That's a very good point and well said.
The real problem is that supporting Hamas - who has repeatedly and incessantly called for the elimination of Jews, and taken every opportunity to do exactly that - is endorsing genocide.
You're absolutely right here, and this is what so gets lost. When ANY criticism of Israel, the Gaza military action, Israeli control over the West Bank, etc., is automatically met with cries of anti-semitism, Hamas gets a pass.
Of course, but they're not "fighting back," they're just fighting.
Right, so you as a third-party (presumably) observer get to decide what valid forms of fighting back are. So it's OK for the state of Israel to control the borders of Gaza and the West Bank, run targeted military and police expeditions through those regions any time they want, control imports/exports, etc., but the residents are only allowed to resist in certain ways prescribed as legitimate by you.
This is EXACTLY why we must have free and open discussion of the issues, because people like you want to use language, discussion, and solutions through cries of anti-semitism.
No, but the intifada is. It's what they teach their kids, it's what they practice.
Again, you apparently are the arbiter of valid resistance?
That didn't happen
Before 1948 there was no Jewish political nation that controlled large amounts of territory in the Levant. One day later, there was. Hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims lost their property, were murdered, expelled, or displaced. Those are facts that are not in dispute.
Your "facts" are ignorant nonsense
Cite one thing I have said that is false. I can back up every single statement I have made--I don't even think I have said anything that is in any dispute!
And you pretending they can be reasoned with is anti-Semitism.
Right, because any objection to the Israeli STATE or its actions is automatically anti-Semitic and the conversation must end immediately. Ridiculous.
Do the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have a right to fight back? Is any fighting back (e.g., intifada) automatically genocidal?
Were the Jews taking Muslim and Christian Arab land in 1948, expelling tens or hundreds of thousands, genocidal?
If we can’t have conversations about the facts, we can’t have a conversation. That’s what the enemies of free speech seem to want. Shut it down.
It literally does not mean that. This is the same trap that Gay fell into—any resistance to Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza is now “genocide.” It’s a pretty clever attempt to quash discussions.
"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission?"
I don't know to what degree it's fully cultural vs situational, but in multiple countries (including America) I have witnessed, firsthand, groups of Indian (from India) and Chinese (from China) students who seem to have absolutely no issue with organized and systematic in-group cheating. Again, I don't know if it's cultural, the position of being foreign students in a different country, or what. It seems pretty rampant, however.
The same Harvard who just fired a president for rampant plagiarism, and for whom calling for genocide is gray area that may or may not constitute "harassment" by Harvard student conduct guidelines?
Gay was a weak scholar who got the Harvard job in part due to both her plagiarism and her race and gender. I think that's undeniable. While most of her plagiarism was indeed of the most minor variety, some of it was not, and she clearly shows a pattern of plagiarizing. That should be punished, uniformly, across academia. I fully support her being removed from her role for this.
However, her responses in the Congressional hearing, that raised such ire, particularly amongst the Jewish donor class, are a separate issue.
https://rollcall.com/2023/12/13/transcript-what-harvard-mit-and-penn-presidents-said-at-antisemitism-hearing/
Here's a transcript of the hearing. I'm not going to bother attempting to summarize or highlighting the points, but you should read it yourself. What I will say is that Stefanik completely conflated the concepts of "intifada" and "genocide" so that any answer that gave any legitimacy to an intifada would automatically be considered anti-Semitic. In other words, any answer that didn't support the current status of the Palestinian and Israeli nations and peoples would automatically be considered anti-Semitic and the anti-speech fascists want that speech shut down. Stefanik argues that Harvard should not allow any opposition to Israel amongst its students.
That is unacceptable.
By those same standards, SUPPORTING the creation of Israel in the 1940 would be considered a genocidal act.
We have to be able to talk about ideas that other people may find offensive.
I don't think that just stating the fact that from tons of data, shoplifting goes up with self-checkout is the same as placing the blame on it.
The person quoted in the summary said that self-checkout hasn't delivered on any of its promises, and one of the reasons is theft. That's what I meant by placing the blame.
If we *know* that it goes up, why should we ramp up penalties/police to protect the revenue of businesses who are making this decision? If anything, I'd say it's a strong argument to reduce them. It's sort of like, the regulations around taking PIN codes for credit cards, if the point of sale doesn't accept chip and pin, then the liability shifts to the point of sale for fraud. We don't just increase policing and let them roll on with mag stripes forever, similarly companies that keep reducing their staff and using their own self-checkout, can at least pay a tax to cover this extra policing or something.
That kind of gets down to what the core purposes of laws of. Do laws exist to regulate behaviors? Do they exist to protect people from being harmed by other people? Do they exist to increase the general quality of life? Strengthen the state? Increase economic potential? Do they exist to implement morality? etc
For the most part, there is no agreement on these issues, and law is all of the above.
To me, I have chosen to live in a state and city that has NOT decriminalized shoplifying. I do no like the state of shopping in stores in San Francisco, Seattle, DC, etc., that I have experienced in the last ~3 years.
If we *know* that it goes up, why should we ramp up penalties/police to protect the revenue of businesses who are making this decision?
Because the point of law is to prevent harm? Stealing is harm.
For me, it's as simple as that. If you don't believe that law exists to prevent harm, maybe you disagree.
"It hasn't delivered anything that it promises," says Christopher Andrews
I prefer using self-checkout to regular checkout at most stores (or alternatives like the walmart app where you can scan as you shop). I don't have problems with the tech, I'm happy with the experience.
So, it has completely delivered what it promised for me, a shopping experience that I prefer and saves time.
Shoplifting and cost savings are concerns of the store, and they are valid concerns. Personally I would increase penalties (or being back penalties for the states that have effectively decriminalized shoplifting) rather than blame shoplifting on self-checkouts.
> There are certain games I like, but I'll sometimes watch my favourite streamers play others. It's about their personality and commentary, and about the struggle to win.
So I agree and I would argue that's very different than traditional sports. For most sports, fans loyalty is to a team or institution. The players change, the coaches change, the commentators change, but the team remains the same.
If your favorite player switches to a different team, they're probably no longer your favorite player. etc
All the evidence suggests that people like sports and will pay to watch them. eSports is no different in that regard. What is different is the demographic skewing younger, and therefore with less disposable income.
I disagree that eSports are no different in that regard.
First, it's insane (to me) how many people watch American football and spend a lot of money doing so. The NFL and major league baseball (with the NBA distant behind them) make more money than most of the soccer leagues around the world combined. I cannot fathom the amount of money flowing through the NFL.
While football tactics, rules, strategies, etc., have changed, the game is understandable for anyone who has watched football since about 1920 or so. If you grew up watching football 50+ years ago, you can still comfortably watch today. Ditto for baseball, basketball, soccer, rugby, cricket, hockey, and so forth.
A quick google claims that GTAV, League of Legends, and Fortnite at the top games so far in January. I've never played any of those. I wouldn't know what is going on if I were to try to watch them. (Just Chatting crushes all games)
In 2012, the most popular games were Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft, Dota2, and League of Legends.
2017 I see League of Legends, PUBG, Dota2, Hearthstone, and CS:Go.
So League of LEgends seems remarkably constant, but the others are all over the place.
If you take a few years off gaming, you're lost in the streaming world--at least among the popularly streamed games.
While many Americans played football in school, almost no adults play football. I would guess that the majority of NFL watchers have never played football, but that's a pure guess. I would argue that it's very difficult to watch most video game streams if you aren't very familiar with the game. And since streaming trends move so quickly, it is truly a genre dominated by young males.
Who knows if the situation will always remain the same, but streaming is pretty solidly dominated by video games and thirst streamers, and both audiences skew male and young.
Interesting! I’ve been using Linux/FreeBSD since the mid-90s and I’d never heard of joe. Pretty well locked into vi/vim at this point. Looks like an interesting editor.
I’ve only driven a Tesla once and used the software another time or two beyond that, and I do agree with you that it’s by far the best of the car manufacturers.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach
