This has been my guess from the beginning, the only logical final objective solution was annexation. If you’re gonna drive everyone living there out and level the landscape it’s obvious you don’t intend for the original people to come back. I said this back in the beginning of November, come 2025 Gaza will just be a normal annexed portion of Israel.

Barak replied “It’s already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa,” which was used as a “command post” for Hamas and as a “junction of several tunnels”

“I don’t know to say to what extent it is a ‘major.’ It’s probably not the only…command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places.”

…

Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, responded, “decades ago, we were running the place, so we helped them.” The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.

“It was many decades ago…that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds.”

But Is he a good boss and is he a good person?

Does anyone actually care what New Zealand thinks? If New Zealand cares so much they can start taking more people in. From what I understand New Zealand is one of the few countries that takes more quota refugees than asylum seekers. That means they take in less asylum seekers than the UN mandated quota of refugees. The UN quota is 1500 per year so their total intake per year is less than 3000 people.

I wouldn’t say New Zealand is xenophobic, but they are extremely restrictive on immigration, asylum seekers, and refugees. I play a lot of Path of Exile which is based out of New Zealand and they’ve stated that to get a job there you have to move to New Zealand because New Zealand law prohibits companies from hiring from outside of New Zealand unless the company can prove that the needed job can’t be filled by a New Zealander.

The standard of living in New Zealand is fairly high, but it’s mostly because they are NIMBY and I Got Mine.

In all honesty, if this wasn’t serving as a proxy war that might have been possible, but I think with China, Iran, and Russia squaring up to support Palestine there’s no way we’re going to cut off Israel. From a big picture perspective Israel is the only real ally the US or western powers have in the middle east and even if we dumped them for the crimes they commit it would ultimately hurt the US and western powers to abandon or sanction them.

I saw an article saying that Belgium is considering sanctions against Israel, but Belgium is also a NATO country and only has 24k active troops with an additional 6k in reserves. In 2022 Belgium had the third lowest % GDP military investment out of the NATO countries.

Whether we like it or not the big players in the game aren’t looking at the atrocities Israel commits in Gaza, they’re looking at whether they will have a foothold and ally in the middle east if we have a World War.

We as individuals can take a stance on the conflict without considering the geopolitical outcomes, but to be able to do so we should admit that we are in a place of privilege. I imagine that if news came out that Ukraine blew up a school Poland still would still support Ukraine, because they’re right next door.

At the same time, countries which don’t meaningfully contribute to their own defense should recognize their privilege when it comes to the world stage.

EDIT: Had accidentally called Ukraine Russia, fixed now.

Hell we would probably have deployed troops to Gaza and also to stand by in case of actions from Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, or Syria.

I kinda wish there was more discussion about the long term outcomes. I personally don’t think a two state option is going to work, especially those that hinge on control of Jerusalem. An independent Palestinian state could be established, but would almost certainly be controlled by Hamas or other like minded groups.

Hamas believes in a two state solution so far as it gains territory, but I think that as soon as that is accomplished the long term plan would be to eventually destroy Israel and make a Reunified Palestine.

If this is true then there will never be peace until either Palestine or Israel is utterly destroyed.

Conversely, if Israel doesn’t just take over Palestine completely things are likely to continue as they have since the 60’s. Hamas does a terrorist attack, Israel responds by blowing up a school, rinse and repeat forever because the groups in control of each side are fucking extremist conservative monsters that believe their magical space daddy is right.

I’m not making excuses for the atrocities committed by Israel or Hamas, I’m just laying out the road map for the next 100 years. If you had to pick between Hamas (or Hamas like) controlled Palestine or Zionist controlled Israel which would you prefer?

I guess there is a third and fourth option, the third option is to have no opinion and whatever happens happens. The fourth option would be to, somehow, maintain the status quo and wait till a time where both sides stop believing in the extremist religious dogma. The fourth option could be something like a UN occupation of Israel Palestine to prevent the two sides from killing each other?

EDIT: Also, if you look at the proposed maps for a two state solution you should already know that a two state solution wouldn’t work, it’s like if Cold War Germany had a baby with the Michigan UP and somehow the offspring was even worse.

You’re literally my parents. They were long term landlords, bought properties for nothing in the 90’s rented them for 20-30 years and then sold them. Most properties were long term rentals, people lived there for 5+ years, one lady had 6 kids in 10 years in one of their houses. Rents in their area are ~$1200-2000, my parents were still renting at $700 because the place was paid off and the people living there had been there for nearly a decade.

Side hustle landlords ain’t the enemy, it’s the corporate landlords that are the true problem. Unfortunately the people being oppressively fucked don’t see a difference and it’s hard to blame them.

Hope your side hustle works out for you and I hope you stay one of the good ones.

EDIT: My parents both have full time jobs, having rentals wasn’t a job for them. They rented to pay the mortgage and pay for upkeep. The long term plan for them was to sell the houses and retire, not live off rent for perpetuity. They rented the properties at a rate that allowed them to pay the mortgage off quickly and pay for landlord repairs (roof, HVAC, water heater, septic tank, etc).

No, you misunderstand what I mean.

Ah I see, you’re correct, I did misunderstand you. I think your point is true, but still lacks finesse in describing the relationship between developers and digital store fronts. I also think you’re disregarding the benefit that the additional 18% cut the developer gets to keep as well as creating partnership options rather than being stuck with a defacto monopoly.

I also don’t think it’s fair to compare GOG or Humble Bundle with Epic or Steam, their purposes and market share is so much smaller than Steam. Epic isn’t trying to compete with GOG or Humble.

Also, you’re correct that the developer is making money either way, but they are making a larger percentage on sales through Epic. You’re probably right that the developers aren’t taking that into account, but they are materially benefited by its success. If they fail to account for that benefit and Epic fails then it will mean they make less money overall.

I think instead of your McDonalds example a better one would be contractors for a large business. Maybe your business frequently uses an electrical contractor and due to special circumstances the field is exceptionally limited (specialty license or security clearance). There is one contractor available and they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. So far this company has been really fair and not abused their power, but a new contractor becomes available. The new contractor has an inferior service line and is a bit slower, but they’re also cheaper. You could just ignore the new contractor and what happens happens, but in the real world it’s fairly common for businesses to diversify service contracts to maintain a pool of available contractors.

Sure, but the idea of fostering a mutually beneficial preferential relationship between two companies is far from new. I’m not saying that the developer has to take a loss, but they could decrease the sell price on Epic while still making more money than on Steam, GOG, or Humble Bundle. If doing so causes more people to switch to Epic it also means they’ll make more money in the long term and in the short term.

I’d argue that the statement that Epic is just as much a customer as the consumer isn’t really true. Epic as a storefront is different from Gamestop as a store front. Gamestop buys the product at a given price and then marks it up to make profit, Epic provides fulfillment and gets paid a percentage of the sale. Epic isn’t a customer in that sense because they aren’t buying and reselling the product.

Yeah, the developers can say fuck it and not help out Epic, but it just furthers the limited monopoly that Steam is. They can’t complain that Steam takes too big of a cut and then make businesses decisions that are counter to that complaint. It’s like complaining about Reddit but choosing to stay there.

I would agree that Epic is a customer in the sense that they are paying for exclusivity, but I think that contract should also include a reduced sale price in it.

EX: Epic pays the developer X dollars so that the first week of the release it’s sold at -Y% of the MSRP exclusively on Epic. After that they can sell it on other storefronts for the MSRP for Z months (with no sales) or they have to refund the X dollars.

hing like that now do ya?

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or if you really don’t understand. If you don’t understand I’d be happy to elaborate.

Well it shouldn’t be at a loss. As the person I responded to pointed out, Epic had a lower fee than Steam so the developer can sell on Epic for less than they would on Steam and make the same amount of money.

Doing so wouldn’t be at a loss, but it wouldn’t make as much profit as possible.

If the developers did choose to sell on Epic for less than it would bolster the Epic store and potentially lead to more people moving to Epic.

If Steam’s fee is 30% and Epic’s is 15% the developer could sell on Steam for $70 and make $49 and they could sell on Epic for $60 to make $51. That’s a 4% increase in profits.

If the Epic store takes off and a large enough user base switches they could maybe increase the Epic price to $62.5 which would result in an additional 4% increase in profits.

Epic’s deal is that they’re offering a lower rate, but the developers aren’t sharing the benefits of that to help Epic grow. If they did the long term profits would likely exceed the short term.

If the developer chooses to do so themselves then it’s likely ok, but forcing the developer to do so likely violates some sort of law.

I imagine that when Epic instituted it’s lower percentage they hoped that developers would sell exclusively on their platform for higher profits. Instead the developers decided to sell on both platforms and just make a larger percentage on the Epic sales. From the developer perspective it would have been wise in the long run to lower prices so that Epic could grow, but that hurts their short term profits and also stymied Epic’s potential.

If Epic’s store grew to truly rival Steam more developers might have jumped ship, but to do so prematurely would be losing a large portion of the potential customers.

Ultimately Epic had to develop a full Steam clone quickly while all Steam had to do was not suck for the end user.

I generally prefer AMD, how are they for Linux?

I don’t think that was his point. He’s simply saying that the benefit of reach and leverage makes it so that equally skilled and unarmored combatants would make it so you need 2 swordsmen to reliably fight a spearman.

That being the case doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have multiple weapons for multiple circumstances, and it doesn’t mean that the appropriate armour wouldn’t impact it.

Finally, battlefield usage is a totally different situation as you have regiments with mixed skill levels.

I think the only thing he was trying to say is that if you have two guys with similar skill and fitness, unarmored, the guy with the spear has a large advantage.

Also, I think he’s a bit more than an Enthusiast. His resume is fairly impressive (https://www.matt-easton.co.uk/about).

You might like this video, https://youtu.be/LX3n4XIwHZo?si=9KC7upiLOFaR0ddN

At 8:50 the guy says that traditionally one person with a spear was roughly as good as two equally skilled persons with a sword.

It’s kinda always been there, just that the urgency has really ramped up in recent years. It went from scientists saying this is coming to the general populace screaming IT’S TOO LATE WE’RE FUCKED.

The only thing that seems expensive is the veggie patties in my opinion. For $4.99 I would have expected a 4 pack.

The buns are a bit pricey, but we’re talking a dollar and some change then.

Looks to me like you have most of 4 lunches and 4 breakfasts for $18.

I wouldn’t put climate change as one of them. Having it be a specific point makes it seem like Climate change had a definitive start or end point. It’s just kinda floating in the background.

Depending on which end of millennials you are really impacts things as well. I would say events going from 1990 onward would count for older millennials, but you millennials might not count anything before 2005.

It’s also used for dramatic pause, suspense, or as a setup for a punchline, which may be the case for the title. Other punctuation is probably more appropriate, but oftentimes doesn’t convey the desired level of pause.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Why did the chicken cross the road… To get to the other side.

David Carradine was found dead in Thailand from auto erotic asphyxiation.

David Carradine was found dead in Thailand… From auto erotic asphyxiation