The Anti-Targ

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

Saw something similar in the NYT. 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/20/world/israel-iran-gaza-war-news#satellite-imagery-shows-that-a-precision-attack-damaged-an-air-defense-system-at-an-iranian-base

That's good enough for me.  I'd rather wait for reporting from a reputable news source rather than scouring Twitter for random tweets.

Assuming they still exist.

I guess things haven't got so bad that there are not reliable purveyors of objective information about world political events. But the number of such institutions seems to be a lot less than it used to. Either that or the biases and ideological influences were always there but are more obvious now.

Even Trump thinks MTG is too far off the reservation.

Unless a system pro-actively manages electoral rolls to ensure you are able to vote then it's effectively a voter suppression system. Difficult to manage in countries the size of the US and India esp given a lot of electoral administration is left to states rather than federal agencies. But still, if you are registered in one state to vote and move to another it should be possible to cast a special vote even if you relocated the day before the election.

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Can you think of any other business that could get away with going to the regulator, asking to put prices up 44% after paying out huge bonuses to shareholders, and woefully mismanaging their infrastructure?  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68872563

What more example do people need that capitalism is bad in its construction. Capitalism always arcs towards monopoly or oligopoly. Complex laws and regulations are needed to mitigate against this outcome but they are typically flawed, and in some cases corporations are able to influence laws and policies that facilitate monopoly or oligopoly, including convincing govts that private ownership of a monopoly resource would serve the public interest better than public (state) ownership.

Maybe in some parts of the UK it could be viable to install local rainwater+filtration+UV treatment to deliver residential drinking water. Volumes would not be enough to meet all home water use needs, but at least being able to drink clean water should be possible. In-home grey water systems could be viable too. Quite apart from decreasing dependence on a monopoly supplier situation, water conservation in general is a good thing.

50 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Not me, there’s just nothing there, wherever “there” is.

 

I guess that would make you the first human without consciousness, quite the anomaly.

7 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Window to the soul for those who believe in the thing commonly called “soul”? What about those who don’t? Are we evil? 

Joking aside, I think the point of this pretty ridiculous photo is that the aviator sunnies are Biden’s trademark? And btw who is the other man?

 

We all have a soul, the only difference of opinion is whether it's a discreet metaphysical entity or an emergent property of neuro-physiological and quantum biological phenomena.

Always suspicious of people taking PR photos with dark sunglasses on. The eyes are the window to the soul, as they say. It's easy to fake smile with your mouth, less easy to fake smile with your eyes, so what are the dark glasses hiding? Is AOC really smiling or has her moral corruption finally begun in earnest?

I imagine [enough] Democrats would vote to keep Johnson seated if only because the next speaker to appear from this Republican House members would probably be even worse (from the Democrat perspective). The only way to avoid that would be for some Republicans to break and become independents to strip the Republicans of the majority and undertake to vote in a Democratic Speaker. I don't see that happening. So I expect it will be Johnson all the way to the swearing in of the next Congress.

19 hours ago, HexMachina said:

I'm not great at cooking curries, but my friend's mam (who is first gen Indian and does a lot of traditional cooking) always says that the sign of a good curry is when you see that fat/oil separate from the curry and form a pool on top. Not sure if that's a generally accepted rule but her food is exceptional, so I trust her

That would be right, fat and water don't mix, and in a slow cooked meat curry, or stew, you want the fat to render from the meat, and when that happens the only place it can go is to float on the top. If your meat is too lean to get an observable amount of rendered fat floating on the top then the meat will be dry after a long slow cook. If the meat is too fatty (which was the case with me buying diced lamb instead of buying a whole cut and dicing and controlling the fat content myself) then scooping off a bit of fat will often be necessary, unfortunately you can lose a bit of flavour that way if to remove too much fat.

If the guy was non-partisan in his thinking that there is a massive military industrial-politicians-billionnaires conspiracy controlling the world, well he was not totally wrong in this. When was the last time a true champion of the people ascended to high office? Biden has the appearance of being the closest to it, but he's still largely captive of the neo-lib orthodoxy.

Wonder if it might not have Iran running to China to get some better AA defence equipment.

12 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

I love ingredient breakdowns like this.

I mostly use red onions in my daily cooking as the other varieties are more expensive where i live. 

What onions do you mostly use?  And how do you use them? 

 

Yellow is the cheapest here, followed by red followed by shallots. I don't know whether I see white onions ever at the store. I vary between shallots and yellow onions in cooking, depending on how fancy I want / need to be. Plus I always hear Uncle Roger over my shoulder saying "onions are shallots for poor people".

Speaking of shallots, making lamb rendang tonight for the daughter-in-law's parents. They are Hindu so can't go with the usual beef. I've made the lamb version a couple of times before. On balance I would say I prefer beef, but the lamb is very good too. Have to scoop off a bit of fat during the cooking process though.

So, Israel has titted Iran's tat, I guess we should be expecting an Iranian tat in the coming weeks.

Potential silver lining (though feels a bit gross calling it that), but perhaps the escalation between Israel and Iran will help Ukraine in that Iran will be less able to supply Russia with the hardware it needs to keep prosecuting its war of aggression.

Kinda cool that we will be able to see a nova with the naked eye in our life times, kinda meh that no one will notice it except those who know where to look. Also pretty cool that astronomers are able to be this precise about when it's going to happen. Though I guess it needs to happen before anyone can say the predictions were correct.

Mine is so vanilla it's almost embarrassing to mention it in a serious thread: spiders.

Though it's not really even a complete phobia, little spiders that I know can't bite me in any way that I can feel it don't bother me at all. So I guess the real phobia is being bitten by a spider.

Interestingly the two critters I have some fear of are the two critters that I got bitten by when I was a kid and had no phobias up to that point. I got bitten by a [non poisonous] spider when playing with a spider and by a weta* when playing with a weta. I was obviously freaking the two critters out and they were probably afraid for their life, hence the bite. So if I had been more aware of their fears at the time I probably would not have those fears now.

*what is a weta?

Cockroaches in groups give me the ick, but definitely not a phobia.

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding of what bias means? Bias is never an objectively good thing, at best it's neutral in situations where the issue is of a benign nature, like what's your favourite colour. When it comes to economic systems, social and environmental policy bias is an undeniably bad thing.

Good things happened with capitalism, but that does not mean they would have only ever happened under capitalism. Bad things happened and are happening because of capitalism.

To me capitalism is like thalidomide. Seemed to be amazing for a while, and then the deformed babies started to turn up and suddenly people realised it was not so great after all.

And now it's time for my fortnightly MMT plug: Capitalism was on the brink of failing hard in the 1970s, but then Richard Nixon did the world a huge favour and killed the gold standard dead forever, transforming almost all the world's currencies into fiat currencies with the flick of a wrist. This, along with floating exchange rates, finally released governments from the shackles of having to balance budgets and allowed the near perpetual running of national deficits to be used for the general public good (but often were not, sadly). Remember folks deficits don't matter (within reason and depending how they are used) and taxes don't pay for [national] govt spending. Govt budgets are moral documents, not financial documents.

I'm impressed you know of Babism. That's not a widely known aspect of Baha'i history.

In my anecdotal experience the Iranian diaspora is very patriotic, but many left Iran because of the current regime and they rather look forward to the day the Islamic Revolution comes to an end.

One of the most interesting things about watching Alexander on Netflix is learning a bit about the last days of the Persian Empire that he smashed to pieces. It was a great empire that had its glory days, but as with every empire in history it became corrupt, complacent and stagnant and fell to pieces when the right person came along to bring it down.

8 hours ago, Bironic said:

Yes this is my experience with Iranians abroad as well… the period between 7th and 9th centuries (the Arab conquest) is see as akin to the fall of the Roman Empire and the „dark ages“ that followed. There is also the fact that there seems to be some sort of „revival“ of pre-Arabic-Islamic culture/religion as well as non „orthodox/statal“ Islam amongst Iranians and more generally Iranian peoples(such as the Kurds) abroad as well, with less participation in mosques and more interest in things such as Nawruz, Parsism/ Zoroastrianism, Yezidism, Baha’i, Mutazila etc… 

Just a point of clarification, Baha'i is POST-Arab-Islamic not pre.

I don't see large numbers of people getting into Baha'i given to do so means confiscation of your business, inability to get any job in the public sector, harassment of your employer if you have a private sector job, expulsion from school / university, possible imprisonment, torture and execution.

Forego the advance for a higher % of gross sales, then get your election campaign to buy shitloads of books to distribute to voters as election promotional material thereby legally funnelling campaign donations into your personal bank account. Perhaps attempt to double dip by gifting every donor with two copies of your book, one to keep and one to give to a friend (or enemy).

If you're not offered a 5 or 6 figure advance surely you are better off taking no advance and making it seem like you are so completely confident in your book being a best seller that you will make pots of cash from your cut of the book sales.

JFC people really need to come up with acronyms that can't be easily misconstrued. Though one wonders if acronymisable names and titles aren't sometimes deliberately chosen to for the double entendre or amusement effect. Not sure that was the intent when deciding on joint fundraising committee(?)

How do you sanction a military unit? That seems like a token gesture, and of course war crimes have to be proven to be sanctionable, right?

Do meaningful sanctions against top brass and political leaders, or the country as a whole, or don't do them at all.

Now that Russia has appeared to give moral if not material support to Iran in it's conflict with Israel, how likely is that to move the right to being more willing to support continued aid to Ukraine?

I guess ultimately for the right it's about doing whatever will weaken Biden, so it's not really about having a coherent foreign policy position. They can figure out what position to take once their in power.

Excess deaths and life expectancy report for the first 2 years of the pandemic, from the latest analysis of the Global Burden of Disease study.

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/covid-19-nz-bucked-global-life-expectancy-trends

Quote

 

Top-line findings

"For adults worldwide, the Covid pandemic has had a more profound impact than any event seen in half a century, including conflicts and natural disasters," author Dr Austin Schumacher, an assistant professor of health metrics sciences at the institute, said in a statement.

The paper reported the pandemic killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, accounting for about 12 percent of deaths from all causes.

Between 1950 and 2021, global life expectancy at birth increased by 22.7 years, from 49 years to 71.7. But in the period between 2019 and 2021, it declined by 1.6 years.

During the same period, long-term trends of decreasing mortality were superseded by marked increases in mortality rates in age groups older than 15 (22 percent for men and 17 percent for women).

However, mortality in children under 5 years was largely unaffected by the pandemic and continued to decrease (by 7 percent).

There were only a handful of countries that did not experience a decline in life expectancy. It should not be a surprise to most which country was one of those...hint it rhymes with blue cheeseland.

For all the arguments about how deadly or not deadly earlier strains of COVID-19 was, the excess mortality and decreased life expectancy across almost all countries in those years defies an explanation other than it was almost all down to C-19.

Trigger warning: the article quotes someone using the L word.

I would credit arguments raising concern at a surprising increase in trans referrals being indicative of a problem in the medical and psychological field as long as the people making that argument first acknowledged the objective truth that trans people really do exist and they have a right to be who they see themselves to be, and to be respected, accepted and loved. If we can settle on that as an objective reality perhaps there can be good faith discussion absent suspicion of having a transphobic or trans-grooming agenda.

It may seem like people who are trans, and people who see themselves as trans allies, have an ideological agenda with the Cass report. But really to me it's that there is worry about the ideological agenda of people raising this as a thing that should cause significant concern and thereby seeking to further marginalise and persecute a minority group. It's not like legitimate scientific research with legitimate conclusions hasn't been removed from context and weaponised for ideological purposes to demonise and marginalise minorities before. The first thing that needs to be determined is whether the conclusions of the scientific report are valid (i.e. the conclusions themselves are not compromised by ideology), I doubt any of us here are capable of coming to an expert conclusion on that point. The second thing is that the report is not used for invalid ideological purposes.

The medical community (and science in general) is not free from bias and ideology, especially when it comes to controversial social issues. The only people who don't have an opinion about trans people are people who have never heard of the concept or come across trans people. The more emotive any written material is about the topic the more likely the material is shaped by the bias of the author(s) and thus has diminished objectivity. A report on exactly the same data will read very differently if written by JKR vs being written by Natalie Wynn.