wishthane

joined 1 year ago
[–] wishthane 2 points 1 year ago

Hamas doesn't exist in a vacuum though. Most people don't just wake up one day and think "hmm, terrorism sounds good to me today!" There's always going to be a minority of people who end up having extremist views and committing violence, but a functioning state is able to keep those people under control. The fact that Netanyahu has no motivation to make the situation better is directly what causes this situation where people help Hamas out of desperation. They can't wait for Israelis to get their act together and elect someone who is strongly motivated to make life better for Palestineans, they see that they have to live on the other side of a wall where only they have to deal with that level of poverty and violence on a regular basis and it's unfair. If you put yourself in their shoes you'd get it too. That's not a justification at all, it's just empathy for their situation.

I can also empathize with Israelis who want revenge. People in Israel expect safety and don't think of their country as a war-zone. It's easy to think of the problem as entirely one-sided when you don't have to deal with it, but it's just not the case.

[–] wishthane 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So which is it, are they being allowed freedom of movement into Israel to work with identification, or you don't want them in because they're terrorists who threaten to kill civilians?

All I've seen is that some people were allowed in and out, but it isn't exactly a porous border, identification requirements are strict, getting the necessary approval and documentation is difficult in a place without a functioning state. And you can't just make rules and distance yourself from the consequences of them just because people are unable to meet the requirements of those rules, you have to actually look at what the effect is.

[–] wishthane 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Israel’s strikes are the most targeted fucking strikes you’ve ever seen a military do, and they actively warn the people in those buildings with everything from roof knocking to a phone call.

That doesn't even make sense. If the point is to destroy Hamas assets and people, there's no sense in tipping them off about it. So either they're doing that and destroying people's homes for no reason, or they're not actually doing that.

It's not actually possible to take out military targets like that in civilian neighborhoods with air strikes in a "clean" way. Obviously the only reason they don't go in on the ground with IDF soldiers if they actually have legitimate targets instead is because the lives of Palestinean civilians are less important than the lives of Israeli soldiers, and they know that air strikes don't lead to any casualties on their side.

[–] wishthane 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The idea that the atomic bombs directly caused the surrender of Japan is contested, actually. It's more likely that they created an urgency in what was already looking like a losing battle. The difference in that situation is that Japan wasn't fighting a war of resistance at any cost against the US, they were fighting as part of an alliance on one front of a world war. In that case it is very real that troops lose morale, civilian casualties become too great, and loss of military assets make victory look unlikely, and then surrender looks attractive by comparison. But I think in the case of popularly supported resistance to colonizers, that threshold is quite high - people feel quite strongly about revenge and are convinced of the justice of their cause in that situation, so the brutality of their colonizers isn't likely to do anything other than strengthen their resolve.

Frankly, I actually think the atomic bombing and firebombing campaigns would be considered war crimes if they happened today. It's really weird that people justify it so much by how horrible the Japanese state was at the time - tons of innocent civilians, including lots of children, died horribly, and it was 100% anticipated, and in the case of the atomic bombing, they did it twice, knowing that. You can't justify your own actions by the crimes of your enemy.

[–] wishthane 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

NL is neither a Nordic country nor ethnically homogeneous. Just like all countries with a history of colonizing other people, many of those people are now in NL. Stop blaming everything on diversity

[–] wishthane 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I actually did stop engaging as much after eliminating Reddit. Lemmy is nice sometimes, but I'm nowhere near as active. I probably post a few more YouTube comments, that's about it.

[–] wishthane 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I could imagine that, if we're just counting the baseline minimum of what that production would cost. I think for the most popular podcasts they could easily afford it, though. It would certainly cost much less than what they're paying Joe Rogan.

[–] wishthane 1 points 1 year ago

It probably won't, but I think it will get better.

[–] wishthane 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's something about driving that innately dehumanizes - I swear I've actually seen studies about this. When people are behind the wheel, they don't relate to the world around them as personally, empathy kind of disappears, it all becomes something like a game, and everything between them and their destination is just an obstacle to be overcome.

[–] wishthane 5 points 1 year ago

I assume they can power the train AI by pantograph or third rail - no reason to have nuclear powered trains, this isn't Factorio.

[–] wishthane 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many people did the Fukushima incident actually kill? Meanwhile people are actively being killed by air pollution and climate change caused by fossil fuel energy. Nuclear energy incidents seem worse because they happen over a short period of time, but it's just like with airplanes - plane crashes are horrific and disastrous, but statistically airplanes are massively safer than even rail and especially road transport.

It requires good governance and adherence to safety standards and upkeep to be safe, but we've shown that we can reasonably do that for the most part.

Renewables should of course be the first priority, though lithium mining is also a significant health hazard - but really when you compare everything statistically and not just by the significance of individual events, there's no reason we shouldn't be trying to eliminate fossil fuels by any feasible means, and that includes nuclear power.

[–] wishthane 6 points 1 year ago

They just saw that video on Roblox and said "yeah that sounds great, let's do that"

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