Goodguy
1hr ago
Azerbaijan is a decent example. And even Azerbaijan is a close Israeli partner.
Lebanon is more murky. However, Iran targeting anti-Iran forces in Lebanon would just be the same kind of thing the US and Israel do when they target anti-US forces in countries that have sectarian conflicts.
US military bases open your entire country to bombing.
What's odd about that standard? Would the US government not bomb all sorts of targets in a country that has a government that allows Iranian military forces to operate on its soil, even targets that are not actually Iranian military? It absolutely would, after all the US has spent two decades considering it standard to bomb any target in almost any country in the Middle East at any time. And that's not even when the US government was engaged in an existential war, as Iran's government is now.
The preference for efficient soft targets, to the extent that one exists, is probably largely caused by the inaccuracy of Iran's weapons. If they had US/Israel-tier military technology, they would have preferred to use it to kill Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, and other enemy elites rather than to waste it on blowing up random apartment buildings.
Goodguy
2hr ago
What countries did Iran bomb that were not US allies and did not have US military stationed on their soil?
Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq all have a US military presence, in some cases a large one.
Goodguy
22hr ago
Normally rich people never get any more than a very very minor amount of sympathy when they die, not just on Reddit but anywhere, unless they are entertainers (including athletes). There are rare exceptions, for example extremely beloved politicians.
But by and large, the public simply will not have sympathy for a rich non-entertainer who dies young. This is not just a Reddit thing, it's almost universal, and not just in the US, but across the world.
So the lack of sympathy for this particular man, I think, doesn't necessarily mean much.
As for OnlyFans, it is to porn what Uber is to taxis. It cuts out the previous middleman and replaces it with a computerized middleman.
I think it's probably a good thing overall for wannabe porn actresses to be able to make porn in their bedrooms without needing pimps or producers. The people who are losing out are the pimps and producers, but I imagine that their reputation for being amoral is likely deserved, so I figure that the benefit to the girls probably outweighs the loss to the pimps and producers.
Goodguy
1d ago
I am very confident that most women on OnlyFans are not motivated to be there by instinct any more than an office worker is motivated by instinct to go to the office in the morning.
Goodguy
5d ago
Consider that perhaps you usually don't notice the feminists who don't just blindly cheer for feminism as a monolith, yet they exist. I'm one.
And if you think that I'm just politically biased, well, I would make the same argument about "the right" as I would about "feminism". That is, it's a very diverse group. In my case, I loathe some ideas that come under that term and am fine with others.
Goodguy
5d ago
I'm sure that "we just want equality" is a Trojan horse for some feminists. Not for others.
Men and women currently have do legal equality in the United States. However, that does not meant that feminists whose primary concern is legal equality have just vanished. I sometimes argue online against people who would like to get rid of that equality. So I am a feminist whose primary concern is legal equality, yet in that capacity I still find things to do.
Goodguy
5d ago
Feminism is really diverse. There are kinds of feminism that revolve around hating men and there are also kinds of feminism that just support legal equality between men and women. Supporting legal equality for women is not a hate ideology.
Goodguy
5d ago
"feminism" means a lot of very different things. Do you actually loathe feminism, or do you just loathe certain kinds of feminism?
Goodguy
5d ago
I am not putting them on the same moral plane. I am pointing out that depicting the US vs. Iran conflict as analogous to polite society vs. violent schizophrenics would be an exaggeration of the actual degree of difference.
Goodguy
6d ago
The violent schizophrenics on the train example isn't a very good one. The US vs Iran isn't a nice peaceful law-abiding society vs violent schizophrenics, it's a somewhat less violent and much stronger schizophrenic versus a somewhat more violent and much weaker schizophrenic. And it's unclear to what extent the much stronger schizophrenic is actually substantially different in willingness to beat up innocent bystanders than the weaker one is - to some extent, the difference in willingness is an effect of the difference in strength. It's quite possible that if the stronger schizophrenic was backed into a corner and desperate, he would start beating the shit out of civilians with just as little care as the weaker one has ever displayed. Furthermore, the stronger schizophrenic has only displayed this kind of concern recently. A few decades ago (Cold War) the stronger schizophrenic was regularly helping his schizophrenic friends beat and kill random innocent people out of fear that if he didn't do this, those random people would turn to the other strong schizophrenic across the street for protection.
Goodguy
6d ago
If feminism is making women on average less happy, that is not necessarily a strike against feminism. There is also freedom to consider. If freedom makes you less happy on average, that does not necessarily mean that you should do away with freedom. Perhaps it can mean that, in some cases, but not as a general rule.
Children generally become less happy at first when parents stop just providing everything to them and start to demand more adult behavior. That does not necessarily mean that it is bad to at some point start to demand more adult behavior from children.
An adult man who makes his own living is probably less happy on average than a sheltered boy who has everything provided for him. That does not necessarily mean that it is better to be a sheltered boy than it is to be an adult man.
It is not surprising that as women went from having a sort of middle status between children and adult men to having legal freedom equal to men and being expected to make their own economic decisions, they also became less happy in some ways and developed various new stresses different from the stresses that they had before. It is especially not surprising given that this is a new development in history, with few precedents. So there is no guidebook.
But this does not mean that women's liberation is a bad thing. In any case, the journey of women's liberation has only begun. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
Goodguy
6d ago
Well, there's a very good reason other than physical fitness for why societies tend to try to get men into the military at young ages like 18.
It's signing up to kill people on government orders and potentially die yourself, to protect a society that on an institutional level barely knows that you exist and will do relatively little for you, compared to what it asks of you, if you ever fall on hard times.
It is an easier sell to young naive reckless men than it is to men who have more life experience.
Goodguy
8d ago
Nobody cares about that fine distinction for environmentalism, like when Sea Shepherd ships ram whalers or when Last Generation Canada members throw paint on museum pieces. Outsiders recognize that the disparate groups (and non-affiliated individuals) all share a common goal and philosophy, and treat them as a coherent entity. This is as it should be.
Why is it "as it should be" to look at environmentalists using low resolution? Surely there is a significant difference between a scientist studying climate change models who calls for using less fossil fuels, on the one hand, and Ted Kaczynski on the other. And plenty of people make the distinction, indeed it is unusual not to.
Notice that you yourself picked two particularly militant examples of environmentalists.
Even if you mean "nobody cares about that fine distinction for militant environmentalists", that is not true. Most people make a distinction between people who throw paint on museum pieces and Ted Kaczynski, and recognize that not only do their actions have different moral qualities, but they can also in no way be said to be part of the same organization. Indeed, since Kaczynski acted alone, his actions cannot be characterized as being the actions of any environmentalist association whatsoever.
To look at people who share common (or somewhat common) goals and philosophies as belonging to a coherent entity is the type of low resolution thinking that perhaps makes sense in the face of an existential threat, when there is no time to try to use higher resolution and to do so would decrease one's emotional willingness to fight, but even in that kind of a situation it would be just an expedient, not something that is good in itself.
Goodguy
8d ago
Oh, I think those people might be me. I brought it up several times. Yes, it's definitely not the only characteristic. But recent Presidential elections have been so close in the swing states that I feel it would be dangerous for either party, when it comes to their chances of success, to run a candidate who is under about 5'11", unless that candidate is extremely attractive to voters in other ways.
Josh Shaprio is 5'8", which does matter I think. No US president since Carter has been under 5'11". He is also Jewish with a little bit of personal history in Israel, which could bad for him in the current political climate.
I know almost nothing about Andy Beshear, but at least he does seem to be within a typical height range for a US president in the modern era. He is also a gentile straight semi-Southern white man, which matters. Democrats have done well with that kind of combination in modern history and would almost certainly be served well electorally by trying to continue something like it rather than risking a black and/or gay and/or female candidate (Obama is commonly thought of as black and did great electorally, but he is also one of the most charismatic political figures in recent history, and people with that sort of charisma seem to be rare in both the Democratic and Republican parties).
Goodguy
10d ago
I don't think Newsom is personally charismatic either, aside from having the looks of a stereotypical US president from a movie, which Vance doesn't (although unlike Rubio, Vance at 6'2" at least has a height that is within the normal range for a modern US president).
So if it comes down to Newsom vs Vance, their middling levels of personal charisma might cancel each other out and the election will be decided by other factors.
To be fair, I haven't seen much footage of Newsom speaking, so it's possible that I'm missing some clips where he displays significant personal charisma.
Rubio is 5'9". Which is about average male height in the US, but he would look small up on the debate stage next to the 6'3" Gavin Newsom. Newsom is also better-looking. I wonder if maybe that alone would be enough to sink Rubio's prospects if the Republicans do some basic electability research. Vance has many issues but from a pure electability point of view, at least he is 6'2". No US President under 5'11" has been elected since Jimmy Carter.
I don't like it. People like Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump seem vile to me. And Trump never seemed vile to me until his second term, in fact I was one of those people who quite enjoyed how much he pissed off "the libs". And I'm still glad that the Trump movement stopped woke overreach. But I think that at this point the time has come to stop the Trump movement. It really seems to me to be a very seedy sort of movement full of twisted weirdoes, sadists, sociopaths, and almost comically corrupt people. And when I say this, I should probably mention that yes, I think the libs are corrupt too. But these Trump people are something else.
It's one thing to believe that Iran should be contained using violence or to want stronger border control. It's another to unabashedly revel in causing pain and to constantly indulge in vice signalling, as these people do.. They seem to be profoundly psychologically disturbed wannabe authoritarians. The "libs" are wrong about so many things, but they are right about these people's character. Unfortunately, as the libs tend to do, they cried wolf about so many things ("Putin has tapes of Trump getting peed on by a hooker!", blah blah blah...) that they fucked up their ability to message the things they actually were right about.
Anyway, after a lifetime of having never voted for either a Democrat or a Republican in a national election, I am seriously considering voting for the Democrats later this year and in 2028.
As for the war, it's kind of looking right now like it won't even liberate the anti-government Iranians. Every day that passes gives the Iranian government more time to track down and kill anyone whom they suspect of even having ever looked at a policeman funny. So what's the point? Nothing that I care about as a positive. Basically the result so far is to just, potentially, give the America-Israel partnership more breathing room to do whatever they want in the Middle East without pushback.
Goodguy
13d ago
I think traffic accidents and fatal overdoses are pretty common causes of death at music festivals.
Goodguy
14d ago
Altamont didn't have a tremendously large number of deaths for such a large event, but it was violent in a way that Woodstock, from what I've read at least (I like the music of the time period but am not an expert on these festivals), was not.
It was alleged, though disputed, that some bands and/or managers arranged for the Hells Angels to provide security for the performers. It true, it was a very bad idea. The Hells Angels were unpredictable and violent, which should have been known at the time. Hunter Thompson's book about them, which described them as being close to dangerous wild animals despite the author's heavy counterculture sympathies, had already been out for 2 years at that point.
There were multiple reports of Hells Angels getting into violent melees with the crowd even before the murder of Meredith Hunter. A Hells Angel even punched a musician, Marty Balin.
In another incident, Mick Jagger, singer for the Rolling Stones, was punched by an unknown assailant when he arrived at the venue.
To add to the narrative, Rolling Stone magazine, which back then was actually influential among the youth, wrote a story soon after the festival that described it as a disaster.
It's also possible that the fact that the race of Meredith Hunter played a role, given the racial tensions of the time period and the fact that the youth counterculture was generally looked to with hope that it would help to resolve these tensions.
I think that the actual violence of the event combined with the journalistic coverage and the desire for simplistic, broad-brush-stroke narratives ("end of an era!", "counterculture dream turns dark!") to give the event its narrative resonance.
I'm not sure that three people dying is unusual for a supposed attendance of 400,000 people over the course of three days.
The annual death rate for 25-29 year olds in the United States in 2023 was 1.24 per 1000. Source.
((1.24 expected deaths / 1000 people) / 365 days) * 400000 people * 3 days = 4.07671232877 expected deaths.
The actual attendance might have been smaller than 400,000, the average age different, etc. And the math might be simplistic. But this gives an idea of the math, at least.
As for the vaunted stature in the American imagination...
I'm a big fan of the music of that time period and I find that other people who are interested in that time period usually don't put much emphasis on Woodstock. It was just one of many famous music events from back then. Woodstock is more commonly made central by narratives that try to capture the 1960s in a really quick synopsis. It has become an easy stand-in for the 1960s, so if you want to refer to that time period you can just show a couple seconds of Woodstock footage, same as how if you want to really quickly refer to the early 1940s you can just show a couple of seconds of footage of Hitler giving a speech.
I think many of us have seen such history synopses on television. It goes something like this: couple of seconds of Elvis dancing, then JFK assassination footage, then the Beatles landing in the US clip, then a couple of seconds of Woodstock, then some footage of Nixon, then the Sex Pistols doing "Anarchy in the U.K.".
Some of the music performed at Woodstock is really good but I think that most of the musicians who performed at Woodstock played better on other occasions. I think that Hendrix's Woodstock performance is overall not very good. From that show, I like Woodstock Improvisation more than Star Spangled Banner, although it is sloppy.
I think Hendrix was best in the studio. I like his studio Star Spangled Banner much more than the Woodstock one. 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is fantastic.
But the US continued waging the war for 5 years after the Tet Offensive. It still had plenty of time to win the war, and/or to make the South Vietnamese military capable of defending South Vietnam, and it failed. The US did draw down its troop strength after the Tet Offensive, which likely played a role in its failure to win the war. But even 2 years after the offensive, the US troop strength was higher than it had been in 1965.
I do think the Tet Offensive and media coverage played a large role, just not a decisive one.
If the US had used an entirely volunteer military instead of using conscription, the war would still have been very unpopular in leftist circles, but the appeal of the anti-war side would have stayed relatively limited compared to the historical timeline. After all, this was the same country that went on to elect Nixon with 60% of the electoral vote in 1972 over the anti-war McGovern, despite the conscription and the failures to win the war. The hardcore anti-Vietnam-War leftists were a small subset of the US population who loom larger than their actual size because they made a large fraction of their generation's enduring movies, music, and writing — and also because the US defeat adds to the tendency to see them as having been right. It was the draft that gave the antiwawr cause resonant widespread appeal among the youth.
If the US had invaded North Vietnam, and China and the Soviet Union did not send land troops to stop the invasion in response, the US would have suffered heavy casualties but would have almost certainly won the war decisively as a result. The fear of China and the Soviet Union sending land troops into Vietnam, and/or the Soviet Union attacking Western Europe, and/or either using nukes, was the main thing that stopped the US from invading North Vietnam.
Goodguy
16d ago
I don't think the media was the main factor that made the US lose in Vietnam. The main factors were:
- Fear of Soviet and Chinese intervention prevented the US from invading North Vietnam.
- Conscription made the war more than just an abstract political event for the American population. There had been conscription during the Korean War, too, but that war ended quickly enough for conscription to not become a major political problem.
The governments of those countries have no sympathy for Iran. I'm not disputing that, I'm just disputing the idea that Iran started bombing "uninvolved" countries.
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