Hyperreality

“We apologize for being caught.”

assassinated Iranian officials.

Bit disingenious to call (senior) Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ‘officials’ like they’re low level bureaucrats, not military personnel.

you’re ignoring the fact that Israel attacked first.

Why did they attack?

According to Al Jazeera, the IRGC initially claimed the october 7 attack on Israel was revenge for the killing of IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, although they later retracted that statement.

In any case, the cold war between Israel and Iran didn’t start with Israel bombing an Iranian embassy. Honeslty don’t know who started it, but it wasn’t the first attack, not the first attack on an embassy either.

Iran retaliated, and did so after warning Israel of exactly what it was going to do

Iran claims they warned Israel. The US says they didn’t.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-notice-attack-may-have-dampened-escalation-risks-2024-04-14

I mean, your user name suggests you’re queer and a communist. How utterly bizarre that you’re defending an Islamic theocracy.

It is possible to be critical of Israel and not defend Iran. Just so you know, I know Russian propaganda probably told you otherwise.

They launched a massive attack on Israel, Israel responded with a very small and limited strike. Iran have been funding terrorist proxy groups for decades. They also treat their own people and women horrifically.

Hate Israel all you want, but cheerleading for an Islamic theocracy is stupid.

I suspect the safety problem is mainly a car problem.

It’s been said before, but if I were a Palestinian (or an Israeli) I’d also be angry at Israeli politicians like Netenyahu for helping prop up Hamas, in order to divide the Palestinian cause and undermine the PLO.

Villains don’t always think they’re evil and don’t often do evil things just because they’re evil.

Often they think they’re doing what’s necessary for what they consider the greater good. For example, an evil character might think that strength is key to survival, is a higher good, so the weak should be punished or eliminated. For example, if you come across a camp of nice but weak innocents, you might side with those attacking them, because you don’t believe the weak deserve to survive.-

Or maybe they think they’re being kind. Those poor villagers were going to get killed by the monsters anyway! Let’s be kind and make it quick by helping the monsters make a quick job of it. Let’s kill the eldery crone or the children who are hungry. It’s a kindness.

Or they might follow a god and do things to appease that god. Serving your god is good, so anything you do that pleases your god is good, whether it’s human sacrifice or killing fluffy animals. Similar to the weak villain, who is too scared of their god or master to oppose them. Like Renfield in Dracula, they (think) they have no choice but to do the evil things their master wants them to do. Often they’re in denial about how they actually enjoy doing these evil things.

Then there’s villains who have no morals or who are nihilists. They do evil things because they’re bored, because it’s easy, and/or because they don’t believe it matters either way. Burn the village down? Why not? Everyone dies anyway. Corrupt someone good? That’s a fun game to play. Someone powerful but good comes along? I’ll help them, because to do otherwise would be dangerous or disadvantageous.

Then there’s villains with delusions of grandeur. They think they’re better than everyone else and will do everything in their power to ensure that anyone who might be better than them, gets cut down to size. Or they like to get involved in evil plots and schemes, because it means they get to feel like they’re influential. Someone wants to overthrow a kingdom? Time to get involved so that people know me as having changed the course of history.

Or there’s the evil characters, who are deeply cynical. The world is evil, nothing is fair, I’m just doing what’s necessary to survive. If I don’t kill/rob them, they’d do it to me. They probably deserved it anyway.

1. The German language doesn’t work well with pun based humour. This is the kind of humour English speakers are used to.
2. They do but you need to be able to speak German to understand the jokes they’re making. Understandably, it’s hard to be funny in a second language.
3. IME German humour is often incredibly dry, deadpan or even anti-humour. In the past I’ve experienced Germans making jokes, and British people thinking they were being deadly serious. Eg. “An Irishman, a German and a Brit walk into a bar. They order beer.” Expressionless face - shit example, but you get the idea.

Oh, is it time for that Sartre quote again?

“Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

The one that really makes the hypocrisy of the pro-life crowd blatant is PreP. PreP reduces the risk of contracting HIV by something like 99%

If people were genuinely pro-life, they’d make it affordable/free and easily available for whoever wanted it. Hell, HIV would likely be a thing of the past in the developped world within our life time.

But who is most likely to contract HIV? Gay men engaging in anal sex and drug users. When it comes to these people, the pro-life crowd are in fact pro-death.