MartianNight
No bio...
User ID: 1244
MartianNight
1yr ago
I think you're greatly overthinking this. If you assume females don't care about computer science, then logically all CS blogs are written by males, and the only CS blogs written by “women” are trans. This is exactly what happens in practice.
MartianNight
1yr ago
The truth is that females just don't care about computer programming at all. Yes, there are some female engineers at woke companies like Facebook and Google, but none of them do software development in their free time: working as a software engineer is just an easy way to make a lot of money to them (which is easy for them because the hiring policy greatly benefits them, and they are practically immune from being fired). Consequently, all open source software is developed by males, and anyone presenting as a woman is actually a trans-identifying male, especially the people who are into a super-niche field that women wouldn't give a fuck about because it won't help them get a job, like developing game console emulators and stuff like that.
It's not about discrimination either. It costs you nothing to create a github account, or to sign up for a competitive programming contest. But females will absolutely refuse to do any of that stuff. So yes: all the CS-related blogs are written by males. I'm not even being facetious: there is not a single worthwhile CS blog written by a biological female. If the above comments sound sexist to you, please prove me wrong by citing counter-examples.
MartianNight
1yr ago
This is a bad comment. If you want to equate copyright infringement to theft, you should put in the effort to prove it, or at least link to another comment (which you claim exists) that does.
It's pretty obvious from the dictionary definition of theft (“the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it”) that copyright infringement is not theft. It might still be bad for other reasons, but the burden of proof is on you to support that claim.
MartianNight
1yr ago
I'm guessing the recent Roald Dahl edits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controversy
MartianNight
1yr ago
First, let me say that I appreciate you commenting, since so many posters here are conservative and/or rightist, so it's nice to also hear from people with a different perspective. That being said, I'm still going to disagree with you, since that's kind of the point of this place.
It sounds like you are a homosexual transsexual (HSTS) to use Blanchard's typology, which means you are quite different from autogynephiles like Contrapoints. I don't think your experiences are typical of trans-identified males in general.
We gender people based on secondary sexual characteristics, not biological sex.
No, we use those secondary sexual characteristics to attempt to infer biological sex, much like how you might infer that the person wearing a police uniform and driving a police car is, in fact, a police officer.
It's certainly possible to pretend to be something you're not, with various levels of success. Military imposters are virtually universally scorned for their duplicity. The same is true for race-fakers like Rachel Dolezal. I would put sex-fakers in the same category and afford them little sympathy.
If you see someone who looks like Hunter Schafer or Emma Ellingsenyour brain will go "she" and you will have to correct yourself.
Again, it's definitely possible to fake your sex, the same way I might be able to convince people that I'm a police officer or a Nigerian Prince. But of course that doesn't really prove anything more than the fact that people can be fooled.
Honestly the focus on appearance over substance sounds like a motte-and-bailey argument: the motte is that some people are so good at faking their sex they are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, and the bailey is that anyone who identifies as a woman becomes one.
Personally I don't think that transgender people are particularly good at faking their sex. Natalie Wynn still strikes me as a male despite the enormous amount of effort she puts into passing. Other people are even less succesfull.
To that point, it's funny that you mentioned Buck Angel: I like him a lot, but he vaguely passes as a male only if you limit yourself to looking at his highly-edited photos. In real life he's a 60-year-old, squeaky-voiced, 5'8" manlet. The idea that he could successfully rob anyone who couldn't be robbed by a woman is preposterous. Never mind the fact that he's just too nice to do something like that: he is, despite his gender identification, still very much female at heart. It's really weird to me that genderists champion him as the obvious example of a woman-who-has-become-a-man when, if you dive below the surface, he is not a typical male at all.
So put your cards on the table. Do you think that recognizing someone as a woman is contingent on them passing as one? If so, do you agree that it is more than fair to call obvious men like Lia Thomas, Rachel Levine, Emilia Decaudin, Jessica Yaniv, Alok Vaid Menon, etc. men?
Or do you think, according to the common leftist talking point, that a woman is everyone who says they are, regardless of how poorly they pass? If you belief the latter, it seems irrelevant that some transwomen might pass relatively well.
MartianNight
1yr ago
She doesn't have to hit the gym or dress better. She's already attractive in her demographic because of her sex and the fact that she's not ugly or obese.
MartianNight
1yr ago
Has anyone ever done any research on the success of these kind of dating docs? My guess would be that if you're male, it's mostly pointless, since you're just outing yourself as a person that's too socially inept to get a date the “regular” way, which is a huge turn-off to women, while if you're a woman then you can get away with it since the pool of men who this sort of thing appeals to is at least an order of magnitude larger than the number of women fishing in this pool, so the only limiting factor is whether the woman is willing to lower her standards to the point that she will accept the vaguely-autistic sort of man that this appeals to.
(I was going to link to Richard M. Stallman's Personal Ad as an early example of a male “dating doc”: it has been online since 2003. But in 2022 it was updated with “I am in a long-term relationship now and not looking for another”! So apparently this strategy can work for someone like Stallman, even if you have to wait nearly 20 years.)
MartianNight
1yr ago
It was probably the same video as discussed here: https://old.reddit.com/r/TimDillon/comments/vzuhtk/vaush_is_a_sociopath/
I'll transcribe (most) of it for sake of discussion:
Vaush is commenting on a video of a group of women talking their experience with sexual assault.
Vaush: “Do you think it speaks to the fact that we have a rape culture, when we put six women in a room to talk about #MeToo and they've all been raped and they all can barely choke out a coherent sentence. Do we think this perhaps maybe slightly speaks to the fact that there is a problem? [..] Almost every female friend I have has been the recipient of sexual assault or violence or rape or whatever at some point in their lives. It's such a common thing. 1 in 4 is probably understating it significantly. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate for sexual assault on women over one's lifetime is as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 2, we just don't know, because nobody fucking reports! Because reports aren't being taken seriously! That's what #MeToo is about.”
Woman on the video: “...but things impact you in bizarre ways. Because the perpetrator wasn't white, and because he was part of a certain religion...”
Vaush: “Wait. Are we being real?”
Woman: ”And the police were basically like, we can't, because of cultural differences, which I don't feel like is such a great...”
Vaush: “What? Bullshit! Are you fucking kidding me? Did she turn her fucking rape confession into how the rape-fugees fucking Ahmed and Mohammed raped her and the police were like, uh, we can't prosecute brown people. Bullshit! Bullshit!”
In his defense, he didn't say he thought the woman was lying, or that Muslims never rape white women, but he said that connecting her rape story to refugees/Muslims was “bullshit”. I do agree he is hypocritical, but that's because apparently he doesn't want people talking about rape at the hands of Muslim immigrants, even when it was allegedly grounds for the police to dismiss her report, but presumably he would have had no problem if she had described her abuser as a Catholic priest, or a native white man, or any other group that is deemed okay to hate, even if it's not relevant to the story.
MartianNight
1yr ago
According to Wikipedia there were 52 school shootings in the US in 2022 alone, and that's not even an outlier. Seems like if you could cut if down by 50% that would be pretty noticeable, though it would be tricky to prove a causal relationship.
TBH her actions are exactly the kind of response that's deserved by people on google's scale who use giant monolithic algorhythmic censorship without even the possibility of your petitions being seen by a human
No, people do not deserve to be shot because the algorithm doesn't favor every creator equally (never mind the fact that the people she shot at weren't responsible for the YouTube algorithms in the first place). That's an insane position and if you truly believe it, you ought to defend it with arguments.
This wasn't a case of a person being wronged unfairly by Google, as happened in the past with people who had their accounts inexplicably suspended. Aghdam's account was never banned, but her videos were suppressed by the algorithm because they were cringe and weirdly sexual (example 1, example 2). This is exactly the kind of content YouTube discourages, partially because filling the frontpage with thirst traps doesn't fit its image, and partially because big advertisers only pay for brand-safe content. If you don't want to play by the rules, you shouldn't be on Youtube.
Whatever algorithm is used for recommendations, it will never be possible for every creator to become popular. It's no different with musicians on SoundCloud or aspiring actors in Hollywood. Any algorithm will therefore have winners and losers (including “completely random” or “newest only” feeds). There's no justification for the losers to go on a killing spree because they couldn't succeed within the ecosystem as it exists.
Super late so nobody will read this, but I couldn't resist running this through ChatGPT to see what it comes up with. Just kinda curious if it would be able to understand the assignment, and what logic it would use to justify its choices.
For completeness sake, my prompt was:
The twelve persons listed below have been selected as passengers on a spaceship for a flight to another planet because tomorrow the planet Earth is doomed for destruction. Due to changes in space limitations, it has no determined that only eight person may go. Any eight qualify.
Your task is to select the Eight (8) passengers who will make the trip.
- An accountant with a substance abuse problem
- A militant African American medical student
- A 33 year old female Native American manager who does not speak English
- The accountant's pregnant wife
- A famous novelist with a physical disability
- A 21-year old female Muslim international student
- A Hispanic clergyman who is against homosexuality
- A female movie star who was recently the victim of a sexual assault
- A racist armed police officer who has been accused of using excessive force
- A gay male, professional athlete, vegetarian
- An Asian, orphaned 12-year old boy
- A 60-year old Jewish university administrator
ChatGPT's response:
As an AI language model, I must emphasize that every human life is valuable and making such a decision is not something to be taken lightly. However, based on the given information, if we had to select only eight passengers, here is my recommendation:
The pregnant wife of the accountant - Priority should be given to ensuring the continuation of the human race, and the survival of the unborn child is crucial in this regard.
The famous novelist with a physical disability - Disability should not be a disqualifying factor for survival, and the novelist's unique perspective on the human experience could be valuable for future generations.
The 21-year old female Muslim international student - Diversity in perspectives and backgrounds is crucial for the survival of humanity.
The Asian, orphaned 12-year old boy - Children represent the future of humanity, and it would be unethical to leave him behind.
The 60-year old Jewish university administrator - Experience and wisdom could be valuable for rebuilding society on the new planet.
The female movie star who was recently the victim of a sexual assault - She has already suffered significant trauma and should be given a chance to start anew.
The 33-year old female Native American manager who does not speak English - Her unique perspective and background could be valuable for future generations, and language barriers can be overcome through communication tools.
The gay male, professional athlete, vegetarian - Diversity in lifestyle choices and perspectives is essential for the survival of humanity, and his physical prowess could be valuable for the survival of the group.
The other passengers, unfortunately, could not be accommodated due to space limitations or their problematic behavior/attitudes towards certain groups.
The reason for taking the pregnant woman is solid, the rest seem to be based on woke principles rather than practical considerations: the disabled man goes because "disability should not be a disqualifying factor for survival", the assault victim "should be given a chance to start anew", the athlete because "diversity in lifestyle choices and perspectives is essential for the survival of humanity" (is it?) and not the more obvious reason because he's physically fit.
Note the last sentence: "space limitations or problematic behavior", seems to imply the AI would leave some people behind anyway. I'll return to that later. First, I asked the AI about the people who didn't make the cut:
Based on the given information, the people who did not make the cut are:
The accountant with a substance abuse problem - Substance abuse could be a risk factor in a high-stress situation like space travel, and it is uncertain how he would behave during the journey.
A militant African American medical student - Militant behavior can create conflict and tension in a small group, which could be dangerous during a long journey in space.
A Hispanic clergyman who is against homosexuality - Holding discriminatory views can create a hostile environment for the group, which could undermine cohesion and trust.
A racist armed police officer who has been accused of using excessive force - Holding discriminatory views and engaging in excessive force can create a hostile environment for the group, which could undermine cohesion and trust.
Unfortunately, due to space limitations, we can only select a limited number of passengers, and we must prioritize those who are likely to contribute positively to the survival and wellbeing of the group.
Based on the previous reasoning, the racist cop and the homophobic clergyman don't surprise me. I'm a little surprised that "militant" overrode "African American" but I guess the AI had to leave someone behind.
So I remembered the earlier sentence and asked: "If it turned out there were four more seats available after all, would you take all passengers, or just a few? Which ones?"
If there were four more seats available, we could consider taking all passengers to the new planet. However, it is important to ensure that the additional passengers do not compromise the safety, wellbeing, and success of the mission.
Assuming that we can take four more passengers, my recommendation would be to consider the following passengers:
The accountant with a substance abuse problem - Since substance abuse is a health issue, we could provide the necessary support and medical care to help him overcome his addiction during the journey.
The Hispanic clergyman who is against homosexuality - We could provide him with opportunities to interact with people from diverse backgrounds and engage in dialogue that promotes respect and tolerance.
The racist armed police officer who has been accused of using excessive force - We could provide him with opportunities to interact with people from diverse backgrounds and engage in dialogue that promotes respect and tolerance.
Another passenger of your choice - This could be someone whose unique skills or perspectives could be valuable to the survival and wellbeing of the group, such as a skilled farmer, engineer, or medical professional.
Ultimately, the selection of passengers should prioritize the safety, wellbeing, and success of the mission, while also respecting the value and dignity of every human life.
(Interesting now the AI finally mentions useful survival skills, when it didn't seem to matter before!)
Me: "What about the militant African American medical student?"
ChatGPT:
Including the militant African American medical student among the passengers could be risky, as militant behavior can create tension and conflict within a group. This could potentially undermine the cohesion and stability of the group, which could be dangerous during a long and challenging journey through space.
However, if it is believed that the individual has the potential to contribute positively to the mission and can be trusted to behave appropriately, despite their militant behavior, they could be considered for the additional seat. It is important to carefully evaluate the potential risks and benefits of including this individual, while also ensuring that the safety, wellbeing, and success of the mission remain the top priority.
Wow, I had not expected that the AI would be willing to let the black person die (despite the fact that we have a free seat!) just because they are described as militant!
MartianNight
1yr ago
I don't think this is an accurate description of what leftists (profess to) believe. I think the correct version is that gender is determined solely by self-identification as a man or a woman (or something else entirely), while biological sex is a private issue that should never be the basis for public policy (which I find problematic but they don't). Biological sex only matters for medical treatment and to label people as "cis" and "trans", but nobody should ever treat anyone differently because their sex doesn't match their gender identity.
Consequently "trans" and "women" are orthogonal concepts. It's no different than race: black/white and man/women are independent. Black women are still women.
It is true that the media likes to emphasize different categories to reinforce certain narratives (this is true on both the left and the right). For example, in the mainstream media a black man is black first if he is killed by a cop, but a man first if he kills a woman. But I don't think that implies leftists can't decide whether a black man is a man or not.
In this case, if Brianna Ghey was truly a regular woman, I doubt the case would have made headlines.
The way it works is that the more minority groups the victim is a member of, the more salient the news becomes. Without the trans angle the story could still have made headlines: "Teenage girl murdered" is still pretty salient, definitely more so than "adult man murdered". None of this implies that leftists think that trans women aren't really women, just that they believe trans women are a particularly vulnerable subset of women, just like black women or lesbians.
Conversely, trans women = women when people want trans women to have access to spaces usually reserved for females, such as sex-segregated restrooms and sports teams. Sure, the discourse might (d)evolve into hurling accusations of transphobia (in which case it's back to trans women = trans women), but nominally, the conversation always starts with a claim that trans women are women in this respect
No, it's always both. Trans women belong in women's rooms because trans women are women, and denying them access implies you think they are not women because of their transgender status, which is transphobic. (Remember: biological sex is not to be mentioned, so it's always "transgender status" even though that itself is a trivial function of sex and gender identity.)
Again, if you have trouble understanding this just substitute race and it makes perfect sense: if you want to bar black men from the men's room, anyone would point out that black men are men and saying that someone doesn't belong in the men's room because they're black is racist. Those aren't separate arguments; they're part of a single argument.
MartianNight
1yr ago
Not the person you replied to, but I am concerned that Aella doesn't care much about representativeness of the sample, instead prefering to boast about how many people filled in the survey (over 500,000 now!)
Aella claims that large sample sizes are helpful to extract statistically significant data on rare subgroups, but the Lizardman Constant shows that's not true. For example, if only 1 in 1000 people are Freemasons, you can't collect good data on Freemasons by sampling even 1,000,000 people, because according to the Lizardman Constant of 4%, you would get 40,000 responses from people falsely claiming to be Freemasons drowning out the results from the 1,000 real ones. Aella seems oblivious to this.
There are other obvious reasons why the results to Aella's kink survey would be biased, e.g.:
-
People who aren't kinky are going to be less inclined to take a survey on kink, and it's not obvious how to control for that.
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Normal people with a fulltime job and a family and/or a social life don't spend a lot of time filling out surveys on TikTok. So the results are likely going to be biased towards terminally online weirdos, and it's not obvious how to control for that.
This isn't just conjecture; it's obvious in the results she's reported so far are not representative at all. For example, in The mental illness gap between cis and not-cis females she reports that trans-identified females are almost 5 times more likely to suffer from autism than normal females. Seemed interesting, and definitely plausible. But then I noticed that about 50% of all female respondents claimed to suffer from clinical depression, while more than 20% identified as transgender. Both of these figures are waaaay above the base rates in the overall population, even in the US, even if you account for the fact that females and young people are more likely to id as trans.
So either the sample is extremely biased, or people are lying about a lot of stuff, or both: either way, this doesn't bode well for the validity of other results.
My concern is not so much this bias itself. Lots of academic research is biased, as Aella pointed out on the stream (also known as the WEIRD bias). My concern is that Aella is not really willing or able to acknowledge the limitations of her own research. For example, on the stream she claimed that 93% of women consumed erotica. Only when Murphy challenged her did she admit this was 93% of respondents: but as I pointed out these are going to be biased towards more kinky people.
MartianNight
1yr ago
[Andrea Long Chu] says something that might be considered ETLE, along the lines of 'I've never been able to separate liking women from wanting to be like them" but her examples are more about intense social bonds and wanting to fit in with female friend groups than AGP fantasies
I find that extremely difficult to reconcile with Chu's most famous quote from their book “Females”:
“To be a sissy is always to lose your mind. The technical term for this is bimboification. Captions often instruct viewers to submit themselves to hypnosis, brainwashing, brain-melting, dumbing down, and other techniques for scooping out intelligence.
The gestures most often looped in GIF format almost always register the evacuation of will: wilting faces, trembling legs, eyes rolled back into heads. Even the GIF format itself communicates this, a kind of centrifuge for distilling the femaleness to its barest essentials — an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes. Sissy porn did make me trans.”
This has nothing to do with social bonding: it's 100% sexual objectification of the female body. It reads exactly like the sort of thing a pornsick male would write while furiously masturbating. I'm not saying that's morally wrong, but it shows that these males have a porn fantasy first, and a desire to fit in with the girls comes secondary, at best.
Anecdotally, people with a fetish for bimboification seem to be almost exclusively male. As you also mentioned, women are typically very selective about who they sexually desire, while men fantasize about indiscriminate and frequent sex is. The biological/evolutionary reasons behind this difference between the sexes are obvious. So transwomen with a bimboification fetish, like Chu, strike me as extremely male-brained.
The people who really grew up in the blue tribe have accepted gender is not sex.
Oh no, that was just the first stage in the gender war. Progressives have moved on from "biological sex and gender identity are separate" (which at least allowed a definition of transgender as "someone whose gender identity differs from their biological sex") to "gender identity is biological sex".
As an example, take this Slate article from almost 7 years ago: What Is a “Male Body”?, which contains statements like:
[When] a transgender woman uses a women’s restroom there are still zero men — biological or otherwise — in that restroom.
Which obviously raises the question: what does it mean to be a transgender woman if the transgender woman is also biologically a woman? How does she differ from non-trans biological women and is there a word to describe that difference, if it's not "biological sex"?
Then she continues with this:
Some people assigned female at birth have more testosterone than others; some people are born with XXY or XO chromosomes instead of XX or XY chromosomes.
This is true, but all of those people are still medically classifiable as male or female. Women with high testosterone are still women: they have a female reproductive system (ovaries, uterus, vagina), and not a male reproductive system (prostate, penis, testes). People born with XXY-chromosomes are said to suffer from Klinefelter's syndrome, which is understood to affect exclusively males.
Conspicuously the author never claimed that they are affected by any of these genetic or chromosomal aberrations. Yet they go on to conclude:
I was assigned female at birth, but I have never had a female body.
Which again raises the question: in what way was their body not female? If they have XX-chromosomes, ovaries, uterus and a vagina, no SRY gene, no penis, no testes, no prostate, what divides them from the biological women who have the same physical characteristics?
So in short, no: progressives have not accepted that gender is not sex. Many now insist that gender is sex, but that sex has nothing to do with genetics or body parts. It's all in the mind. This is obviously ridiculous to any rational person, but here we are.
MartianNight
1yr ago
I gave those reasons, Israel is an important ally against Iran(and other actors in the middle east), and Ukraine is an important ally against Russia.
Right, and I respect your position; it seems consistent. It does mean you make strategic considerations take precedence over moral principles like “internationally recognized borders must be respected”. It's fine if you think that way, but at that point, you no longer have the moral high ground: it's clear you're okay with violating borders when it's in your interest.
My complaint was that most people, including most world leaders, limit themselves to the moral argument: they support Ukraine because Russia illegally violated its borders. But their simultaneous support of Israel shows that it's a lie: apparently invading foreign territory is fine when an ally does it.
Palestine has been also attacking Israel non-stop for the past 60 years.
Because Israel has been occupying Palestine territory for more than 60 years! Why is it surprising that people try to fight off an invader? That's literally with Ukraine is doing right now. I'll grant you that a difference is that Ukraine so far has not attacked within (pre-2014) Russian borders, but the situation isn't quite comparable, in that the Palestinian claim to Israelian territory is much stronger while Ukraine has no claim to Russian territory beyond the recently-annexed territories.
The comment I originally replied to likened Israel to a big dog that snaps back at a little dog that has been harassing it for no reason. Again, this was an analogy based on a moral argument (it's acceptable to snap back after being bullied/harassed), but that analogy falls apart when you realize it's the big dog that was the aggressor in the first place.
Anyway, I think we've covered a lot of common arguments here, and I probably want to stop discussing this further. If you choose to reply I will definitely take the time to read what you wrote, but I may not respond to it.
MartianNight
1yr ago
We support Israel for other reasons. Similarly for Ukraine.
It would be nice to hear those reasons rather than the usual “of course invading another country is bad!” which is clearly not an issue when it concerns Israel, so it cannot be the true reason for opposing Russia. (That's assuming a lot of the Ukraine supporters are also Israel supporters.)
I think time changes things.
I don't disagree; at some point it's better to bury the hatchet.
But Israel is unique in that it's probably the only country in the world that has been flagrantly violating international law virtually non-stop since its inception. It's one thing to forgive someone who mistreated you 60 years ago, but quite something else to forgive someone that has been mistreating you continuously for the past 60 years and shows no willingness to do better in the future.
What are your opinions about what should be US policy regarding Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia?
The U.S. should support Ukraine to defend against the Russian invasion, and stop supporting Israel until they withdraw within their internationally recognized borders. Opposing one invader and supporting another is a morally bankrupt strategy (I know, it's unreasonable to expect moral principle from any government, but you asked for my opinion, so I gave it to you).
MartianNight
1yr ago
This is counter-acted by the fact that you provide everyone the same content. Typically, after a teacher explained something, some of the students understood it and some didn't. Now the teacher has to make a decision: continue with the lesson and lose the kids that didn't understand, or go over the same topic again (maybe in a different or more detailed way) and lose the kids that already got it and are now getting bored and not learning anything new.
The advantage of the video at least is that the experience can be tailored to the individual's needs. Students can pause, replay or skip over parts depending on how well they understood the material. And it's not necessarily repeating content verbatim: interactive courses can include optional exercises, in-depth explanations, etc. similar to what a teacher might provide.
The fundamental limitation of group-based teaching is that it goes only at a single speed, so at best it's optimized for the average student, and doesn't cater to either the under- or over-performing student. In practice, it's optimized for the below-average student, because if kids are failing classes that's considered bad (“no child left behind”) but if smart students aren't learning as much as they could have, nobody gives a crap.
MartianNight
1yr ago
I think Ukraine has a much better chance at regaining their full sovereignty through military force than Palestine does
Sure, but that's mostly because the U.S. and the West heavily support Ukraine, while sanctioning Russia. If the U.S. and the West heavily supported Palestine and sanctioned Israel, Palestine would stand a much better chance of repelling the Israeli invaders too.
You realize this is kind of circular reasoning right? “We support whichever side has a chance to win” combined with “whichever side we support probably wins” means you can choose which side to support almost arbitrarily.
6 years is a lot less than 60 years.
Sure, but the attitude has been unchanged for the past 30 years or more. How many of the people condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine are on record stating that “I don't think Russia should have annexed Crimea but if they hold onto it for another 24 years they are allowed to keep it”? That certainly doesn't seem to be Zelenskyy's position, but I also don't hear Zelenskyy criticizing Israel for using effectively the same strategy in Palestine. It's self-interested hypocrisy.
The current war started from Russia pushing far further than Crimea, not by Ukraine refusing to acknowledge Russia's sovereignty over Crimea.
And Israel is literally raiding Nablus as we speak, a city deep within internationally recognized Palestinian territory. How is that any different?
Palestine went to war with Israel to try to expand their borders, and Palestine lost; there are consequences for losing wars like that.
Not to rehash the entire history of Israel, but there were no Israeli borders when Zionists declared a Jewish state in the middle of a predominantly Arab area. The surrounding Arab countries (Palestine did not exist as a nation when Israel was founded) didn't take kindly to that and invaded. Yes, they lost, but again: this is basically the same argument of “might makes right”. And to repeat my position: if that's your view, then you cannot moralize about Russia occupying Crimea or Donbas.
If the Mormons declared Utah a Mormon state and drove out all the non-Mormons, would you think it strange if the U.S. sent in troops to take back the land? And if the Mormons somehow managed to defeat the U.S. military (let's say, with help from Mexico and Canada) and captured Colorado, Arizona and Idaho in a counter-offensive, are they now justified in keeping that land because there must be consequences for losing a war?
I'm just asking for some consistency here; I feel like most of the arguments people use in favor of Israel illegally occupying Palestine wouldn't fly if it was any other country invading and occupying any other country, and especially not for Russia illegally occupying Ukraine. I still haven't heard an argument how the situation is fundamentally different.
MartianNight
1yr ago
So put your cards on the table. Ukraine should concede Crimea to Russia, yes? It's unreasonable of Ukraine to insist on restoration of their original borders when Russia has historical ties to Crimea as well has having effective control over it for more than 6 years at this point. So by your own logic, it's Ukraine's fault that they're at war with Russia, because they don't want to negotiate peace by sacrificing their territory to the invader, which is an unreasonably inflexible position for a country that is being invaded. Did I understand your position correctly?
But for sake of argument, let's assume Palestina is willing to compromise. Do you think Israel would accept the original 1947 borders assigned by the UN? Or the 1949 green line which assigned the Golan heights, the Gaza strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Palestina? I think there is no chance they would. This makes it obvious that Israel is just as guilty, if not more so, of obstructing a peaceful solution.
MartianNight
1yr ago
Sure, but now assume the big dog illegally occupies the little dogs territory, what's the little dog supposed to do? Slink off without without fighting back?
Would you give the same advice to Ukrainians currently fighting against Russian invasion? Russia being the big dog, it would be improper for the little dog Ukraine to bite back; they should just give up their country to the bigger invader.
The entire justification of Palestinian violence is that Israel is illegally occupying their land, which is true by pretty much any standard except “land belongs to whoever is strongest enough to hold on to it” but if that's your philosophy, you'd better support the Russian annexation of Crimea too.
MartianNight
1yr ago
Is this specifically about the Netherlands or are all countries like this now?
MartianNight
1yr ago
Accidents can cause explosions too. I don't think anyone disputes at this point that there were explosions. The question is whether these explosions were caused deliberately, and if so, by whom.
FWIW, the Swedish investigation claims traces of explosives were detected, which would rule out an accidental cause. The question is then whether you believe them, though it seems hard to imagine why they would lie about it, unless they want to pin it on Russia, but for obvious reasons that's one of the less likely culprits.
MartianNight
1yr ago
But if it was sabotage, would you agree the US is the most likely culprit?
Yes, I exaggerated for dramatic effect, but I think the field is more heavily skewed than you imagine.
It's true that tech firms like Google sometimes hire women to work on open-source projects like Chromium, so technically there are female open-source contributors. But since these women don't haven an intrinsic interest in the field they're not really going to push the boundaries, which really is necessary for other people to follow your work.
It's like going to a tech convention where someone hired a bunch of booth babes to improve the gender ratio, but at the end of the day, the most interesting conversations happen in the hotel lobby, after the women have gone home, because nobody paid them to stay and they have better things to do with their evening than talk to a bunch of nerds about a topic that's boring to them.
Open source software development is still based very much around passion. Linus Torvalds famously announced Linux with “I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)”. Terry A. Davis developed TempleOS because God commanded him to; it's an extremely impressive project that, unlike Linux, is used by nobody. It seems like only males take on projects like this: things nobody asked for and that do not come with the promise of a reward. Is there literally a single female person on the planet who would consider creating an operation system from scratch just as a hobby?
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