If you look at the state driver’s manuals from the dmv it actually says exactly that. It’s already considered a privilege. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to test into it and pay annually to keep your car on the road.
I actually like cars. (They’re… “cool”. I play Forza sometimes, lol.) But the reality is they’re fucking expensive to maintain, along with insurance and taxes and fuel. And very much not fun to drive under normal circumstances, next to removeds and idiots. And terrible for the environment, at absurd US numbers at least.
I’d rather save thousands of dollars and have public transit or easily maintained bike. But bikes are not viable when planet is trying to kill us (Texas is 100-110 °F for 2 months straight now).
Those are all things you need to pass to get your driver’s license here in The Netherlands. We still have idiots on the road. Granted, they don’t (or at least, very rarely) slam their vehicles through the fronts of stores and houses, but we still got idiots doing idiot things.
Agreed. I’m the era before every car had a camera, I’d back into my driveway because foggy windows plus backing up sucks. I still back into my driveway even with all of the current day features on my vehicle - it’s just less stress in the morning to pull forward.
Zero traffic would mean it’s an empty lot. If there’s a curb or cement blocks preventing pull through, I’d still back into a spot.
But to answer the spirit of your question, it’s easier to back in to a confined spot due to the steering being on the “back” side and ability to use the side mirrors to line it up. Other than pull through spots, I can’t think of a single good reason to pull in to a parking spot forwards rather than back in.
I agree it can be easier. I prefer it if the spot I am backing into is tight. When I say zero traffic I should clarify to mean it is very unlikely to have another vehicle in motion within your yard when you are parking/leaving.
Your body is constantly generating heat. If that heat has nowhere to go, your temperature goes up and up.
You need to be in an environment that sucks heat away as fast as you create it - and if the external air temp isn’t cold enough to do that on its own, then you have to rely on evaporation of sweat to help shed the heat.
It’s the feature that let us become the dominant predator. We could track large game that is wounded until the collapsed from heat exhaustion. Yay sweaty humans!
So are you saying that people who sweat more in hot environments are better suited for long distance hunting? Because I’m a gross, sweaty mofo and I would like to feel better about it
Probably not I’m sorry. Sweating enough so that the sweat evaporates as fast as it excretes from your pores is optimal. Skin being more wet doesn’t cool faster (drops of sweat falling off you don’t cool you), so excess sweat would just dehydrate you faster. Sorry
It also seems like this is part of why there were so many powerhouses around the mediterranean, the climate there is just right that you can work a lot without melting, and warm enough that it’s comfortable to walk basically naked.
And it makes sense when you consider that humans evolved for a comparatively sedate lifestyle (even hunting isn’t going to involve sprinting that much) in subsaharan africa.
Seeing boing boing articles in my Twitter feed was one of the reasons I started using it years ago. When junk started filtering in, that’s when I stopped using it. When musk started messing with politics and using Twitter to push his views, that’s when I nuked it.
This concept is also why I’m so hopeful for federated software. The federated model means that there’s no single instance that holds all the power. Many of these instances are run by admins of their own kindness and initiative. And at worst, if any instance were to start being “enshittified,” people could easily move to another instance and continue participating in the greater network.
Between all of what we’ve seen unfold in the last few months, and even weeks, on Twitter and Reddit, it’s safe to say that “enshittification” could be reaching critical mass. That’s why I came here, after all, and I’m looking forward to seeing this community simply persist here on the web.
Simply not correct at all. Look up the trans Saharan slave trade. It was absolutely enormous business before the Portuguese sailed down the West Coast of Africa.
Uhh okay. You’re talking about dozens or hundred people or so at a time, thousands of people per year, mostly prisoners of war, traded domestically, deported over a period of 1,700 years.
And it still not half as many slaves as were deported across the Atlantic in only 350 years. Millions of slaves died on the voyage. They built vast trading routes and employed slavers as a business model, building customized ships to transport 600 slaves at a time.
You have a profound misunderstanding of the trans Saharan slave trade. Over centuries it resulted in millions of West African slaves being transported into and through the Arab world. This may not even have been the most significant source of slaves out of Africa during the pre-European colonial period. It is highly likely that more slaves came from Central and East Africa via Zanzibar. Millions upon millions of slaves being extracted from Africa before the Portuguese arrived. I’m not saying that what Europe did was even remotely reasonable. Just understand that we didn’t invent slavery, we didn’t start up slavery in Africa out of nowhere. It doesn’t excuse us. But we’re not uniquely evil either.
What do you think an enormous demand for slaves, as the colonial nations building plantations and mines in the americas, does to a the supply of slaves? Supply and demand, friend. It’s not as if all the enslaved people exported to the Americas were already in circulation when the europeans came knocking
I can't think of a single ethical framework that considers having someone else do your dirty work as permissible. If you have zero agency, sure. If you have nearly all the agency, like the colonial powers, no. The colonial powers threatened to topple governments that restricted slave trade, like the Kongo.
I have a reason. Just read the other comments, its explained there. And yes i am in general in disfavor of repetitions for most things. Money can’t buy you free from historically moral debt.
Romans had Germanics as slave yet Italy nowadays is a lot less successful than Germany…
Where is that wealth? Where is the poor Germans (and their decents)?
There has been so much slavery through out history and there still is, only a minority of slaves in total was black or from Africa.
Im absolutely against paying any “repetitions” as its disgustingly disrespectful to again put a price tag on people in one way or another, we (Europeans) already do much for development globally, this, just like “sending back” artifacts, is just idiotic and absolutely pointless. Where does the money/artifacts go? Exactly, into the hands of corrupt Politicians, Cartels and Warlords. Its unacceptable.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was alive and well within the past 200 years. I’m 40, and my grandmother literally coexisted with people who had been slaves in the US when she was young. You’re comparing this to ancient Rome??
I'm not sure if you are an ignorant apologist or outright racist but it feels important to comment on this given the number of uovotes this post is receiving. From an article from Slate I will link below:
"But, as historian Marcus Rediker writes, the “ancient and widely accepted institution” of enslavement in Africa was exacerbated by the European presence. Yes, European slave traders entered “preexisting circuits of exchange” when they arrived in the 16th century. But European demand changed the shape of this market, strengthening enslavers and ensuring that more and more people would be carried away. “[European] slave-ship captains wanted to deal with ruling groups and strong leaders, people who could command labor resources and deliver the ‘goods,’ ” Rediker writes, and European money and technology further empowered those who were already dominant, encouraging them to enslave greater numbers. Both the social structures and infrastructure that enabled African systems of enslavement were strengthened by the transatlantic slave trade.
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Bottom line: Why should this matter? This is a classic “two wrongs make a right” ethical proposition. Even if Africans (or Arabs, or Jews) colluded in the slave trade, should white Americans be entitled to do whatever they pleased with the people who were unlucky enough to fall victim?"
Is it possible that other factors led to the countries being wealthy or impoverished, and this allowed the wealthy to colonise or take the impoverished as slaves?
I recommend the book “Guns, germs, and steel” if you’re interested. I’m not sure it covers this specifically, but it does cover in depth the reasons for different areas of the world being more of less wealthy (it has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the geographic area, climate, natural resources including flora and fauna, and proximity to other populations).
Yes, definitely. But why they had guns is also another question. I recommend the book “Gun, germs, and steel” as a great look into how and why different populations formed as they did.
The original OP argument is that those captors or slaves don’t exist anymore. Even the countries barely exist. Is this a matter of descendants being responsible for their ancestors crimes?
I think there’s a strong feedback loop argument here but I’m not sure that’s the point you’re making.
Do descendants have the same responsibility as their ancestors who actually owned slaves? No. But do they bear some ongoing responsibility as a benefactor of a system that was built around their ancestors owning slaves? Yeah they do.
All of this is incredibly messy, but approaching it at a governmental level is definitely something I support, because slavery was sanctioned and even encouraged by the government we’re talking about, which has existed continuously
Some countries collonised others: crime of ancestor
But those countries used slaves and stole resources, making those countries wealthier. That wealth allowed them to develop better technologies, making them even wealthier.
So the argument is that while the original crime is not the responsibility of those alive today, the proceeds of crime should not be kept - they should be returned. In this case the proceeds are wealth, so a monetary reparation is appropriate.
Is my train of thought right? Because it seems to make sense to me.
This is true. Also, remember that some African kingdoms were the sellers of slaves. Modern countries there are not direct analogs, and they don’t really have any money, but they deserve some of the blame.
Yes, but the few dollars per slave that a trader would have received is nothing in comparison to the value a slave would generate through their lifetime.
Compensation is based on damages, not on how much money the crime made. People routinely owe damages for assault or vandalism that makes them no money.
You may have misunderstood me. By removing someone from their home nation, the damages would be the value they would have produced in their home nation.
Disclaimer that I’m not English and don’t particularly have a dog in this fight, and my opinions are a little mixed. On the one hand, I agree on the morality there, a lot of people were damaged in the very long term by slavery. But on the other, even if you can say that it’s an act to attempt to return the wealth to the wronged people, that doesn’t mean the wealth has simply been sitting there for nearly 200 years, waiting for return. That money has to come out of some budget, somewhere.
So where are they going to pull 18 trillion to give reparations from? Certainly, cuts will need to be made somewhere to make it happen, and often, those cuts are usually made along the lines of political agendas rather than things that are objectively bloated.
Watch a video tour of the tourist sites of London. Or look what is in the imperial museum. Or the Victoria and Albert museum. The looted wealth of of their genocidal empire is still celebrated as a national treasure. India still has not recovered from British occupation, which only officially ended 75 years ago. And that’s like 20% of the entire current human population.
My comment is not about the validity of reparations. It was a direct reply to the one above it, which seemed to imply that reparations are because of the actions of past people, when in my view it’s about the proceeds of the crimes rather than the crimes themselves.
If they are not, then you are saying that you are making people responsible for a crime that was committed well before they were born.
By separating the crime from the proceeds, you can justify why reparations should be paid, without the defense of the crime being committed by someone else.
The UKs position today is arguably due more to leading the Industrial Revolution and that was the main factor in the decay of slavery, so you need to balance historic grievances with development i.e. “what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Exactly. If anything, this amount of money is way too small.
Occasionally we read a news story about someone who escaped a maniac that kept them locked up for years, forcing them to work and do depraved things for little or no pay. We rightfully think this is terrible and the criminal is inhuman.
Slavery was millions of people in that situation for their entire lives. Whole economies were based on this genocide. We put Nazis to death for genocide. We put other leader on trial for similar crimes. Paying this tiny fine is the least the British (and other European governments) can do. The amount they really owe would bankrupt them.
What amount of money would you exchange for measurably worse lives (education, health, jobs) for you, your family, and everyone who looks like you for generations?
He was using some fancier and older form of English. I believe it is grammatically correct, we just don’t use those forms anymore. The first translation of the Gita is from 1785 and it is one of the most translated Asian texts. Famously, every translator places emphasis and projects their own personal worldview unto the text. Though Oppenheimer actually could read and had read the Bhagavad Gita in its original Sanskrit, so he was just giving it his own personal twist.
About 70 years ago European leaders decided the best thing to do with the Jewish people was give them their own country…
So they picked the holy land of three main religions, kicked out everyone that had been living there for centuries and made it a religious ethnostate.
Surprisingly the people who lived there weren’t happy to be victims of an ethnic cleansing.
Picking virtually any other place on the globe and it probably would have worked itself out by now.
Cynics think that was intentionally. It’s the perfect lightning rod for attacks against “the west” and the hostility leads to plenty of proxy wars while avoiding actual war in Europe again after WW2
It actually started with WW1 when Britain promised both Jews and Palestinians their own state if they overthrew the Ottomans.
Before that, Ottoman rule was oppressive to both groups relatively equally for a few hundred years.
WW2 and the whole holocaust thing just turned it from a small problem into a big problem, as millions of European Jews sought a safe haven outside of Europe, leading to the creation of a religious ethnostate in 1948.
So yeah, Europeans definitely are to blame, but Arabs and Palestinians aren’t innocent either. They rejected a perfectly adequate solution by the UN in 1947.
It started even earlier, after the ottoman empire fell/dissolved, British and French diplomats basically drew lines on a map Scramble for Africa style and created new countries out of nothing.
There’s also a belief among some Christians in the US (including many political leaders) that a Jewish state was necessary for the second coming of Jesus to occur. Why they’re in a hurry, I don’t know.
As one who was raised Evangelical Christian for the majority of my childhood by a devout and Republican parent, I’m pretty sure it’s just a death cult.
They live their whole lives only preparing to die.
They forsake and forego a lot of random stuff in favor of rewards after death.
And if they think it’ll get them any bonus, they don’t care if they take everyone else with them, hence the Republican Evangelical politicians generally trying to supply the ingredients for the battle of Armageddon to happen.
Tldr; I think it’s greed typical of those who would fully knowledgeably choose to be a Republican combined with the beliefs of an Evangelical trying to cash in on rewards asap, in the way a Republican typically does.
There has been conflict there for centuries. It was predominantly Jewish people 1500 years earlier when they were forced out. One of the main reasons it was selected was because it was not heavily populated and that at one time it was a Jewish region before they were invaded. The history goes back millenniums.
Many good answers in this thread (and some stupid ones) but there are a few critical issues that the current British government will not accept.
First, currency. GB does not want to give up control over the pound, and their previous agreement did not force them to adopt the Euro. There are several other EU countries that have not yet adopted the Euro, but all except Denmark are obligated to switch over once certain criteria are met. GB might be able to negotiate that privilege again, but the EU is in a stronger bargaining position now.
Second, immigration. For as much as their country is suffering from their own strict immigration policies, the conservative government is still making political hay out of xenophobia and bigotry. Reopening the borders would be a tacit admission that their rhetoric was bullshit.
Third, taxes. Joining the EU means contributing to the EU, and while their nation may save money overall due to improved trade relations, the conservative government has made the cost of admission another talking point.
Basically, the current government would have to renegotiate readmittance to the EU, and they would get a worse deal than they had before. Doing so would make it obvious that leaving was a mistake, and their government could only be consisered an objective failure. So they won’t do it, even if it is the best option available.
Every country that joined the EU after the 1992 Maastricht treaty has to adopt the euro. Denmark signed that treaty, UK as well, but if they rejoin, they’d more than likely be treated as a new member.
I disagree - on paper sure they would, but at the end of the day the UK is the ≈2nd biggest economy in Europe (UK and France make up 2nd & 3rd and who is bigger changes every couple of years), unlike Georgia or Moldova or whoever else where their joining is barely noticeable.
That means that the EU is more likely to want the UK to join, vs smaller countries wanting to join the EU, although it would be mutually beneficial of course - the UK would likely increase the EU’s power a little more than the EU would increase the UK’s power, but saying that hides the fact that it’d probably be a 10+% increase in both cases.
Of course the EU could make an example of the UK if they were want to rejoin, but if they were to look at it objectively then they’d most likely reach the conclusion that the negatives of making the concessions they made before are far outweighed by the additional collective power of having the UK as a member.
The UK has proven itself to be a very fickle partner. If they want to join, we would need some serious proofs of good faith. Those proofs are called Euro and Schengen.
That’s a fair point, however it’s hard to see the EU making an example when it’s so in its interest not to… Chances are they’d end up getting some hard proofs in terms of legislation commiting the UK to the EU for a lengthy time period and maybe some other “commitments” which don’t boil down to anything but look firm to members and citizens (as loved by governments everywhere who want to look like they’re doing things while also not wanting to do those same things)
I’d disagree - it hurts both the EU and the withdrawing nation to have a nation withdraw, so saying “if you withdraw you will end up coming back, but on terms more beneficial to us” is a good move for the EU to further decay eurosceptic movements around Europe. Letting places rejoin on the same terms would encourage eurosceptics as they’d say “we can always rejoin on the same terms”
Why would we let the UK join on the same terms when the terms aren’t conducive to the current aims of the union AND HAVE NOT BEEN SO FOR DECADES?
The UK just doesn’t fit in the EU. They were barely a match for the EC. If they find a Time Machine, they are free to join the 1990 EC under the same terms as they had before. They are not free to join the 2023 EU under those same terms because it’s a different organization that does different things.
Yes the UK is a large powerful nation. But if it doesn’t share the aims of the club, why should we let it in?
And everyone in Britain knows this. They have been banging the “political union vs economic union” for decades. You can see it in this very thread. Well, the EU it’s a political union. You join it now, you become part of a political union.
Or you don’t, and define a different relationship, like Norway or Switzerland or Canada.
It depends on the news you read. If you look at the polls, Scotland isn’t in favour of independence and NI has never been in favour of joining the Republic.
If you’re reading news that says the UK is about to fall apart I could point you in the direction of some equally wrong news saying that Italy, Poland etc. are about to leave the EU
it’s hard to see the EU making an example when it’s so in its interest not to…
Why would it not be in the interest of the EU to make an example? Poland and Hungary were (led by extremist right political parties) playing with the idea of leaving the EU, too. I think it has become mighty quiet on that front now that they have seen how much of a pain it is for the UK to empty a whole magazine into their own feet.
I don’t think EU has any reason to “make an example” by being hard on UK, but they also have no reason to bend the rules to be soft on UK. It would be a really bad signal to send to other joining countries to let the ex-country in easier.
Yeah well, I’d like them to rejoin before they run the country further down. I’ve visited London several times and I’m shocked to see how it is noticeable falling behind already. If this keeps up, it won’t be great for EU to accept a “Mississippi” state. The sooner they rejoin the better it is for both UK and EU.
I wholly agree, but as long as the political scene is like it is, it will be quite unlikely. I guess it will take at least a generation to get over this in the UK alone, and then it will be questionable still.
This is exactly the mentality that made Brexit come true and the post-Brexit agreements such a mess: “The EU needs the UK more than the other way round!”. Now look at it and tell me who needs whom more?
Neither truly needs the other - both are hurt by Brexit but they’re both getting along ok without the other (although brexit was far softer than people tend to realise - aside from a few very major things the UK is still de facto in a lot of EU institutions, and not including issues caused by Russian invasions)
Making the same concessions and signal to every other country that you can just hop in and out on a whim? Uhhh I have a bridge to sell you if you really believe that.
It was in regards to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which was sort of the founding treaty of EU. In order to complete the transformation from European Communities to a European Union, all involved countries had to sign the treaty.
Some of the countries just couldn’t legally give off this amount of sovereignty without a domestic election. Denmark being one of them. So, even if it’s a small country, it had the same power as any other country to obstruct the founding of the entire union.
So when the election turned out a narrow “no”, it was a bit of wrench in the wheel. Denmark then negotiated having a few opt outs before they were able hold a new election which then gave a “yes”.
The EU didn’t exist at all back then. Today, the EU can make such a demand of a new joiner, say for instance the United Kingdom, because it’s the entire EU vs UK. In 1992, it was Voltron coming together, and they needed that left leg lion to keep him upright.
First of all, all the politicians that would look bad after propagating Brexit. Then those few select rich who gained a fortune from Britain’s misery. And those people who fell for their lies, and simply can’t admit that they had been had. This is the one side.
The other side is the EU. Brexit has cost the EU a fortune, and a lot of work. Re-admitting the UK would be put them in a bind to make sure - absolutely sure - that such a shit show will never, ever, happen again. Basically “Fool me once…” And they would have to convince all current EU members that this time, the UK really means to join and stay and take the whole EU stuff seriously, and not just like they did when the UK joined for the first time: To be in just to be able to easier weaken them.
I think they do, but probably not guaranteed everywhere. Denmark might not, but I don’t know for sure. I know Czechia does close to the borders, but I haven’t been to the other countries myself to know.
It is up to the shops whether they want to accept euro or not (or any other currency), but the official currency is kroner. I know that some supermarkets (Netto) used to gladly take euro in exchange for a horrible exchange rate
For as much as their country is suffering from their own strict immigration policies, the conservative government is still making political hay out of xenophobia and bigotry.
The funny thing is that the UK now gets way more refugees than before, as France no longer sees the need to keep them back.
Not just that, all these trade deals we cut with other countries means visas for their citizens. Net immigration to the UK has tripled since Brexit from countries like India. I’m sure the racists and xenophobes are really happy with what they voted for.
Based off the amount of fury porn communities I’ve blocked, half seems very, very conservative. What’s the old joke, if a bomb went off at a fury convention the Internet would go down?
Not sure why this is such a common perception. Most of the software devs I know are pretty average people other than being computer nerds. I met one trans CS student in college but that was it.
youve been here for 17 days and made nearly 500 comments and ive seen you reply with obvious troll comments to every comment on several different posts on here.
Being trans is correlated with autism and you will find a bunch of autistic people in tech, because tech makes more sense to then than humans do. Same with things like videogame speedrunning.
If you don’t see that there is a greater number of trans people than in the general population you might want to look again.
I find it interesting that in Swedish the opposite of sunwise is “motsols”, i.e. counter sunwise or literally “against the sun”. Sunwise is called “medsols”, lit. “with the sun”.
Yep - in the northern hemisphere a sundial shadow will move from west to east in a clockwise fashion; in the southern hemisphere it still goes west to east but does so moving anticlockwise.
And if I’m thinking about this correctly, people between ~20N and ~20S latitudes will have it reverse throughout the year and and sometimes be a straight line.
That made me curious, so I tried to find a pre-clock synonym in Indonesian. The best answer I have is by translating “Sunwise”, which became “dr kiri ke kanan” or “from left to right.”
Which make sense, if something is going clockwise around you, that’s what you’d see. No idea if that was a real phrase or an artifact of machine translation, though.
I somehow read this comment in the voice of the cleric performing the “mawwiage” ceremony in Princess Bride.
Cleric: “Sunwise…” long, uncomfortable pause. “And for the exact same weason.” Pause. “Clocks go clockwise because their pwedecessors did… and what were their pwedecessors?”
Humperdink: “Look, can we hurry this up?”
Cleric: “Sundials.”
Humperdink: “Just skip to the end!”
Cleric: “Countewclockwise… as said in another comment… would be… widdershins.”
Sundials are also responsible for why we say “o’clock”. It’s a differentiatior. Because the speed of a sundial would vary based on the time of year while a clock was constant, you had to clarify what kind of time you were talking about. Did you mean 10 of the clock or 10 of the sun? (Basically no one said o’sun, if you didn’t specify, it was assumed you meant by the sun.) Somehow, that stuck around long after sundials fell out of common use.
You just made my brain click. I’ve always wondered why clockwise rotation around a vertical axis was commonly agreed. I have never seen a mechanical- or electrical clock installed flat on the ground. So why would we assume that the clock isn’t in the ceiling facing down, which would reverse the direction?
But now that you mention it in the context of a sundial, it seems so obvious that the clock is just an extension of that, making the sun and clock a common reference.
But that bids the question if they have another term for it in the southern hemisphere.
It’s been very difficult to find an answer for this, and I suspect it’s because most of the southern hemisphere is water, and most of the rest of it was colonised by people from the northern hemisphere. As of right now, I couldnt say if there simply weren’t words for that kind of rotational motion or if my google-fu simply isn’t strong enough.
The best answer I’ve been able to find is from Indonesia, which is equatorial. The word “sunwise” translates into a phrase “from left to right” via Google Translate, but that may just be an artifact of machine translation.
I didn’t even consider equatorial countries. That’s interesting as well. Depending on the season, the literal “sunwise direction” would change, while spring- and autumn equinox wouldn’t translate to any rotation around a vertical axis.
I used to be a swing dance instructor, and describing rotation as “to the left” or “to the right” always seemed a bit more natural and understandable for the general participant.
I’ve just find (in wiktionary) the word “moonwise”, meaning antisunwise/counterclockwise. But the moon moves the same way as the sun does. So is there some deeper meaning based off of some long-term patterns in lunar movement, or is it just simple antagonism sun×moon?
That’s what it appears to be. This is supported somewhat by the term “moonwise” not having a lot of historical usage, leading me to believe that it came along much later by someone who wanted a related antonym.
The only bit about the moon that seems to travel right to left are it’s phase changes, and even that is because we’re outside the rotation and watching along it’s horizontal plane. You’ll see the same thing with anything spinning clockwise in front of you: the closer edge goes right to left, the farther edge goes left to right.
Israel was magicked into existence not very long ago(1948), immediately started breaking agreements and compacts… Displaced millions of people from their homes and has killed thousands upon thousands more… Many innocents. It is run by an extremist religious military organization.
Hamas is a brutal, far right religious extremist movement that kills indiscriminately, even it’s own people.
Objectively they are both in the wrong.
Israel has stolen and murdered the Palestinian land and people for decades while continuously lying about their intentions.
Hamas is a shit show of an organization that is probably objectively worse… But their actions make sense when you realize that their families and property have been stolen when murdered for the last several generations. The only life most Palestine people know is one of suffering and loss… And this is directly Israels fault.
In your Russia/Ukraine scenario, Israel is Russia (mostly foreign invaders) and Ukraine is Palestine(natives fighting for their land and freedom). But it’s not quite as simple because Hamas is so objectively horrible…
It’s perfectly acceptable to support civilians, and support peace- we can and should be critical of the Israeli government and Hamas- both have inflicted horrible wrongs on the other.
In fact that’s really the only way out of this, I think. This conflict has gone on long enough into history that… there’s really no side that’s justified; and it’s mired in a lot of violence and hatred to the point that it won’t be a simple path forward.
Allow me to preface this by saying that I think both sides act like enormous cunts at times and I am also eternally grateful that it is not my life.
The only problem I have with the “Its Palestinian land” argument is that 1948 was 75 years ago. Its very important to the macro view of the sutuation but do you think a 3rd generation Israeli born citizen who is now strapping up his body armor to fight so that people stop trying to kill his family gives much of a fuck about how young his country is? Or who traditionally owned the land? Its his town, his city, his little brother who was just kidnapped.
I dont think anyone seriously thinks if Israel gave Hamas/Palestine the whole west bank, no more arguments about borders, leaving the settlements alone and trying to make peace that Hamas would become all about peace, hugs and understanding.
I think its absolutely impossible to defend either side with a straight face. Ask both of them about the worst 10 things the other side did and both of them are monsters.
But surely that person has to appreciate that it’s only happening because his country is killing and stealing the land of another and has been for 75 years, and has essentially kettled them into a literal corner with giant walls and no escape where they have to rely on aid to survive, while killing and injuring huge amounts more of their people. (20x more killed in the last 15 years)
Acting in self defence or in anger is pretty understandable given what’s happened.
It’s like condemning Ukraine for attacking Russia, if Russia had been attacking for almost a century. Russia also claims that Ukrainian land belongs to their country historically. Blows my mind anyone can “both sides” it, and supporting Ukraine whilst condemning Palestine is especially hypocritical. The BBC especially surprised me how blatant the hypocrisy is with their one sided reporting
Side note: the BBC has deeply disappointed in recent years with their Murdoch-esque reporting style. They’ve had to come off the list of trusted sources.
Jewish history in Palestine stretches back some 2000 years with a major purge about 1500 years earlier. What do you think about that claim on their land or does time negate that? Serious question that could argue rather the opposite in that they are fighting for land was taken from them.
Well if Ukraine doesn’t fight for it and Europe and the US allow it, then I suppose Russia can have it. But I don’t suspect that will happen. Russia is acting like terrorists and well they are paying the consequences. I suspect this will be the downfall of Putin. No loss there.
I believe the believe they do. I won’t be sad when they loose. They are acting like a terrorist country with a government that, while acting like a democracy, is eliminating any opposition negating any real democracy. They don’t care about their people but power. Much like Hamas. So no I don’t believe they have any right to Ukraine. They don’t believe in real human rights.
No I believe they have a right to defend it due to the desire of those people on it. But furthermore to this, they also occupied and lived peacefully on it at one time in the past as well. Giving them as much right as anyone.
Russia on the other hand has tried to annex the Ukraine region in past but that does not mean it is owned by Russia. So no Russia can fuck off. Ukraine is owned by the people who have spoken. Same as Israel. Palestine has lands and is owned by the people there. They wish to expand thru the use of terror then those engaging in that tactic are subject to loss of their lives. Unfortunately these fuckers have no qualms about using their own people as shields.
Ideologies that use violence to gain power are as legitimate as entities that use violence to remove them from power. After all it is the rules they enacted. Ultimately it comes down to what entity would be the most fair to the people there and represent the majority of the wishes of the people there.
As did Russians on the land of Ukraine, in their opinion.
In the 17th/18th century, parts of what is now Ukraine were incorporated into the Russian Empire, especially after the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. However, other parts remained under Polish or Ottoman rule. The Russian Empire did exert considerable influence over these territories, often implementing Russification policies.
Throughout the 19th century, the concept of a Ukrainian identity persisted, albeit under the umbrella of the Russian Empire for many regions. Some Ukrainians sought greater autonomy or even independence.
During the early 20th century, specifically after the Russian Revolution, Ukraine briefly declared independence but was soon incorporated into the Soviet Union as one of its constituent republics. While it was part of the USSR, Ukraine had its own Communist Party, constitution, and administrative structures, but Moscow held ultimate authority.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Ukraine was an independent country.
So is Russia allowed to take back the land they feel is theirs, and technically was, 30 years ago?
Meanwhile, “Israel” hadn’t existed since around 63 BCE when it fell under Roman control. It wasn’t until after WW1 and especially 1947 that Jewish people of the Zionist movement decided to reclaim their religious roots and move back to the area en masse.
So is Israel allowed to take back the land they feel is theirs, and technically was, 2086 years ago?
To be clear, I don’t support anyone here. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy of allowing Israel to dismantle Palestine whilst fighting the russian dismantlement of Ukraine.
I don’t think Palestine should be killing civilians, I don’t think Russia should be, I don’t think Israel should be. But they all are. And the media in the UK and US is only really reporting one side of the Israel situation due to their historic involvement, which causes a very one sided view of the situation, where a nation is being slowly invaded and killed whilst blaming them for any retaliation in any form.
Did you read what I said? Who ruled what and when is pretty much negated and means little. You trying to use your bullshit argument that Russia at one time had interests in Ukraine this should be allowed to use force and terror to take back control pretty much is a losing argument all around.
It is the people who get to decide and to a lesser extent, who the rest of the world supports.
But if you try and use a false argument the Palestinians were there first, I will counter that will an earlier version when Jews occupied that lands.
On the other hand, that is within a human lifetime and they’re still expanding their settlements today. It’s not like the bad stuff just happened to people 75 years ago then stopped.
But I wish Israel didn’t help create Hamas. It would be much preferable for a more secular force to help Palestinians that I could put my support in. No one wants to support terrorists, but now Hamas is basically their only option, which sucks. I don’t even like reading about the stuff over there now, it’s all sad and there’s no good solution.
I know it was difficult to move a bunch of ethnic Jews to Israel to begin with, but I don’t see why it would be any more or less difficult to move them away in some sort of gigantic humanitarian effort to give the land back to Palestine now. It is equally as ridiculous now as it would have been back then.
Why not as an international community just guarantee a spot anywhere on the planet effectively for people to move out of Israel and into a country of their choice and give the land back most importantly.
Ironically, the beginning was then England left and divided the land between them. Then all the surrounding countries attacked the Jews and as they defended themselves, created the borders.
Even if you did find a place to move them, the Israeli people don’t want to leave. The area they currently occupy is sacred to all three Abrahamic religions, which is a motivating factor for the conflict.
Why not as an international community just guarantee a spot anywhere on the planet effectively for people to move out of Israel and into a country of their choice and give the land back most importantly.
That already happened once, and it is called Israel.
The core issue at the heart of all of this would be the generations of oppression and systemic genocide done to the Jews of Europe and the Middle East that necessitated the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. And barring any better options, it was decided at that time that the best candidate was the ancestral homeland of the Jews. There was just the small problem of people who were living there for generations after the Jews were first pushed out centuries ago.
You can probably find countries willing to take in Jewish refugees if Israel were to dissolve, but no country on Earth is willing to cede land to enable the same degree of self-governance that Israel has today. If America or Germany were to cede land to create New Israel, that would only result in the same degree of resentment among the generational occupants of that territory that the Palestinians feel today.
Forcing another diaspora and relegating the Jews back to being just a minority group scattered across dozens of countries is asking for the same conditions that led to all of the forced migrations, pogroms, and holocaust which necessitated the establishment of Israel as a sovereign state in the first place.
I imagine Ukraine’s resistance would become objectively horrible if the Russians were still there after decades, claiming more and more land, bulldozing homes and creating an Apartheid. I once watched a documentary about Palestine (one of many) and the documentary maker was talking to a Palestinian woman while children were playing in the background. The children were playing a game of being suicide bombers. The reporter asked the woman about the children’s game. She said that t the children had no hope for the future, their only hope for a better life was after death.
That really stuck with me. The Palestinian people have been treated like animals for generations by Israel, lied to, robbed, kept in poverty and forced to live in apartheid. I am not surprised they are fighting back. Yes, HAMAS are definitely bad guys too, but Israel is worse and till they are held to account over their behaviour and made to return Palestinian land and homes that have been illegally annexed ,things will not get better.
If Hamas didn’t exist, life in Palestine would be totally different, so this is a bit of a misleading conciliation you’re making.
Rejecting peace deals then acting as if your rights are violated because you don’t have a peace deal, which then justifies your terrorism, is not something that helps the people of your nation
So if the Israeli military hadn’t funneled resources to Hamas in the 80s and 90s it’d be pretty different, good point. Maybe the moderate coalition would’ve been comparatively powerful enough to gain leadership instead of literal terrorists.
Unfortunately the only thing to do now is completely dismantle Hamas. Current Israelis did not make this bed, but they’re the ones stuck sleeping in it.
Israel was magicked into existence not very long ago(1948), immediately started breaking agreements and compacts
This is not really an accurate portrayal of events. Literally on the day that Israel was founded, Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen launched an invasion - for those keeping score at home, that’s all of their neighbors at the time, plus some of the larger countries in the region. This immediate and unflinching antagonism - very specifically on the heels of Jewish people being subjected to the Holocaust, and in combination with rhetoric from their neighbors calling for “the eradication of Israel” - seems to have largely set the tone of Israeli-Arab relations since then, and Israel has fought more than one existential conflict against its neighbors since then.
Now, I’m not saying Israel is blameless here, nor am I saying that the UK/UN was blameless in arbitrarily drawing some lines on a map in a very geopolitically fraught area. But I do find the narrative that Israel is solely responsible for the situation in entirety to be woefully naive at best, and maliciously disingenuous at worst. Sure, they’ve made a LOT of bad calls over the years, but the situation cannot be placed entirely at the feet of Israel.
That is a fair critique. Israel isn’t solely at fault, but they do share blame. It’s difficult to fit the entirety of the history, but from the Palestinian point of view what I said isn’t wrong. There may be confounding external causes, but Israel has absolutely been in the wrong from nearly the beginning of its existence.
There are arguments about preventing genocide that are valid, but most of these arguments start from racist ethnostate positions that have very little moral credibility.
How on earth do you claim Israel immediately started ‘breaking agreements’ when they were attacked on multiple fronts as soon as they became a country?
That’s some wild revisionist history.
Israel not only defended themselves but took land in the war. They then returned that land later on as a gesture of goodwill. Only to be attacked again and again…
There is a known strategy called EEE (Embrace, extend, and extinguish).
First, they embrace the open web. Millions of people who never would’ve joined the Fediverse (and, probably, don’t even know what the Fediverse is) flock to Threads and start to interact with us.
Then, they extend the open web, adding features to Threads that aren’t compatible with our servers. People on Threads don’t understand what’s wrong with our server (even though it’s Threads that’s the source of incompatibility).
Finally, they decide they’re “having trouble maintaining compatibility with third party servers” and start to break off from us, leaving us with no way to interact with our new friends. Unless, of course, we make a free Threads account…
Google Talk is perhaps the most relevant example of this. Here’s more details.
Sound to me like the worst case scenario is that some of the users gained in the debacle is also lost afterwards. Why would the users that joined the fediverse with a purpose leave for threads in the breakup?
The EEE strategy would lead to the big corporate entity being the way most people interact. New users would go there instead of other platforms to engage. In time, a lot of the users and content would be on the corporate platform because it’s the one that has the most reach, marketing, etc. so defederation would be a big hit.
And you don't need to look too far to see it now. The majority of people posting on the threadiverse come from lemmy. world and kbin.social. Why? Because they were already the established "big instances" and they went there.
The average user will just go to wherever is the biggest and that will be threads. And when they have the majority of new take up and most people on the other side have the majority of their contacts inside the threads world, then they don't need us any more.
This is just the way a corporation operates. Source: I work at a multinational corporation.
I am not attached to the fediverse. The federated aspect is, to me, interesting from a technical standpoint, but irrelevant to my decision to be here. I’m also not particularly attached to foss principles.
I came here because I got annoyed at reddit. I’ll continue to poke around here exactly as long as it’s entertaining/informative. That purpose is not contradicted by leaving here for threads (it’d have to be a reddit clone instead of a Twitter clone to pique my interest at all, but leaving that aside).
So if, over the next few years, more and more of the content that I was interacting with was coming from threads, then threads split off, it’s reasonably likely that I’d want to continue interacting with threads. And if the majority of the stuff I was interested in was on threads, I probably wouldn’t bother coming back here.
A reasonable reaction to that is “don’t let the door hit you on the way out”, and that’s fine. But what could conceivably happen is that something like threads uses what has been built here to gain ground, then starts leeching away communities. They start moving to Facebook servers because Facebook has butt tons of money so the servers are stable, and besides, everyone else can still get there from other instances. Then Facebook starts adding incompatible features, which motivates more migration to their instances, and so on and so on, then there’s a split.
Now Facebook’s threads has devoured your communities, taken your users, and so taken your content, mostly just to jumpstart it’s own growth. To get what they are familiar with, people like myself stay on/move to Facebook, leaving the fediverse to rebuild the communities that it built in the first place, out of the people who care more about foss principles. While appearing to external observers like an inferior clone off the Facebook threads thing, to add insult to injury.
So the issue is that you wouldn’t lose just the new stuff from Facebook, but a fair bit of the preexisting stuff that sided with Facebook after the split out of convenience. What you’d keep are the people who stick it out out of loyalty to foss or federated or some other principle - and that may not be enough to carry on the level of content that’s desired, even with the fediverse’s “size isn’t everything” philosophy.
Of course, it’s possible that either a) none of that would happen even if there were federation with Facebook and everything would be fine forever, or b) all of that would happen even without federation with Facebook, just without the intermediate stage where there’s interaction. But the above seems to be the concern, and it’s not without merit (both because of past examples and, well, because I know I personally wouldn’t stay if the content were more appealing somewhere else and I don’t think I’m unique).
Personally, I think that with Twitter reeling at the moment, all the Facebook version has to do is be similar enough to be familiar, have good performance, and be easy to use to have a shot at that nabbing that part of the market (including users from the fediverse) - interoperability with mastodon or not. But predicting the future is rather difficult, so it’s hard to say.
There's also users that potentially could join other instances but because of some exclusive feature Threads has, they choose it. So basically rest of the instances are bleeding users to Threads.
Great article. It’s pretty obvious to me now that the Fediverse should have room to grow on it’s own naturally. It’s probably in the best interest to block any massive corporate entity from joining in and swallowing it whole.
It’s interesting seeing how fast it’s already growing due to mega corporate incompetence, and I think the sheer desire to escape that landscape is driving growth now and we should nurture that as long as possible.
Wow, this is crucial reading. Previously I was basing my dislike for Threads federation because Meta but this has refined my overall stand greatly. Thanks for this.
Email protocols: Microsoft supported POP3, IMAP, and SMTP email protocols in their Microsoft Outlook email client. At the same time, they developed their own email protocol, MAPI, which has since been documented but is largely unused by third parties. Microsoft has announced that they would end support for basic authentication access to Exchange Online APIs for Office 365 customers, which disables most use of IMAP or POP3 and requires significant upgrades to applications in order to continue to use those protocols;[23] some customers have responded by simply shutting off older protocols.
I was required to implement this (IMAP with OAuth2) "simple change" but for a server backend service that checked an inbox to perform certain actions. That was certainly fun. In the end the solution wasn't that difficult, but finding it and working it into legacy code...
The less innovation (avatars!), the harder it seems to justify the breakoff. 'd seek opinion of ActivityPub dev, is it easy to break the twitter era stuff by adding (what?) new feature
The less innovation (avatars!), the harder it seems to justify the breakoff. 'd seek opinion of ActivityPub dev, is it easy to break the twitter era stuff by adding (what?) new feature
The XMPP stories/comparisons are such bullshit, imho.
Sure, both Google and Facebook both used XMPP for a while (even at the same time, so you could message someone from Google on Facebook), but XMPP was an unpopular niche protocol before that and it’s still the same today. I used to be an uber (foss) nerd at the time but even for me the appeal was close to zero - although I’ve tried it several times.
I’ve also literally never heard of anyone signing up for Google or Facebook due to their alleged XMPP 3E strategy. Google Mail was already the most popular and most hyped mail provider and Facebook was at its height as the defacto quasi-monopolist social network as well - everyone who was willing to sign up with them had already long done so.
(Funnily enough, the Cisco in-house messaging and video calling solution we use at my work, through which we also receive landline calls, is still running on XMPP to this day, so I sorta became a XMPP user after all…except I haven’t started this software in 10 months because fuck landline calls and we have better alternatives for chatting.)
You are absolutely right. Really getting tired of that one post about how to destroy the Fediverse. XMPP and lemmy/kbin comparison are not equivalent. XMPP didn’t have enough users to sustain themselves in the first place. Also google tried the same with AMP and failed.
(Funnily enough, the Cisco in-house messaging and video calling solution we use at my work, through which we also receive landline calls, is still running on XMPP to this day, so I sorta became a XMPP user after all…except I haven’t started this software in 10 months because fuck landline calls and we have better alternatives for chatting.)
XMPP is still chugging along on the backends of stuff like that. I’m not sure but I think WhatsApp has some XMPP in it still.
The most ironic one though is Jitsi, which is what Matrix uses/used (until they started working on Element Calls) to do video calls.
Yup, and I guess XMPP is fine for Cisco’s solution or Jitsi. But XMPP has always be used in a rather centralized way, the feature to talk to users on other services was always niche. And this centralized way has survived, where XMPP is used among users on the same server. Which is alright, but don’t tell me Google/Facebook killed XMPP.
The name “yam” is used for a few different root vegetables.
The word is from West Africa and refers originally to Dioscorea yams, which are found in many parts of the world — having been independently domesticated in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The word “yam” is related to the Fulani word for “to eat”, and was introduced into European languages by way of Portuguese colonizers.
But in the US, “yam” almost always refers to a variety of sweet-potato (Ipomoea genus), which is more closely related to a morning-glory flower than to either Dioscorea or a true potato (which is a Solanum nightshade).
Both sweet-potatoes and potatoes are native to the Americas. Sweet-potatoes probably were grown first in the Yucatán or in eastern South America, while true potatoes are from Peru and western South America.
Meanwhile in New Zealand, a “yam” is oca, an Oxalis species — close relatives of sourgrass and redwood sorrel. And in Malaysia, “yam” is taro root!
I see. So it’s a little bit like how in the U.S. pickles refers to pickled cucumbers, but in other places pickles can refer to other pickled foods. Yams are to sweet potatoes what pickles are to pickled cucumbers.
Another fun layer I’ve encountered recently has been “pickles” referring to a specific variety of (non-pickled) cucumbers that are usually used for pickling. So pickles are pickled pickles.
The word “yam” is related to the Fulani word for “to eat"
The etymology is a bit messy. It might be from Fula, but it’s probably from Wolof ⟨ñàmbi⟩. Nowadays the Wolof word means yucca, but given that yucca is from the Americas, odds are that it was originally used for any edible root; or potentially another local root.
Either way (from Fula or Wolof), the word ended in Portuguese as ⟨inhame⟩ [iɲɐ̃.me]. Nowadays it refers to taro, but before that English borrowed ⟨inhame⟩ as ⟨yam⟩.
Nowadays the Wolof word means yucca, but given that yucca is from the Americas, odds are that it was originally used for any edible root; or potentially another local root.
That reminds me of how the word “corn” referred to any grain until maize was discovered
Yup, it’s the same underlying phenomenon - as maize becomes the prototypical non-wheat cereal grain for plenty speakers, they eventually repurpose the word “corn” to mean exclusively “maize”. (British dialects are the exception that prove the rule, as maize isn’t so prevalent in the islands.)
This doesn’t happen just with crops, mind you - even animals get this treatment. Guarani “jagua” for example went from “hunting beast, specially jaguar” to “dog”, while Navajo “łį́į́ʼ” went from “pet, livestock, specially dog” to “horse”.
Looking them up, it sounds like they’re the same species as American sweet-potato, which is one more bit of evidence for early contact between Polynesians and South America.
I believe they are different. Kumala (in Fijian) is very different than a yam. Yams and uvi are more tubular, and the skin will slip off after cooking and kumala is more bulbous. Google shows different pictures than what I remember, showing kumala closer to taro (dalo in Fijian).
Neat, so yams in the US refer to a sweet potato? Slightly related, but can you also explain the difference between Ube and Taro? I've had this conversation with my friends as well.
Yeah, if you go to a general US grocery store and see something described as a “yam” it’s going to be a sweet-potato, usually a larger or starchier variety.
Ube is a Dioscorea yam native to Asia. It’s closely related to the African yam. Most of this family of plants are big terrestrial vines that can live in somewhat dry places.
Taro, or kalo in Hawaiian, is from a different family of plants. It’s related to the peace lily. Most of this family of plants live in aquatic or marshy places.
You can make “brand accounts” on YouTube that are a completely different profile from the default account. She probably won’t notice if you make one and switch her to it.
You’ll probably want to spend some time using it for yourself secretly to curate the kind of non-radical content she’ll want to see, and also set an identical profile picture on it so she doesn’t notice. I would spend at least a week “breaking it in.”
But once you’ve done that, you can probably switch to the brand account without logging her out of her Google account.
I love how we now have to monitor the content the generation that told us “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” watches like we would for children.
We can thank all that tetraethyllead gas that was pumping lead into the air from the 20s to the 70s. Everyone got a nice healthy dose of lead while they were young. Made 'em stupid.
OP’s mom breathed nearly 20 years worth of polluted lead air straight from birth, and OP’s grandmother had been breathing it for 33 years up until OP’s mom was born. Probably not great for early development.
Delete watch history, find and watch nice channels and her other interests, log in to the account on a spare browser on your own phone periodically to make sure there’s no repeat of what happened.
Burning Man ‘promotes’ anti-consumerism and communal effort, however attending requires significant financial resources and costs that can and do exclude (most) people, it’s living hyprocracy, and an excellent example of capitalism corrupting grass roots ideals. honestly is an absolute joke of a festival.
It’s like $400 for a ticket, and then the rest of the cost is getting there, food, water, shelter, etc. You can pay as little or as much as you want to accomplish those things. Plenty of people drive there and stayed in tents. I don’t see how it’s any different than camping for a few days.
Ive never been to burning man. I went to Coachella a LLOOONNGG time ago when it was hippies rolling around in the dust. Coachella ain’t that anymore, it’s instagram rich kids and tech bros. I assume the same thing has happened to burning man.
There is a similar thing not far from where I live. Through an unlucky friend, then the neighbour of their festival grounds, I got to discover the organizers’ ‘ideals’ and ‘ethical and ecological approach’ first hand. In short: it was about money. And more money. And they managed to turn a large reservoir into a dying punch bowl of acid, piss and shit within only a decade. I suspect Burning Man to be the same, considering the ticket prices. The fact that some poor fools with their heart and soul intact save their little money to visit this monstrosity just makes it more sad.
I don’t actively engage in Schadenfreude much, but I do carry a little of it in my heart. If people think flying or driving very far away for Entertainment, and bringing thousands of people into an otherwise quiet place is okay for the wildlife there, and can be in any way an ecological thing, they have understood very little about ecology. And now also ignored by most: the destruction that happens by the thousands of ‘poor humans who just wanted to have fun’ trampling through the last remnants of life in a drought stricken place.
We are not alone on this planet. Invading a place with our idea of fun is very damaging. We can party perfectly well at home. If home happens to be bleak and sad maybe we should work on that first before invading quiet places.
Just as a counterpoint, the area burning man is held in is one of the most ecologically inert places you could go. There’s no vegetation and the only life to speak of is brine shrimp eggs, which are about as threatened as mosquito larvae.
There’s still a lot of trash that gets left behind which can travel with wind, but as far as impact on the land goes, it’s likely significantly less invasive than your local county fair. There’s just nothing out there for them to damage.
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