Skua

Also, he was one of the guys in Rubberbandits

I have to use Teams for a remote course I’m doing and holy shit no program I have ever used is worse for notifications than Teams. Even turning off everything doesn’t prevent it from flashing on the taskbar, so you then have to go disable that for everything as well. I know someone sent a message in chat, Teams, I am in the fucking call where they sent it

If you have fact-checked it, why not just say that wherever you did that is where you got the answer from? People are right to be skeptical of “ChatGPT says so”, and if you’ve used it as the start of your research rather than as your entire research then just saying “I asked ChatGPT” is no different to “I googled it”, and nobody would much like you saying that either. How you found the information is less important than where you found it.

It’s possible it’s for other reasons, though. Black Americans are generally poorer than other Americans, and success in sports is a ticket out of poverty that is accessible to people in that position. It could also be a cultural thing; I doubt Finns are genetically predisposed to be exceptional drivers, but they are still wildly over-represented at the top level of motorsports for such a small population

I’d probably also develop a short temper about spanners too if they were being shoved in my face by tech companies as hard as chat bots are

And your solution is to give it to the guy who did the exact same thing more actively and who is promising to do it harder? Right. Sure.

Alright, look, I appreciate the back and forth but I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere here. We do both, at the very least, agree that minimising Palestinian deaths is the goal. I’m not persuaded by your analysis of much of this, and you’re not persuaded by mine. Hopefully things go the way that whichever one of us is right wants

I bake a lot of bread, including for my coeliac stepmother, so I’ve taken to labelling the loaves gluten-free and gluten-expensive

You don’t think a Trump administration would ditch America’s position in Europe if that was what was needed to do what he wanted to do? In light of how he acted throughout 2016-2020?

We’ve already seen in the Red Sea that America is quite capable of using its naval and aerial assets without shifting the budget. They aren’t magically crushing the Houthis because yeah, of course bombarding people from offshore doesn’t make them want to fight you less, but I sure as fuck don’t want to see what America is doing to Yemen also done to Palestine on top of what’s already being done to it. Especially since Palestine is far denser with civilians.

And, of course, they absolutely could just spend more. That would not be even slightly unprecedented. The budget is currently close to the smallest as a percentage of GDP that it has been since before 2001.

I’m quite comfortable saying that the ~$4 billion a month that the US sent to Ukraine in this summer would be enough to be meaningfully harmful if redirected towards Israel

If your theory that America is currently bombing Palestine in secret is wrong, then it can actually start. The navy parked offshore can start doing bombardments, they’re not doing a lot right now. America can decide to substantially increase military spending to increase production for Israel; as a proportion of GDP, spending hasn’t changed significantly despite the war in Ukraine and what Israel is doing. Fuck it, maybe it’s boots on the ground. Wouldn’t exactly be the first American adventure in western Asia. I do not for a second think that America’s ability to blow people up is currently stretched to breaking point.

Apart from the ability to increase production, I did literally just answer this in our other chat

It changes, yes, because it would be America and Israel doing it. I don’t think “more bombs falling on Gaza than before is worse” should be a complicated stance

It only results in 100% of the Palestinians dying on the assumption that there is enough time to do that. The longer it takes them, the more Palestinians are still alive if and when it is stopped.

So materially they are already approaching their limit to how many Palestinians they can kill in a given time frame

Trump wants to stop supporting Ukraine. That frees up a huge amount of resources that could be sent to Israel without changing the total balance compared to today at all.

Trump would be a lot less effective at international diplomacy in general and a big part of what America is doing for Israel is stopping other nations from intervening.

America doesn’t stop other countries from intervening by deft diplomacy, it does it by military power. Trump is perfectly capable (and fond) of threatening countries with the American military.

If Kamala isn’t stopping the genocide or even holding Israel back, how will Trump be worse? What could Trump possibly do that’s worse than genocide?

America absolutely has the capacity to supply far more equipment than it already is, and it has a track record of engaging in bombing campaigns in its own right in similar situations. Like in Yemen, under Trump. I do not want America to start bombing Palestine directly as well

“Finish the job” vs “finish the job faster”, either way the same result, genocide.

If they get to finish the job. The less quickly they can finish it, the more of a chance there is of Israeli and/or international public support turning against it enough to actually change it. The American election is not going to do that by itself because both realistic candidates are pro-Israel, so there is no point in making decisions that only work if they completely stop the genocide by voting or not voting.

You clearly also think that there is a chance of it being stopped since that’s your foundation for saying faster genocide is preferable. I don’t think your logic holds there, because I don’t see why a faster one would be likely to fail faster. On that basis, slower means fewer dead Palestinians.

It comes off as someone who doesn’t actually care about the issue and just wants to get their talking points out about why genocidal Trump is bad and genocidal Democrats are good.

Literally every point I made was explicitly rooted in what I believe will result in the fewest Palestinian deaths.

They most likely insulted you because they read what you wrote, the same reason I didn’t respond initially.

I accused them of not reading because they started off by trying to nitpick me by restating the exact same thing I pointed out literally in the same sentence.

I think that despite the appalling amount of equipment already being sent to Israel, a country with the resources of America can absolutely send a fucktonne more if it chooses to. Or it could start actively bombing in its own right, like it did in Yemen.

So is your position that if the Saudis had killed Yemenis at the same rate as Israel is killing Palestinians, Trump would have reversed course? Bearing in mind that the war crimes weren’t enough, and he supported it significantly more actively than Biden and Harris are supporting Israel

I know 50k is the confirmed number, that’s why I specifically made an aside about the real number

I’m not even saying Biden or Harris are holding Israel back. I’m saying Trump has openly stated that he wants to push Israel even further than it is already going.

Considering you apparently didn’t read what I actually wrote and instead chose to insult me over something you made up, I’m hardly about to take your news recommendations. I’m even less inclined to do so when the first one is the Grayzone.

Why is his backing of the Saudi campaign in Yemen not enough to you? The war has a far higher civilian death toll than Israel’s current actions do, the Saudi forces in the area have a long record of likely war crimes including bombing a school bus full of children in Dahyan and declaration of an entire city of 50,000 people as a military target, Trump actually vetoed congress to prevent them from stopping arms sales to SA, and dozens of actual direct American drone strikes were carried out under Trump’s presidency.

The message will be that Americans chose the guy who is complaining that the massacres are going too slowly

Remember that he was ardently supportive of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen when he was president. We have seen how he handles this situation. He is absolutely not a lesser evil here.

Do you usually treat what Trump says as gospel?

In so far as it being a reflection of his intentions when otherwise entirely plausible? Yeah, sure. This isn’t him drawing on a hurricane map with a pen.

“Genocide but sad” vs “Genocide and happy”, I’m not choosing Genocide period.

Fifty thousand dead Palestinians is fifty thousand too many - or however many the real number is by now - but there are two million Palestinians in Gaza, and three million in the West Bank. Despite how bad it already is, this can still get so, so much worse.

Your claim to not choose genocide is, in fact, a choice to let the rest of the country decide without your input. If Harris’ lukewarm opposition saves literally any Palestinian lives whatsoever relative to the alternative, that’s worth more than someone feeling smug about not voting. I don’t know about you, but I think that the most ethical choice, if you are voting solely on the matter of Palestine, is whichever option is materially best for actual Palestinians even if that option is still horrible

you’re engaging in hypotheticals on it getting worse based off Trump’s words

Are you suggesting it is not reasonable to judge a politician based on the things they say?

But don’t worry, because I’m also judging him on his actions when he was president last time. Like pardoning American war criminals, massively increasing the amount of drone strikes conducted, assassinating an Iranian general, recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, attempting to extort Ukraine for his own political gains, and actively backing the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen. And as a reminder, even the Biden administration dropped support for that last one. He’s as belligerent as any American president and no hypotheticals are needed to demonstrate that. So when he says he wants Israel to do more in Gaza? Yeah I consider that a genuine and meaningful threat to the millions of Palestinians that haven’t been killed yet, and I will absolutely take Harris’ nothing response over that.

So on what basis do you think that Trump is the preferable option?