JFC, it’s difficult to imagine that soulless husk of a human having any sexual feelings at all.

This is the correct answer. And, they’ll do it so that it kicks in only for people younger than them.

There is also a selection bias at play here. I suspect that people who are more susceptible to manipulation are more likely to be religious.

Fighting fascism, together.

I’m so pleased that this keeps happening. Fuck these planes and assholes that fly them and the government that deploys them. Bleed this rotting hump of a nation out, one ridiculously overpriced weapon at a time. As an American, I’m just done being even remotely patriotic at this point.

The only good nazis are dead nazis.

I have them, they are great. Here are a few obvious things I’ve learned that I didn’t appreciate beforehand:

The complexity of the endeavor rises exponentially with the number of kids. That is to say, 3 is a much bigger leap from 2 than 2 was from 1.

They get dramatically more expensive and complicated as they get older. All that exhausting baby activity is the easy part. As you start to figure out how to do it, the rules shift and you have to get learning again.

I never imagined how much of adult life as a parent revolves around the literal management of shit. Between kids, pets, and aging parents, I just never expected to be so preoccupied with the logistics of excrement. I guess I was living in some kind of Disneyland in the before times. You sort of get used to it though. Sort of.

As someone who would probably qualify as one of these anti-American Americans on Lemmy I can say this: A big factor for me is the despair I feel (having genuinely believed the myths for most of my life) as I see the facade falling away. The genuine awfulness and inhumanity of not just our government, and our economy, but also of the culture, the people themselves, is just overwhelming. These forums are one of the outlets I’ve been using for my rage. I can only speak for myself. I’m not a bot, or a Russian actor, or an edgy teen. I’m a disillusioned middle aged American.

How about reigning in Israel and not, like, genociding. That would be nice.

I’m going to start calling it the ‘camera tumor’. Thanks for that.

In one form or another, this is basically the rationalization that warmongers always use to justify their own awfulness. As an American, I’ve been listening to my own country deploy this gem my entire life.

The Al Jazeera report that you link to only claims that Houthis launched missile and drone attacks at a US ship. It makes no claim that they seriously damaged or sunk a US ship. Here is a BBC/MSN report that describes similar things. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c800j14y38xo?xtor=AL-72-[partner]-[microsoft]-[headline]-[news]-[bizdev]-[isapi] what exactly are you claiming is false in the Al Jazeera report? Both reports also describe US actions against Houthis targets, which would be a strange thing to do if the Houthis aren’t in fact doing something (even if it is a very ineffective something).

I’m old enough to remember when 24 hours ago the Biden administration said that a ground assault in Rafah would be crossing its red line. It’s pretty easy to remember because that was about 48 hours after the Biden administration said that just ‘going in’ to Rafah would be crossing its red line.

I hope everyone understands that this entire project is a facade, designed to provide Biden and his administration with a hook on which they can hang claims of deniability without actually meaningfully hampering Israel’s genocide campaign.

“and about just as many view it as a belief in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (72%),”

This, right here, is a big part of the problem. The notion of an ethnostate is antithetical to a democracy. You cannot be both. It’s definitionally impossible. A state practicing some of the mechanics of democracy does not make it a democracy. If the supremacy of one ethnic cohort is a fundamental tenet of your state, there is no amount of ‘liberalism’ or rhetoric that will turn you into a democracy. If you are part of this 72%, I implore you to examine the cognitive dissonance you are practicing. I strongly suspect that many of this 72% have not critically examined the fallacy of people’s claims of Israeli democracy. Of those that have, I suspect that many are intentionally misrepresenting the situation since afterall, actively supporting a violently oppressive ethnostate isn’t a great look.

Edit: spelling

shocked pikachu face

On first read this headline confused me. I read it and wondered why they were claiming Israel had a ceasefire demand.

At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel announced that they were setting up ‘bathing facilities’ for Palestinian refugees at these ‘humanitarian islands’.

A while back, I launched a site that used a stock trading mechanism to rank posted links and content. It was kind of a speculation market. There was a flurry of activity as a community embraced the game aspect of it, even though no actual money was involved. However, I learned that it’s difficult to manage such a system when many clever people are trying to game it. Eventually pulled the plug as I didn’t make enough time to properly grow it. Still think the concept has merit.

As other have said here, this is obviously an attempt to create a foundation of legitimacy for their own invasion of Taiwan. What I don’t understand about diplomacy at this level is this: Why do they care? What I mean is, everyone in this deliberating body knows what they are doing, and everyone observing it knows as well. Furthermore, as a permanent, veto holding, member of the Security Council, China faces no actual oversight from the UN as a whole. So, why bother with the show?