It has yet to pass the Senate, and Biden said he would veto it.

Of course, Biden is still swearing to everyone that he is still sending shipments except for the one that he paused because of Rafah, and that he plans to keep doing it. And, his administration conducted an investigation which somehow managed to conclude that they “may have” been committing war crimes but that it’s not clear enough that we would have to stop shipping them weapons or anything which we would be legally obligated to do if they “conclusively” were doing anything criminal.

Fuckin assholes

In general, they get grants of cash from the US which they are required to use to “purchase” from US suppliers more or less any weapons (with few export restrictions). We’re giving them weapons but they still get to pick out what they think they need. This is a pretty good overview which seems like it’s mainly missing:

• The fact that congress authorizes aid, and then the White House is generally responsible for actually sending it. That’s important in cases like the most recent aid package congress passed, which Biden is at least partially simply deciding not to provide, which he is more or less able to do (the “more or less” is complicated and I don’t really understand it).
• A detailed breakdown of what shipments got “paused” and what aid has actually been delivered since then. Presumably, the White House is able to keep the details of this information secret. Currently, Netanyahu is claiming that they’re cutting off a lot of shipments they should be giving, and the White House is claiming that that’s wrong and they’ve been delivering aid as normal (and as far as I know not saying how much that is); it would be nice to know the detail of what’s being sent and who is lying (although I have a theory).

political extremists, tech nerds, privacy enthusiasts, and shitposters

Dude thank god

I miss my old nerd internet. I won’t say you’re wrong for wanting something that isn’t that, but I personally wish it was more that way than it currently is. SDF or mander is honestly a lot closer to how I like the culture and interactions to be, than Lemmy.world. I was super psyched when I came on and there were all these communists and science weirdos.

for the general masses? Lemmy is just not good.

For example, a NBA post on the NBA subreddit can get you thousands of interactions in a couple of hours. An NBA post on here will maybe get you a dozen over the course of a couple of days.

Honestly, when sports started showing up on the main page of Reddit it was confusing and alarming to me. I recognize that I am the weird one here (from the POV of the ordinary person society), but I much prefer just having my nerd stuff and having it be unencumbered by any normal person stuff

I think we actually have exactly the same view of Lemmy and its accurate position in relation to most normal people, just disagreeing over whether that is or isn’t a good thing

I know this whole message is preaching to the choir but:

You guys managed to find like the one time in history that US military ordinance killed civilians that unequivocally wasn’t our fault, when they were attacking a clearly military target under occupation from a clearly malicious invading force

And you are, predictably, complaining like it’s our fault you put the airfield right next to a fucking public beach and then didn’t sound any kind of warning that it was under active bombardment and knocked one of the missiles off its military target and it fell on some people

Pack up

Go home

Bro I’m telling you, you gotta set up your lemmas a little bit and get everything in order before you get to the QED

And anyway Stanislaw Lem did it better

Sir we’ve had some complaints, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave

IDK if I am the clueless one, but I had absolutely no idea what “S’pore” was supposed to mean.

Bloody hell, you are right (well, sort of; apparently it’s complex.) That’s convenient for the map makers, I guess, although best of luck to them in enforcing any of it (and according to that article they’ve sort of clarified that that doesn’t mean they’re actually claiming the sea, as best as I can understand it.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ

I think what they are trying to say is that the emotional experience they have when they look at a sunset is similar to the emotional experience that gives them conviction that there is a God. It’s not a statement of objective fact about the universe and its processes; it’s a statement about their mental and emotional life and how they want to feel inside their own head.

Although, maybe they are saying that no one knows how sunsets work and so therefore a wizard did it. I would hope it is that first thing though.

I know another planet that we should be worrying about terraforming through technology solutions first, though

100% serious

Acting aggresively, but in a carefully crafted way to avoid an escalated response. The message sent internally that the other side restrains themselaee not out of reason, but fear.

That actually might be it. We can’t look to people in our own government / own country like we’re anything other than the boss and everyone knows it, but also, we definitely don’t want to pick a massive fight with another nuclear armed power and our biggest trading partner for literally no reason at all. And so, let’s play this stupid fighter-plane-chicken game with them and spin it at home like we’re out there telling them what’s what.

IDK if I buy it. It sorta makes sense.

It’s hard to square that, though, with actually fucking up the sailors on Filipino ships in a way that seems like it should demand some kind of response. Maybe the orders were to just be pushy in a non-escalational way and things got out of hand on the ground in a way that for-real wasn’t intended?

That “China/Taiwan” is just kinda thrown in there without even an asterisk or anything

(Actually I guess leaving Taiwan out of the legend entirely would have looked like an accident or something, and having a separate color for it would have been a huge deal and they’d have started to get phone calls, and so they just shrugged and put that down and said you know what it’s not a perfect world let’s move on)

But they do this shit with the US too. Their fighter planes play the “I’m not touching you I’m not touching you” game with US aircraft right up until the point it turns into the “oh no I did touch you and now I’m dead and my airplane is falling apart in fiery chunks and your airplane is crippled what an exercise in futility that whole thing was” game.

Like I say, I won’t even say that that didn’t impact US policy in some way similar to what they wanted. I don’t know that it did but I don’t know that it didn’t. Overall my main reaction is just wtf are you guys doing why is your strategy like this.

(I do of course suspect that they will not try to play the firehoses and spear wielding game with the US Navy. Just some similar version of the same type of tactics.)

The Chinese are pursuing a very weird passive aggressive strategy here that I do not at all understand.

“Surely if we spray water at the other boats and run our boats into them and jump on board the opposing ships with poking weapons like some kind of Maori tribesmen the rest of the world will get sick of it and go away and give us what we want i.e. full control of the South China Sea, without us having to actually start a war about it”

I really don’t understand. I can’t even say for sure it is a bad idea, because like I say I just don’t understand, but it seems unlikely that it’s going to produce the impact that they seem like they want it to produce.

Ah, got it.

Yeah sometimes that is the nature of potato love. They live in a world of absolutes and tremendous dangers; they don’t always have time for calm reflection.

I can’t tell you yet. And even if I did, that would just mean you’d become a part of the superposition.

You gotta get the little potato some friends, otherwise they’ll develop mental health issues

You broke the code yes

😢

It is changing slowly but that doesn’t do anything for someone whose child is dying quickly, right now

Part of it is just the news. They would present it VERY differently and in a much more compelling fashion than they present what’s happening in Palestine today. But that’s only part. The average American also cares far more about white people and countries that are “our friends” than they do about people who are neither of those things.