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The Anti-Targ

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Everything posted by The Anti-Targ

  1. Pretty good chance it's rare in the universe. Relatively speaking. There are possibly several billion planets where it happens, but that's still rare.
  2. I thought intent was always part of any criminal prosecution. Did you intend to murder the person, or was it an accident? Depending on the answer the consequences are quite different. Only for the very lowest level of offending with fines as the maximum penalty can intent be disgregarded. You have a piece of fruit in your bag when you arrive in New Zealand you WILL pay a $400 fine whether you intended that piece of fruit to be there or not. Being vomitously drunk is often offered as a mitigation. I personally was not prepared to give Mel Gibson a pass because he went on a drunken anti-Semitic rant several years ago, so I'm not well disposed to people using the "but I was drunk and didn't know what I was saying" defence. In vino veritas and all that.
  3. [Censored for compliance with rules, assuming they still stand] Justifying civilian deaths pretty much goes hand in hand with justifying the violent conflict of which it is a part. If someone believes the wider conflict justifies the use of violence then they will (if they are being honest) say civilian casualties are justified. So if you are prepared to say that deadly violence is a necessary action under [fill in the blanks] circumstances, then you ought to be prepared to offer apologia for killing civilians. And you can't just say it's justified by the side you support, because there are normally civilian casualties on all sides, so you have to allow that civilian deaths on the side you do support are also justified. You normally justify your own civilian deaths by saying there would be more if violent action was not taken, though that justification is only really legitimate on the part of the victim, since if the aggressor took no action presumably there's be no civilian deaths anywhere. A problem arises, of course, when everyone claims to be the victim.
  4. How about celebrating the deaths of other countries' military personnel? Also bad if it's US's friends, but fine if it's rivals? When is it OK to celebrate a person's death and when is it not? Seems like the number of situations where celebrating peoples deaths is justified should be zero or somewhere close to it. I don't think soldiers are at all special in this regard. Veneration of military personnel of one's own country beyond what should be normal due regard and respect for all people is militaristic nationalism. I think that's a particularly bad kind of nationalism.
  5. It's just apologia for British (and conservative Christian) colonialism. Which also happens to look a lot like dog whistle racism. After all if Britain can evolve to be way less LGBTQ+ phobic than it was when it was the colonial ruler of parts of Africa, then Africa should have socially evolved too. So if they haven't it means they are to be faulted and thus are culturally inferior in some way. Cultureism is the modern day respectable face of racism. Y'know like how people like Ben Shapiro say that black American gun crime is a black American "culture" problem, not a gun control problem.
  6. Outrageous, if govt money is used to bail out people who should be held personally accountable for defaming people then that does nothing to deter MPs from defaming people. Financial penalties, either levvied by the courts or through a settlement process to avoid a court from finding someone has definitely been defamed are supposed to act as deterrents against future behaviour. If the guilty party doesn't feel any personal pain the action against them is pretty pointless. The taxpayer "paying" for the compensation is a minor issue to the the much larger principle of what justice and redress for wrongdoing should look like. And justice does not look like govt covering privileged people's arses financially, or in any other way.
  7. I would like to know who is in favour of the Ukraine War. I think everyone who doesn't want Russia to annex a neighbouring sovereign nation was (at the time of the invasion) and is still against the Ukraine war, but sees the way to end the war as Russia retreating back behind it's 2021 (preferably 2014) borders. Is it that Galloway and Brand oppose the Ukraine war differently, in that they want Ukraine to just stop fighting and let Russia have what it wants? That seems to be what "opponents of the Ukraine war" seem to be wanting.
  8. Nikki Haley wins the primary!!! ... The Washington DC primary that is.
  9. It's a natural, and good, thing that as women become more educated they tend to have fewer children, because they see themselves as more than just baby factories. However this by itself should not lead to a declining population, because alone it should drop birth rates down to a stable or slowly growing population. What sends it into decline are all the socio-economic negatives that are weighing people down. Shitty geopolitical conditions, environmental problems people thinking they shouldn't breed as part of their contribution to global warming mitigation and other environmental degradation and pollution issues, the expense, the perception of a greater level of stranger danger (even though the facts suggest it's actually friends and relatives who are a greater danger), the [false] rhetoric that the world is already overpopulated, and a few other things I'm probably forgetting. There's actually a lot govts can do to address these de-motivating factors. They can give a lot more direct financial support to families (if there is a concern about dropping birth rates direct financial support can help to address that concern), govts can take more meaningful and urgent action on environment, pollution and global warming, govts can make sure education all the way through high school and probably even undergraduate degrees are universally available, at low or no direct cost to families and of a uniformly high quality. Of course the cost of raising a child, even with current levels of govt spending, is a lot more expensive than importing a fully grown adult, with the necessary skills and qualification, and putting them straight to work, esp since those adults usually bring a bit of cash with them. So govts are motivated to try to address population decline with immigration because it requires the govt to do less.
  10. The fact that left-leaning media has significantly less need to resort to lies and mis-representation of facts should be somewhat instructive to those of a more right-leaning persuasion. That perhaps objective truth is more often on the side of left/progressive perspectives and perhaps one might reconsider one's own leanings in light of the direction objective truth seems to point towards. An unwavering commitment to truth and the path it leads you down should eventually get everyone to more or less the same place. Search for truth without the least trace of love or hate in you heart, lest love incline you to error or hate blind you from the truth. Just don't seek truth from those who are already known to be deceitful.
  11. I am a supporter of the pile on doctrine: anyone invades another country without a UN mandate, everyone else piles on to kick them back out. Whether that needs to be a military pile on or something less killy would depend on circumstance. In the Ukraine/Russia case Russia really had no support countries that would be willing to commit bodies to the fight. Ukraine should have had allies willing to commit bodies to the fight. But even without formally committing bodies a hardware blank cheque could have done the job.
  12. The bias vs truth and integrity thing again. Every person intelligent enough and informed enough to have an opinion about something is biased. The question for media and journalistic integrity is if you support your bias with well contextualised facts, or if you mislead and lie to support your bias. I don't know if Ground News (for examples) does proper fact checking, but if they only put articles on a subject on a right/left bias spectrum they are not really addressing the fundamental problem in media which is honesty and integrity, y'know that quaint concept of journalistic ethics.
  13. The various reflections on radicalism might suggest the J6 2021 prosecutions will have little or no deterrent effect at all, if the MAGAists are true believers in their cause. If you go to prison for what you believe to be a righteous act then you will see yourself as a political prisoner in a corrupt regime, not a criminal. And your comrades on the outside will believe the same and will be motivated by your sacrifice to carry on the good fight. Tyrants locking people up and executing them using the facade of kangaroo courts works for a time, but eventually the revolution comes. If that's how the MAGAist see J6, the prosecutions and the Biden regime we can expect more or worse in January 2025 if Biden wins, especially if it's once again narrowly and with sudden swings to Biden late in the reporting for a number of states. If you look at all the political rhetoric around J6 and the various convictions that followed, the conclusion I come to is that in MAGA circles the struggle continues with even greater determination. At least that's what is being projected to the world at large. Behind closed doors it might be different.
  14. First I'm reading of a moratorium. Good to know lest I suffer the wrath of the gods.
  15. Who doesn't have bias? It's not bias I care about, it's a commitment to honesty and having integrity that I care about. If I read a piece that's all "Israel must be allowed to do whatever it wants to defend itself" then it's easy to identify that as having a bias and I have my own bias and will read the piece with those things in mind. But what I want from biased and purportedly neutral news articles is clear identification of verifiable fact with appropriate context, unverified allegation and opinion. If anyone is putting forward opinion or allegation as fact then they have no place in journalism, irrespective of bias. And if they are not providing proper context to facts their journalistic skill and credibility is questionable.
  16. For my sins I have the dubious pleasure of unavoidably having to work in the are of organics regulation. Fortunately only on the periphery. My take on it: what may have started out as a genuine desire to make food production more sustainable has turned into a complicated mess of rules many of which have little or no value in achieving sustainability and a corporate scheme to charge premium prices for a label most consumers don't understand. These days I actively avoid buying organic, except where an organic product happens to be my preferred product for reasons other than it's organicness. The only example that comes to mind right now is my preferred brand of coffee beans because they work best in my espresso machine, and dare I open another can of worms they are fair trade beans.
  17. That's because pretty much no one in history "know they are wicked". People who acknowledge they are flawed and know they will make bad choices are not "wicked" if their motivation is to do good in the world. So the SC deciding to review the case indicates they think there is merit to Trump's argument, so it seems like while they might not give presidents blanket immunity for the rest of time they might provide some level of immunity beyond what perhaps is accepted right now, which may or may make some of the charges disappear.
  18. That is such a lame and demonstrably illegitimate generalised statement. Consciously not voting is in itself a massive complaint that there is no one worth voting for and / or the system is so hopelessly broken and corrupt that even voting for someone that appears decent will be of minimal/negligible benefit to the issues you care about. I don't vote* anymore because no one is really dealing with the root causes of the big issues facing my country or the world, and in my view the current system actively prevents people from trying to deal with the root causes. But I assert the right to complain the hell out of those massive flaws and the things that are paralysing meaningful action, and no one is going to tell me my complaints aren't valid because I chose not to choose. People who don't vote because it's too much effort (even when it's very easy to vote like it is here), yes I do see more of an argument that they don't have much claim to be listened to when they complain. *I actually did vote last year but I scribbled all over my ballot basically invalidating it, but it went into the ballot box and thus it was a +1 to the number of people who voted. My vote is recorded in the official stats as an "informal vote". Last year 0.57% of voters cast informal votes. Essentially it's a vote of no confidence. But if you consciously choose not to vote from a no confidence perspective then it's the same as putting a spoiled ballot in the box. The next time I'm likely to vote with a non-spoiled ballot is the first time any candidate expressly adopts MMT as their economic framework. But even then the "decent people incapable of making meaningful change" aspect comes into play.
  19. Just to be clear, when you say not all of us agree odes that mean some in the queer community think the Police are doing just fine in their relationships and protection of the queer community? I'm not sure I can agree with the notion that these murders aren't on the police. Any time a cop, on or off duty, murders a person because of who they are that is not just a single bad apple, that is the tip of a systemic iceberg. Are attitudes that can be a direct danger to members of the public being actively identified in members of the force, and dealt with?
  20. It's the responsibility of the police to get on side with minority and vulnerable communities to meaningfully try to keep them safe, as far as it's possible to do so. It's not on those communities to invite the police in if they feel the police are not doing enough. Telling the cops they are not welcome at Mardi Gras is a clear message many in the queer community don't feel the police are doing what's required for this community. How the police respond to that message will give everyone insight into what the police culture really is. I hope the police say "we'll do better and earn back our invitation to participate in the next Mardi Gras."
  21. Maybe. It somewhat depends on whether the day to day evidence points to the police actually being LGBTQ+ allies or if they are guilty of tokenism, like taking part in public events and not much else.
  22. It's getting better of course but battery lifecycle is a factor in the use car market. An EV with a 300km range new that is sold today will have something less than a 300km range when it is put onto the used car market in 2030 no matter how well the owner looks after the car. A petrol/diesel powered car will have the same range as when it was new, so long as it is well maintained. However the price people will want to sell the used EV will be higher than the petrol/diesel car with pretty much the same features. I don't see many people paying a premium for EVs new or used because of their concern for the environment. Some will but not enough people to massively reduce emissions from private vehicles. Until new EVs are sold at middle income family petrol car prices and decent range used EVs are sold at low income family petrol car prices EVs will not become dominant in the market. In our case the cheapest new petrol car on the New Zealand market is about $20,000. The cheapest new pure EV on the New Zealand market is more than double the price at over $40,000. One good thing though is the cheapest new hybrid is only just over $20,000, so there is really no price barrier to getting into hybrids esp since the fuel savings available with hybrids will make up that small price difference in a reasonably short space of time. It doesn't help to completely eliminate private car tailpipe emissions, but it does help to reduce them. But we need, in NZ, a $20-25K new car with zero emissions before we can really start dreaming of a zero GHG emissions private transport fleet.
  23. Supreme Court Rejects Port of Charleston Case in Labor Battle - WSJ A pro-labour decision (to not hear the case) out of SCOTUS. Semi-pro I guess.
  24. If Trump wins and is very unpopular then there's basically no shot a Republican wins in 2028; but I guess having a snowball's chance in hell of winning doesn't stop people from deluding themselves that they will win. Haley's best path to 2028 victory is Biden winning, or Trump winning and being very popular and voters wanting more Republican rule; and she rehabilitates her credentials over the next 4 years as being someone who was always a Trump supporter and all her past statements were manipulated by the Democrat controlled media. Though the danger of Trump being very popular is him finding a way to end term limits and running a third time. "The country loves me, and they deserve more of me". He doesn't even have to end term limits, he just has to find enough people willing to re-interpret term limit to mean serving 2 consecutive terms. Haley is irrelevant in terms of the nomination (while Trump remains), but she's not irrelevant in terms of media presence and public profile. People are still talking about her, and as Oscar Wilde famously said (or Monty Python's version of Oscar Wilde famously said): There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about. If she drops out of the primary race people will stop talking about her.
  25. It’s Been 30 Years Since Food Ate Up This Much of Your Income - WSJ https://nypost.com/2024/02/21/business/americans-spending-11-3-of-income-on-food-most-in-30-years/ I don't think either of these papers are particularly friendly towards Biden. But it appears the stats are accurate. The graph in the NYP article is interesting in that is shows that despite inflation at home grocery spending in 2022 is still a lot less as a % of income than it was in 1990 and is comparable to the last 10 years. The total food spend more tracks the eating out graph both both the total and eating out graphs showing a sharp drop during the height of the pandemic and then a sharp rise when people stopped worrying about the pandemic. Over the last 30 years there has been relative food price deflation / stability, though as with all things the absolute price of food always goes up over the long term. Contrary to popular opinion it's not the price of food going up that's the problem, it's that wages are not rising to keep food affordable. In an era of massive profits for some of the biggest employers wage stagnation is the thing people should be talking about, not price inflation. In the end paying a higher % of your wage packet in food than you did 8 years ago makes people feel bad, and this influences voting decisions.
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