I’m split. On one hand, thunderstorms in DC in the summer are so obvious and predictable that anyone doing any kind of organizing for an outdoor event would have considered them months in advance and would have contingencies. So “cancelled due to thunderstorms” is obviously a cover for “we’re getting too much pushbacka and don’t want to embarrass ourselves.”

Otoh, not realizing that there is a thunderstorm pretty much every single day in DC in the summer is exactly the level of competence I expect from the Trump admin.

Right. My point is that the Arab states lost to Israel because Israel was backed by the West. Without western support, a tiny Jewish state with almost no natural resources and a small population would be hard-pressed to stand its ground against a coalition of Arab states with a much larger population, oil money, and possible Russian backing. All the Arab states would need to do is keep taking pot shots at Israel while their superior military technology degrades and their stockpiles dwindle. A modern fighter jet relies on thousands of hyper-specific, high precision parts which can only be sources from western manufacturers. One part breaks and your whole plane is grounded. Even if the Arab states are not in great shape themselves, they win a war of attrition handily - especially once the average Israeli sees the inevitable and flees, depriving Israel of its soldiers and intellectual economy.

Otoh, your timeline argument is reasonable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t a coincidence in one way or another.

I hope Iran. I think they’ve got the best food of the options on offer. Plus, no cold winters!

Relevant

I’d argue that a nuclear Iran is not the only threat to Israel. Pretty much every other nation in the region hates their guts and wants them wiped off the map, and Israel has only stopped this from happening due to western support for their military. Iran nuking them is definitely a threat. But the other big threat Israel must contend with is losing Western support and munitions. Without that, a coalition of Arab states would overrun Israel in a conventional war.

My bet: Israel knows it is losing the war of public opinion in the West. So it is trying to start a war with Iran to get the West to support it again. Your ally committing genocide against an enemy that has almost no resources and no means of escape is a difficult stance to maintain. But supporting your ally in a war against your sworn enemy has a lot more public appeal - or so Israel hopes.

I mean, I’m honestly not surprised. I’ve been waiting for the billionaire class to rise up against Trump for a while now. If Trump were a competent autocrat, I’d be more worried, since they might all start competing for his favor in order to reap the benefits of crony capitalism. But the honeymoon is over, and Trump is very clearly extremely incompetent and toxic for business. He is scaring and deporting their low wage labor, tanking their stock prices and lowering profits with his tarrifs, and destabilizing potential international business deals with his erratic style of governing. Their increasing discontent with the current administration will drive cooperation rather than competition among them, and they will use their sizeable resources to neuter the administration.

A king can only rule so long as the court supports him.

I’ve thought of having kids occasionally, and have largely decided it is not a good idea. However, I decided that if I ever did have kids, I would need to meet a number of requirements first.

Beyond providing basic necessities like food and shelter, the most important thing a parent can do for their child’s happiness and well being is be happy. The parent needs to show their child, through their everyday actions, how to deal with adversity with grace and how to enjoy normal days with happiness and gratitude. While these things may be achieved via sufficient mental training - like hours of meditating per day - likely the more efficient path is to ensure their own higher-level needs are met.

The parent should feel secure in their ability to provide for themselves and their family, even in times of economic turmoil. They should feel their work is not just tolerable, but generally enjoyable and meaningful. They should have a large support network of friends and family with whom they can interact regularly. They should be be generally physically strong and healthy, and able to maintain that level of health easily - barring outside sickness or physical trauma. They should have the time and resources to engage in enjoyable and meaningful hobbies. They should have the time and resources to participate in their larger social communities’ gatherings such as festivals, time spent in the bar meeting strangers, or town hall meetings.

And then the child needs to be cared for. The child needs to be fed healthy food; be given stimulating activities to engage in; be provided with ample opportunities to interact with peers; and be given support and guidance not only with object-level tasks like homework, but with emotional issues around navigating social interactions, learning to appreciate necessary rote tasks, maintaining a regular routine, and finding what is personally meaningful to them. And the child also must be given ample unsupervised time where they can be alone or interact with peers (while not staring at a screen), so they can learn to be independent and self-motivated.

So basically my requirement is to form a commune of like-minded people that is walking distance from a small city’s walkable downtown, which has a transit line to a large city’s downtown, where everyone involved has a common understanding of the responsibilities of shared childcare, and also everyone is financially secure enough such that they don’t need to work full time. Further benefits of community organization would include reduced food costs via economies of scale, reduced labor burden of chores like cooking and cleaning, and social support for shared activities like exercise, sleep, and focusing on mental health.

But I have to say, this seems quite unlikely, so I almost certainly just won’t have kids.

and am closing on my first house in 2 weeks, which is VERY far away from them, and I have refused to disclose its location.

Good for you! This is also how I deal with my family.

You’re traumatized and overthinking it. They are not that smart. A good thing is happening. Enjoy it.

At my previous job, my relationship with my coworkers was 100% based on work. I had no problem asking for help or talking shop or whatever. However, due to not wanting to potentially tank my future career prospects, I meticulously avoided talking about anything personal or emotional at work.

Any kind of work social event was always painful then, since there was no work to talk about.

Meanwhile, we were a contracting company. Our company worked for other companies, where we signed contracts saying we would have the work done by a specific date. So company social activities either meant I was meeting with coworkers off the clock, or I was burning up valuable time I would need to get my project delivered within customer expectations.

So if my company said “hey everyone, we’re going to a trampoline park!” My thought would be "motherfucker - so I’m gonna spend the day pretending to have fun while making awkward, stilted conversations so I can effectively hide my emotions from my coworkers and thereby retain a professional demeanor and reputation. Meanwhile, I’ll be stressing all day about the work I have to do, since I’m already behind schedule and now I’m more behind schedule. Fuuuuuuck!

Seems too interesting for this sub. Please respect the space.

You’ve clearly never tried to use Wikipedia to help with your math homework

I will say that this is some significant gaslighting. The bar is by no means “on the ground” if you are a guy - unless maybe your bar for women is also on the ground. Like, could you woo a grossly overweight, extremely insecure woman who works at Walmart and has no hobbies other than complaining about her more successful sister? Yeah, probably. But idk, I personally have standards in both the looks and personality department for women I want to date, and these are not some superficial “shallow” standards - they are standards without which I seriously have no interest whatsoever in spending time with or sleeping with a potential partner.

So the question is - where is the bar for the women you’d be interested in dating? Like, the cute, athletic, cheerful, intelligent, successful girls who usually don’t break down in tears because they are out of orange juice. And the answer is - higher than you wish it was! Because every other guy also wants to date these women, and while some of those guys are shitty, a lot of them are also jacked, hilarious, kind, emotionally open, rich, and yes, tall! If you want to date these women, you have to work hard to make yourself stand out - getting in better shape, dressing in a way that looks good and expresses your personality, becoming more emotionally open and sociable, having an interesting and fun lifestyle, etc. And then you have to work hard again, because unless you are just an ungodly top shelf man, most women will still not want to date you for some reason, most of which are out of your control, so you will therefore have to shoot your shot with a lot of women until you find the ones who are into you.

Oh my God, YES!!! WOMEN LIKE TALL GUYS!!! Obviously I don’t mean all women, but a statistical sampling of women would reveal that “being tall” or “being taller than me” is a turn on for a significant majority of women. This doesn’t mean short guys should take the black pill and give up on dating because all women are shallow bitches. But it does mean that dating will be harder if you are a short guy. This isn’t a death knell for your dating life, but it does mean you will need to work harder at the things you do have control over, and it means you’ll get rejected more often for a specific reason outside your control.

And meanwhile, these women who aren’t into short guys aren’t “immature”, or “shallow”. They are simply staring their preferences and/or requirements. Physical attraction is important, and trying to date someone you aren’t physically attracted to is a bad way to start a relationship. After all, you probably wouldn’t want to date a girl with a face that looks like she got run over by a semi truck. That’s not fair, she can’t control how her face looks, but also, fairness doesn’t matter because you don’t want to date her. Full stop. Terminal value. Life isn’t fair, and it isn’t up to some random person you run into to make it fair for you. That’s a big case of not their problem.

To summarize: Dating is harder for shorter guys. This is no one’s fault, and no one is being a bad person. Short guys just need to work harder. Sorry.

It just came up in my main feed.

I cannot, since I don’t introduce myself as autistic at parties. I can’t imagine anyone in real life saying any of these things to me, since by the time we are talking about neurodivergence they have already sufficiently filtered themselves to probably be the sort of person who wouldn’t say these things. I don’t make it a major part of my life or identity, and don’t find it to be an interesting topic of discussion most of the time, except as a joke. My brain is different from other people’s brains. That’s fine. I have my own challenges and advantages just like everyone else. I work on the challenges I have without feeling the need to label them, and I try to appreciate the advantages when I notice them.

Idk, I’m not too broken up by it.

On the subject of authors, Robert Pirsig. His book made a bigger impact on me than any other, and I constantly re-read it anytime I feel lost or depressed or in need of some kind advice. It’s the kind of advice I wish my dad had given me. Losing him was like losing the dad I wish I’d had.

What evidence do you have that it is unnatural? How can you tell the difference between brigading and simply lots of vegans showing up by chance? If we assume 2 out of 5 Lemmy users are vegans or think we should eat less meat to save the planet, and almost all lemmy users simply scroll the front page, then this seems like a completely expected phenomenon

I think some market-based leftists have proposed various solutions for this problem, like mandating that all companies be run as coops. But I’m still skeptical of these for a number of reasons.

Even if they don’t win the case, court cases in general can be extremely costly. So companies will try to avoid getting sued as much as they try to avoid doing things that would actually lose them a lawsuit.

It definitely does not require coordination.

You are on Lemmy, which attracts leftists. Hence all the communism memes. Leftists heavily overlap with vegans. Hence, there are a disproportionate amount of vegans on Lemmy, ready and willing to spread anti-meat talking points at any given moment. This is all quite straightforward.