hydroacetylene
No bio...
User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
Persia did respectably for itself, and Islam tends to make civilizations punch below their weight over a long enough time scale for a variety of reasons.
I don’t really believe 103 but upper nineties seems plausible. Russia has a similar IQ with shitty broken institutions and poverty.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
It’s more accurate to say that the western Allies did not use violence against civilians as a political tool after their states had surrendered. Hiroshima, etc.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
The USA has domestic politics reasons for why any Iran attack will go over at least acceptably, has a lot of Allies who hate Iran(probably Saudi at least as much as Israël) and has additional interest in keeping them too weak to fund proxies.
Of course, Trump thinks military operations are good for him politically.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
By the Israeli government, legitimately elected by admittedly narrow majorities of the Israeli public. Israel’s West Bank behavior is indeed bad; both sides suck and need to stop Balkans irredentist nationalism, but Israël at least has a functioning society wherever it goes.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
If the native Japanese rose up after 80 years of occupation by the Han, then they would have the right to. If the Japanese diaspora attempted to invade their ancestral homeland which is now majority Chinese eighty years later, that’s just stupid.
Balkans rules of possession make things terrible. The Palestinians lost in Israël long enough ago that they need to accept that- but being very upset about their treatment in the West Bank seems entirely reasonable. Just like how Cherokees advocating for better reservation conditions or whatever is fine, but trying to conquer and ethnically cleanse parts of Georgia is psychotic.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
The Palestinians have been displaced for too long, and have states of their own(they’re really not that different from Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese), this is just balkanian Kosovo je Palestine at this point. The people claiming the land weren’t born there. Their parents weren’t born there. Life sucks for the Palestinians, retaking recent settlements in the West Bank might be reasonable, but Tel Aviv je Palestine is just stupid. The reality is both sides have blood on their hands, the Palestinians seem to now be led by actual psychopaths when they aren’t led by corrupt, incompetent assholes, and the nakhba is more or less outside living memory.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
A used, reliable sedan will give you more than enough utility to compensate for depreciation over ~1yr.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
You should put the maximum amount into a Roth IRA. This is a tax advantaged structure to assist with retirement.
Real estate in desirable cities is the best bet for appreciation(your cap on IRA contributions is a lot lower than that), due to Tokyoization over time. If you don't want to do that, you can buy precious metals as a savings account with extra steps, you can put it into a mutual fund.
You probably should buy a car, you kinda need one.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
It's pretty common in less-religious parts of Eastern Europe for soviet nostalgia to be conservative coded. Eastern bloc regimes were socially moderate, paid their pensions on time, kept the streets clear, and made sure employment rates were high- eastern Euro boomercons mostly have not been the beneficiaries of their EU integration driven economic growth.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
And nor was Israel that big of a factor in the Iraq war, it was mostly about stabilizing oil sales.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Terminator two had a plot such that making a sequel necessarily creates a plothole. It was a neat, tidy self-referential loop... which renders the whole plot irrelevant.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
(except Islamophobia, I suppose).
The Ayatollah certainly hates sunnis more than Trump or Kirk.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Iran funding people who shoot at Israel is well within the normal rules. Iran did in fact start it with the shots at Israel, however, and they've been going tit-for-tat for months.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Which parts of the US? Because off the beaten path you can definitely find the hero-cultism of military service, ubiquitous open carry, highly visible cops, Trump cult of personality, American exceptionalism, etc.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Generally feminism is a class-interest movement for urban, educated, professional women in the west. That's why they don't tend to care very much about things like sexual assault in the military, third world oppression, grooming gangs, etc., but care a lot about college campuses or US men's only spaces.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Isn't there another round of uprisings and protests going on right now?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
You didn't get a 'militarized manifest destiny frontier society' vibe in the US?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Feminism is an instrumental criticism of fundamentalist Islam for American political conservatives. It is rightly seen as an instrumental criticism by people who disagree with American conservatism, but wrongly seen as 'not worth worrying about' by them. Women actually do have few rights under Islam.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Iran was always going to be important for Chinese contingency plans for dealing with a blockade of the strait of malacca, though.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Romans usually used a mole- which would prevent negotiation after it was completed, just the same. A ram reaching the wall is, like a mole reaching the wall, the end product of a lengthy process.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
This is a near historical universal- Rome didn't negotiate after their final siege assault was ready.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I mean Iranian women are still under coverture.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I expect it to go thé way of The Learning Channel. In all things there must be balance.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
But didn't these Kansas transgenders have warning that the law was going to go into effect?
Iran’s behavior in the current war offers plenty of evidence- the attacking random countries thing.
More options
Context Copy link