Relax: Calm down, chill bro.

you’ll be pleased to know yours is a very reasonable opinion to have and you’re right for having it, too.

“I mean, that must be terrible. Can you imagine what it would feel like to be sucked off through a hole?”

Is it ads?

edit: It is ads.

wut

It’s still an upgrade from the books, sadly.

writes a lot, anyway

I claim the Isle of Wight.

b a n a n a

I only purchased this toothbrush because that was the only way to get the water-resistant Corporate Surveillance Device that I wanted for the bathroom.

why
in
the
name
of
christ

😬

I love Miles’ work. Hes one of the few people of approximately my generation speaking openly and directly about the actual, observed risks involved in AI without hype or drama, and that in a very accessible way.

strategic

It occurs to me upon review that I did not address the point of religion. I do not say that the foundation of israel was irreligious, but rather the continued support by foreign powers of israel is totally secular- Based on the material considerations like that which I pointed out of Suez shipping (extremely underestimated by my interlocutor) and the strategic consideration my interlocutor pointed out of nuclear retaliation.

bruh how you gonna flat admit israel took their country then beef when i say thats fucked up wheres your head

I seem to recall hardliner elements of both plo and israel being very much involved in fucking that up, to the tune of the mass shooting at the cave of the patriarchs, and israeli militants’ assassination of pm rabin, as well as suicide bombings from jihadists and a general feeling among palestinian militant groups that palestine had no real hand in the negotiation feeding a resentment against the proposed peace; however, since the oslo accords did not at all recognize the palestinian state it is emphatically not what I meant by “two state solution.”

remember now?

I didn’t say it was justified, I said this is why people are doing what they’re doing. I believe my exact words were, without looking them up, “This is what they will take when their right to exist is denied.” That isn’t justification- though I understand to them it would be. I’m saying I understand, sympathize, even empathize with other people. You are saying you don’t. You are saying that 77 years is “ancient history” (there are people alive today who can remember back to 1947, you betray the immaturity of your age, and your perfect ignorance of history with that belittling quip) as a way to misrepresent recent history. You are using the words “ancient grudges” to hand-wave the existence of people who are very much alive and suffering today as a footnote to history. The ancient history here, if you want to do that goes back through and past the ottoman empire. The collapse/dissolution of that empire balkanized the region- fuck me You know what, I don’t feel like teaching you history, it’s goddamned exhausting, and anyway you’ll ignore and twist and misunderstand and take out of context and put words in my mouth that I never said, whatever is convenient to your argument, based on the rest of our “conversation” anyway (I’m quite certain I detect the effect of skimming my work in your words, certain marks of a person who has not taken the trouble to understand a person’s position before replying to it). My advice: go read wikipedia on palestine/israel instead of the nothing you got in public school and the less-than-nothing you’re getting from the news.

Last straw my left nut, this is merely the latest in a series of campaigns committed by both sides in this 80 year mutually-retributive open warfare. “Last straw” he says. This “last straw” is just the next straw- the next provoked “justification” for the next wave of seizure and occupation of every other house on the block, by way of outright murder and starvation and any other means necessary (read: slow-roll ethnic cleansing by way of genocide).

As for what the secular and interested nation of israel- the supposed “Land of the Jews”- should do? They should start, if they were actually motivated by the spirit and not by lucre, by opening the Torah and observing the wisdom from Exodus: An eye for an eye means to restrict compensation/retribution to the exact nature of the loss, and I invite you to figure some of the many nuanced ways that could apply here. They could stop pretending they are the sole victims and not-at-all perpetrators. They could find peace with their neighbors, they could stop murdering and harassing and starving and raping and kidnapping and torturing and pulling their land from their cold, dead hands as was, in point of fact, the ultimate intention of the other atrocities, despite so much peaceful rhetoric. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

An excellent first step would be calling a truce. An excellent next step would be deposing the current bloody-minded ruling party. An excellent third step would be to make amends and disburse reparations, starting with the schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure they have destroyed, fourth ceding the gradually encroached (to the point of the article) territory. I’m willing to bet for my own (admittedly useless) part that the peoples of Palestine and israel would settle at this point for the two state solution if it meant a lasting peace- if ever two leading parties were morally sane enough to propose it to each other in good faith and bold enough to resist outside pressures against it, “river to sea” notwithstanding. USA & Co. could still keep its slice of Suez pie, even.

Christ, can you imagine it? Jews and Arabs living side-by-side in peace and harmony, except actually, and that across the entire region?

If it isn’t right, why are you defending it? “It’s always been done this way” is no excuse for continuing to commit an act that you admit isn’t right.

… The short answer is “They have not been allowed to.” The long answer is the paragraph-long metaphor you seem to have missed or skipped over in my other comment. You are pleased to use the devastation and fragmentation and discoordination of a region which used to be connected and prosperous as some sort of gotcha against Palestine’s legitimacy- In all ignorance of the fact israel inflicted that devastation and fragmentation, ensured that the only coordination could be underground, with the necessary help of US dollars. You’d be arguing against your propagandistic position and for Palestinian independence, but that I frankly doubt you are able to see what you wrote here as part of the larger narrative of oppression unless I further spell it out for you. Either that or you read the comparison to native americans, understood it, and unironically agreed, in which case I invite you to do the other thing.

israel was formed on the corpses of the people it murdered in the homes of the displaced to take that spot in the first place. It has a government propped up by foreign support and could not possibly exist without it. That support only continues because of the strategic and material advantage of having a hold on Suez shipping; Obviously the nations which prop up and benefit from this corrupt arrangement recognize it. What is not a recognized nation (except, of course, by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, and me for another one) is that remnant of the ottoman empire, a people with thousands of years of ancestry there, that has seen fit to elect a military organization willing to use terrorist and other guerilla warfare tactics, notoriously effective in holding off a larger and better equipped opponent.

What of the people who already live there, the people who are unquestionably being forced out; what of their right to live in peace and prosperity? What of their rights to defend themselves, their families, their homes, their farms, their peace, their prosperity, defend themselves as israel is so nauseatingly fond of repeating is its right, and that by any means necessary? What of their right to exist? Open war and guerilla war and terrorism- flying planes into skyscrapers: This is what they will take when they are denied the right to exist. Why don’t you answer to me about the rights of Palestinians, and not wax propagandistic about how hard israelis have it ( 🥺 ) trying to manage their apartheid- and genocide-fueled ethnic cleansing. “deal with passports” forsooth.

Too much emphasis on ancestral not enough on homeland. Despite what may have taken place 200 2000 or 20000 years ago to lead to the settled population being what it was when israel got Wished into existence, there was a population settled there. israel doesnt get to say it has a right to defend itself/right to exist when its defense now and existence in the first place is a function of the displacement of that population.

By the logic israel uses, the native Americans had no claim to the land because manifest destiny. They werent using it correctly either, the land is in much better hands now, gestures broadly. Also, those pesky indians were fighting among themselves so often the land changed hands countless times over the centuries and millennia; who’s to say who the rightful owners of the lands really were when the white savior came along and fixed it all up proper? They were wrong to try to defend the land their forefathers had hunted buffalo across, to launch failed wars to retake those lands, to form war councils to lead their people who recommended to commit acts designed to strike terror into the hearts of their oppressors like torture, kidnapping, raping settlers, and sending murderous raiding parties into border towns… Anyway, they couldnt defend it, so what claim can they be said to have had at all?

Now replace native american with palestinian, manifest destiny with zionism, hunted buffalo with farmed dates, war council with hamas, murderous raiding party with O7, and white savior with the 1947 U.N. Palestine Plan. Its just ethnic cleansing by way of genocide in order to take land and increase material wealth. There is no piece of paper that makes the harm done tit for tat for tit for tat going on nigh a century now any the less evil, and no matter how you slice this pie, israel comes out with a greater share of that evil, both for the initial wrong, and for the continued encroachment, coming full circle to the point I was making in my top level comment: Israel was founded by the foreign seizure of already settled lands. Observe in the “1947 U.N. Palestine Plan” UN is the subject and Palestine is quite literally objectified.