There’s been a lot of heated commentary on this subject, and some genuinely good analysis https://digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/israels-strategic-cul-de-sac

I thought this was helpful and insightful, so sharing it here

Now you have ruined three lives forever

Yeah this is the point where I’m really glad other people having kids is not his decision to make. I’m high-functioning enough to pass for neurotypical, but my sense of injustice at this is amped beyond deep-fat-fry, on to ‘hot as the sun at its core’

Isn’t a senate rules change a straight 50?

To do it, you need cloture and that takes 60

Eventually you have to stop letting your enemy make the rules, and defend yourself.

Well, it looks to me like both sides are convinced that unless they punish the other side, the other side will keep on doing what they’ve been doing. Acting on that belief only provides evidence for the other side for the case that the other will stop at nothing but the other’s extinction, that the only rational course of action is yet more offensive action until the other side finally capitulates- …which seems unlikely to ever happen so long as Palestine remains the accepted battlefield for the proxy war that this conflict is.

Yes, Hamas commits war crimes by using civilian infra Yes, Israel commits war crimes by bombing it The context of this exchange of atrocities is… the occupation of Gaza, which meets too many of the measures of a genocide. At this point, neither Israel nor Hamas are defending themselves, they’re cooperating in the genocide of Palestinians The broader context of that is that Israel:Palestine is a proxy conflict between their respective allies, who are just fine watching Palestine burn

Unfortunately changing the rules takes more votes than the Dems have; they’re still stuck using the same rules package McConnell left

Yeah this isn’t just about Tuberville wanting concessions to get the military to stop protecting female service members from state laws against abortion- it’s also a fine pretext to hold open a raft of leadership positions to be filled with political appointees by the next GOP administration

So if it’s a total blockade now, what was it before? (hint: it was also a blockade then, has been since 2007)

It’s saddening to see Israel’s military (which is not Israel) attack civilians and civilian infrastructure in retaliation for Hamas (which is not Palestine) having attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure- this is all a shit-show of punishing the innocent to get the other side to back down and it will never end.

An asshole in a truck doesn’t mean they necessarily will drive their truck down the sidewalk like what is common with assholes on two wheels.

Not to defend irresponsible scooter use, but the ‘but scooters are more commonly a hazard to pedestrians’ argument could (and arguably should) be expanded to include trucks vs. cyclists.

I don’t always have bad interactions with motorists, but when I do it’s almost always some guy in a truck that feels entitled to drift over into the bike lane while I’m in it, or when there isn’t a bike lane, to overtake dangerously- if I have one thing I feel threatened by when I ride my bike, it’s not scooters, it’s badly-behaving motorists but mostly men in trucks.

If we’re going to use the ‘I feel threatened by scooters when I am a pedestrian’ measure to justify regulating them, what if I feel threatened by big truck drivers when I am a cyclist? Yeah this all ultimately boils down to inadequate infra so not everyone has a safe or appropriate place to be, and these are all real problems- it doesn’t make sense to me to decide one of them ought not to be addressed.

Cars are not allowed to

They’re not supposed to do a lot of things, and yet they do all of those things. They speed, they overtake dangerously, they kill pedestrians and cyclists, they kill or injure other motorists.

“But there’s a rule against it” doesn’t resolve problems like all the pedestrian and cycling deaths that we seem to accept as a needful sacrifice to keep bad transport infra and as-is. There are also rules against scooters operating dangerously. I’m not sure why bigger, heavier, more-powerful vehicles ought not to be subject to similar kinds of controls scooters are

Drivers can’t just yeet themselves across the pavement for no reason.

They shouldn’t, but they do.

As it stands the GOP seem unlikely to be able to elect a speaker. Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speaker in case of emergency, so upon McCarthy’s ouster rep. Patrick McHenry became speaker pro tempore. Speakers pro tempore have only the authority to gavel sessions in and out, and to conduct votes for a new speaker.

Basically McHenry’s first act with the gavel was to order Pelosi out of her offices. What an asshole

If they do and don’t elect a Republican to replace him, and if they expel Santos and his replacement in the special election isn’t a republican, there goes the GOP majority

Odds of the house GOP giving up their majority/control are exceedingly low. If there’s one thing they’ll prioritize, it’s keeping their own power

I kind of wish it was at least normative to groom your successor and bow out if you’re a ground-breaking leader as you advance in age

I especially wish that was the sort of thing had been the case with (for example) RBG because let’s face it, it really hurt us for her seat to go to ACB

Well, there’s this, and this to say you’re right. Had the minimum wage tracked in line with production, it would be ~$26 today. If it had tracked in line with inflation, it would probably be closer to $21.45.

That it’s been flatlined for so long means people working for minimum wage have been getting steady pay cuts for 50 years.

you can go to the bulk section

Yeah. I got a bunch of resealable/airtight bulk containers and will probably never buy spices in those little 2oz shaker-jars again. My pantry is a small store by itself now, it feels better to get like a pound of a spice for $7 than it does to buy 2 ounces at a time for $7- and all those trips I don’t have to make to get a spice I just ran out of is totally worth it- my restocking trip is… from kitchen to pantry, takes seconds.

only some localised pumping for certain elevated locations.

Sounds like this could be feasible for coastal places that are water-thirsty then? (I mean if, for example, L.A. was self-sufficient (or close to it) on water, that would mean quite a lot for its upstream/uphill neighbors). Today L.A. draws from local groundwater, canals from inland, and the Colorado River Aqueduct- and everyone that also depends on those has to make allowances for LA.

This sounds fantastic on its face, but I seem to keep on hearing about how desalination will solve all kinds of problems and we still have this particular problem.

The missing piece, it seems, is the will for it to be used as infra at scale. Meanwhile selling bottled water taken for free from public lands for several dollars a liter in single-use bottles remains a multi-billion dollar industry. (an industry, I might add, that is aggressive about lobbying to protect its interests)

Trump Putin wants a shut down.

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The Military doesn’t uniformly vote right- it’s just the senior/ranking/whiter folks that tend to do that. The noncoms (who tend to be young, brown) tend to vote in line with their civilian cohorts.

In other words, the military are politically representative of/in line with their civilian peers, politically

Several injured after UAW strikers hit by vehicle Motorist hit-and-run striking workers with vehicle, causing injuries

fixed it