Replay of Mass Effect. I had to cheat, though, because I forgot that the Mako is mandatory to finish the Ilos level. I had to use a cheat code to spawn it just before the end. So many people have made this mistake and you can’t go back for the Mako if you left it behind, so you are soft-locked out of the ending if you don’t re-spawn it. You’d think they’d have fixed that in the Legendary Edition, but no.

Margaret Atwood uses the term “speculative fiction”, I think partly to get at the difference you are describing. But also partly because she doesn’t think it needs to be “science-y”.

Recency bias. Also anti-semitism. I don’t mean that in the sense that any criticism of Israel is necessarily or logically anti-semitic. I mean it in the historical sense. Any time Western societies starts hating on Jews, we really, really need to reflect hard on why.

I know, we all think we are objective enough to separate the Jewish identity from the Israeli identity, but I’m not so sure. Jews are definitely not so sure. It would be interesting to see a study on the correlation between having general anti-semitic views and having negative opinions about Israel.

Haha, yes, I was being cheeky. :)

DCS. Easy peasy.

Best response. Almost everyone alive has a net negative impact on the environment. Maybe that one Indian guy who planted a whole forest by himself gets a pass. We can try to be less negatively impactful depending on our inclinations, resources, and other interests and priorities. Some people may choose vegetarianism, some might buy an electric car or install some solar panels, some might organize politically for a new policy. Some might spend their altruism improving social conditions rather than focusing on the environment. But being ever so slightly less of a negative impact on the environment than your neighbour who has a slightly different set of priorities is hardly a reason to feel morally superior.

In fact, you are describing what most of the IDF operation has been. The most dramatic video makes the news. But look at the numbers instead of the emotional propaganda.

2.3 million people in Gaza. Almost 5 months of modern war in one of the mostly densely packed places on earth. 32,500 Palestinian deaths, including Hamas militants since the Hamas government doesn’t count civilians and militants separately. That is 1.4% of the population. It is obvious that the IDF isn’t just mowing down civilians or bombing them indiscrimately. All deaths are bad, yes, but 1.4% deaths is hardly a program of indiscrimate civilian annihilation. Should it be fewer? Sure, I’ll give you that. But do you have the expertise to judge whether 1.4% mortality is good or bad, given the mission to root out Hamas? What should it be, realistically? How the hell would a couple of keyboard warriors like us know? Most people are just reacting to the tragedy, not really thinking about the logistics of carrying out the IDF mission. And make no mistake: murderous groups like Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Houthis, and Iran are a menace to be destroyed. They are the enemy of civilization and have vowed to eradicate Israel and the Jews from the river to the sea. If the militants hide among the population, it will always cost civilian casualties to root them out. There could be fewer with even more restraint from the military, but collateral damage will never be zero as long as militants use human shields.

I guess the civilians could out the militants themselves, no? Then the IDF could take out the militants with fewer civilian casualties.

It’s easy to criticize from your armchair, but what is your solution to the ancient problem of militants who commit heinous acts and then hide among the civilian population? If you don’t have a realistic alternative, then complaining about civilian casualties is just virtue signaling. Lots of people on here have obviously never had to make a hard call to accomplish a mission. The IDF is using conventional military and siege tactics, while Hamas is using human shields and terrorist tactics. Civilians lose either way. That’s war. At the end of the day, however, I would rather see Israel win, not Hamas.

Also, when people say “but what about the children”, it sounds just as disingenuous as when conservatives say it. You should remember that Hamas and their ilk are not your friends, nor are they liberal or progressive or Marxist. They are brainwashed religious zealots who would happily torture and kill you if they could.

You really went there? Ouch. Get help.

Nope. As I said in my other comment, cutting off aid to Gaza in order to starve out the militants hiding in the civilian population is a military operation that is at least plausibly justifiable. And I acknowledge the argument that Israel has taken it too far.

But what is your justification for raping people? What sort of military operation is that, exactly?

My point is that bombing a building that you believe contains soldiers sometimes also causes civilian deaths. We can debate whether sufficient care was taken, but the justification is that the army believes that enemy soldiers were present. Same with cutting off aid shipments. We can debate whether Israel has gone too far in restricting humanitarian aid, but the justification is that Israel doesn’t want supplies diverted for use by Hamas. What exactly is the justification for raping people?

That’s bullshit. There are many news articles literally every single day about the civilians killed in Gaza. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, you have people still denying that Hamas sexually tortured women captured on October 7. Sorry it doesn’t fit your narrative.

In my opinion, there is a huge difference between civilian collateral damage during a military operation and the use of rape as a weapon of war. We xan argue about how much force Israel is using and whether X amount of collateral damage is acceptable. But gratuitously raping people has no legitimate purpose, military or otherwise. It serves to sow terror and incite retaliation, which is why Hamas did it.

I’ve never seen that diagram before. I like it.

I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are “far left”. Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren’t really “far left”. Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them “far right”. Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!

No.

I’m not the one that made the strange claim and I’m not your history professor. But if I was, I think you’d be struggling on the midterm right now.

WTF? Dude, time to go back to school and take some history courses. You literally made me laugh out loud.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are trying to say. How are Israel, Canada and America different from Britain and China? And how do the Irish fit into it?

they’re only a nation because that isn’t their land other people lived there first.

That is true of every nation. Literally everyone lives on land that was occupied by some other tribe in the past. The really ironic thing about saying that the Palestinians were there “first” is that the UN used precisely that originalist doctrine to justify creating Israel for the Jews in the first place!

It’s probably true that Netanyahu funded Hamas for cynical reasons. The Israeli right-wing coalition definitely needs to go. But you can’t justify Hamas terrorism againsr civilians because the Palestinian people are angry and oppressed. Hamas has agency. They aren’t some inexorable force of history. They choose to be terrorists. Hamas was already a radical terrorist organization in its own right, and was duly elected by the people of Gaza as such. Fuck those raping terrorists.

All this back-and-forth revenge is, of course, just a vicious cycle and shouldn’t continue. But I am a little tired of this faulty reasoning that Israel is the bad guy just because they are more powerful. Palestinians and Israelis have both done things to provoke violence and both sides have, at various times, rejected peace and compromise. But Hamas is unambiguously a terrorist group that stokes division and whose sole purpose is to eliminate Israel. Hamas is a barrier to peace and will get no sympathy from me.