Hegar

100% death tax on all assets over $1m excluding a single house. That my final offer.

There’s no justification for a birth lottery that awards democracy-warping levels of wealth to whoever had the evilest parents.

That’s just completely not true though.

Nothing but his own internal monologue and no interaction with the rest of the world? That’s basically a campaign rally for him. He’d love it.

The only way this gig is ethically justifiable is if the support act is a guillotine.

take as many free shots as he wanted at the heavily restrained and completely innocent man, a perk the military provided to each new recruit. “Now, I’m not entirely sure what this gentleman’s whole deal is. Looks like he could be from the Middle East.

Brutal.

Across time, space and cultures, to be ruled is to be ruled by villains.

That much power fucks with your head, even if a well adjusted person manages to make it to that position, they won’t stay well adjusted for long.

Neuroscience supports this. Giving someone power causes changes in your brain that makes your brain less capable of empathy, closer to the brain of someone born with psychopathy.

https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it

https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy

https://www.livescience.com/1128-mere-thought-money-people-selfish.html

https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/

In parliamentry systems you can dissolve parliament, requiring an election. It’s usually a way to bypass deadlock. Imagine if, when republicans are fucking around with the debt ceiling and pissing off the country, you could threaten to call a snap election and let them answer to voters then and there.

So if this passes it would basically force a national referendum on netanyahu’s leadership.

If gantz is pushing this, probably he thinks he can win. That could mean netanyahu’s many financial and political crimes being looked into again. Maybe.

It could mean more of a focus on getting hostages back, but it might not lead to much change in gaza:

Gantz’ centrism is not equivalent to Western centrism: Natenyahu’s Likud party and other Israeli nationalists have “gone so right-wing that the center in Israel has changed,” a Middle East Institute think tank fellow told Al Jazeera. Previously serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, Gantz has overseen two military offensives in Gaza and labeled several Palestinian NGOs terrorist organizations, indicating it is “unlikely” he would improve the conditions for Palestinians living in Gaza

Thank you this kind of comment is why I come here.

Yeah but presumably the parent in the M1 has a spouse operating a surveillance drone to provide real time fire child correction?

I’ve seen a number of polls that reiterate how strongly youth and democrats oppose israel’s actions and call it genocide. I don’t think it’s an echo chamber effect.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx

This poll from March shows 55/36 disapprove/approve.

Moreover, democrats disapprove at 75% vs 18% approve and independents disapprove at 60% to 29% approve. Sure, republicans approve at 64%, but ain’t no republicans switching to biden over gaza.

Those numbers are brutal for democrats, and getting worse. More obvious genocide from the israelis and feeble lies from biden isn’t going to reverse that trend.

I personally don’t think that fear of assassination is what’s driving biden and the democrats policy on this.

Given that netanyahu and gvir were almost certainly involved in killing yitzhak rabin I’m sure they’re capable, I just think the risk/reward is off. They can affect US policy without the risks inherent in killing an allied head of state.

When the genocide is this obvious, and the ongoing consequences for the democrats and democracy this serious, it really makes me wonder what’s the political calculus behind it.

Is AIPAC really that big of a threat? Is netanyahu that important to our imperial interests in the middle east? Why choose full on putinesque post-truth politics over this?

I’ve never had much faith in the democrats, but I honestly just don’t understand what’s driving such terrible decision making.

The first two claims are not really supportable:

Human beings are the only living things that are truly aware of their own mortality and spend time pondering the meaning of life and death.[24] Awareness of human mortality arose some 150,000 years ago.[25]

The claim that only humans are aware of mortality is from an article about COVID and death anxiety by 3 psychologists, no primatologists, paleontologist or animal behavior specialist. Recently published elephant burials and long documented chimp and corvid mourning behavior could undermine this claim. Although an emotional reaction to death may not imply awareness of one’s own death.

The second claim that mortality awareness is only 150,000 years old is sourced to a 25 year old psychology paper. Our understanding of the human past has radically transformed since then. Sima de los Huesos may show mortuary practice from 400,000+ years ago, Dinaledi chamber may show non-sapiens mortuary practice from 200,000+. And if erectus (2M - 100k y/a) had fire, boats and language or proto-language well mortality awareness doesn’t seem out of the question.

There’s no good reason to think we know when awareness of death arose.

Reading beyond the headline, I kind of agree that she faced a sexist double standard where she suffered electorally for things that wouldn’t have impacted a male candidate as strongly.

Being a slimy, self-entitled political creature is pretty acceptable for a male politician.

Then again she did win the election by 2 percentage points. So as much as I dislike her, it’s probably more of a structural issue than either sexism or candidate quality.

In case anyone missed the reference, this is based on a work found painted on the walls of Fransisco Goya’s dining room after he died. You’ll often hear it called “Saturn Devouring His Son”, but the work was never titled or displayed publicly. There’s really no good reason to believe that the devourer is Chronos/Saturn, that the devouree is even a child, or that either body is male.

I personally like to think of it as Untitled (Dining Room).

I know this is really just pointing out some amusing homonyms for laughs, but languages aren’t really harder or easier to learn. How hard or easy you find a language depends on you, the languages you know and how different the other language is.

It’s common to hear that English is hard because English is the most common second language, so there’s are just more people who’ve tried to learn it and thus more people who’ve struggled.

Ok, I’ll be the first: can someone explain this?

The soldiers are roman so it can’t be a hapsburg chin joke. The jawbone wielder has a prominent jaw himself, which feels like the set up, but if so I’m missing the punchline.