What do you mean? We have our summer intern rewriting the entire Linux kernel in Rust with the help of ChatGPT. They are set to submit the PR by Friday night.

/s

I’m sorry, but there is no situation where it is permissible to stand idle as someone suffers an untimely and preventable death.

Even soldiers at war, captured in foreign territory without visas, are entitled to lifesaving care.

OK. So by that logic, let’s say you are touring Europe and have a heart attack. The paramedics are in the area and available, but refuse to take you to the hospital. You are left to die on the street.

You think you deserve such foul treatment?

When a government is informed that people are dying within its waters, and the gov has the capability to respond but deliberately chooses not to because the victims are “african”, you think that the government bears no responsibity for their deaths?

Is it really so different though? The outcome of both situations is the same. Migrants are dying, through direct action and deliberate inaction.

Mediterranean nations have the opportunity to protect lives, but instead they choose kill / let migrants die.

You are defending willful negligence that leads to the deaths of migrants.

Up to 1 in 13 migrants die in the Mediterranean. Italy as well as Greece have been allowing migrants to die as a part of deterrence-based migration policy. Rescuing the passengers of capsized migrant vessels has been criminalized. There are plenty of articles that confirm these facts. Here is one example.

Are you trying to equate the ideology of a political regime with a minority population of South Africans?

South Africa had no right to exist as an apartheid state, and Israel has no right to exist as an apartheid state.

After apartheid ended and living conditions improved, black South Africans didn’t go and slaughter every white South African as retribution, so when Israel says freed Palestinians would slaughter all Israelites, why should we believe them?

If the occupation ended today and Palestinians were allowed to live fairly and given ample resources to rebuild, what reason would they have to seek further conflict? If treated fairly, why would Palestinians act any differently than the South Africans freed from apartheid? This conflict is ultimately the direct result of unfair treatment after all.

Sure, but “effectiveness” is usually not a binary and is often difficult to measure. Small, but persistent changes should still add up. Eventually.

So long as people recognize that these things are in fact quite toothless, I’m not sure they are entirely detrimental. There’s no reason this couldn’t be used as a starting point for more effective action, now that signatories are in greater contact with the campaign.

I don’t know.

I still think there’s at least some value, even if the only thing it accomplishes is getting people to talk about it. Many people have never even heard of The Internet Archive.

Either way, there isn’t really a reason not to.

Sure, but it is still better than doing nothing.

Relevant username?

destroying as much fossil fuel infrastructure as possible is a good thing

Maybe not when doing so would release as much methane as a small country.

If the plant tastes very bitter or soapy

brb, eating soap

That’s fair.

Is it not tax evasion/fraud? In the US, either can bring criminal charges. For a smaller municipality, is there no assistance available from higher government?

It’s both.

An example of bad urban planning is low density urban sprawl, which requires lots of resources for few housing units.

Less housing, price go up. High build cost, price go up.

Blaming AirBnB for high housing prices is like setting up a chain of dominos, and criticizing a guy who comes by and knocks it over.

Yeah, and that’s exactly what they chose to do. They contributed to the reasons John Public can’t afford housing, and were rewarded massively for it.

If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else, or the wind.

Yeah, anyone can rob a bank with poor security, but we should still punish the guy who actually robs the bank.

Cops would rather beat up college students and the unhoused than go after landlords.

that’s an expense that’s hard to justify to taxpayers

Ah, yes. We don’t have money because collecting taxes would be too expensive. Classic.

EDIT:

https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-tax-audits-recover-12-dollars-for-every-dollar-spent-2023-6?op=1

Somewhat conflicted on the “deliberate targeting”

Intentionally striking hospitals, aid workers, journalists, and families in their homes, is the deliberate targeting of civilians.

Still certain that Hamas knew what would happen and already had a plan to use it for propaganda purposes.

When a faction commits war crimes, the propaganda writes itself.

Israel already have all the weapons they need to flatten Gaza completely.

Yet the US continues to send military equipment and munitions.

The only people who can stop this suffering is the Israeli and Palestinian people

Not entirely. Israel relies heavily on foreign (US) capital. Threat of divestment and/or sanctions would likely be quite effective.

I’d say the scale of civilian death achieved through the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure is so extreme, it could not have been foreseen. It is a vastly disproportionate response.

No, they knew, and counted on it to get support and to wreck any goodwill Israel had with their neighbours and the world.

This is just wrong. The western powers have unwaveringly supported Israel from the beginning. Only just recently has the US decided to perhaps reduce the weapon shipments to Israel, after vast destruction and loss of life has already occurred.