’t ready for it. Got told “oh you’re using Mint? That’s nice but you should try out Debian it’s the Real Deal™” but the reason I was using Mint back then in the first place was that it was my first step out of the Windows ecosystem, I was scared shitless and didn’t understand anything. What do you mean I don’t get a huge pretty start menu?! How am I supposed to find stuff then?!
What a disingenuous comparison. This woman didn’t start an insurrection. This is like if Putin had prevented Prigozhin from running, which he would have been completely in his rights to.
Bringing up the USS Liberty incident, like bringing up crime statistics in the US, is less the great argument you think it is and more of an ideological calling card. Anyone who actually cares about morals, decency, and the best interests of the civilized world wouldn’t honestly decide that the discussion would be best guided forward by going back in history to cherry pick this one incident that occurred nearly 60 years ago.
EDIT: The upvote / downvote ratio on this comment should tell you everything you need to know about the population breakdown here. People who criticize Israel because of the actual things that Israel does will bring up the '67 expansion, or the high blood price paid in Gaza, or the blockade, or the current extremist government, or whatever else. The USS Liberty is a cynical rhetorical instrument, not a building block of any sane person’s actually, honestly held opinion. Anyone who posts or upvotes this 60 year old incident that Israel has apologized and paid reparations for “because oh isn’t it worrying, isn’t it telling how bad of an ally Israel was to the US that time” is concern trolling and hiding their power level. Simple as.
I understand your anger, but I feel compelled to make some remarks.
The IDF did personally pull the trigger to shoot and kill three of the hostages who were, at the time, waving white flags made from their shirts. This event is surely very telling, and was also immediately considered a catastrophe, with Israeli responses on all ends of the spectrum. On the more sane end you have the official statement by the IDF chief of staff, who didn’t mince words about this:
“You see two people, they have their hands up and no shirts — take two seconds,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told soldiers in Gaza on Sunday. Halevi said a day earlier that the soldiers who shot the three had opened fire in breach of IDF protocols.
“And I want to tell you something no less important,” Halevi continued. “What if it is two Gazans with a white flag who come out to surrender? Do we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
“Even those who fought and now put down their weapons and raise their hands — we capture them, we don’t shoot them. We extract a lot of intelligence from the prisoners we have; we have over 1,000 already,” he told the soldiers.
Halevi added: “We don’t shoot them because the IDF doesn’t shoot a person who raises his hands. This is a strength, not a weakness.”
Now, given the actual event which speaks for itself, there is obviously a very deep disconnect between what the chief of the IDF touts as policy here and what the soldiers end up doing in practice. You could posit that the chief is speaking out of his ass, but the more probable theory is that higher up on the hierarchy some officers are sincerely convinced that they are leading the charge of the Most Moral Army in the World™, and meanwhile some hefty portion of the boots on the ground have decided to, like you’ve phrased it, kill everything that moves and fuck the rules of engagement. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say this proves such a grand statement such as “genocide is the goal of the Zionists”. Do the events of Oct 7 prove that “genocide is the goal of the Palestinians”? What are we supposed to do with this conclusion? Does it lead anywhere productive?
The hostages are not political pawns for Netanyahu, they are a huge headache for him. Netanyahu could very well easily continue the military campaign just on the promise of dealing with Hamas alone; he would in fact much prefer this, and would like nothing more than to be rid of the constant shouting about the hostages. It’s an open secret that the hostage families have effectively thrown in their lot with Netanyahu’s most fierce opposition; they’re constantly shouting for “a deal NOW” and “negotiate with Hamas NOW”, to the degree that this has become somewhat of a wedge issue in Israel, you’re expected to be a “bring back the hostages, stop the war, reach a deal now, kick out Netanyahu, left winger” or a “push on, let the chips fall where they may, destroy Hamas, keep Netanyahu, right winger”. I am exaggerating but really not by much, and some paper op-eds have written on this topic extensively. The state, for what it’s worth, evidently cares about this issue a lot more than Netanyahu himself does, or you wouldn’t have had the first ceasefire in the first place.
I encourage anyone to read the Wikipedia page on this issue, it provides a lot of sources and goes over whatever evidence the Israelis did claim to have, and how several pieces of it were dismissed as insufficient. I am not arguing with your conclusion here, it’s just that “HA! THIS HEADLINE SETTLES IT” makes for a lousy mental habit.
Israel says it has two goals: destroy Hamas and rescue the 129 hostages still held by militants […] but some families of hostages worry that the bombing endangers their loved ones. Hostages released during a weeklong cease-fire last month recounted that their captors moved them from place to place to avoid Israeli bombardment. Hamas has claimed that several hostages died from Israeli bombs, though the claims could not be verified.
I have to believe that everyone in Israel knows that “continue this balls to the wall military campaign to destroy Hamas AND free all the hostages! These go hand in hand” is cakeism lip service. Every minimally rational person should be able to understand that when facing a foe who is holding hostages, if you commit to destroying that foe by military means then you have effectively forfeited the lives of the hostages, barring an outstanding stroke of tactical genius or a lucky break (so far Israeli soldiers have been able to rescue one hostage by force). Conversely, if you decide to sit down with that foe and say “all right, score one for you, let us cut a deal and get all our hostages back”, then your foe will make sure to negotiate terms such that you will not be destroying anything or anyone (Hamas mistakenly thought they had this sorted out with the first ceasefire, which is why now they demand total cessation of all hostilities as a precondition for any further deal). But speaking this truth out loud in Israel these days is just not palatable; instead the public demands to hear these “do this and that” fairy tales.
white supremacist
Lol. Lmao, even.
None of the 54 people who upvoted this have the first idea about how Israeli internal politics relates to white supremacy. None of them know how Likud got elected in '77, on top what of ethnic tensions. None of them know the names “Dudi Amsalem”, “Miri Regev”, “Galit Distel”, who are high ranking ministers in the current Israeli govt (Distel quit recently), and how they built their political capital and support base on top of repeated scorn and derision for “the white tribe” which in Israel is traditionally identified with the secular liberal elites, who vote for left wing parties and try to promote left wing policies. Listen to some of the stuff that this wing of Likud says, ironically they don’t sound far off from the BLM movement who of course they will tell you that they oppose in their capacity as staunch conservatives. Don’t underestimate how much of Likud’s power comes from exactly that fault line in Israeli society.
Go ahead and call Israel bigoted, a settler state, a colonialist project, all of these start off an argument that often Israel is going to look not so great coming out of – but “white supremacist”? People make the surprised Pikachu face because this take is detached from physical reality. Out of what I want to believe is good intentions, you ended up shoving the square peg that is this conflict into the convenient round hole that is this narrative about colors vs. whites which has not applied since decades before the turn of the century.
FWIW I don’t personally have the taste for any of this. I wish I could stop hearing about the imaginary applications of colors to Israeli internal and foreign policy, and instead start hearing more about practical plans of how to ensure security in the region and how to aim for a future where millions of Gazans don’t starve. But clearly no one is asking me.
The advertisement is specifically about returning to the Gaza settlements that were abandoned during the disengagement of 2005; no one in Israel right now knows what’s going to happen to Gaza once the war winds down, there’s no consensus even for what the Israeli public would want to happen in theory. So, while this ad is jingoistic, tasteless and not a good look, it is not some deep chess move by the Israeli govt sending the real estate industry to Jewify Gaza; it’s one actor among a cacophony of competing voices, shouting “LET US UNDO THE 2005 DISENGAGEMENT THIS IS THE REAL SOLUTION”. If you want to correctly argue that historically these kinds of crazies do end up having govt backing then by all means argue that, but it’s better to understand the situation as it currently is.
I have a lot of complaints about the HFW plot but the biggest one is the juvenile way they handled Tilda and Sylens in their capacity as prime movers. Aloy herself is a mature character but the story around her takes place in a moral scape of the world as seen by a fifteen year old.
Sylens goes through the motions of his scheme and keeps the same smug “I’m above it all and don’t owe anyone any explanations” attitude, through setback after setback and reality check after reality check. It seemed like the authors were poised to deliver a harsh discussion about ends vs means, how the world isn’t a magical fairy tale and sometimes something important needs to be done that requires dirty politics and won’t be magically solved by the one pure hero pulling the sword out of the rock; but then they squandered it completely and went back to ‘yeah all glory to the chosen one’. Most frustratingly they had their angle right there, already baked in: Aloy fails the first 7 times she tries to do anything, so if Sylens mocked her “this is the real world, you don’t just go ahead and solve things, Hero”, she could legitimately retort “idk, have you tried”. Instead they just don’t have this discussion and go back and forth “screw you I hate you” “behave, girl” again and again in a flat loop.
Tilda was made in the mold of this cringey moral that’s all the rage now about how everyone’s an abuser and when people say “I love you” they really mean “I own you” (as also seen in Dragon Age: Absolution). It reads like someone’s pent up frustration about their controlling parents, like in his nightmares the person who created this plotline sees his mother taking to the air in that floating exoskeleton and shouting amid a rain of guided missiles “you’re going to college and that’s final, submit or perish”.
Add a “refuse” button that pops up a short text box detailing the consequences. The End, credits roll. Problem solved, now they can all go explain to everyone on the forums why this is the best ending
Now of course one could make some damning argument about the state of the tech industry in practice, resulting in one of those bell curve memes with “using SQLalchemy is a sin” on both far sides and “noooo it’s just a name it’s fine there’s no fraud involved” in the middle
A lot of games allow you to adjust the difficulty mid game. I've played several games on "ultra masochist hard" only to lower the difficulty for the bullshit final boss (looking at you Kena).
War of the nine speakers
"God that asshole douche Kazuya is so hot… ugh what is wrong with me"
Let X equal the number of cans of spinach in the known universe. Let Y equal the number of times the Hulk can possibly get "angrier" without succumbing to an aneurysm. Since the Hulk gets stronger when he gets angrier (designated [Zi r = Zf]) and Popeye's spinach ability allows him to attain a level above his opponents strength ([Zi+1 = Zf],) the only way one of these combatants is going to lose is if the source of their power gives out. Thus if X is greater than Y, Popeye wins. If Y is greater than X, the Hulk wins. This is relatively untenable until one realizes that Olive Oyle is present in the room. Since that is the case, and theorists have speculated that Olive is in fact Female, there will be twice as many X chromosomes in the Room as Y chromosomes. Since X > Y, Popeye wins.
Here's a pro-Palestinian argument I find compelling. Israelis like to talk up and down how much they love peace. They say fine, there's settlements eating up the west bank, and a siege on the Gaza strip, and all of that, but how is that justification for violence? Peace is better than war! We love peace! Let us have peace. Palestinians find this laughable: first you kill and conquer, then with the boot comfortably on the neck you talk about peace? There can be no peace without justice.
I don't know if I agree with the conclusion all the way, but it certainly is a compelling argument. And I find that it is compelling as it applies across the board geopolitically. Too many times "peace, peace" is used as a rallying cry in support of whatever bully already used their power to tread, create facts on the ground and declare fait accompli. You hear the same about Ukraine: how immoral it is of Zelensky and Biden to insist on war where it would be so much more peaceful of them to accept what Russia has taken by force and seek a diplomatic solution. Anyone who supports the push to undo the partial conquest of Ukraine is therefore, by definition, argued to be a bloodthirsty warmonger.
That's not how the world works, or should work. Conquest and bloodshed is not a game of tag, for agents to escalate at their leisure and then shout "time out" when they are done extracting value from it. In accepting such a "humanitarian" point of view we maybe choose peace now for the people embroiled in the current conflict, but choose bloody war for countless innocent souls in the future who will come under the baleful eye of some geopolitical bully or robber baron who will inevitably reason, "we live in a world where I can go in, slaughter, conquer and philander, then when I've had enough and it seems things are turning against me, I shall weep that peace is preferable to war, and the world will listen". This is not an endorsement of an endless cycle of revenge, but it is an endorsement of the idea that nations should be allowed to retaliate against acts of war in ways that make the original act, in retrospect, not worthwhile. In civil society we have courts for exactly this purpose.
The beautiful modern internet! Where one can in one breath complain about the post-truth era, then proceed to get 30 upvotes for making the absurd, maximalist claim that no one excused the Oct 7 terrorist acts – when Iran called those attacks Palestinian self-defence and Students for Justice in Palestine called it "a historic win for the Palestinian resistance" (those are Reuters links, hopefully we can agree they don't invent news wholecloth). So what now, are we going to move the goal posts and say that calling something "a win" and "self-defense" is not excusing it?
There are enough valid pro-Palestinian arguments: denying water to a civilian population of nearly two million is a war crime, that's certainly a valid argument. These attacks didn't happen in a vacuum, and need to be seen in the context of the impossible conditions in the Gaza strip: also certainly a valid argumnent. But this stuff, this blatant misrepresentation of reality, is what makes it to the top of the comment section instead.
Propaganda is not there to make you agree with it, it is there to tell you that you are powerless against it
Obviously, yes, but at that level of knowledge as a user, you either don’t know about that or don’t feel comfortable enough to deal with it.