correct. it doesn’t address the core issue. however, sometimes enemies have to live next to each other. a military solution cannot end Hamas. anything short of full-scale ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza cannot end Hamas. that is the unfortunate reality. the human cost is too great.

Hamas murdered 1,195 people on 10/7. Israel has killed ~57,000 in Gaza, and razed it to rubble. Israel has had its retribution, killing 50 Gazans for each dead Israeli. enough.

I’d genuinely like to hear what Israel should be doing instead in response to Hamas.

negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas in exchange for the remaining hostages. reign in the West Bank settlers, to focus the conflict on Gaza specifically rather than the conquest of the Palestinian territories. as part of the ceasefire,

1. remove IDF troops from Gaza.
2. freely allow all medical, food, construction and infrastructure aid, along with foreign aid workers. still check all shipments and persons entering for weapons and other contraband. maintain a naval blockade and checkpoints to implement the screening.
3. rather than having IDF implement the screening, propose a joint peacekeeping force, staffed by Israelis, Egyptians, Jordanians and UN peacekeepers.
4. offer a pathway towards increased autonomy, easing of travel restrictions, potentially even Palestinian statehood contingent upon the peaceful transition of power from Hamas.
5. encourage Arab foreign nationals and other non-Israelis to volunteer or do business in Gaza, rebuilding, running aid clinics, teaching school, etc. establish economic prospects for collaboration between Gazans and the rest of the world.
6. remove Netenyahu from power and investigate him for corruption and his dealings with Hamas. remove Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezazel Smotrich from the Knesset, and ban Otzma Yehudit the way Kahan’s Kach party was outlawed.

sound fair?

hawking*, unless they’re chucking it at you.

feels increasingly like fleeing Russia for Germany after a pogrom against your shtetl.

Switzerland used to have all their bridges wired to blow. They should probably get back on that :/

handguns are much more common in homicides in general, but I think rifles are the weapon of choice in school shootings and other acts of domestic terrorism. they have more potential to kill a larger number of people in a shorter amount of time from a greater distance. in particular I’m thinking about the Las Vegas shooter who infamously used bump stocks to rain bullets on a crowd.

incidentally, we almost banned handguns decades ago. it’s my understanding that that attempt at a ban - saved by last minute edits - are responsible for outlawing short-barreled rifles (they were trying to prevent people from making their rifles into handguns.)

They’re not JUST for killing people and/or sport. Every reason you could legitimately need a gun for, the broad category “semi auto rifle” covers, so banning them has a disproportionate impact to people who use them legally and as tools vs banning handguns.

but do those purposes need semi-auto? can you not afford the extra second to charge the weapon between shots? the only situation I can envision is needing to protect yourself from criminals with semi-autos, which is a legitimate concern.

read up a bit. there’s an interesting concurrence(!) from Kavanaugh, which basically said they’re too busy, come back later.

it’s wild to me that the Court struck down the ban on bump stocks in Cargill, which are obviously unusual devices without a history of use for self-defense (and strained to misinterpret the “by a single function of the trigger” language of the NFA) yet they decline to overturn this decision.

where’s the internal consistency? you’d think they’d at least follow precedent they themselves set.

get the man some reading glasses already!

“assault weapons” are a nebulous concept. that law sounds like it was closely tailored to match the AR-15 and its clones, since that’s the closest definition anyone can agree on. but it’s not like thumb position, stock design etc. make the AR-15 more lethal than other rifles.

why don’t they just ban semi-auto rifles? for home defense you can use a handgun, for hunting you can use a bolt action rifle of a pump action shotgun. you eliminate the bump stock loophole and it becomes harder to mow down a crowd.

eh, sorta. the books the Nazis burned in that famous photograph were the library of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish sexologist who studied and supported trans people, and who even hired some as his assistants. did the Nazis burn his books because he supported trans people, or because he was a Jew? both, I think. the Nazis practiced intersectional hatred. they accused Hirschfeld of promoting degeneracy to undermine Aryan society, an anti-Semitic trope that continues today.

gay and trans people were sent to concentration camps, but not usually to the death camps.

likewise, the predecessor to the NSDAP specifically singled out Jews in its founding document, but (afaik) not homosexuals.

this is my recollection anyway, as a trans woman who’s a potential convert.

wtf why would the DNC vote for this shit?

yeah. the energy and determination of youth has kept GenZ from burning out yet, but they went through covid during what should have been the peak years of their life.

on the other hand, us Millennials are cursed with remembering how things used to be better. sometimes I wish I didn’t.

Double-plus goodthink. MiniTruth will police thought-crime and correct badthink. MiniLove will reeducate or unperson pastors. Talk at next IngSoc groupthink when clock strikes 13. Daygreet, prole.

Different symptoms/mechanisms.

Spanish flu killed young healthy adults; the weak and elderly were actually safer. That virus triggered a cytokine storm - an overreaction of the immune system - that slagged the patient’s body as collateral damage, like a twisted game of “stop hitting yourself.” The stronger your immune system, the harder you’d hit yourself.

SARS-CoV-2 followed the normal pattern, and hit the weak and elderly harder. Admittedly, the original strain was a wildcard, and did take down some healthy 30yos at random while others never showed symptoms. It also tended to provoke micro-clots throughout the body, rather than hemorrhages.

Omicron evolved to target the upper airway rather than the lungs, which is the main reason why COVID is so much less lethal these days. I’m not sure how Spanish flu evolved, but I don’t think it was an issue of the tissue it targeted as much as some immune pathway it hijacked.

imagine how hot those brake pads were, converting that much momentum directly into heat in a flash. glad they didn’t bump into each other, since even a minor crash could turn into an inferno if leaking jet fuel contacts brakes that hot.

it sounds like you and your neighborhood have chosen tent cities over crack houses, then.

my unpopular opinion: homeless encampments in the US are a result of housing becoming unaffordable.

I’m not saying most people ended up in tent cities because they couldn’t afford rent. usually people will sleep in their cars, find a spot in a shelter if one’s available, crash with relatives etc. at least here (Seattle) most of those who live in big tent cities are homeless because of mental illness: drug addiction and/or psychosis.

but serious addiction isn’t new. where did addicts live in the '80s? crack houses! before real estate turned into gold, there was plenty of mold-infested, aabestos-ridden, lead-painted substandard housing left abandoned or rented cheaply by slumlords. junkies could sleep there.

now, most of those buildings have been torn down and luxury condos rebuilt in their place, at least in the big cities.

I’m not pro-crack den. the old buildings were health hazards. but junkies can’t afford the upscale housing that replaced them. they can barely afford tents.

JD Vance is Catholic. he converted right around the time his political ambitions deepend. Leonard Leo (Federalist Society president) is Catholic, as are most of FedSoc leadership. Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh are Catholic.

the deep power in the RNC is very conservative Catholic.

based as fuck. I’m so glad some Democratic governors still have our back.