WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MOTHER SCHRODINGER!?

It’s a trap hexbears, singer’s last name is Pinkerton.

If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.

From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…

Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.

Interesting stuff, to be sure.

In the US, there are positive and negative stereotypes, too. German efficiency and Japanese perfectionism and perseverance are among them. Jewish intelligence and commitment to education, too. These things have a basis in reality, of course, but they shouldn’t be mistaken for reality itself. It seems to me these things appearing in your textbooks were probably attempts by your own government to get its people to emulate what it sees as positive traits in other cultures, rather than an attempt by foreign adversaries to paint Chinese people as inferior. Of course, when the message was a little too unclear or negative as in the “toxic textbooks” incident, your government deflected blame.

Well, yes, I suppose, and that’s why I said all the stuff I imagine you must have read before you got to that part, and the thing I said right after that, too.

I appreciate you adding context to why some Jewish students feel unsafe with the discourse going on at the moment.

I feel like a dick talking about it with what’s going on, but it’s still important. And to be clear, we Jews who are inculcated with Zionism and the generational trauma of the Holocaust from a young age have to zealously interrogate our unconscious fears and biases. The protests provide the perfect opportunity to confront it head on if you can swallow your pride and just listen. My Arab & Muslim friends are some of the most thoughtful people I know, with strong opinions and moral convictions that come right from the deepest parts of their being. I feel as at home with them as I did in the Synagogue growing up, and I have no doubt if I were to attend a peace protest that I would find many more like them. They’re an absolute gift; I was never a supporter of Israel, but their friendship has thrown the whole thing into even sharper focus since October 7th. I hope one day the Zionists can be defeated, and from the river to the sea, all good people will finally be free.

Full disclosure, I am Jewish myself, and sorry for the book… try not to knee-jerk react to it.

I hate to partake in this genetic essentialism garbage, but Ashkenazis by and large share their paternal heritage with Sephardic Jews and other Semites, although that Semitic heritage has become somewhat diluted over time by converts in the maternal line and their descendants. My point in saying that is not to say that Zionists have any legitimate claim to Palestine - they absolutely don’t. It’s just “Ashkenazi Jews aren’t Semites” is a highly debatable and fraught claim that has the potential to lead one down a rabbit hole into actual racism, and incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with the crimes of Zionism. When I hear that implication, my mind is drawn to the adoption by antisemites (most recently Black Hebrew Israelites) of the now disproven myth that the original Semitic Jews died out and were replaced by Khazars.

I’m stopping short of calling what you said, specifically, antisemitism, but in another context a similar statement might be called a dog whistle. People can say these things unintentionally when they just don’t understand the implications. This kind of reckless use of language and ideas is at least part of why we have Jewish students on college campuses claiming they don’t feel safe. We Jews have grown up being implicitly taught to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to rising intolerance, and yes in a lot of cases that has resulted in a massive blind spot for our own intolerance, but it doesn’t mean we should ignore warning signs. Of course, as a Jew, and like you, I often scoff when I hear claims of antisemitism, and in fact I get angry about them when they conflate Jewishness with Israel & Zionism, which ironically IS antisemitism.

Now I mentioned the Khazar myth and Jewish students who don’t feel safe. The issue here is that they lack the self awareness to say, “maybe my hangups about certain things people say are a product of my own upbringing and sensitivities, rather than any intentional antisemitism on their part.” On the other hand, when people talk about Jews or Jew-adjacent issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they should also have the self awareness to ask themselves “am I contributing to a climate that lets actual antisemitism fly under the radar and should I be more careful about the things I say?”

In any case, flinging accusations back and forth is unproductive. If my fellow Jews feel threatened by protestors and their words, I would recommend they approach those protestors with humility, and listen to their grievances before making assumptions about their intentions. Which is funny, because here I am Jew-splaining in response to a flippant remark in an internet comment section, but the reason is I just desperately want people to understand each other (and themselves) better.

Without even reading it.

Why are you here, Oklahoma man?

Not the guy you’re responding to, but Discovery and Picard are awful entirely on their own merits; so bad, in fact, that it took me four years to recover enough to try Strange New Worlds, which was great by the way. Lower Decks and Prodigy aren’t really for me, but I’ve caught enough of them to know they’re quality entertainment, too.

I have to wonder if motivations remain the same past a certain point in a species’ development. Our expansionism on earth and in our solar system is driven by our need for resources, which is driven by our population growth, which is driven by the basest of biological instincts. If we become largely non-biological and functionally immortal, is the desire to procreate still there? It’s really an extension of what you said, but maybe that “turn inward” is not only a question of feasibility, but also maybe intelligent life just becomes satisfied at some point, a kind of cybernetic nirvana.

Well, two legs, and attached to the left leg is part of its tail hoop, which it uses to strangle its prey. What looks like a foot is actually used to gather the excess length of tail and tighten the hoop, and also assists in gripping the prey.

Yeah, Traffic Lights Enhancement helped a ton in high volume intersections. It doesn’t have the full signal timing or lane assignment like TM:PE did, but you can change to “split phasing” which just makes each leg of the intersection take turns, and you can add a “pedestrian only phase” and there’s some basic lane assignment but it only does U-turn, left, right, straight and it might not do what you expect depending on the angle of the roads. I looked on Discord, and it sounds like the dev is planning on implementing the fine-grained controls that TM:PE had, though.

I managed to get some people walking through the Notre Dame landmark by connecting the building’s invisible paths to the regular paths that I built surrounding the building, it’s a little finicky though.

I think there was already a mod to disable the traffic scaling, not sure if it’s in Paradox Mods yet. There’s one called Traffic Lights Enhancement that lets you control signal phasing and lane assignment a bit, but I know that one’s not on Paradox Mods yet, and it’s not fully fleshed out yet.

The parks should have connected path networks and I imagine you would see people using them if you connected them to a broader path network. The issue is why would anyone use the park paths when they don’t go anywhere? Connecting them might not be as simple as placing a path, though. You might have to enable devmode to play with the invisible paths.

You beat me to it, but I’ll also add this other obligatory link.

To be fair, both bikes and fences are made of pipes. What else is made of pipes?

Pipe bombs.

I just started my switch to Linux and the only things that don’t work out of the box on my brand new Lenovo laptop are things that have no bearing on the actual use of the device. And frankly, spending hours fiddling to make things work is much more satisfying than spending hours trying to figure out how to stop Microsoft spying on me.

Well, if each universe itself is infinite, then there are infinite planets, meaning the number of planets that are not earth is infinite. So, if there are infinite universes that are, themselves, infinite, then the infinity of universes that do not contain earth is infinitely larger than the infinity of universes that do.