On the one hand this may have been the time to do it, there was a confluence of factors that seemed to make Iran vulnerable.
But it seems weird to take a victory lap on most of the objectives. No one thought the USA was incapable of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. So while I think some of the points about the region abandoning Iran are cogent, it wasn’t the first year after starting the war anyone was worried about, it was the next twenty.
> On the other hand, I can't help but think that some of this heartbreak would have been avoidable, if only he possessed more of the Richard-Stallman-esque attitude that non-free software is inherently suspect and unethical.
Since we’re getting all philosophical, heartbreak isn’t inherently bad, it means you had the opportunity to love something deeply. Being engaged in the world means taking risks on things that might disappoint you. I do wish more of that love were directed at open source, but it’s not as if open source is without heartbreak and disappointment. Richard Stallman is sort of emblematic of someone who starts out with good intentions, but whose paranoid risk aversion probably put a ceiling on his potential?
I think we should go a step further and log every activity a person takes the blockchains. There will be no ID theft because your DNA will be used to cryptographically authenticate your user.
Education isn't based on the premise that they'll never disobey. It's to help them recognize when things become dangerous or are getting to be a problem. Of course kids will do things they're told not to do - this is just helping them tap the brakes and understand how to recover. The attitude that the only solution is perfect enforcement is (in my opinion at least) partially to blame for the lack of self-awareness that makes the more vulnerable to later addiction problems in the first place.
Not sure if this is sarcastic but that's exactly how drug education works in the US. Sure it's optimistic but almost everything about raising kids is optimistic.
I was curious about drugs after DARE because I learned about stuff I'd never heard about before. But it didn't make me want to _try_ drugs. And if DARE weren't enough, watching Euphoria was definitely enough to make me not ever want to touch drugs.
Tell your MAGA friend if Trump is going to censor people he should be better at hiding it so they don’t trigger first amendment concerns. This is the first time I’m hearing Michelle Obama got Barr fired!
That's the thing. I can't tell him anything that he doesn't already believe. The programming is so deep that I think it's part of his identity and any questioning of his beliefs is taken as a personal attack.
I wish I could find some way to engage but I every time I try it becomes more and more clear that there's literally nothing I could say that would make him examine the situation from a different angle. Fox News has done its work well.
I might be in favor of it for fairly weird reasons, but I can’t help but think how pointless it is, I’ve heard several folks say Kimmel could make more money and have a bigger reach on his own. Legacy media is dying, broadcast media fastest of all, the fcc would be sort of accelerating its own irrelevance.
> I can't see how it is actually a win for Trump. OPEC has mostly been a big partner with the US.
I mean, I don’t even know if I mean this sarcastically anymore, but are we sure that Trump and the US’ interests are aligned? I think something can be a win for Trump and a loss for the USA.
I believe it to be possible to vote for someone and also not be 100% aligned with every outcome they bring about.
In fact, it may even be possible for this to be more in line with the vision of people who did not vote for Trump than the people who voted for him.
If you look at presidents historically, there are some occasions where the vision they described during the campaign to get votes is not in fact the vision they bring about while governing.
Also - what is your presumption of what my vision of the USA might be?
Nobody wanted a war in Iran, recall how Trump wasnt going to start any new wars? We are in this conflict bc of Zionists - it had nothing to do with US interests at all.
I feel like there’s a difference maybe between instrumentalism and habit.
What’s kind of weird about the article is how much the desired benefits are disconnected from the act taking place; I don’t choose a walk outside because nature “improves heart health” but I do think being outside is good and makes me feel good; I do it in service of a purpose, and I don’t think it’s implicitly wrong to make your life mostly habitual. Prayer at night, art for an hour every morning. Even 30 minutes before bed to talk to your partner.
I think a lot of people have this romantic notion that doing things you like shouldn’t be done intentionally. But if you have young kids even sometimes sex has to actually be planned, and it doesn’t have to remove the intimacy of it.
So I think I disagree with your idea that “doing relaxation” has to be stressful. Especially if you implicitly have bad habits forced around it like doom scrolling. I think forcing yourself to take a 20 minute walk outside every day has the benefits of being outside and walking. Even if it’s “doing relaxation”. And I may disagree with you entirely, that the best relaxation is an intentional process. Be it a walk, a bike ride, a video game, or yoga. I think the problem isn’t so much that intentional relaxation is bad, but more that it sounds bad.
Maybe the paradox here is that what works is what works. If you’re relaxation program, unintentional as it is is working for you. Great! It’s not my job to tell you that you’re wrong to feel relaxed after X, but I do think for those who don’t seem to share that experience it’s useful to here opinions like those of OP.
Throughout history people have taken precautions against ceilings disintegrating. One might even say, ”strong engineering controls”.
Some of the best known laws from the ~1700BC Babylonian legal text, The Code of Hammurabi, are laws 228-233, which deal with building regulations.
229. If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.
230. If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, they shall put to death a son of that builder.
233. If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his silver (at his own expense).
That doesn’t sound like ceilings never disintegrated!
But it seems weird to take a victory lap on most of the objectives. No one thought the USA was incapable of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. So while I think some of the points about the region abandoning Iran are cogent, it wasn’t the first year after starting the war anyone was worried about, it was the next twenty.
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