This is the effect of having an authoritarian in charge. The propaganda that gets produced is done to convey a sense of power of the person/party, its popularity, and the scale of the internal and external “enemy threat.”

I think a lot of people have their fingers crossed on this one.

I really think there are two different aspects to the classification of the threat. It’s actually pretty analogous to the Afghanistan War.

First, neither Al Quaeda nor Hamas represent an existential threat to their opponents. The US hasn’t really faced a believable existential threat since the collapse of the USSR, Israel hasn’t really faced one since the 80s. Countries in Eastern Europe face an existential threat from Russia. And so on. Killing 1200 (or 3000) people, no matter how brutally or unjustified or evil it seems, it does not threaten to destroy the state of Israel. It is, of course, now an existential threat to Netanyahu, which is one reason why it’s being pursued with such enthusiasm.

The second aspect builds from the first and questions whether the solution pursued by Israel (and the US) were both efficient (ie proportional to the threat so as not to divert attention and resources from other threats) and effective. They have to be expected to achieve specific and measurable goals and timelines.

The ability to pull off an Oct 7th might have been equally well but more efficiently and effectively with intelligence and commando units, and Israel would have been given free rein by most of the planet to do so.

Hamas never posed an existential threat to Israel.

Well, the suit that overturned his bonus was a single shareholder suit and that one was obviously successful.

I have been surprised there haven’t been more shareholder suits to be honest. They could challenge fiduciary responsibility on the basis of him robbing Peter to pay Paul by raiding Tesla for engineers, not to mention dividing his own time and effort between too many unrelated interests.

There were major protests, though. I participated in ACT UP, and the WTO protest n Seattle. There were anti-Gulf War protests, protests over US actions in Central and South America, and many campus-closing protests. I even took part in one, where we occupied the admin building and shut it down over tuition hike plans.

Why don’t they have cameras on every door that sends an alert and a video of who is going in and out? This seems like a solved problem. They can even do facial recognition on some of them.

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

~Jack Handy

Are they barred from veteran’s day and St. Patrick’s Day parades as well, or does the NPS participate in those? How about 4th of July?

Has this always been the case? If not, who was on the board that made the decision and what is their political affiliation?

In a world where half the electorate thinks a judge must be prejudiced and has no problem with their autocratic leader saying that ethnicity decides whether someone is “fair,” I think these are legitimate followup questions.

We needed a de-trumpification of the government. Anyone appointed by Trump or hired by an appointee should have been dismissed. This is basically what Trump is planning on doing.

Oh, I mean the guy himself. I know two women who knew/worked with him.

I always took Paradise as more funny than creepy because I interpreted it as a parody of stereotyped guy/girl behaviors and agendas rather than advocacy, but the guy himself wasn’t someone you’d particularly want to see your sister dating.

Between the “I have an immune system and I don’t need no mask and covid isn’t real anyway” crowd and the munchausen patients, there’s a lot of people. One reason why “whole body scans” as a diagnostic tool on healthy patients is controversial is that you end up making the patient think they have something that they demand treatment for. In this case, patients will request specific meds or tests based on a marketing campaign specifically designed to sell drugs. Patients don’t need that kind of input, and it’s potentially harmful - not because people want to be sick, but because of the kind of phenomenon that makes WebMD users think they must have cancer.

Seventeen is also easier to fit into lyrics. Dancing Queen by ABBA. Sexy + 17 by the Stray Cats (although the song was about ditching high school classes). At Seventeen by Janis Ian (who was singing about herself at 17). Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf (again about both being high schoolers, but he’s a bit of a creep anyway).

I might be giving my age away here.

This is something that the CIA actively engages in. It’s not quite at the covfefe level of “we meant to get caught,” but they do occasionally put out the word that they like it when they’re perceived as ham-fisted bunglers as it makes it easier to get away with stuff.

That’s pretty much what all of the site aggregators were. I ran a couple of communities on yahoo and some other sites. There were also services like Archie, gopher, and wais, and I am pretty sure my Usenet client had some searching on it (it might have been emacs - I can’t remember anymore). I remember when Google debuted on Stanford.edu/google and realized that everything was about to change.

Syncs can be really weird. I have an account on another instance which constantly runs far behind .world. I’ve made double edits only to have the last one take.

What an unfortunately awful article. Is full of speculation without citation.

A shrinking population with proportional or greater increasing productivity is exactly what you would both expect and want, because otherwise you’re going to hit carrying capacity much, much faster.

I can’t help but find it weird and a little disturbing that people are apparently posting YouTube reaction face posts on science questions.

Soft on crime.

No, because he’s actually quite mad and belongs nowhere near any kind of power. I can see his conspiracy theories appealing to the Q type, but most of them are going to go for Trump. He’s polling this highly because he’s an unknown. As more people start paying attention to who he actually is, he will be the Herman Cain of the race.

The Kids Who Lived.

You’re right, but it depends on how you want to think about it. They’re not necessarily graded on a curve, but with standardized tests you usually have both a history and a design target. They’re intended to produce (for example) a normal curve with a specific mean (eg mean IQ = 100) and they’ll adjust the test year over year to keep within those bounds. In other words, the grades don’t change but the test does.

Curves exist because failing 90% of your class is a really bad look.