Meta: The company whose products you use when you absolutely, positively, don’t give a shit that they are the worst example of the worst nightmare of a consumer-hostile, privacy-invading, you-are-the-product, tech company. Yes, even worse than Microsoft.

Remember, this is the shit he’s trying to pull while not in a position of power.

I’m just barely old enough to recall when Sir Mixalot alleged that Jane Fonda does not have a motor in the back of her Honda.

😂

I agree with all that, but less so that she’s capable of doing anything meaningful with the demographic she’s targeting.

She should be targeting younger boomers and older x’ers if she wants to find a group that might want to listen to her.

(I say this as an older x’er)

I’m just barely old enough to for Jane Fonda having an opinion to be meaningful for me in any way, and I’m in my 50s. How on earth is she going to rally “disaffected young US voters” when most of them have likely never heard of her?

I’d say if you are appropriating a name from a fictional character for your child (which seems an odd choice, but which I think people should be able to do) it probably doesn’t matter much whether you take further creative liberties with it in that way.

Because he chose to work in law enforcement, and to turn off his brain. Not necessarily in that order Bobby, not necessarily in that order…

For both law enforcement and magas I see the same thing over and over –

What? People think we’re awful? Those people don’t know us. By the way, I’m just gonna be over here being awful.

This guy managed to do it for both aspects of his personality.

I mean, that sort of thing can hardly be a surprise at this point.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/5-lewd-remarks-donald-trump-allegedly-made-about-his-daughter-ivanka-over-the-years/ar-BB1p9djH

It was in a batch specifically meant for Hezbollah operatives.

Yes, I understand that. And those Hezbollah operatives can lose their pagers, have them stolen, or they themselves can move randomly through populated areas with the hidden bomb strapped to their hip. You don’t think any of these “operatives” do anything but sit all day in a cartoon-style bad guy lair surrounded by other bad guys? They never go to buy groceries, or stop at a hospital or school, or have their devices stolen or lost in some random location? As I have said repeatedly, these devices were deployed in a manner that has absolutely no mechanism by which to control where they actually are and who else is in proximity to them when detonated.

Either we are just incapable of communicating effectively with each other, or you are being intentionally obtuse.

Again I say good day to you.

I did, it’s been in every comment of mine and in the rest of the sentence after the bit you cherrypicked.

I’m left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation.

Once we hit this point, further discussion was likely pointless anyhow. Please let’s end this discussion here. Thank you!

And yes magas, everyone you know who isn’t one of you is doing this. All your friends, coworkers, and relatives who don’t actively call you out are just silently praying that you don’t open your bigoted, racist mouth whenever you are all together.

I think the important skill we all need to learn and practice is de-escalation.

I generally agree with you about this, which is probably good enough for this discussion. 🙂

but it’s natural for people to say “who welcomes me? Who attacks me?” And go with those who welcome them.

The people in my life who are wearing the red hats are essentially always the ones attacking, despite making up a tiny fraction of the people in my social sphere. The rest of us just spend every family gathering or social event hoping they won’t start spouting off this time, and offering zero of our own opinions because we know they absolutely will start spouting off if we do. They have a chilling effect on topics that anyone can discuss, compared to what we can discuss when they are not there.

So yeah, IME they are the oppressors from Trump all the way down.

My maga neighbor across the street has no idea if I’d welcome him or not, because his yard is full of hand lettered signs letting me know in no uncertain terms that anyone who votes like I do is a moron/traitor, etc. So I just pretend he doesn’t exist, and hope he and his (continuous stream of) visiting buddies don’t blow up the neighborhood or get careless with their guns one day.

The one and only sign he does have in spanish is the one letting everyone know he’s got a surveillance system though. That’s probably not racist though…

And yes these same rules apply to someone who grew up hearing the US is an imperialist bully state.

I didn’t grow up hearing that, but I mean…

I see your point, and I hope I succeed in assuming people are interacting in good faith until shown otherwise most of the time, but at a certain point people also need to be responsible for questioning the narratives they have always accepted without having to be stroked and petted into doing so. (They are both the “party of personal responsibility” and also the “fuck your feelings” party, after all.)

I grew up surrounded by rah rah USA#1 jingoism and a continuous dose of cold war propaganda in almost every bit of media I consumed. (It was the 70s/80s after all) And now I know that the US is an imperialist bully state with a lot of things in its past that folks like to try wishing out of existence rather than willingly examining.

I didn’t change a bunch of my opinions because the people I used to disagree with about many (not all) of these and related topics were nice to me about it. The things that have changed have changed because I was willing to consider new information.

“you seem not to (or have chosen not to) understand [the parallel?] the first two times

When I typed that I hadn’t spotted my own typo yet. Sorry.

If that’s the case, you’re making it so easy for me other people might think we’re in cahoots

I don’t care in the least if anyone thinks I’m in cahoots with anyone; it won’t change that I’m in cahoots with no one.

You can, of course, think differently.

Typo notwithstanding, it remains true that I do think differently, and if your argument boils down to what has actually been banned vs an understanding of how absolutely heartless and tragic it is to deploy a bunch of explosive pagers that will randomly move around a populated area because you want to kill a limited set of bad guys in that area, there is nothing left for us to discuss.

If that’s some kind of dunk because of me being on ml, YSK I’m not a communist. Beyond that, I don’t really understand your point, which is fine.

You can, of course, think differently.

And I do. It’s been one argument the entire time, and I don’t see how it’s worth reframing the parallel when you seem not to (or have chosen not to) understand it the first two times.

Good day.

Edite: I see I typed Hamas when I meant to type Hezbollah in one place. Will correct now. I admit that was potentially confusing.

The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas.

I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.

And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.

You cannot reasonably predict the path that a pager takes once it is shipped, no matter who it is intended for, not least because no one expects a pager to be the source of a deadly threat. You control who owns that “bomb” you have just sent into the world only until the moment it is unpacked and given to the first person who takes possession of it.