I’m not sure if I agree or not but I like that what you’re saying is making people mad

Weird that for the last 5 or so years “Yemen” has been synonymous with “the Houthis” but in the last week there’s been a dozen articles posted to Lemmy still talking about the “Yemeni Government” as if Ansarallah don’t control the Capital, most of the country, have the support of the people and can project power outside their borders.

Ansarallah, called the Houthis by some, are the Yemeni government. The “Yemeni Government” here is nothing but a Saudi proxy.

Here’s my take: the United States had, through its Imperialist policies in the middle east, radicalized so many people who had identified the World Trade Center as a pole of that oppression that there was no politically feasible way to prevent its eventual destruction (at least, not without the establishment of a Draconian surveillance-police state that only a terrorist attack like 9/11 could justify).

9/11 wasn’t prevented despite multiple people knowing about it precisely because we don’t exist (or, at least, didn’t back in 2001) in the sort of world where the wealthy and powerful and the deep state are in constant cahoots. That is the view of the conspiracy theorist, not the Marxist. There are connections and backchannels but there are also breakdowns in communication, conflicts over jurisdiction.

I think some people knew enough to tell a select group of “insiders”: “Hey, there’s a chance the towers get bombed today, maybe call off work”, but not enough to, in their minds, justify the mass panic and professional consequences of a public announcement, especially in the case of a false alarm or failed attack. A public announcement may also tip off the hijackers, who could pick a different target or wait for a different day - and if the towers got abandoned because they were too large of a target for terrorism, I think a lot of people in the national security field would consider that “letting the terrorists win” with just the threat of violence.

As far as the Saudi connection, I think that’s the easiest thing to understand. Because Saudi Arabia (and other Gulf States like Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE) has closer ties to the U.S. especially among the elite, it is easier for terrorists from those countries to get access to the U.S. And connections to those Elites makes it easier to plan and fund terrorist attacks. Bin Laden, being a wealthy Saudi national, was familiar with the Western airline industry and had the resources and connections to enact 9/11 in a way that a radicalized Afghani or Iraqi civilian just doesn’t. That doesn’t change the fact that he was an Arab and a Muslim who opposed the United States’ economic subjugation of his people.

More good than bad, not perfect - I think the USSR’s system had some serious fundamental flaws that were left to fester, especially during the Revisionist era starting with Kruschev.

But even Kruschev was not evil. He was a somewhat misguided Communist who was doing his best to manage a Socialist state the way he knew how and thought best, just as every other leader of the USSR (including both Stalin and Gorbachev) was.

You realize that’s literally just the Nuremburg defense, right?

Okay this is like an actually good and interesting philosophical question I think lmao

I think objectively pulling the lever is morally neutral. The people are going to die regardless, you might as well take the money.

But, like the image says, I wouldn’t be able to in good conscience give up my “bystandership” for $100 even if the ultimate outcome doesn’t change. If it was a truly life-changing amount of money - $5,000, maybe? - I might pull the lever.

The forest temple scared the crap out of me as a kid, as did the bottom of the well.

I think for the forest temple a big part of it was just the discordant music

It is beyond hypocritical to refuse to call an election because it is politically inconvenient when you claim your right to rule by virtue of being a Democrat. A so-called “Democrat” who refuses to hold free and fair elections is nothing at all but an empty suit.

I think a lot of it comes down to paperwork burden. It used to be if you were entitled to something there was an office you could sit down in and they had a responsibility to get you want you needed before you left. Now, they send you home with a link to a webpage that doesn’t work and a million online forms that time out that you have to fill in perfectly or they get auto-rejected.

I’m dealing with this with a work friend who’s trying to apply for medical leave with hostile management. If you can’t count on your immediate boss getting you the paperwork you need in a timely manner without throwing a fit because you’re “trying to get out of work”, it just becomes a million times harder to live a normal life. It used to be that there was a chair somewhere you sat in and could reasonably expect your problems to be solved by the time you stood up again.

My immediate assumption, based on the map, is that methamphetamine is being smuggled into Iran, Syria and Lebanon by Western forces to destabilize those states. The smaller, localized bubbles around Istanbul and the Gulf States are likely the result of second-order proliferation of those drugs for profit.

Since they are redistributing production across their other locations, I can’t help but see this as a continuation of the move of jobs from Democratic-aligned states towards the South. It’s no accident they’re closing locations in Washington and Illinois and moving those jobs to Texas and Kansas.

Locals should pressure their legislators to implement internal trade barriers to protect the interests of union workers within their states.

I’d be upset if Al was scanning my face at the gay bar too

Yes, and their membership in NATO was a major sticking point - if not for the Ukraine war, I think we would have seen a Russian invasion of Finland when they announced their intention to join NATO. Throughout the Cold War Finland managed to remain a neutral power and was never invaded by Soviets. They should have remained that way. Their membership in NATO will continue to be a source of regional tension well after the end of the Ukraine conflict.

Since the breakup of the soviet union, Russia has invaded two nations: Georgia and the Ukraine. It invaded both for the same reason: they attempted to align themselves politically with the West and join NATO.

NATO was not founded to oppose Russian aggression. It was founded to oppose the Soviet Union. After Russia abandoned Communism, they petitioned to join NATO and the Western bloc in general. They were rejected by the West and all current hostilities stem from that rejection - Russia believed full reproachment under mutual anti-Communism was possible with the West but the West preferred their full economic subjugation.

Belarus and North Korea have been a more or less steadfast Russian allies and has never been threatened with invasion. Kazakhstan and Mongolia have maintained relatively independent political positions (playing both sides) and have never been targets of invasion. Azerbaijan has strong ties with Turkey, a NATO country, but has never attempted to join NATO itself and has friendly relations with Russia.

A NATO that includes Ukraine but not Russia is as untenable a situation as Canada having Chinese military bases lining the American border. If Canada was considering such a deal, America would invade immediately. The same would apply to Ireland hosting the Russians against the UK, or Mexico hosting the Iranians, whatever. Local rivalries are all fun and games until you start involving world power blocs. There is a reason why, despite tensions, nations like Sweden, Ireland, Canada, and Mexico do not host foreign troops; and why instances where this is threatened (the Troubles, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Russo-Georgian war of 08) the result is always proactive invasion.

Prevent a large nation on their border from joining a political-military bloc (NATO) that exists explicitly to oppose their interests.

The blame ultimately comes down to the Western meddlers installing a fervently anti-Russian government in the Euromaidan coup.

Russians and Ukrainians are brother peoples, barely distinct from one another. If the Ukrainians wish to have an independent state, there is no inherent problem with that - but just as a Canada that is anti-U.S. would be a geopolitically impossible and untenable destabilizing force, a Ukraine that is anti-Russian is the same.

I eat meat, and while I would consider myself generally politically anti-meat, it is on ecological and economic grounds rather than animal rights grounds. Animals don’t have rights. That’s what makes us people and them animals. I believe strict political veganism is an ultra-leftist position.

Whenever I say that, people always jump down my throat and talk about how animal abuse hurts people too - how it leads to lower-quality food, spreads disease, takes up energy and land and requires enormous subsidies. I agree with all that. End the subsidies, implement agricultural requirements to protect the health and safety of meat consumers and the general public. I also have empathy for animals - I have a pet cat I love very much. I sometimes struggle to deal with live shellfish; it makes me nauseous to sort through and pick out the dead ones. None of that has anything to do with moral or legal rights.

I believe that moral veganism is an idealist, and not scientific, position because animals lack the capacity for literacy and political solidarity.

Unfortunately, though, if you don’t want to become management, there is generally only one union retail position with real job security and good pay, and it’s meat cutters. Cake decorators and produce trimmers are increasingly being phased out of retail. Hell, they’re trying to phase out meat cutters too, but I think I got in under the wire and will at least get a nice buyout when they replace me with an underpaid clerk who just puts beef packaged in a Mexican packing plant on a shelf.

How in depth do you want me to go?

In a lot of ways it’s like any other retail job, except instead of putting boxes on shelves you’re cutting meat into smaller pieces of meat.

Since you’re a little harder to replace you can generally get away with a little bit more. You can goof around, tell inappropriate jokes. There’s less turnover. It’s harder to get in trouble for, like, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. For better or worse, the Union favors you and at least at my job the meat department is under a separate, better contract. I make $18/hr which is alright for Ohio without a college degree and good job security.

Everywhere is a little different, but the general workflow looks like - wake up at 3:30 AM, shower, leave home at 3:45 to get into work at 4. Public transportation is not an option that early (buses start at 7 AM) so I drive. Depending on the sales of the store, you might be the only cutter or there might be a team of 3 or so. Unless you work in an exceptionally busy store you’ll have one person on beef, one person on grinds and pork, one person on “mainline” (pre-packaged stuff) and value-added product (kabobs, meatballs, sausage, stuffed chicken, bacon, depends on the company and time of year). At very slow (or just penny-pinching) stores they’ll have one opener who does beef, a closer who does pork, and hire “clerks” (employees paid less and not trained in knife use or heavy machinery like grinders and saws) to do prepackaged and value added product. Your job is generally to make product to fill the service case and holes in the shelf by some arbitrary time (at my current job it’s 10 AM) and then cut some backup. Sales are unpredictable so it’s a balancing act between underproduction (leading to product outages) and overproduction (leading to spoilage). At very slow or bad stores they’ll just have one meat cutter and either have floaters cover their days off or just have them cut backup and hope for the best.

They do try to use AI to control production but management can never decide whether they want to maximize short-term profit (minimize shrink) or guarantee product availability (increasing shrink) so we generally just ignore the printout we get in the morning telling us what to cut and just follow the literal thousands of years of institutional wisdom on balancing production.

There’s a general shift in the industry over the past 20-odd years towards treating meat as a luxury good rather than a staple. Lower-income areas are having their meat counters closed and are increasingly getting rid of in-store butchers for pre-packaged product stocked by clerks; Specialists are being let go and having their regions consolidated; many stores are no longer carrying sub-par offerings (select grade, non-natural, and uncertified meats, less prestigious cuts, etc.) to focus on getting high-paying customers to shell out for prime filet mignon, rib steaks and imported wagyu; natural, organic chicken breasts; and pre-packaged product with a 200% markup. Stores in regions without high-paying customers either go out of business or are only kept around due to deals/for the optics/because (and I know some people might not like hearing this one) a lot of these local grocery chains are locally, family-owned by people who, while they want to make a profit, do actually care about poor communities having affordable food to eat - which is why they lose ground to more corporate, non-union stores like Walmart and Target infiltrating the grocery industry every year.

I’m a butcher. I do not use AI as part of my daily workflow. Claude cannot yet trim a steak.

Fragging officers is always morally correct, and the IOF makes basically every soldier an officer. It’s why you see 19-y/o “Captains” and “Sergeant Majors” all the time.

I would hardly call CoC “super-niche”