miras_chinotto
certified low iq
No bio...
User ID: 348
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
6d ago
It's not correct to assume there are only antisemitic right wingers and zionist right wingers. There are a great deal of Republicans who are noninterventionist either out of libertarianism or as a result of Iraq/Afghanistan and there are many who, like me, have a great affinity for Jews while seeing Israel as morally no different than the terrorist states they fight. This isn't a coalition, but it's certainly a larger group than the "Holocaust didn't happen but it's a good thing" types. If it's enough to contribute to Democrat election losses, then that means it's enough to contribute to Republican election losses.
And that's not delving into the conservative voting Muslim or global South origin issue.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
10d ago
Eh, if the reservoirs aren't depleted, then the lack of water pressure at the hydrant is from some other bottleneck. The processing plants, lift stations, and distribution system are almost certainly not designed for this sort of load. Are they underdesigned? Who can say without intimate knowledge of the system itself.
I think the over-abundance of fuel (from the admittedly complex lack of prescribed burns issue discussed below), lack of manpower, and lack of equipment for LAPD are better indicators of dysfunction than the hydrants running dry.
It's basic infrastructure engineering. You can allocate nigh-infinite resources to making something safer or stronger or higher capacity and there will still be a theoretical load case that will exceed it. We don't have anything close to nigh-infinite resources to throw at anything so you determine an acceptable level of risk or design load case based on the probability of exceedance and the cost of mitigation and that is what you design to. This isn't California specific, this is the case in all responsible engineering everywhere.
What is possibly California specific is not having additional options available when their design cases are exceeded, i.e. reservoirs holding that excessive rain from last year. Or if some of those videos are to be trusted, not even having extra buckets and hoses for LAFD to use.
If California is so determined not to collect rain water, I don't see why they don't invest in (nuclear?) desalination plants. Would solve a great deal of the water disputes they seem to be having with adjacent states as well.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
11d ago
Thanks for this post. I hadn't considered that the conditions for controlled burns could be so restrictive and in the context of California, there's almost certainly permitting and approvals required that add additional cost and time to it.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
11d ago
The lack of water in hydrants isn't anything surprising. No water system is designed for a wildfire that's impacting 2000+ structures. Depending on how the system and lift stations and such are planned out, you're typically planning for 1 or 2 residential fires per zone, more for commercial, more for industrial. And you have to keep in mind that once a structure becomes compromised, their water pipes are going to be effectively turned on at max (the pipes and valves being compromised by heat or gravity loads) creating even more demand on the system. Reservoirs are pretty much your best and only affordable option for water for wildfires and such.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
12d ago
It also notably was not binding on either the US or Russia (in the case of the US, such treaties have to be ratified by Congress). The concern at the time was that Ukraine didn't have the funds to even pay soldier wages let alone secure or maintain the Soviet weapons stockpiles, so this was a more of a "pat on the back, don't worry, here's some cash for your nukes" agreement.
It's also worth noting that both the US and Russia trot out this Budapest Memorandum line when convenient. Russian propaganda mentioned it several times back during the Maidan crisis in 2014 and it was just as silly then.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
13d ago
It's perhaps uncharitable, but one of Bari Weiss's motives is likely out of her pro-zionism stances. She has throughout her career framed Israel's flagging US approval as a PR issue and become increasingly defense over even the most anodyne or factual criticism of Israeli actions in MENA. There is a large surge of Islamophobic writing on the right currently due to the NOLA attack and this is a convenient way to try to continue splitting Muslims from the liberal coalitions in the US and UK.
The timing of this surge in interest, when we've known many of the facts about the rape gangs for a decade, suggests to me that both Bari and Elon are using this opportunity to deflect. That doesn't mean they're deflecting for the same reasons though.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
17d ago
I haven't paid attention to new developments but are we sure this was an intentional explosion? The photo of the burnt out truck bed seemed to show that it wasn't even particularly full and some large fraction of the fireworks appeared to be bottle rockets from the video of the explosion (which would seem to be the worst kind of firework for this purpose).
Could be he was on the margin mentally had packed up a bunch of stuff for a new years bash in the desert (or a suicide in the desert?) and at the last minute decided to shoot himself in front of the Trump property? Could such a shot possibly set off flammables in the trunk?
I'm probably just grasping at straws in the face of the disjointed acts of a depressed or worse man.
Do we know in what conflict zone he worked in? If he was working out of a gulf state or Ukraine, it would significantly change what any political message he was sending if it was intentional.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
18d ago
just naturally sign up with ISIS because, well, what else would they do?
Why don't you try to consider it from their perspective? Almost overnight, their careers are ended and are made unable to support themselves and their families and their own government and fellow people subjected to tremendous violence and destabilization more or less for no good reason. Why wouldn't that radicalize a person?
This was both the anticipated and actual outcome of deBaathification.
Shouldn't we be thinking of people like this in similar terms as we might view southern Confederate sympathizers during and after the American Civil War?
You mean we should have extended them a blanket pardon conditional on an oath of loyalty? Yes, I think that would have been the ideal outcome and may have stopped Iraq from sliding toward Iran puppet-state status by having continuity and more robustness in its institutions.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
18d ago
There is quite literally a direct line of causality between deBaathification in Iraq and ISIS. Purging the Iraqi military and public service resulted in thousands of professional soldiers and officers as well as otherwise peaceful professionals like graphic designers, accountants, intelligence analysts, etc being unemployable overnight and so they joined up with fledgling ISIS and that's how it became such a competent organization so fast. This was even predicted by US analysts and foreign policy writers at the time, but Rumsfeld et al proceeded any way and only rescinded after most of the damage was done.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
It would be very exciting and cool for this to be ayys, but each of the videos I've seen ends up looking either like a regular drone, a commercial airliner, or something else that happens to have FAA red-green lighting (which wouldn't make sense for a military stealth drone experiment or for alien aircraft).
So yes, I think you're right. We are seeing mass hysteria possibly coupled with people just not having taken the time before to notice just how many flying objects are actually in your typical American night sky. And really, I can relate to this (at the risk of typical minding I suppose) because over the last year, my toddler has become obsessed with planes and seeing them at night so I didn't have any idea myself how active and busy aircraft are at night until we started watching them all the time.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
Thanks I was really confused why it was linking to a deleted reddit comment or whatever.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
Can you double check your link?
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
If terrorism is your objective, a guaranteed kill isn't really necessary. A drone can probably carry enough of a highly flammable liquid or powder and cause severe burns or death and in many ways that's the stronger signal. It would however result in a lot less of a folk hero image though.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
2mo ago
Qatar kicks out Hamas leaders
This point isn't accurate. It's based on anonymous US state department officials and has been denied by Qatar. Qatar has said that they think both parties are negotiating in bad faith and that they are no longer willing to be mediators for that kind of dialogue. What that actually means for Hamas' polticial office in Qatar is unclear, but it certainly isn't "Qatar is in awe of Trump so they're kicking Hamas out."
Can someone put together an actual timeline of events here? It is proving very difficult to determine from the articles I've read. Those critical of the maccabi depend on them doing genocidal chants, vandalism, and low level violence prior to the game. Those staunchly on the other side are relying heavily on this being "preplanned" but the only pre planned attack evidence seems to be some messages on social media that they were sent the same day as the attacks? So presumably after the prior maccabi provocation? It's not clear to me.
Obviously mob violence is not justified by chants and vandalism, but if you fly into some other city and stir things up, it's not a pogrom or fitting with a "Europe has an antisemitism problem" when psycho locals escalate. This story seems hopelessly distorted in the news coverage.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
2mo ago
Asking mid-low functioning people to plot to do bad thing and then arresting them for it is absolutely the FBI MO (see also kidnapping Whitmer). I wouldn't be surprised especially since we don't have much information about this guy that would explain why he's the go-to guy for the IRGC (he seems low level, arrested for robbery at one point even).
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
2mo ago
The truth is in the middle here. There doesn't actually appear to be any real plot or attempt to kill Trump (the IRGC asked some guy to come up with one, he got two other dudes on board, but apparently never actually came up with a plan) and the FBI has made it abundantly clear they are willing to manipulate Americans to achieve policy aims so the explosiveness and timing and strong push on social media to escalate certainly does appear to be intended to manipulate public sentiment IMHO. But Iran certainly does have incentive to do so after Trump made the wildly escalatory move of having Soleimani killed, so it's not like it's unexpected to anyone that they would try and that people seem to have forgotten this shows how insulated and arrogant many Americans are when it comes to IR.
Absolutely agreed on the power of the sticker. And it's awesome how local businesses are getting into it and giving freebies and discounts for people wearing one. It's like a remaining vestige of civic pride and community involvement.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
3mo ago
Wow. He seems more aged/old than he comes across elsewhere but also somehow sharper and in better physical condition than I expected. A 50 minute Trump Biden golf trip video (alluding to their golf banter) would have actually been very cool and hunanzing for everyone I think.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
3mo ago
Cities can spill over into multiple counties and judicial districts can be quite small. A ballot for Townsville city council district 123 but also justice of the peace for place XYZ and school board members for ABCISD and a county road maintenance bond for a county that only 10% of the city crosses into can be a very, very small intersection of people. But otherwise I do agree with you, the actual ballot is secret which is largely good enough and really it wouldn't take much effort otherwise to guess which way a given voter voted based on precinct counts, demographics, and party registration/donation.
Well yeah, but if I were a longshoreman, I would rather my Amazon order be $5 more than have no job. Minimizing costs for businesses is not an end on an of itself. From the perspective of the longshoreman, trying to automate away their jobs is defecting and its obvious they would want to punish this behavior.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
3mo ago
I mean, good for them. We should all be so fortunate. When software engineers are begging for scraps on the streets, the longshoremen will truly be kings among men. When the social contract (referring to pro-social business norms) cannot keep your family fed, people will resort to other means.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
3mo ago
An additional reason is that wokism and such has to this point "won" the culture war. Marxists are not the only ideologs who seek to take credit for social justice as a successor movement to liberalism, you see this with Christians (particularly in some denominations such as Methodists), capitalists (there's decades of writing about how responsible capitalism requires this sort of thing culminating in ESG), and especially neoliberals. It's natural that older, more dysfunctional intellectual traditions would try to extend claims over their successor movements.
Good. I frankly don't trust or expect people like Elon to be able to meaningfully be able to separate wheat from chaff within the federal government.
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