This is probably one of the top 10 dumbest war strategies in history. Make the population of the region you’re eventually seeking to occupy hate you even more, and on top of that, it makes the very foolish assumption that Hamas leadership would give up if they see their Gazans suffer, which is so naïve it’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. Hamas leadership doesn’t give a shit if ordinary Gazans starve. In fact, they probably think it’s all the better for their recruiting numbers, seeing that I have yet to see a single Hamas fighter suffering from malnutrition on the level of ordinary Gazans.

To external observers paying attention, this can only lead one to conclude either Netanyahu is a terrible military strategist or he’s using this “strategy” as a cover to snuff out the entire Arab population of Gaza. For all I know, both are true!

I am not opposed to reading. I will happily read a 1,000 or 2,000-word article to hear new ideas. What I will not do is listen to a 90-minute podcast or read its transcript, which is so long it crashed LibreOffice Writer when I tried pasting it to get the word count, just to understand what CabbageRelish@midwest.social is talking about with the comment that took them twenty seconds to write.

It’s not unreasonable for me to say that if you took less than 60 seconds to write your comment, I’m going to spend a maximum of 5-10 minutes thinking about and writing my response.

Me: People used to pay attention to laws.

You: Yeah, but the law was RACIST when it was first written!

Remember when these words used to mean something?

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Remember when the document this came from used to mean something?

I am not reading through a fucking 10,000 word podcast transcript to find the relevant two paragraphs. Quote some points if you want.

Edit: I actually underestimated this thing. The transcript is so large that it crashed LibreOffice Writer the first time I tried pasting it in to get the actual word count. The transcript is 16,719 words long.

No, mate, the parent commenter asserts that the tankies only claim it murders 500,000 people a year because it also economically hurts Russia.

Rowling was always known to be slightly racist but people mostly dismissed it as a sort of fantastically stupid racism. As in, the “ha ha this racist stereotype is so dumb, see how ridiculous it looks when I put it in my wizard book” sort.

I don’t think it was until she started going full TERF that people began to realise that she’s not making fun of the stereotypes; she actually thinks casual racism is a funny and cute thing to do.

Classic Europeans on the Internet trying to make fun of [bad thing that happens in the US] without realising it also happens in Europe

Germany:

If you work between 6 to 9 hours a day, you are entitled to a 30-minute break after no later than 6 hours. If you work more than 9 hours a day, the break is extended to 45 minutes. Labour law prohibits taking the break at the end of the day’s work in order to leave earlier.

France:

As soon as your daily working time reaches 6 hours immediately, you must have a break of at least 20 minutes consecutive

The break is granted:

• Either immediately after 6 hours of work[, or]
• before this 6-hour period is completed

United Kingdom:

Employers can say when employees take rest breaks during work time as long as:

• the break is taken in one go somewhere in the middle of the day (not at the beginning or end)
• workers are allowed to spend it away from their desk or workstation (ie away from where they actually work)

American states set their own labour laws, but the ones of the state where I live (Oregon) are actually far more generous than comparable ones in Europe. I am entitled by law during an eight-hour working day to one 30-minute lunch break (not paid) and two additional 10-minute breaks (counts as time worked and is paid). Meaning I get 50 minutes of breaks in a day and the employer has to pay me during 20 minutes of those breaks. My employment contract actually gives me a 1-hour lunch break in addition to the two 10-minute breaks, which isn’t required by law but is not uncommon.

Your idea of “distressingly often”, which you bring up a lot, I believe to be severely flawed. With respect to individuals who control their own wallets, it is in reality exceedingly rare for hackers to be able to breach a wallet’s security measures and steal coins. Most wallets implement encryption of some sort, either through the device’s keystore or using a password. Most crypto thefts take the form of people being tricked into giving away their key phrase or sending their crypto to a scammer. This is really the same type of scam as someone taking your debit card and then tricking you into giving them your PIN. According to most bank policies, you are liable for unauthorised chip-and-PIN debit transactions. “Zero liability” only applies to credit transactions proceed through the Visa or Mastercard networks. If you give someone your PIN for any reason, you are deemed to have authorised all transactions that they make with that PIN.

But you do raise a good point that the crypto industry is very under-regulated and there needs to be some form of deposit insurance for crypto exchanges. More regulation is definitely not a bad thing (despite what crypto bros will say), especially in the post-FTX era.

Let me be more explicit: You say that like the people running banks aren’t the exact sort of people who think that laws are merely suggestions and that fines are the cost of doing business. Finance bros are exactly the same as crypto bros, except instead of shitcoins they talk about Byzantine financial instruments that only have a 90% chance of collapsing the country’s economy but has a 10% chance of making them $10000000000.

For most of human history, salt met this definition. Ever wonder why it’s called a salary?

Tungsten is also one of the rarest minerals on Earth despite being relatively cheap.

Yes, as everyone knows, if you are mugged in the street, you can just say “no”. The robber legally cannot take your money without your consent.

Yes, but the overwhelming majority of the value of gold is because it is shiny. Up until very recently, it had almost no other practical use other than being shiny. Plenty of other objects meet the definition of “rare” and “cannot make more at will” and “doesn’t degrade over time”. Gold is just the prettiest.

The notion that “crypto is easily stolen” is completely false. It’s definitely harder to steal than, say, cash in a wallet. That it is “accepted almost nowhere” is also false. Look hard enough, and you can find someone who will sell you almost anything for crypto.

The choice of a uint32_t for time saves 4 bytes per transaction. That doesn’t sound like much, but with 1.2 billion transactions recorded, it adds up to almost 10 GB of space saved.

They could, ultimately, just replace it with a uint64_t some time in the 22nd century without much fuss. In the late 2000s when Bitcoin was created, storage space was at a significant cost, but now it is quite cheap and in the 2100s it will undoubtedly be even cheaper.

Well, gold might be a little bit different. It derives its value not because of a government mandate but because monkey brain like shiny

Trump is not yet in charge of the Federal Reserve. That may change depending on what his goons in Congress and the Supreme Court do, but for the time being, even if Trump says “I ORDER the Fed to buy $1 trillion in TrumpBonds”, Powell can say “I’m good” and there’s not much he can yet do about it.

Crypto is also accepted as a means of exchange. There are plenty of merchants willing to accept it as payment, but they are just not geographically concentrated in one location like banknote-accepters are. With a banknote, you have a very high concentration of merchants who will accept that as a means of payment in one geographic area (i.e. the country or region whose central bank issued that banknote), while it is not accepted anywhere else. With most cryptocurrencies, they will be acceptable worldwide, but the concentration of people willing to take it in any given geographic area is low.

It is important to note that you can’t take properties of the smaller coins (the ones which you are probably thinking of are derisively referred to as “shitcoins” and most are deserving of that epithet) and apply them to every cryptocurrency. Just like you can’t use properties of the Zimbabwean dollar to smear all fiat currencies in general.

Bitcoin transactions on its Lightning Network are typically instantaneous, and fees are lower than most credit cards (usually on the order of 0.1%). An on-chain Bitcoin transaction currently has a fee of about 1 USD, which would make it competitive to credit cards for transactions greater than 40 USD. Bitcoin fees, despite being notorious for being the highest among all cryptos, are actually very competitive with most traditional payment methods. This transaction from the most recent block at the time of writing paid about 117 USD to move over 411 BTC worth 48.5 million USD. That means they paid about 0.00024% in fees and this is the highest-fee transaction in this block (meaning they paid the highest fee rate of any transaction in this block). The going rate for this block was actually much lower; whoever sent this transaction overpaid by about 50 times.

This is called debt monetisation and has been forbidden by law in the US since 1981.

In the US if someone takes your debit card and enters the correct PIN, the transactions are permanent, and the bank has no obligation to give your money back (and if they choose to do so it would be out of their own pocket).