The US has nearly unilaterally vetoed all international attempts to impose accountability on Israel in the UN forever. You’re mischaracterizing the world’s attitude about this. I never suggested that Biden can (or even should) deny all aid. Bit listen, I get it. I know it’s easier to rationalize horrific war crimes when you delude yourself into thinking that no one bears responsibility and no one has any power to change things.

I fully recognize that Republicans are lock step in favor of genocide. I’m pointing at the current administration because it’s, well, the current administration. They set foreign policy. They approve the arms sales. They provide logistical support to the IDF. They veto UN resolutions. They lie, obfuscate and gaslight the press and constituents who are protesting. Biden has enormous power but is ideologically devoted to the genocide. He has been the only president since Israel’s campaign started. For you to suggest that he doesn’t have agency here, that he doesn’t have responsibility for US policy, that he should be somehow excused from accountability, is nonsensical and a recipe for never accomplishing anything ever. I’m not surprised to hear a such defeatist attitude, as this has basically been the defining characteristic of the Democratic Party for about 40 years. It’s this cowardly, weak sauce, no fight approach to public policy that has facilitated American fascism’s advance to the brink. I have no patience for such bullshit.

It should be noted that, since Israel is only able to operate like this because of the financial, materiel, and diplomatic support of the United States, these are US crimes. We are doing this. Officials in the Biden administration, and it’s State Department should be held criminally liable for these crimes. Now is the time to hold Harris politically responsible for starting to fix our mess.

What a man of the people.

Just to clarify what I said: I know that there are good people working in these corporations, and I know that good sometimes happens. What I am saying is that the organization itself doesn’t care the way they are often given credit for by their own marketing, media coverage, and public perception. The incentives that are foundational to these organizations are antithetical to achieving anything beyond revenue that is either widespread or long-term in nature. I am all in favor of holding corporations accountable, and pressuring them to be better members of our society, but people should never fool themselves into thinking that meaningful, sustainable change on social or environmental issues will ever result from actions taken by corporations. Those kinds of changes can only come from governments that are open and accountable to their people, and have the confidence to check the actions of private industry.

Anything that corporations do, that isn’t directly oriented toward revenue generation, is window dressing, marketing, and bullshit. They don’t actually care about addressing social ailments like inequity, they don’t care about environmental destruction. While individuals within these organizations may believe in these causes, the machine itself is just lying when they parade these initiatives out. They don’t care about their workforce (beyond maintaining functionality), and they certainly don’t care about their society. If these corporations were people, they’d be considered sociopaths, with ZERO exceptions.

Boycotts are speech. Calling for boycotts is speech. I’ve been told by every corporate leader and the Supreme Court that spending money is a form of speech. I would think that a free speech advocate would appreciate these things. Of course, like all outspoken libertarians, Musk’s positions are not well considered, consistent, nor actually libertarian when it doesn’t suit his own business or ideological* interests. This dude sucks at everything he does and his success perfectly demonstrates the fallacy of meritocracy in this society.

• usually racist

That’s one of the things that really gets me about all this. This didn’t happen suddenly, but there has never been any actual effort by the opposition party to counter it. They never address the trend in any organized way, and never really raise awareness of it. The closest they get is to fundraise off the threats, but it never translates into action or progress. If anything, they organize to ostracize the few members of their party that do speak forcefully about it.

Just tell Joe that there are six Palestinian children on the court and he’ll get right on it.

I agree with this sentiment, but let’s all not forget to give the US credit for its lies too.

I had very modest needs for Windows. It was not my primary computing device, but there was one application that I ran on an older laptop all the time. All the recent drama pushed me to investigate a bit and I learned that the app is also on Linux. I was able to wipe and install Linux Mint easily despite not really knowing much about either OS. There are a lot of guides on youtube about the process that helped make it easy. Laptop is running well so far. I’m also using this as as a test to see if I can replace much of my Apple stuff with Linux as those devices start to age out. Thanks for the little push Microsoft.

In one form or another, this is basically the rationalization that warmongers always use to justify their own awfulness. As an American, I’ve been listening to my own country deploy this gem my entire life.

I would like to understand how the size/capability of this proposed facility compares to both CERN and also the never completed Superconducting Supercollider. I will never get over the fact that, as Americans, we could have had a huge lead in this research. We started to build it, then decided to stop.

This seems to happen every time a technology company grows beyond some threshold of size/market share/revenue. I can’t think of a single exception.

Reminds me of some of the anticompetitive behaviors that Amazon has long engaged in. Among other practices, they use their privileged position in the marketplace to gain insight into markets, then force sellers out of business by producing the same products at a loss. In this way, third party sellers on Amazon serve the purpose of conducting market research for Amazon.

It’s remarkable that Apple has been able to generally maintain such a cordial relationship with developers for this long. Hopefully change is coming.

The Al Jazeera report that you link to only claims that Houthis launched missile and drone attacks at a US ship. It makes no claim that they seriously damaged or sunk a US ship. Here is a BBC/MSN report that describes similar things. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c800j14y38xo?xtor=AL-72-[partner]-[microsoft]-[headline]-[news]-[bizdev]-[isapi] what exactly are you claiming is false in the Al Jazeera report? Both reports also describe US actions against Houthis targets, which would be a strange thing to do if the Houthis aren’t in fact doing something (even if it is a very ineffective something).

It’s remarkable how quickly OpenAI has speed run into evilcorp status.

My suggestion, based on more than three decades of observing and interacting with this company: don’t believe a fucking thing they say, ever.

Lebensraum

The time has long passed whereby we need to remove Google as the effective governing authority of the internet. As with most things online, a good idea ballooned into a net negative for nearly everyone else. This fact was obvious decades ago. There needs to be actual competition and government need to reassert itself as more than a rubber stamp for business growth.