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.

Never mind about that, he changed his mind again.

After comments that seemed to suggest President Trump was looking towards an exit from his war with Iran, Trump said in a speech to Republican lawmakers in Florida that “we have won in many ways, but not enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.”

The enemy cannot anticipate your actions if you have no plan! No doubt Sun Tzu would have said something like that if he were American.

We’re going to end up in a situation where whatever is necessary to train AI is permitted, and the main question is whether that will be through (re)interpretation of existing law or the passage of a new law.

Well, the actual NYT article has the headline

U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows

The school appears to be part of the same compound as the naval base. Presumably someone or something thought it was part of that base.

I admit that the articles I’ve read are not entirely clear about the order in which things happened, but my understanding is that the Israelis were trying to sneak in and dig up the grave without being noticed, they were noticed and attacked, and they called in air support. They were clearly prepared to fight, but their mission would not have involved any fighting had it gone according to plan.

who didn’t have anything to do with it

Those people attacked them. The interesting thing is how outmatched the attackers were despite outnumbering a group that wasn’t there with the intent of fighting.