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TrueMetis

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Posts posted by TrueMetis

  1. 4 hours ago, maarsen said:

    More stuff to add as I was listening to CBC at the noon phone in segment with the people talking about how the protest affected them. Almost all the callers complained that they had lost their job after refusing to be vaccinated. Here in Ontario it has been a well established principle in labour law that refusing a vaccination is enough grounds for an employer to move you from your regular workplace and put you in a place where you don't have the opportunity to infect others. Hospital workers regularly get vaccinated for influenza, and those that don't are subject to the above measures. A nurse or a doctor or anyone else whose job requires them to be in contact with others or the public can be sent home, without pay, until they are vaccinated. Furthermore under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, here in Ontario, an employer has the duty to take all reasonable precautions to protect the health and safety of workers in the workplace. Someone not getting vaccinated puts others at risk of illness and as such the emoyer can send them home without pay.

    In other words Stop The Whining!!

    Also as you say it's "Here in Onatrio" most of the stuff the clownvoy were complaining about were Provincial (or even American in the case of the cross boarder vaccine mandates), not Federal.

  2. I mean, there were some legitimate issues with the show, as there always are, and yes that even includes how Katara's character was handled. But it does sound like instead of, say, having the show actually tackle how bad it is that Katara's been forced into the mom roll outside of a few moments that don't really go anywhere IE Sokka admitting he doesn't remember his mother's face and when he tries he pictures Katara, then the next episode Katara throwing that into his face by saying he didn't love her like she did, something that' never comes up after that even though it seems pretty important, it's instead going to excise that entirely.

    Though I guess if that includes removing Aang kissing Katara without consent twice that may be worth it.

  3. Fleeing with the heirs of the absolute monarch of a nation probably isn't gonna go very well.

    Anyway, while I don't actually think the creators being gone is a bad sign (just look at all the crap they put out with the comics, very clearly an even more extreme version of the Lucas effect going on there) but some of the other stuff I'm hearing does concern me, cause like Sokka's sexism isn't just he's an asshole about women until episode 4 when Suki kicks the shit out of him, it's in his commitment to being what he sees as a proper man, which he keeps and influences his character for a much longer time.

    But then what do I care? I don't have Netflix.

  4. "Gaza will be rebuilt once Hamas is defeated" is such obvious bullshit and all you have to do it look at how the West Bank is treated to know it.


    Anyway in an early thread I pointed out one of the biggest difference between groups is while people are fine with Hamas being destroyed, that's not broadly something called for for the IDF. Well I've changed my mind. The IDF needs to be dismantled and replaced. Clearly it can't be expected to rise beyond the terrorist groups that formed it.

     

    ETA: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1750894630650937662

  5. The court ruling is pretty weird to be honest, the judge admits if they were in the Cabinet based on the information they had at the time they would have been in favour of invoking the EA. It drops a whole bunch of people from the case for not having standing. Declares that the convoy was not a lawful protest. And to the extent the EA wasn't acceptable it was only partially so some thing reached the minimum requirement and some things didn't.

     

    The appeal should be interesting. Or just bloody weird.

  6. Just for everyone talking about ROE and how it's unreasonable for the IDF to moderate casualties, that's what ROE *IS* that is the entire goddamn point. They are the conditions, circumstances, and limits on which force is allowed to be used. And to sit here and act like not only is that not the case, but that the IDF using a particularly restrictive ROE is fucking insane. Canada when peacekeeping and requiring permission to shoot back is restrictive ROE, meanwhile Isreali snipers have been shooting civilians. Their favourite pastime. Like at the bare goddamn minimum could you accept "don't shoot unarmed people" even if "don't shoot armed people unless they make themselves a threat" is a step to far? And don't act like that second one is unreasonable, that second one is precisely the kind of ROE you see in situations like this where people might have firearms for personal protection. Yes it increases risks to soldiers, but for most countries it's better to accept that risk and trust your soldiers ability than risk slaughtering civilians.

  7. The rain and wind sucked pretty bad for the ride into work today, fortunately yesterday when it wasn't quite as bad I decided I would bring a spare set of clothes just in case. Came in handy. And Friday it's looking like it'll be down in the negatives and get some snow, which may mean snow day for me cause this city is not built for the snow.

  8. RE the debate in the last thread about how far Israel can go in the name of stopping Hamas, I have to wonder if the same standard would be applied if the PA in the West Bank decided to level every illegal settlement? After all, an enemy polity has marauded their citizenry, right next door. They cannot do nothing. I mean, does any of the justification Israel has for their attacks not apply to them? Given we've apparently decided that human shields means it's okay to just fucking kill them anyway I can't see any reason by Israeli logic not to turn them into blood baths. In fact, if Palestinians were setting up villages in towns and villages in Israel en masse with the publicly stated goal of harming Israel's ability to govern itself I can't imagine Israel even bothering with the human shield excuse, those people wouldn't be civilians, they would be invaders.

    Underlying every "Israel cannot do nothing" retort (even though no one has actually asked them to do nothing, but let's not let honesty get in the way) is the fact that the PA must do nothing, for if they were to respond even slightly in the manner of Israel, the same force currently turned on Gaza would turn on them. And I have no doubt at all that Israel would be talking about the PA in the exact same terms as they do Hamas.

  9. Honestly, I find the discussion of getting into the definition of sentience or intelligence, or whether or not humans are too just following programing both boring and irrelevant. Actual capability at tasks is more important. True AI is human level in its ability to gather new information by itself and act upon it, if it can do that I would happily call it general AI even if you could show it was just following programing or found a workable definition of intelligence even if that definition technically disincluded it. Dumb (or I suppose I should have said weak, I've been playing to much Halo lately) AI is able to competently perform specialized tasks, GhatGPT has trouble identifying how many times a letter appears in a given word. Now, maybe it will become a weak AI in the future (after it's plundered enough actual human labour) but it's not there now.

  10. They're theft machines on a grand scale, not anything close to true or even dumb AI, and even as a predictive algorithm you're playing with fire with no protective equipment especially as it begins to poison itself with the data is creates and needs to rely more and more on underpaying people in developing countries to sort out not only good data from bad, but just straight up illegal shit. Many of these models are filled with CSAM for example.

    And yes, it's absolutely not AI whatever quibble you want to make about how the human mind works, because most of what's happening with these models are done by humans, not the model. And what it does do isn't synthesizing new information from old, but guessing what's next based on statistics.

  11. The Mexico example is interesting because it forgets for this analogy to be equivalent the US would also have to be literally invading Mexico and setting up new towns for Americans to live in. But uh, if you do that than the situation kind of changes doesn't it? Especially when you remember how many of those border states used to be part of Mexico. IDK not sure this analogy was very well thought through. Like legitimately in this situation I can't imagine the majority of the world not condemning the US and taking far more concrete action against it than what has happened to Israel.

    Kind of like that whole "Oh but they were willing to take *the desert*" thing and I'm sure the indigenous nomads of the area who's way of life was completely disrupted in favour of a more western style of living were just in awe of the generosity. Really hard to shrug off those accusation of colonialism when the mindset is clearly still "we took what was underdeveloped by our standards and developed it according to our standards and therefore it's ours."

    1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

    It was however far safer. Which is why the idea that Israelis got more extreme when facing fewer terrorist actions weird as he'll.

    The mid 2000s was also about 17 years ago ‐ 7 years after that Israelis were thinking much more about a 2 state solution. To me the main differences are Israel being very unhappy with the US deal with Iran (2014), followed by Trump giving Israel whatever it wanted and completely fucking over Palestinians (2017-2021) and then Netanyahu going even more right wing (2021-2023). During this period attacks from Palestinians went lower and lower, to the point where Israeli government believed that hamas had largely given up due to futility.

    Notably on the flip side even before October 7 2023 was an highly deadly year to be a Palestinian.

     

  12. 23 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

    Are you under the impression we don't? I brought this up in a previous thread, showing how the British seeded and expanded religious divisions for their own gain, then when they decided the whole colony business was too expensive, they left behind death, hatred and division. Which is why colonialism and post-colonial analysis is critical to understanding what's happening here in this conflict, as well. 

    China and France are ethnostates and no one has any complaints about that, just as no one has any complaints about the partitioning of India and Pakistan (and the Muslims there were brought by the British apparently, gonna be news to the Muslim people living there who are pretty certain they can trace their roots a lot farther back than that) next up we're gonna learn that the decolonization of Africa went great actually. Everybody got what they wanted and there certain aren't issues caused by it impacting the world today.

    Anyway @karaddin thank you, yeah that's pretty much it.

  13. Should it be noted that Hamas official charter states that Palestine's border would be those that existed in 1967 and does not call for the destruction of Israel? Now obviously we don't just take them at their official word, and include the fact it used to as well as statements from their officials in looking at what they really want. I'm just curious (rhetorically) why it's "listen to people when they tell you shit like this" but only in one direction. (Again, rhetorically I know perfectly well why this shit only goes in one direction for some people)

  14. 3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

    But you then have to add another wrinkle, the third party was previously thrown out of that same area which was their cultural homeland through violence, so why aren't the people who did so also colonizers? 

    ... They are. The fuck are you on about? I literally called the British, Ottoman, and Roman's colonizers earlier in the thread, when I said that did you think I was excluding the other empires that invaded the area? Or are you just doing the same mealy mouthed weasel bullshit you've been doing this entire time by leveling made up accusation at people and deliberately reading in as bad faith a possible.

    2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

    They are! But so are Jews and yet only the latter are called colonizers. Or accused of wanting an ethnostate. Or of wanting to commit genocide despite that the former are actually being louder about the last two parts. There's no denying this. 

    Accused of wanting an ethnostate? Them wanting an ethnostate is official policy, policy *you* defended and advocated with your "most states are ethnostates" nonsense. Enough of this gaslighting bullshit Tywin.

  15. 10 hours ago, Darryk said:

    I'm talking about people who say the founding of Israel was colonisation. You are correct that the current annexation of the West Bank is colonisation, I can't defend that.

    An Empire took land from another Empire and gave it to a third party without the consent of the majority living there. The societal and cultural institution where then reshaped to the newcomers desires rather than integrating into the already existing social order. What would you call that but colonization? Like legitimately, I do want an answer to this before you read the rest of my post.

     

    And this doesn't even get into stuff like the common language being Arabic but the British, being the British, dealt in English and so ended up elevating English speakers to positions of power which in practice meant European Jews. And if you aren't getting hints of how the British operated in Africa I don't know what to tell you. Or taking children from their parents and giving them to others, which should bring to mind things like the 60's scoop in Canada. It's the same old story that happened here, it didn't happen, to it did happen but it wasn't part of official government policy with many details still being hidden (Israel is currently here), to it did happen, and we're sorry, but we're not actually going to do anything to make up for it and it's low key still happening (Canada is currently here), to maybe one day actually dealing with it.

    IDK is this like when some people in other threads claimed most states are ethnostates? Are we just operating on a very different definition of what colonization means?

  16. 1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

    I get that, and I think it's a valid and very real fear, I'd feel the same way. But once the prisoners have been stripped, there's no reason to fear suicide vests anymore. So why not allow them to get dressed again, at the very least? To me it looks like it's more than just genuine and justifiable fear, it's about humiliation and teaching them a lesson. And sadly, the lesson most likely to be learned from this is not a positive one, nor one that will make anyone safer in the future. 

    Yes, once you've determined they're safe you absolutely return their clothes. This is humiliation and sexual harassment and a literal on camera violation of the Geneva conventions and nothing else.

  17. 4 hours ago, Darryk said:

    @GrimTuesday

    If you want a one-state solution, too fucking bad. It ain't happening.

    Thinking America or anyone else is going to be able to convince Muslims in that region to stop hating Jews then you're barmy.

    The colonisation narrative is bullshit. Palestine was a Roman, then Ottoman, then British territory where both Jews and Muslims were living for centuries. The UN divided it up between the two. If you don't like that solution then go cry about India and Pakistan.

    And if you don't think people should "cry all they want about the past" then why are you crying about a supposed "colonisation" that happened 100 years ago?

    The colonization narrative is bullshit? Israel is creating settlements in the West Bank right fucking now, what else do you want that to be called but colonization? It didn't just happen 100 years ago it's happening right now.

    And if the UN lends such legitimacy to arbitrarily cutting you're country up let's let them do it to your country and see how you feel about it. Talking about it becoming Roman, Ottoman, then British to say it's not colonization, like those Empires are famous for not colonizing anything. Out of your god damn mind.

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