ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
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User ID: 2935
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
Nicely done! I haven't done anything remotely similar since woodwork in school. I was terrible at it, and glad when I could give it up, but there's a feeling that comes from crafting something physical that you can't really get elsewhere.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
God of War, The Witcher 3, and Horizon Zero Dawn are some of the biggest Sony titles, but to me the character movements feel sluggish, jerky, and unintuitive. They can have beautiful worlds and good stories, but I don't really enjoy existing there nearly as much.
Have you tried From Software games? I can' think of any studio that that makes third person melee feel as good as they do.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask are far superior to BotW as Zelda titles.
Agreed (I couldn't get into BOTW either). But MM has aged worse than OOT IMO, much as it pains me to say it.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
As is typical for any male who spent a large part of their youth trying to maximise their success with girls, I'm no stranger to bad romantic advice. That said, I don't think I've ever come across a suggestion quite as bizarre as that given in this tweet:
Since #TamponTim is trending I'll point out that in high school, any boy who casually was like "Oh you got ur period? I stashed a pad from the bathroom in my backpack in case one of my friends needed it" -- that boy would be king stud. That boy would be drowning in prom invites.
Reponses ranged from the incredulous, to the half-heartedly supportive, to the hilarious, to those advising young men that really, this isn't a good idea.
Still, I had a good laugh, and it made me curious as to what are the worst romantic ideas that other people here have received or seen. Anyone got anything more extreme than this one?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
That sounds like a pretty difficult problem, at least practically speaking.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
The problem is that Walz reads as such a turbo normie
I think this is the crux of the issue. There's a difference between objective weirdness and perceived weirdness. The higher your social status, the lower the perceived weirdness of any given action will be, and in today's world turbo-normality probably gives politicians close to peak social standing among people who just don't want to have to think about politics that much.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
My favourite part of the linked page (my bolding):
Idyllwild is known for being one of the first places to elect a dog for mayor
There's a trend of this happening?
Of all the images, videos and reports from the recent UK protests/riots, none have struck quite so powerfully as this clip of a policeman reporting from a meeting with local "community leaders".
The video is short, focuses almost entirely on one individual and quiet enough you could miss what the man is saying if there's some loud traffic outside your window. And yet it does a better job encapsulating all that's happening in the UK than any video of Muslims setting busses on fire*. Everything about it is perfect - the policeman sitting like a chastised schoolboy, reading as if from a pre-written apology letter, making references to "the leader" (presumably standing somewhere close behind), while a stern-looking Muslim (I can only assume) towers over the policeman from behind, looking contemptuously down his nose at him. I could imagine future artists painting this scene.
Of course, I'm being a bit dramatic. Maybe it's not as bad as it looks - the guy in the background could have that expression because he's ill, maybe he's standing over the policeman so that they can fit as many people in the frame as possible, etc. But it feels like the simplest interpretation is that which corresponds most closely to what's been seen over the last few weeks: that there are non-insignificant areas of the country where the police have effectively abandoned the monopoly on violence and are turning instead towards diplomatic outreach, as if dealing with foreign neighboring states of ambivalent friendliness. I don't necessarily blame the police for that; there are only so many of them and realistically they probably can't deal with hundreds/thousands of angry people who don't see them as legitimate enforcers of peace and order.
What does the future hold? There'll never be the political will or real ability to force such people out of the country. On the other hand it's pretty unrealistic that we'll see the other extreme (violent ethnic cleansing or civil war). Probably just a slow trend towards more of the same, although I do wonder what the final steady state will be.
(*I'm LARPing a bit here, I haven't lived in the UK since 2022. Feel free to correct me if I've managed to misunderstand the events of the last few weeks from a distance).
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
I know. I was referring to the "ass", as it were.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
but the media putting its ass on the scale
First time I've heard that expression.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
And I'm saying I've never seen that gesture used that way. And I've seen plenty of people using two fingers to indicate two.
I don't know BSL and if that's the official sign then that's the official sign, I guess. Although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the person responsible for that website just googled "person displaying two fingers" and used the first image that came up.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
You judge people by their actions instead of where they arbitrarily happened to be born.
Well, this isn't true. My brother arbitrarily happened to be born the same parents as me, but that fact plays a much stronger role in our relationship than any other achievements of his.
(@jeroboam, look how quickly we get someone saying that all immigrants, even the positively contributing ones, should be forever treated as inferior)
I don't think you can take a particular Motte poster's position on immigration as particularly emblematic of broader societal consensus.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
For one the two fingers sign also symbolizes bunny ears so it doesn't always mean disrespect. I have fond memories of pranking friends with think back in my carefree youthful days.
Bunny ears (at least in the UK) would be with a pronated hand position i.e. palm facing away. The gesture of disrespect is with the palm facing inwards.
This I also disagree with. Holding the index and middle finger up is the British sign language method of indicating two.
I've never seen someone indicate two with the palm facing inwards.
Do you expect he'd provide much of a boost to the Harris campaign?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
Harris seems to be polling quite significantly better than Biden. Nate Silver is giving her close to 50%. It could be Netanyahu felt the way the wind was starting to blow and felt that waiting until after the election would risk losing the chance to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
From the linked article
Israel could have killed Haniyeh anywhere in the Middle East, yet deliberately chose to do so in Iran during the inauguration.
Is this true? My impression was that Hamas leaders were mostly staying in Qatar, where Israel would be very unwilling to try an assassination attempt.
Does Netanyahu actually want to drag the US into a much larger war with Iran?
I've seen various takes on Twitter pointing out how much Israel has escalated recently since Netanyahu's meeting with Harris. It seems very possible he realised/had confirmed that her administration would be much less friendly than Biden's, and that the time to try and draw the US in was now.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
You've seemed to be a generally smart guy and good poster
Much appreciated (and you).
At no point in either the European or Pacific theaters were the Americans or Russians flailing about randomly. Throughout the process, they had specific aims and plans they were working towards. Their intention was to occupy Germany and Japan, and institute by force a government which they would sustain by force for however long it took for those nations to be trustworthy self-governing members of the international community again.
They definitely had plans, but I'm sure those plans were secondary to their prime objective (military victory). We'll never know, but I can't imagine that the allies would have stopped the war effort if for any reason they couldn't agree on what to do with Germany and Japan once they'd surrendered. Forcing surrender was the ultimate goal.
Importantly, the Allies understood that after victory, after surrender, they would take on responsibility for Japanese and German (and other national) civilian populations. They would take on responsibility for the administration of the territory, the provision of necessary goods, and the healing of the harms of the war. At no point was this in doubt. The Battle of the Bulge, won or lost, wouldn't have changed the intended outcome of the war for the Allies.
Israel has no intention of occupying Gaza and providing administration or aid to the population. They have no plan to institute a government, nor even a publicly stated outline of what an acceptable government would look like.
Maybe our disagreement is just semantic in nature (and I might have misunderstood some deliberate hyperbole), but I wouldn't equate Israel not wanting to administer Gaza as "random flailing". Their campaign definitely hasn't followed a straight line from A to B, which they bear a certain amount of responsibility for, but they've made strategic advances.
Their win conditions are something like Gazans stop hating us, unlikely to be advanced by their current strategy, or all the Gazans are dead, which they will presumably reach eventually though I doubt they've made significant progress towards extinction during the current war.
I don't agree with this. I think their win condition is that Hamas is largely neutralized (probably defined as breaking their organisational structure too much to be able to maintain truly operational as a coherent military entity) and that Israel control the main points that can be used to smuggle weapons back into Gaza, such as the Philadelphi corridor. At that point I imagine they'll leave Gazans to their own devices, conducting occasional raids like they do in the West Bank to stop any terrorist group that looks like it's building up too much power.
I don't see how anything beyond this, such as taking a more active hand in administering the region, is feasible. Even if we assume that Israel has the money and manpower to try and nation-build, it would be a diplomatic impossibility. Israel hasn't been in Gaza since the mid 2000s, and most of the world still thinks/acts as though Gaza has been under oppressive occupation for the last several decades. Imagine what would happen to their global reputation under an actual occupation. There would be constant protests or acts of rebellion and it's not hard to imagine how the international media/NGO complex would cover even the gentlest attempts to maintain order. So they would be forced to leave, at best putting Israel back where they were once the war had ended, at worst leaving Gaza with much of its infrastructure rebuilt and ready for use as military infrastructure by Hamas or a new terrorist group.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
I think most "mens" sports events are technically open?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
Serbian? Belarussian?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
An alternative is to work for a company that produces tech for police departments (i.e. mobile forensics, visual recognition, cybersecurity etc). These will probably pay you decently (if not at FAANG-level, although what do I know?) and the work will probably be pretty interesting.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
None of these goals are realistic, or at least they aren't working towards them in any meaningful way.
I don't know, Hamas have lost huge numbers of soldiers, commanders, vital parts of their infrastructure and ability to smuggle weapons. Some sources suggest they've basically stopped firing rockets into Israel, even after Haniyeh's killing. That all seems pretty meaningful.
I agree with Trump, and anyway the deaths of 100,000 to rescue a few hundred is so desperately out of proportion it has lost all sense
The central thesis of the article you mentioned - that Hamas are undercounting the number of dead Gazans by a factor of anywhere between 2 to 4, seems wildly unrealistic, especially given that Hamas' main strategy is to use negative propaganda to bring international condemnation and pressure on Israel.
Talk of proportionality is also meaningless - nations generally speaking don't respond to wars of aggression by seeking to inflict the exact same damages that were inflicted on them. I've never heard anyone argue that the correct response to Pearl Harbour was for the US to kill an equal number of Japanese soldiers and civilians, then go home.
At this point Israel has bombed and marched across all of Gaza multiple times, if they haven't neutralized Hamas yet color me skeptical that the next 100,000 corpses will solve the problem.
I'm not sure why you're so skeptical, they seem to be making solid progress. This sounds a bit like like saying if the D-Day landings didn't completely neutralize Germany then there's little reason for anyone to have thought further fighting would achieve anything.
And working out a plan for a future government of Gaza was a good idea to work out before the war, as Israel was repeatedly urged to do by the international community, not after.
It sure helps to know exactly what to aim for, but you can come up with plans during the war and after. And pretty much any outcome is better for Israel than what was there before.
As it is they are engaged in an orgy of violence with no realistic goal.
Except that this isn't true. Retrieve as many hostages as possible, neutralize Hamas, work out a some arrangement where Gaza is less of a threat than it was before (most likely involving other nations, or just leaving Gaza disunited enough that Hamas or another similar organisation can't completely militarise it again). Any or all of those things might be (very) difficult, but that's quite a different thing from what you said.
One big organisation means co-ordination, unity and economies of scale. Five hundred separate cells are more likely to be a danger to themselves than neighboring nations.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3mo ago
I think this tweet is a pretty effective summary of the recent direct Iran-Israel hostilities that started with April's missile attack.
My bad, I missed that!
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