Everything, everywhere all at once.

Best picture winner last year. I have to say: meh.

10,000 children killed so far.

10,000.

But Israel isn’t a terrorist state. Hamas hasn’t killed nearly as many children, but their real problem is PR: when they murder, they do it wrong. If only they learned to call it “accidental” and “defensive,” or maybe justified it by saying “those are the breaks— Dresden, Hiroshima, collateral damage, blah blah”. Then I suppose Israeli war crime apologists would be just fine with it. Too bad.

They need to hire better publicists.

Meanwhile, 10,000 Palestinian children have been murdered by Israel. And counting.

Endless talk of politicians in January. Must be another one of those 4-year media extravaganzas.

Seems easy enough: take one minute, see who the worst candidate is, vote against that candidate, and get back to doing actual work.

The rest is sports-like political hobbyism.

Next week in very Independent New Hampshire, which is an open primary in which non-Republicans can also vote in the GOP primary — 180 Proof

That’s my plan.

There are several ways to “mention” someone: click the leftward pointing arrow under a post; highlight a portion you wish to quote and hit the “quote” button ( which will pop up); or push the “@“ button and type the person’s name.

Any of these methods will work, and they will be alerted to your reply in their “mentions” section.

:up:

Now, at 86, I still do some pull-ups and short hill walking every few days. But I have arthritis all over my body, so I am recently using a cane. I continue minor mathematical explorations. You remember what Sachel said . . . — jgill

Satchel Paige? Something about not looking back…

Anyway, the simple act of walking really has its benefits. I’m seeing that more and more as I get older. Used to laugh about all the walking talk as a child. Now I feel like if I stop, I’ll barely be able to move. Like any skill, it’s something that can get rusty.

I dance lindyhop. — jkop

Never heard of it— thanks for bringing it to my attention!

fats pretty much restricted to judicious amounts of vegetable oil and margarine. — Vera Mont

Not olive oil? I’m surprised.

Jiu jitsu!! — AmadeusD

I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Very trendy now adays so it’s easy to find. Used to do shotokan in college. A good supplement to strength and cardio training, definitely.

I don’t dispute satire.

he’s looking for fraudulent ballots, the ones that were shredded, and so on. That’s entirely within his purview because he is expected to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. — NOS4A2

:rofl:

I try to avoid processed foods and sugar and I eat a lot of greens and drink mainly water. I weigh the same as I did when I was 20. — Tom Storm

Thanks for the reply. This stood out to me in particular. That’s quite an achievement — weighing the same as 20 takes real effort.

I need to lay off the starchy carbs and processed foods even more than I do. I think my main problem is overeating though.

walk a 3-5 miles every day — 180 Proof

I would do that if I had a decent place to walk. My neighborhood is too boring, and I think it would take me too long. I walk with my wife though — maybe 10 minutes. Not enough, so I do HIIT training— maybe 10 minutes worth — and then I feel like I’ve actually pushed myself.

Anyway — your routine is very disciplined. Good for you!

Obviously Trump will appeal straight away — Wayfarer

Right— so where does that go? The NY Supreme Court, ultimately? (Or the equivalent— I think NY has a different setup.)

So Trumps civil fraud trial concluded today. Assuming he’s on the hook for over $300 million— what happens then? He appeals…but he appeals in NY, right? It isn’t going to federal courts.

So he’s likely screwed. But I have a feeling he’ll worm his way out of this somehow.

Trump himself is a narcissist and will say and do anything to stay in power and protect his brand. That’s obvious. But the party he’s chosen to attach himself to won’t go along with everything. They’ve got no souls or spines, so they stick with him because of his large base— but the core element of their agenda is neoliberal, through and through. Not fascism.

Trump was happy to let them (mostly) carry out this agenda, and his rhetoric (mostly) reflects this as well — code words like liberty, freedom, small government, security, law and order, etc. Meanwhile every policy decision helped the wealthiest people and the corporate sector, the most obvious being his one legislative “achievement”: the tax cuts of 2017. He also stacked the regulating agencies with insiders from the industries being regulated — Scott Pruitt heading the EPA the most glaring example, in my view.

So while his rhetoric has become even more extreme, and the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy plans is scary indeed, I don’t think the powers that be really want a civil war or suspending the constitution; they don’t want fascism. Rather, they want a well run system, preferably with even more wealth transferred to them. They very much need the state to subsidize them and bail them out when their profiteering crashes the economy.

I’m not too worried about fascism. A second Trump term will be catastrophic enough, perhaps even worse than fascism.

Belief is connected to knowledge through rationality. — Hallucinogen

Already skipped after this.

It seems im a serious minority but - gross lol — AmadeusD

What’s gross?

What a strange comment.

See How To Write An OP. Issue isn’t topic.

See site guidelines on posts:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines/p1

The lounge is the appropriate place for posts like the one moved.

I wanted to add this for anyone else that was curious about why it never came to fruition. This is from Bev Stohl, Chomsky’s long-time assistant:

The family line is that he’s resting. Let me add that he’s slowly recuperating from a June event following Daniel Ellsberg’s death. My guess is that he exhausted himself answering emails, probably forgot to hydrate, maybe forgot to sleep, walk around, take some deep breaths.

It was precisely June when he was supposed to get to the Forum’s questions. Just bad timing, unfortunately. Norman Finkelstein has said something similar. They’re all being very respectful of his condition, and won’t divulge anything beyond generalities like this.

Of course I very much wish him well.

They’re going to issue a broad ruling stating that he cannot be removed with blah blah blah. It’s foregone. They’ll find some reason — doesn’t matter what the reason.

Let him run and lose again. Fine by me.

Perhaps we are focused too much on Israel. — BC

Of course— this is a thread on that specific topic.

Perhaps, though, not as bad as some other wars carried out to achieve control over other territories and people. — BC

Maybe, sure— what’s your point though?

Trump incited an insurrection. True, he's good at plausible deniability, and through in some qualifications and vague terms. But everyone knows what was happening, to the point where violence was predicted and he was asked repeatedly to stop before January 6th. He's certainly partially responsible.

Rhetoric like "if we don't fight we won't have a country anymore," after months of "the election is being stolen," holding a huge rally the moment the votes were being certified. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what was going to happen. If he hadn't lied about a stolen election, if he hadn't whipped his loyal cult following into a frenzy and scheduled a rally, if he hadn't encouraged people to march to the capitol building, none of it would have happened.

He should have been convicted already. A part of me thinks that it shouldn't really matter that they'll be an uproar if he's convicted. Another part says, "Fuck it -- let him be." If the country wants to re-elect this asshole, it'll just empower a bigger backlash.

Having justification, however, doesn't make the bad behavior good. — Ennui Elucidator

Hamas gives justifications too. So does ISIS. So did the Nazis. According to the United States, the US has only made “blundering efforts to do good,” and is always acting defensively.

This is why apologists love to trot out Dresden or Hiroshima.

Do you see any difference at all between a) a willing perpetrator of genocide who intentionally murders members of a certain group because they are members of that group and b) a soldier in the opposing army who, in attacking that group, accidentally kills civilians of that group. — BitconnectCarlos

When are you going to wake up and understand that this entire dichotomy is nonsense. Propaganda, through and through.

The killing of 8000 children isn’t accidental — they simply don’t care. They don’t care about Palestinian lives. That’s obvious in the rhetoric and the actions.

So ask yourself: what’s worse, someone who murders children and recognizes them as victims for some cause, or someone who murders children for some cause but who sees them as irrelevant statistics?

I’m not in favor of killing children— even in the name of some great cause or defense or good intentions. If you believe it’s all accidental and the intentions are better, that’s on you. In that case, the US invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, were all justified. For that matter, invading Poland was justified— Nazis gave plenty of justification, and of course claimed the best intentions.

There should, at minimum, be a ceasefire.

My choice would have been taken away. — GRWelsh

Right. But when you predicate these actions on bogus beliefs, it justifies it.

If the election was truly stolen — as these clowns believe because Donald Trump said it and because it’s what they want to hear (and also out of spite, since they’ll claim that democrats did the same thing in 2016) — then it makes sense to throw them all out and start again.

But since there wasn’t a scintilla of truth to that claim, as should have been obvious from the beginning, it really was an attempt to steal. That’s what they were doing. Doesn’t matter if they refuse to let go of their silly delusions.

Likewise the insurrection: people were egged on to “stop the steal,” to stop the certification of the stolen election. Wasn’t simply a riot— people were there, on that day, because the electoral college votes were being counted. That too was based on the same zombie lie.

So again: what will it take to rid people of their delusions? Probably nothing. They’ll go on believing it to the grave. They’ll come up with other reasons for saying it’s true. Like with God. So now it’s “they allowed greater access to mail-in voting” and so forth. See, that counts as a steal. Etc.

Most of these people don’t know or care— they just say it because they think they should, and they don’t want the libs to be right.

There are differences, and important ones. Abortion, climate, guns, you name it. But corporate America still dominates both. No labor party or socialist party like other countries, etc.

I think in the long run, climate stories would be #1. The wars and the strikes would be up there.

My propaganda diet is limited to what pops up on my X feed. — NOS4A2

Notice I mentioned Twitter. Which has become a huge cesspool itself. A poor diet indeed.

There is no right or left. It's uniparty all the way down. Trump has single-handedly upset it and its glorious to watch. — NOS4A2

Again, I’m not interested in his personality or that he insults everyone who doesn’t kiss his ass— I’m interested in policy. And when it comes to policy, he’s as much part of the uniparty as anyone. Same rhetoric, same personnel, same legislation.

I just can't be bothered to care about his moral life or what comes out of his mouth. What I oppose is the moral panic created in his name. — NOS4A2

But this can be argued about Biden too. Do you listen to conservative talk radio or read conservative newspapers editorials — to say nothing of cable news, Twitter, Rumble, podcasts, etc. You’d think the fucking world is ending because of some senile figurehead in the White House. So what? Of course it’s overblown, hyperbolic, sensationalized.

Yes, the left does it too. No question. Even if one believes it’s more extreme on the left, why let that blind us to the reality that it’s tribalism all around?

I don’t give a damn about Trump as a personality. I look at his policies and his influence on millions of Americans who take him seriously— and the results of such policies and rhetoric. The record is simply terrible. Biden isn’t far behind.

But the question stands.

Give it a rest already.

Why does it hurt so much to see a dissenting opinion? — NOS4A2

It doesn’t hurt, but as I said earlier, it would be nice if it wasn’t often insane and in such bad faith. You say you “test your intuitions.” Fine— but how about asking why those are your intuitions to begin with.

Why are you defending this con man? Why am I able to admit how much of a lying, corrupt sack of shit Joe Biden is, in agreement with much of what you say — about how the Russian stuff was largely nonsense and didn’t swing the ‘16 election, etc. — fairly obvious things for anyone not too caught up in the tribalism of politics; but you simply cannot admit the equally obvious statements about Donald Trump? Yet you go on pretending to be above it all? Above media propaganda, above groupthink, and so forth. Your relentless defense of this goon undermines your whole brand. It’s just bizarre and pointless. If there are real points to be made, why not make them clearly?

Eh, it’s a new year— figured I’d try to understand it once before mostly ignoring it.

Some regard the lack of approval as a sign of superiority. They understand what others do not. — Fooloso4

Oh there’s definitely that. Goes nicely with the normal victimization that the right are always peddling.

Doesn’t being a laughingstock who gets repeatedly embarrassed get tiresome?

:chin: That’s less a question for you than for the forum. Why do people like this go on? What’s the point?

Let’s move the discussion about political topics, etc., to feedback.

The blood lies on the instigator. — BitconnectCarlos

So Hamas was justified? No thank you. I don’t buy that.

Hamas uses 14-18 year olds as combatants. — BitconnectCarlos

And Israel kills them — of all ages, in fact. Approaching the tens of thousands.

But at least they do it without hatred in their hearts.

:up:

Hamas does it from hatred, sadism. — RogueAI

And Israeli’s killing 8000 children out of love and compassion.

As long as good invisible intentions are there, one can kill with impunity.

Moderators should rise above the fray, don't you think? — RogueAI

I do. Which is why I hold myself to a saint-like status and never lose my temper. Can’t speak for the other derelicts.

He said "boo-hoo" when someone pointed out the deaths of children in the Israel-Gaza thread. Compared to the insults the moderators themselves are tossing around in said thread, I think it's a pretty weak banning — RogueAI

Insults of the same level as

The Israel haters here (esp. the moderators) sure do come across as pricks sometimes. — RogueAI

Of course there is. Scratch a hyperbolist, find a useful idiot. — RogueAI

?

Plenty of leniency on that thread, for everyone. The difference is that you, for example, don’t have a long history of nearly exclusive trolling/negativity.

A quick perusing of his comment history speaks for itself, and anyone can look.

Hmm, just out of curiosity could you point to specific examples? — EricH

Here are just a few from the first page of his comment history:

Correct. It is a sucka play for nabbing baby-raping dimwits — Merkwurdichliebe

Apparently, you'be not been paying attention
— 180 Proof

I only have to hear the lame ass bitching and whining from you Hamas symps to know Hamas is fucked. — Merkwurdichliebe

according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times.

:yawn: Blahblahblah. NYT has no credibility. — Merkwurdichliebe

That is because the climate change doom cult is full of shit. — Merkwurdichliebe

He almost never posted anything substantial or engaged in good faith, even if one was polite. But as mentioned, a response of “boo hoo” to dead children should remove all doubt about the kind of poster he was.

Good decision indeed.

We can each help a little to make it slightly less catastrophic, so inaction is not what I am suggesting, — unenlightened

Okay. I guess I misunderstood “resignation” there.

Why do you imagine the climate can be stabilised at 2°C or 3°C? — unenlightened

I’m going on various trajectories based on business as usual, stated goals, and best-case scenarios. If we’ve “improved” to the point where 4C is no longer seen as probable, then that’s some progress at least. 1.5 is gonzo— I know that. We shouldn’t let that stop us from pushing anyway.

The best estimate of the climate record shows that the last time CO2 levels were at the current level, the global temperature was about 6°C higher — unenlightened

Well that’s terrifying. So what am I missing? I don’t hear 6C being mentioned as a probable scenario much.

No, what I was referencing was your misuse of language in order to compare the "genocide" and "concentration camps" of Nazi Germany to the current day conflict in Israel as if they're literally the same. — Hanover

I can’t speak for Benkei, but I myself do not consider them the same as Nazis or the Holocaust. They are not the same.

As for the appropriateness of “concentration camp,” which many people immediately associate with Nazi concentration camps, I think the following is enlightening:

Currently, he said, there are 11 million people in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip, and that number will increase to 36 million in 50 years. The area between Beer Sheva and the northern tip of Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) has the highest population density in the world. Gaza alone, he said, is already “a huge concentration camp” with 1.3 million Palestinians. Moreover, the land is surrounded on three sides by deserts. Palestinians need more land and Israel can ill-afford to cede it. The solution, he argued, lies in the Sinai desert.

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/

This statement was made by Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council. He’s no Palestinian sympathizer, either. Is his description wrong?