I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think Wales is correct.

I understand this seems irrational, because of course Israel committed genocide in Gaza. And Wikipedia’s job is to describe reality, right?

Wrong. Wikipedia’s job is to describe historical and scientific consensus. It is fundamental to their mission that they do all they can to avoid arbitrating disputes. I know that’s painful, but it’s a matter of roles: academics and media organizations arbitrate, and Wikipedia’s role is to catalog and communicate the consensus these organizations reach.

It’s terrible that a minority of biased actors have managed to prevent media and academic institutions from reaching consensus when the subject is so straightforward and obvious. But until that is addressed, unfortunately Wikipedia is hampered from describing the consensus reality by the needs of their core mission. They are designed to be downstream of these organizations, and they have to be to remain effective to their core mission. It’s like how the UN lets war criminals like Netanyahu visit and speak. As much as we’d all like them to kick him the hell out, doing so undermines the core purpose of the institution. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s the job description.

I think one solution is that their should be more than one crowd-sourced encyclopedia for the world. Wikipedia will always suffer from a Western, English-speaking bias.

Deep take. Thanks for sharing.

I really love your analogy. I’m imagining early 90s Windows and AOL bombarding folks with pop ups that say ‘want to take this with you? Print it!’ and ‘Did you know you can print anytime you like with our new dedicated keyboard print button?’ and ‘Try our new cassette music player, now printer-powered to give you the best sound you’ve ever heard!’

I think the comment being posted accidentally in the wrong thread makes more sense.

My son went as Wario.

• Overalls, $15 used on Mercari
• Yellow shirt: already owned
• Yellow hat, $10 from a hat store

I went as Waluigi, similar stuff and costs.

There’s one more key consideration I haven’t heard people mention: you can choose to make your costume out of stuff you can wear outside of Halloween!

My son can wear purple overalls any day of the year. Our hats aren’t cheap costume hats, they’re baseball caps, which are useful accessories you can wear any time.

If you’re looking to get started making a Halloween costume, try going to a thrift store or an online reseller like Mercari and recognize that Halloween is an opportunity to buy stuff you kinda want to wear but feel self conscious about buying. Buy yourself a used leather biker jacket. It’s just a costume! But also… Now you happen to have a dope jacket in your closet. Maybe wear it the week after Halloween and see if it feels right…

That’s one of the best parts of putting together Halloween costumes, imo.

What does this mean?

WOW. So that’s where that video came from.

This is such a wild portrait into this attorney. They’re a lawyer in the Israeli army, so I can’t not assume that they’re ultimately complicit in so many atrocities. And yet they also did something incredibly selfless and dangerous in the name of justice, which most humans will never ever do.

It must be enormously painful to sacrifice your career and entire family’s social standing to bring a gross abuse to light, and then have much of your own society say, ‘Now that we’ve seen this proof… We’re going to stick with our position. You thought we’d change when you proved the claims of rape? No, we’re just going to admit that we endorse rape.’

I do appreciate their bravery, because the release of this video, imo, has been one of the most impactful events in the narrative of Jewish Israeli self image. This event did force a reflection. It forced Israeli Jews to confront that their actions were inconsistent with their belief that they are a righteous people. Unfortunately, it seems that when faced with this incongruity, they resolved the conflict by accepting that they’re the bad guys rather than insisting on stopping it. But I think accepting it did move the world another step towards accepting reality. And that’s progress towards the day the occupation is ended by external pressure.

It’s good enough to keep me interested.

It’s not good enough to replace Reddit yet, in the sense that I’m still active on Reddit. But there is enough worthwhile content here that I can check in each day and find some stuff that I enjoy. And that’s enough to give me a reason to keep coming back.

This is an interesting observation, but I watched Daredevil like a decade ago and I’ve never seen Superman & Lois so I don’t really know what you’re talking about.

The question “are we in a recession??” always makes me think of the SNL at-home headache test commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKgsR_9qa4

Deal removes constraint on OpenAI’s ability to raise capital

I think they mean “raze”…

I don’t think his strength is within an order of magnitude of theirs. I don’t think his durability is either.

Granted, I wouldn’t be surprised if you showed me a comic showing otherwise. There’s probably a comic where he goes inside a star or something stupid, because there are always those kinds of writers. But based on his typical portrayal, I think he’s more of a brush off a car crash and pick it up guy than a survive a nuke and crush coal into diamonds guy.

You know, sometimes when the Avengers announce a new inductee I’m like, ‘Really?! You think that’s a good strategic addition?? This feels more like a popularity contest!’

Their choices kind of look to me more like a publisher’s idea of what will sell books & toys than a cooperative of gifted public servants. But I’m probably just being silly.

Agreed. His comments are so bizarrely stupid on so many levels.

They’re not just “wrong”: they’re half-right-half-wrong. And the half that is wrong is idiotic in the extreme, while the half that is right casually acknowledges a civilizational crisis like someone watching their neighbors screaming in a house fire while sipping a cup of coffee.

Like this farmer analogy: the farmers were right! Their way of life and all that mattered to them was largely exterminated by these changes, and we’re living in their worst nightmare! And he even goes so far as acknowledging this, and acknowledging that we’ll likely experience the same thing. We’re all basically cart horses at the dawn of the automobile, and we might actually hate where this is going. But… It’ll probably be great.

He just has a hunch that even though all evidence suggests that this will lead to the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, for some reason his brain can’t shake the sense that it’s going to be good anyway. I mean, it has to be, otherwise that would make him a monster! And that simply can’t be the case. So there you have it.

It’ll be terrible great.

100%.

Peter Frase deconstructed this in an article a decade ago (and subsequent book) “Four Futures”.

It’s really not complicated. Saying 'the rich want to make us all obsolete and then kill us off ’ sounds paranoid and reactionary, but if you actually study these dynamics critically that’s a pretty good distillation of what they’d like to do, and they’re not really concealing it.

I’m glad to see cross platform releasing. Eventually, I’d like consoles to all just be open platforms.

Reported experiences vary between the hundreds of hostages, but in general, public statements have been inspecific declarations that they went through hell. A smaller number have spoken more publicly and described specific horrible abuses. Prisoners released by Israel largely mirror this, which is consistent with an abundance of public evidence that Israel operates extremely brutal extrajudicial torture camps.

But honestly, I’m not sure why we’re still talking about this. This started because you said that you believe it’s important to exercise skepticism towards sensationalist claims, and I pointed out that it’s equally dangerous to ignore credible atrocities because they are too shocking.

The situation in Israel/Palestine is really not that complicated. If you’re unaware because you’re not following it, that’s fine, but then I think it’s ignorant to demand extreme forms of evidence for things which are already well documented that you can’t be bothered to review.

The US is materially supporting a state sponsor of terrorism in broad daylight. This is publicly acknowledged by experts and major figures within Israel. Do with that information what you will.

You know, that’s kind of a weird response. Because what I asked was whether or not my interpretation of a set of events fulfilled your criteria for credibility. And instead of answering a pretty simple yes-no question you asked whether Greta Thunberg has published photos of her unclothed body.

I feel like you responded in your head, and then imagined my response, and then wrote a response to that.

But I think I can infer that you’re unconvinced.

Now I gotta ask: if that’s your standard of evidence, do you also doubt the veracity of the Israeli hostages returned from Gaza who attested to being tortured and abused?

If not, I think you’re exercising some pretty “selective” skepticism. And if so, congrats on your neutrality but Jesus Christ, that’s fucked up. When anyone gets back from captivity and alleges that they were abused or raped or violated, requiring them to expose themselves to you as the price to have their claims considered is quite gross. It’s not even an effective form of proof. Most torture is markless, and bruises are easily faked.

I’m not asking you to “believe women” or accept any victim narrative unexamined. I’m just pointing out that you can judge victims credibility without demanding that they submit to your leering gaze. Don’t believe Greta? Fine. I think that just as the hostages are far more credible witnesses to their own treatment than Hamas, the hundreds of flotilla activists testimony is far, far more credible than IDF. But you do you.

Uh… @DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ?

I think it sounds like you might be a danger to yourself.

I don’t know your situation, but I just want to point out two things:

1. The belief that those around a depressed person secretly don’t want them around or would appreciate them more when they’re gone is wildly untrue. It kind of sounds like your brain is trying to convince you of this, and you should know that your brain is almost certainly lying. Lots of people know folks who are depressed that we love very much and are grateful to have in our lives.

2. People who survive suicide attempts consistently experience enormous regret and relief that they survived. They typically describe the experience as terrifying, and report that it felt like someone else was trying to kill them.

I know that during depression, negative thoughts can make a convincing case that you cannot expect anything to get better, but there are A LOT of people alive today who enjoy their lives who felt the same way at some time in the past. I hope that with support you can perhaps be one of these people.

So where does this fall for you?

Two weeks after the alleged incidents, we have further reported details. Greta Thunburg has given a lengthily interview to Aftonbladet. In it she alleges that she was tortured in captivity. She also shows off her suitcase, which bears Israeli vandalism. Her story is corroborated by interviews with numerous witnesses, including journalists such as Saverio Tommasi.

Thunburg describes a visit by the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itmar Ben G’vir. Ben G’vir has confirmed this, and released footage of the event. Though the foreign minister has denied the claims that she and the other activists were tortured, Ben G’vir has expressed pride that they were made to suffer. He described them as terrorists. This was reported by The Times of Israel. This should be understood in the context that he is responsible for overseeing their treatment, and he has repeatedly expressed that he believes that terrorists in captivity should be tortured.

So my question, again, is whether you’d say that Greta Thunberg’s claims to have endured torture in Israeli captivity, during which time she was beaten, starved, and subjected to solitary confinement can be considered objectively verified.

I think so. I think the original report was fairly credible, and I think subsequent reporting thoroughly substantiates it by rigorous journalistic standards. Would you agree with this?