7359 pts ยท January 21, 2014
Fair! Agreed!
I see many arguments from the outside arguing that Jesus said X but people do Y, so they're not Christians. This is misleading because it misses out on the centuries of interpretation, debate, and dogma that stand between the text and the practice(s) of that religion (of which there are MANY). It would maybe be better to say "this seems to be a contradiction" rather than "these people aren't true Christians" because that's false. Both Talarico and Potteiger are Christians.
I'm of two minds about that last comment. It feels like a "no true scotsman" thing. Like, I'm Jewish and think that the Palestinian genocide is an unconscionable horror that is antithetical to my understanding of both normal human decency AND the requirements of my religion; however, orthodox jews in Israel who think this is justified by religion are still Jewish. I think that there's a very important gap between religious text, interpretation, and practice.
The term you are looking for is pogrom.
Some states are more strict about keeping rates steady than others - some believe competition will keep prices reasonable, while others are more strictly regulated and the regulators will often force insurers to charge less than they want. And the profit margin will vary considerably from insurer to insurer and line to line!
Look up the underwriting profit in your state by line of business: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/publication-pbl-pb-profitability-line-state.pdf - for example, I'm in MN, so I'd look on page 439. That's basically the premium they collect minus the costs they incur. So for auto insurance, the profit margin is about 1.7% total (including liability and physical damage coverages). Pretty low! Compare to the u/w profit for mortgage guaranty of 62.7% - insane.
100% agreed. This is democrats trying to help the working class. They're not being savvy political players here, making this stick to republicans, etc. They're trying to actually help normal people. It's honestly kind of refreshing to me?
wow, holy shit.
My mom was given a 5-year survival rate about 15 years ago for heart failure, largely managed by lifestyle things (cutting out salt). Similar but not identical kind of issue. My impression is that the survival rate statistics are low partly because people are bad at making lifestyle changes that stick. If you can make good choices and stick to them, you'll last way longer than anyone expects (and you'll feel way better physically the whole time you're doing it).
The commentary and the headline are at odds here, though. If Israeli soldiers are traumatized, it is precisely because they are horrified at what they've done (since basically nothing has been done TO them). Which is understandable given the war crimes and genocide. It suggests that they are not psychopathic but calls to mind instead the banality of evil - "just following orders" - etc. The commentator is also mistaking journalistic malpractice for the opinion of the entire society.
THIS. If you watch flat earth conspiracy videos, Youtube will start recommending you other wild conspiracy videos (naturally), which basically puts you in the QAnon pipeline. That's why so many MAGA folk are also conspiracy nuts. The Right just figured out the algorithm, and it plays well against the Left's stance of "education as an institution is good; science is good" by suggesting to gullible people that it's actually those same leftists who are ignorant of the "true" nature of things.
Most auto insurance rates based on number of accidents but not based on the value of those accidents. There are actually NONE that are based on the value of the accident that I've ever seen. If her plan had "accident forgiveness," it wouldn't even impact her premium, crazily enough. That said, her insurance would probably just non-renew her after that.
Another way in which everyone should be watching what MN does.
That all said, I think the "that's how things were back then" quote is kind of what Spinoza said (and honestly what many more liberal religions say) to justify contextualizing more problematic aspects of the bible as being anchored in a particular cultural context that no longer applies.
What does the map mean? If anything?
All excellent points. There's a LOT of important complicated history I completely glossed over in my comments. And there is a lot that could be done in the future.
Yeah... I just posted a long thread about that here! I think it's true. I think it has a lot to do with the aftermath of WWII, antisemitism in the US, propaganda, and other things.
I'm not saying that Israel's actions are in any way understandable or that it's morally OK to be on Israel's side - it's absolutely not. But many people are just STUCK and as far as I can tell they just really don't want to see the other side of things. When your whole life is seeing stuff like that as antisemitic garbage, it becomes easy to dismiss. I think they are reachable in many cases, but there's a history there.
For Jews living in the US who faced antisemitism daily and who did not know about the displacement of Palestinians, Israel was a beacon of hope bravely defending itself against Jew-hating neighbors. Until it wasn't. And now many people who grew up at that time have a hard time grappling with (a) the history of colonization and (b) the horrific actions of the government. It would be like if someone told you Mr. Rogers was a murderer. You would just have a hard time believing it.
That all being said, I think you need to understand some context for why people have a hard time with this issue. After WWII, Israel was kind of a place where Europe was able to ship Jews who were displaced and generally unwanted. Even in the US, there were lots of supporters of Naziism at the time, and it wasn't clear that the US was safe for Jews. For many of a certain generation, Israel was the dream of self-determination, and we were not told about the displacement of Palestinians.
Israel is fucking up my life, and the fallout of that is just going to go on basically the rest of my life - we're not going to suddenly turn to a brighter future where people stop hating Jews in the US for what Israel is doing that we have absolutely no say over - but the ways that Israel is fucking up my life don't even RANK compared to the devastation in Gaza.
As a Jewish person in the US, this is extremely heartening. What is extremely disheartening is the vast amount of antisemitism I've already seen in the comments here, with antisemitic caricatures and the like. Among American Jews, supporters of Israel are a minority (though a vocal one). Netanyahu has made my life (and the lives of my children and many of my friends) less safe by perpetrating one of the most staggering catastrophes in modern history.
They seem to have been aware of the problem, having made several pledges over the years to eliminate child slave labor in their chocolate production, but those promises do not seem to have ever been kept.
I mean, this is literally the least of the problems with the company. In addition to the lead and cadmium in their chocolate products, they have been the target of a lawsuit for employing CHILD SLAVE LABOR in their chocolate sourcing and as of 2019 at least could not guarantee their chocolate was slave-free.
Another fun fact: you can't convert old coal fired powerplants to run on nuclear... not because it can't be done safely, but because the plants themselves are TOO RADIOACTIVE due to all the coal and can't be cleaned up, and nuclear plants have much higher safety standards that don't permit your plant to have that much radioactivity!
Fun fact: Mercury in fish is only there because of coal! If we didn't burn coal, there would be basically no mercury contamination!
As disheartening as it has been to see billionaires in the US go unpunished for some of the most heinous crimes known to man, I am absolutely here for a backlash against populist conservative nationalism and corruption ANYWHERE on the planet.
Lord, I see what you have done for others
Huh! I heard it described as an MIT marching band cheer; however this site says the order is "Cosine, secant, tangent, sine": https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/three_cheers_for_the_mit_march/
Oh, I should clarify: any government with the power to silence hate speech has the ability to use that same power to quash legitimate speech. Arguably that isn't EXACTLY what's happening in America, but I think given what we've seen from the Trump admin, we can accept it as basically true that Trump is doing everything in his power to limit the ability of people to criticize him.
Fair! Agreed!
I see many arguments from the outside arguing that Jesus said X but people do Y, so they're not Christians. This is misleading because it misses out on the centuries of interpretation, debate, and dogma that stand between the text and the practice(s) of that religion (of which there are MANY). It would maybe be better to say "this seems to be a contradiction" rather than "these people aren't true Christians" because that's false. Both Talarico and Potteiger are Christians.
I'm of two minds about that last comment. It feels like a "no true scotsman" thing. Like, I'm Jewish and think that the Palestinian genocide is an unconscionable horror that is antithetical to my understanding of both normal human decency AND the requirements of my religion; however, orthodox jews in Israel who think this is justified by religion are still Jewish. I think that there's a very important gap between religious text, interpretation, and practice.
The term you are looking for is pogrom.
Some states are more strict about keeping rates steady than others - some believe competition will keep prices reasonable, while others are more strictly regulated and the regulators will often force insurers to charge less than they want. And the profit margin will vary considerably from insurer to insurer and line to line!
Look up the underwriting profit in your state by line of business: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/publication-pbl-pb-profitability-line-state.pdf - for example, I'm in MN, so I'd look on page 439. That's basically the premium they collect minus the costs they incur. So for auto insurance, the profit margin is about 1.7% total (including liability and physical damage coverages). Pretty low! Compare to the u/w profit for mortgage guaranty of 62.7% - insane.
100% agreed. This is democrats trying to help the working class. They're not being savvy political players here, making this stick to republicans, etc. They're trying to actually help normal people. It's honestly kind of refreshing to me?
wow, holy shit.
My mom was given a 5-year survival rate about 15 years ago for heart failure, largely managed by lifestyle things (cutting out salt). Similar but not identical kind of issue. My impression is that the survival rate statistics are low partly because people are bad at making lifestyle changes that stick. If you can make good choices and stick to them, you'll last way longer than anyone expects (and you'll feel way better physically the whole time you're doing it).
The commentary and the headline are at odds here, though. If Israeli soldiers are traumatized, it is precisely because they are horrified at what they've done (since basically nothing has been done TO them). Which is understandable given the war crimes and genocide. It suggests that they are not psychopathic but calls to mind instead the banality of evil - "just following orders" - etc. The commentator is also mistaking journalistic malpractice for the opinion of the entire society.
THIS. If you watch flat earth conspiracy videos, Youtube will start recommending you other wild conspiracy videos (naturally), which basically puts you in the QAnon pipeline. That's why so many MAGA folk are also conspiracy nuts. The Right just figured out the algorithm, and it plays well against the Left's stance of "education as an institution is good; science is good" by suggesting to gullible people that it's actually those same leftists who are ignorant of the "true" nature of things.
Most auto insurance rates based on number of accidents but not based on the value of those accidents. There are actually NONE that are based on the value of the accident that I've ever seen. If her plan had "accident forgiveness," it wouldn't even impact her premium, crazily enough. That said, her insurance would probably just non-renew her after that.
Another way in which everyone should be watching what MN does.
That all said, I think the "that's how things were back then" quote is kind of what Spinoza said (and honestly what many more liberal religions say) to justify contextualizing more problematic aspects of the bible as being anchored in a particular cultural context that no longer applies.
What does the map mean? If anything?
All excellent points. There's a LOT of important complicated history I completely glossed over in my comments. And there is a lot that could be done in the future.
Yeah... I just posted a long thread about that here! I think it's true. I think it has a lot to do with the aftermath of WWII, antisemitism in the US, propaganda, and other things.
I'm not saying that Israel's actions are in any way understandable or that it's morally OK to be on Israel's side - it's absolutely not. But many people are just STUCK and as far as I can tell they just really don't want to see the other side of things. When your whole life is seeing stuff like that as antisemitic garbage, it becomes easy to dismiss. I think they are reachable in many cases, but there's a history there.
For Jews living in the US who faced antisemitism daily and who did not know about the displacement of Palestinians, Israel was a beacon of hope bravely defending itself against Jew-hating neighbors. Until it wasn't. And now many people who grew up at that time have a hard time grappling with (a) the history of colonization and (b) the horrific actions of the government. It would be like if someone told you Mr. Rogers was a murderer. You would just have a hard time believing it.
That all being said, I think you need to understand some context for why people have a hard time with this issue. After WWII, Israel was kind of a place where Europe was able to ship Jews who were displaced and generally unwanted. Even in the US, there were lots of supporters of Naziism at the time, and it wasn't clear that the US was safe for Jews. For many of a certain generation, Israel was the dream of self-determination, and we were not told about the displacement of Palestinians.
Israel is fucking up my life, and the fallout of that is just going to go on basically the rest of my life - we're not going to suddenly turn to a brighter future where people stop hating Jews in the US for what Israel is doing that we have absolutely no say over - but the ways that Israel is fucking up my life don't even RANK compared to the devastation in Gaza.
As a Jewish person in the US, this is extremely heartening. What is extremely disheartening is the vast amount of antisemitism I've already seen in the comments here, with antisemitic caricatures and the like. Among American Jews, supporters of Israel are a minority (though a vocal one). Netanyahu has made my life (and the lives of my children and many of my friends) less safe by perpetrating one of the most staggering catastrophes in modern history.
They seem to have been aware of the problem, having made several pledges over the years to eliminate child slave labor in their chocolate production, but those promises do not seem to have ever been kept.
I mean, this is literally the least of the problems with the company. In addition to the lead and cadmium in their chocolate products, they have been the target of a lawsuit for employing CHILD SLAVE LABOR in their chocolate sourcing and as of 2019 at least could not guarantee their chocolate was slave-free.
Another fun fact: you can't convert old coal fired powerplants to run on nuclear... not because it can't be done safely, but because the plants themselves are TOO RADIOACTIVE due to all the coal and can't be cleaned up, and nuclear plants have much higher safety standards that don't permit your plant to have that much radioactivity!
Fun fact: Mercury in fish is only there because of coal! If we didn't burn coal, there would be basically no mercury contamination!
As disheartening as it has been to see billionaires in the US go unpunished for some of the most heinous crimes known to man, I am absolutely here for a backlash against populist conservative nationalism and corruption ANYWHERE on the planet.
Lord, I see what you have done for others
Huh! I heard it described as an MIT marching band cheer; however this site says the order is "Cosine, secant, tangent, sine": https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/three_cheers_for_the_mit_march/
Oh, I should clarify: any government with the power to silence hate speech has the ability to use that same power to quash legitimate speech. Arguably that isn't EXACTLY what's happening in America, but I think given what we've seen from the Trump admin, we can accept it as basically true that Trump is doing everything in his power to limit the ability of people to criticize him.