Notions like “the best defence is offence” and a preemptive/preventive war have existed for a long time, to be fair. It’s just that this isn’t the first time Israel or the US have pulled that card and it never worked. Hezbollah was founded the first time Israel invaded Lebanon ffs.

Even if it did work in this case, it would be short-sighted, as the injustice in Palestine would continue and it’s just a matter of time before things blow up again. “No justice, no peace” and all that.

Once again, that’s not what’s being said. She gets reprimanded in those cases.

Sometimes, there doesn’t appear to be any thought involved at all [in her outbursts of “dysregulation”], and when Margo reminds our daughter that it’s not okay to hit like that (“like that” meaning without consent), she looks genuinely startled, as if she has forgotten that we’ve ever talked about any of this. We do our best to respond calmly, to remind her that she has to ask before she hits. She knows that she can always get her boxing gloves and hit her bag if she needs to let off energy. We also model this for her by practicing martial arts in front of her, and demonstrating how we request and receive consent in that context.

That is not what’s going on. They teach her that violence is allowed only in rare cases, and not recklessly or disproportionately. Read the article, please.

As a young boy with bullies, being picked on, [Nic, the daughter’s father] was taught not to use martial arts until it was absolutely necessary. If an older kid was being physical with other kids and attempted to do so with him, he was able to respond appropriately and not preemptively. “Right time, right action,” Nic says. He saw situations where people around him got into conflict and reacted early with violence, and then they’d just end up fighting. Because even as a child, he knew where those boundaries were—the boundaries between circling and testing conflict, and outright physical aggression—and he was able to verbally deescalate confrontation. Because he wasn’t in a state of fear, he thinks, he was able to maintain a thoughtful process about situations as they unfolded.

With children, consent is a practice—they are literally practicing it, testing the boundaries of what happens when they violate it, checking to make sure it is reciprocal, feeling for all the edges. Sometimes, our kid hits Margo outside the space of permissioned rough play, with all the wild vigor of a still-forming human who cannot always control her urges, who occasionally wants to see what will happen if she just lets her body loose. She screws her face up and swings her arm around to deliver slaps, her tiny body moving so fast that it is difficult to grab hold of her wrists to stop her, like the gentle-parenting gurus Margo favors tend to recommend. This isn’t cruelty or anger, but dysregulation. Sometimes, there doesn’t appear to be any thought involved at all, and when Margo reminds our daughter that it’s not okay to hit like that (“like that” meaning without consent), she looks genuinely startled, as if she has forgotten that we’ve ever talked about any of this. We do our best to respond calmly, to remind her that she has to ask before she hits. She knows that she can always get her boxing gloves and hit her bag if she needs to let off energy. We also model this for her by practicing martial arts in front of her, and demonstrating how we request and receive consent in that context.

She does have boxing gloves, coincidentally, but only for hitting a punching bag “if she needs to let off energy”.

In his essay on Stalinism Koba the Dread, Martin Amis proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov’s childhood (though Nabokov states in his afterword that he “[detests] symbols and allegories”).

The paragraph is titled “Sounds Familiar” for crying out loud

Of course, the obligatory China mention. “Digital totalitarianism”.

Hold up, you are the same person that went gushing about thighs beneath a previous comment of mine…

…

They’re picturing a depressed person as a nihilistic killjoy that doesn’t want to do anything and lives without a purpose, I’m assuming.

Just want an excuse to post this

China built an extensive high-speed rail network. But it consistently loses money.

Literally a week ago (China State Railway Group includes high-speed rail as well):

Source: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3276871/chinas-railway-operator-brings-gravy-train-posting-profits-and-lowering-debt-ratios

Also, companies like Amazon and Uber made huge losses for YEARS, so they could increase market share and eventually use their size to incur massive profits later.

I didn’t know that. That makes this train a little less absurd, at least.

It’s just branding, because it’s a shuttle service between a mainline stop in a nearby village and their Gigafactory outside Berlin.

The best part is that this train isn’t made by Tesla, it’s just them leasing battery trains from Siemens, and they don’t even operate them:

Tesla plans to switch to operating battery-electric trains from the Mireo Smart family, manufactured by Siemens, replacing diesel trains currently transporting employees to their factory near Berlin.

[…]

The trains will be leased from the newly established leasing company, Smart Train Lease, founded by Siemens in early 2024. The operation of the trains will continue to be managed by the passenger transport operator Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB).

Source: https://www.railway.supply/en/tesla-is-transitioning-to-environmentally-friendly-trains/

In 1967, Astroboy [sic], the Japanese animation and comic book icon, died protecting a North Vietnamese village from American bombers.

Throughout the postwar period, progressive artists, directors, and authors in many countries, not least the United States, have represented the US in critical ways. Peter Katzenstein has described representations which criticize the United States for failing to live up to its often lofty human rights rhetoric, as “liberal anti-Americanism”.

While opposed to American wars and other international actions, it must be asked, however, if “anti-American” is the best label for categorizing such writing. In Japan, critical commentary has often been combined with deep reflection on Japan’s own human rights record, past and present. This type of discourse, at its best, seeks a universal standard from which the mass killing of civilians and other forms of violence can be condemned.

In Astroboy [sic], Tezuka’s critique of the American practice of indiscriminate bombing is part of his life-long condemnation of militarism and organized violence, which included probing looks at Japan’s war record. Criticizing American atrocities in this way is quite distinct from using the US as a convenient target to reify Japanese nationalist images. For Tezuka, the critique of US destruction of Vietnam was part and parcel of his dissection of Japan’s war crimes.

Japanese popular culture, however, also sees the contextless use of anti-Americanism and vague but nonetheless meaningful images that glorify Japan`s 20th century wars.

Source: https://apjjf.org/matthew-penney/3116/article

It isn’t woke

Oh shit, I was born in 2003!

I watched this series as it was streamed for the anime club in a communist Discord server I’m in.

whataboutism

See my other comment here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5333660

They added a general disclaimer that some dialogue is inappropriate for modern times and not representative of Capcom’s current values. Some examples, courtesy of the ESRB:

The game contains some suggestive material in the dialogue (e.g., “Stop peeking! You Pervert”; "Her measurements are 33,22,33”; “You missed out on seeing [her] naked.”).

There’s nothing visual going on, it’s just “spicy” dialogue, but I support their decision to add a disclaimer. But merely acknowledging this is too much for these people…

Ranked-choice voting probably wouldn’t do much. Australia has ranked-choice voting, and their political landscape isn’t much different from the UK or Canada, with two status quo parties dominating everything (Labour and Liberal+National), only now you have smaller parties and independents they have to deal with sometimes.

Maybe that’s because it still has single-member constituencies, which really hurt electoral diversity. The House uses single-member constituencies, and only 12 percent of seats belong to third parties. Meanwhile the Australian Senate also uses ranked-choice voting, but with the nationwide vote share for seat allocation , and there third parties have 30% of seats, with mainly the Green Party benefitting.