He’s saying that because the population of the USA is approximately 40 times larger than that of Israel, the loss of one Israeli life would diminish Israel to an extent proportional to how much the loss of 40 American lives would diminish the USA.
I find AI to be a better conversation partner than humans in most circumstances. It’s not perfect but it’s knowledgeable about pretty much every topic and it’s always fully engaged and attentive. Most people, by contrast, aren’t very interesting and most interesting people are busy. Of course I would prefer to talk to someone who was also subjectively experiencing and enjoying the conversation, but I can get a lot out of a conversation even without that.
The cargo tracking firm Vortexa has reported that at least 34 tankers linked to Iran have circumvented the US blockade since it began, with 19 exiting the Gulf and 15 entering from the Arabian Sea.
I don’t understand why this is happening. Is the US Navy somehow trying and failing to intercept these ships? (That would surprise me.) Or are they being allowed to pass deliberately?
I wouldn’t mind being able to start my washer remotely - I want it to run while I’m not home because it’s noisy, but I don’t want the wet laundry to sit all day like it would if I started it and then went to work.
I just bought a very lightly used BRZ (20k miles) for $27k and I thought I was splurging because I could have paid significantly less for a completely adequate car, but I wanted something fun. It cost me more than an SUV would have, so even people who want practical cars aren’t being forced to spend over $30k.
There’s very little chance that the USA will accept the plan - among other things, that would mean paying reparations to Iran.
Generally when I choose to do something, I have the hope that it will turn out well. Although I’m aware that it might not and I’m prepared to deal with that possibility, if I knew with certainty from the start that what I was considering doing would not turn out well then I would not choose to do it.
According to gay people I’ve talked to who tried to adopt but ended up paying a surrogate, adopting a healthy baby is very difficult. Children available for adoption are generally older and/or have serious health problems.
Well, criminals generally don’t like law enforcement officers…
Are we? I’m looking to buy a car and I think gas cars make the most sense even now, because the change in the price of gas seems like a relatively small part of the cost of car ownership. A one dollar increase in the cost of a gallon of gas works out to about $300 a year in extra costs for me. That’s not enough to tip the balance towards an electric car.
For reference, I’m comparing a Hyundai Elantra N to a Tesla Model 3 - the Hyundai costs as much as the base Tesla at about $36.5k, but to get similar performance you’d need the $42.5k premium Tesla, and that price difference pays for enough gas to go 40,000 miles.
Yeah, although I admit that I thought biotech was the most interesting and important thing I wanted to do back when I chose it over 20 years ago, but knowing what I do now, I wish I had gone into machine learning instead.
Reporters and networks are prohibited from publishing the precise location of Iranian missile impacts, or even filming or photographing the extent of the damage in a way that could give away the location — restrictions designed, in the words of the army’s chief censor Col. Netanel Kula, “to prevent assistance to the enemy during wartime.”
The restrictions sound completely reasonable. This reminds me of how we would laugh when Russian soldiers uploaded detailed depictions of the damage done by Ukrainian attacks, because they were being so foolish.
I worry that a major ground invasion is the least bad option available to the USA now, and the Trump administration is not capable of carrying it out.
But what about the people with strongly felt but incoherent world-views, like the ones who voted for Sanders before voting for Trump? They need memes too!
I think that most Trump voters support isolationism symbolically. They want a leader who prioritizes them rather than perceived others, but they don’t actually have a strong opinion about specific foreign policies per se. Attacking Iran does challenge that symbolism, but in the absence of direct effects on their own lives, their trust in Trump’s established “America first” reputation will go a long way.
Well if he’s not quite alive, then he can’t be assassinated.
But for the moment if there is one country in this war that is rudderless, it is not Iran.
Ouch.
Most vegans do. The general idea is to avoid exploiting animals, but the wasps are living out their natural life cycle. There are a small number of people who do worry about preventing wild insect suffering but they’re not concerned particularly with figs.
I’ve seen some interesting discussion of this linked to the idea of survive/thrive strategies. Is the world a dangerous place that calls for avoiding risks and protecting what you have, or is it full of opportunities and calls for exploring and being open to novelty? Neither inclination is fundamentally wrong. But I’m not sure how to reconcile that with modern “rightists” who want to burn down the system and aren’t conservative in the lowercase-C sense.
So the preexisting difference in price between CA and the rest of the USA was bigger than three wars with Iran… CA voters are a mystery to me.
Almond-scented stuff (not almonds themselves - they have no noticeable smell to me).
Pine forests, the sort with lots of dry pine needles on the ground.