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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • They’ll still be fucked but they’ll at least stop worrying about this particular enemy.

    The difference is that “in for a penny, in for a pound” implies all options are equal as long as the objective is achieved. “Surgical strike that kills 24 civilians? Nuclear strike that kills 2,400,000? Something in between? Why bother weighing the pros and cons because we’re fucked on the world stage either way. Might as well go big.” It’s an argument designed to sidestep the very real debate over “acceptable loss” calculations and the duty to safeguard human life. No one is saying that Israel shouldn’t retaliate. No one is saying that Hamas is playing fair. What they are saying is that 10,000 dead refugees might look like Israel doesn’t care that they’re dead. Especially when Israel says they targeted refugee camps and ambulances on purpose. And when you chime in saying “fuck it, just kill 'em” to a simple plea of “maybe count the kids before killing 'em all.”

    The IDF is in an impossible situation, but the answer isn’t to shut down debate, it’s to actually talk about where the line should be drawn and try to minimize civilian harm. Allow foreign aid to reach the starving children. Allow civilians to leave the city. Listen to why there’s an outcry against indiscriminate bombings. Palestinians aren’t “meat shields.” Hamas might be hiding behind them, but that doesn’t mean you have to aim straight at the “shields” and pull the trigger. They’re people, and deserve more consideration than a simple “fuck it, what’s a little genocide if the bad guy’s dead?”


  • I agree that intent is an important consideration. In war, combatants are obligated to be intentional with who they target. That intentionality is even codified into international law. It’s why we say that civilian casualties must be minimized whenever possible. By law, commanders must attempt to discriminate between military and civilian targets, applying force appropriately to target only those who are part of the conflict. By law, retaliation is governed by the principal of minimum force, meaning only so much force as is required to remove the threat, and no more.

    When those of us outside the conflict zone are confronted with dead children on the front page, that’s the standard of “intent” we’re weighing our reactions against. For many, it’s hard to see how attacks on refugee camps were intended to spare refugees. How attacks on aid convoys and ambulances intended to spare the sick and wounded. How refusing to allow food, water, and the gasoline that hospitals need in order to operate is intended to safeguard the welfare of civilians who have been forced to drink sea water just to stay alive. Even if Hamas is using the population as human shields, it doesn’t change that the intent should be to spare those civilians in spite of Hamas’ actions. They’re fellow human beings. They deserve that bare minimum of thought. Sure, dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza City would wipe out the terrorists, but I think we’d all agree that’d be a war crime since it would also murder millions. The same logic applies here on the smaller scale (though 10,000 residents - half of them children - isn’t exactly “small scale”). That’s why it’s hard to see intention in those headlines. At least aside from the intention to do exactly what you’d expect bombing a refugee camp to do - murder refugees. The indiscriminate leveling of a region isn’t targeted, but it sure as hell looks intentional.

    I desperately want to be wrong here, and like I said, I’m an outside observer from America just like you. But that’s the train of logic that I see dominating calls for a humanitarian pause over here, and it’s rather compelling.


  • It’s a good way to frame things. As an outsider, the subjectivity of the IDF’s target is why I wonder if people are choosing one term for the war over another. Some see the intentional bombing of refugee camps, ambulances, and aid convoys as targeting the civilians of Gaza in what amounts to a systematic extermination of Palestinians. The casualty numbers seem to heavily favor that interpretation. So could this be one reason for some news outlets to frame the conflict as Israel vs Gaza itself? Or is the word choice more nuanced than that, given how it seems as though the two names are being used interchangeably on both sides of the line?




  • Makes sense. From your earlier post it sounded like there were only two levels needed: “deal with right now” and “deal with at end of day,” in which case “silence” works as a poor-man’s snooze for me because I don’t pick up my phone and deal with them unless it vibrates or I’m at home going through the backlog. But now that you’re talking about four different priority tiers, having them be device-specific sounds like a good plan. Best I can do without a separate tier from smartwatch/KDE Connect/ChromeOS is notify, snooze, and silent - 3 tiers. Pretty sure there are a few apps offering custom ringtones or vibration patterns per app or per notification keyword for further granularity on the phone itself, but for those who already wear a smartwatch (like me) having the separate device do that heavy lifting is a great way to go.





  • I can see the logic there, but why not vote based on relevance rather than agreement? That way comments that are on-topic and further the conversation rise to the top, regardless of whether they align with the Lemmy hive-mind. Some of the best threads are the long ones with a spirited back and forth between ideological opposites, and those would go away (or be pushed to the bottom) if both sides simply down-voted each other back to net-zero.

    As a weird byproduct, we also get fun stuff like Hanlon’s Law, which states that the fastest way to find the correct answer to something online is to confidently state the wrong one on Reddit/Lemmy and wait for your comment and the actual answer to float to the top. After all, people love to correct one another, and we often come to Lemmy to learn about other points of view and have our own views challenged. As long as everyone is debating in good faith and trying to add value to the conversation (which should be enforced by downvote), differing opinions are a good thing.


  • I can think of two benefits to an adjustable desk:

    1. Better chairs at a lower cost. Most office chairs (and chairs in general) are designed for table-height desks, so you’ll find a greater variety of multi-point-adjustable ergonomic options that’ll improve your posture while seated. From a corporate perspective, these chairs are also more versatile when the office changes size or layout because they’ll work just as well around the conference table as in the cubicle.
    2. This one’s purely a business reason, but also the main reason an office manager will have on their mind: the employee they hire to replace you might be a different height. Cynical, I know, but an adjustable height desk means they can accommodate anyone they hire now or in the future, and they’ve got to justify office expenses on a multi-year timescale

    For you, an existing employee who already has a desk and chair you like, the adjustable desk will probably be a downgrade. For the office, it’s a smart business decision that also means comfier chairs for everyone.