Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

I generally recoil from comparing biden to putin but this really requires russian levels of post-truth politics.

Israel is committing war crimes like trump commits all his crimes - openly, in public and shielded by US elites.

But Hamas won, they completely control the ‘unity’ government and Fatah have vastly less power. If divide and conquer was the goal Netanyahu would have been funneling resources to Fatah and not Hamas. But he has consistently empowered Hamas because the international community can’t accept a Hamas-led state.

That ended over 15 years ago.

I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?

Yeah, I’ve been presuming that’s a significant part of it. That and the importance of a dependent and dependable ally to help anchor US security architecture in a vital region. Israel needs US imperial presence in the region. Saudi just benefits from it.

US support for Israel continuing the current conflict or US support for Israel in general? If really forced into it, maybe the Democrats can withdraw their blessing for the current conflict, but I don’t see how they could end support for Israel. If Putin wins the US election who knows what could happen but short of that Israel is just too important to the US empire and they know it. I mostly believe the official line from Washington that they don’t have that much leverage against Israel - in the sense that Bibi&co have enough counter levers to make acting against them more costly than it’s worth for the Democrats.

Hence the bullshit antisemitism law, the brutalizing of campus protests, etc. Democrats are even willing to drive down turn out among their base in one of the most important elections in US history over this - I just don’t see them doing that if they had a better card to play.

I doubt it will change even if the US withdraws support, but I’m a cynical depressive type.

Our fundamentally inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people led to October 7.

There are only two ways to prevent it happening again. We could stop the unconscionable deprivations we inflict on the Palestinian people or we could speed up the genocide we’ve been engaged in.

No surprises that the government compromised of war criminals and people the Israeli courts have deemed to be terrorists are going for the later. The far right are in charge and they’re pretty open that this is the goal.

It’s not divide and conquer, that implies keeping multiple groups at parity and fighting each other. Israel intentionally kept the crazies in charge to undermine the viability of a Palestinian state.

the operation is highly organised, technically savvy

Of course an operation this sophisticated targets people looking to buying luxury brands for cheap, that sounds like an ideal mark.

I personally believe that preserving a false and misleading picture of reality designed to trumpet a deranged cult that is working to make the world objectively worse for everyone including themselves is not acceptable.

I would say, “Look mum I love you more than anything in the world but preserving some of these movies crosses an ethical line for me.”

Of course I grew up in a house of atheist jewish academics, so making and justifying personal ethical stances that contravene wider group stances is expected behavior in my family. And we take document preservation fairly seriously.

That code is to computer porn as the Hunt the Wumpus is to computer games.

Boeing is an important part of our military industrial base and thus an important part of the broader structure of US power.

That’s why they’re allowed to kill whistleblowers without repercussion.

“Because” often doesn’t make sense in the real world where anything that happens is the sum total of multiple factors. Especially a trend as broad as enshitification.

Being publicly traded seems like a contributing factor, but a sole owner can still enshitify through greed or incompetence.

I would guess that market consolidation and low competition are more of a factor.

Think of them as 2 methods for determining policy

They’re not though.

Democracy is a strategy some states use to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Science is a method for producing knowledge.

Policy is determined by the financial interests of our elites, our global imperial interests, and the form of our bureaucratic institutions.

Democracy, science and policy are three very distinct domains.

Civilization is one of those great words (like Innovation) where if you’re using it, you’re definitely using it wrong.

When you say civilization, do you mean: The State, Justified Violence, Official Oppression, Bureaucracy, A Standing Army, Cultures you Agree with, or just Table Manners?

if politicians would grow a backbone, most of the problems we have would be solved

Politicians aren’t scared to do what’s right. Their job is to act in the interest of their fellow elites. The most successful at empowering their fellows are given more power. Solving society’s problems isn’t remotely on the agenda.

If anything, we want more cowardly and timid elites. Politicians with a backbone are just more dangerous predators.

For those who are truly into etiquette, we understand that it is a gift we give to others and hope they will choose to return in kind.

What well-wrought words!

I feel like there’s a picture of etiquette where it’s always stuffy and exists only to reinforce unjust hierarchies. Etiquette as a gift given freely with hope but no expectation of return is a great alternate model.

I love this comment so much, but it feels hypocritical for a supporter of Canadian cricket to be lecturing people about doing it wrong.