BraveSirZaphod

Jumping to “All Israelis deserve to die” is not helping you the way you think it is, but by all means, keep digging if you want.

So, yes, it’s “I think more civilian deaths would be good”.

I think I’ll just let that speak for itself. Cheers.

Are you suggesting that hundreds of dead Israeli citizens would be a better state of affairs?

If your position is that we should not support military action that blatantly violates standard rules of engagement, that would apply to the Iranian military just as much as it applies to the IDF. There’s no contradiction in criticizing IDF action in Gaza for not trying to minimize civilian casualties while also working to minimize civilian casualties in Israel as a result of Iranian action.

That’s proven to be both unpopular and often having unintended side effects.

I did my first cruise this year, and honestly had an absolute blast. However, the extremely important factor here is that it was a gay cruise (from the company Atlantis), and so it was absolutely nothing like the standard experience. For one week in the Caribbean, it was basically just a giant non-stop party. No kids, no entitled retirees, just you and 5000 other gay men trying to enjoy as much debauchery as can be fit into a week.

There were some port stops as well which were nice, but the main draw was very much the parties that would go on all night and through the morning. The music and production was incredible, and most of the other entertainment options were also swapped out for more gay-oriented options, so instead of bingo or whatever it is the boomers do, it was drag queens doing Britney Spears singalongs and things like that. And because everyone is gay, there’s already a shared common experience and identity so people tend to be very friendly and welcoming.

Also, if you’re single or otherwise available, the amount of sex you could have is genuinely ridiculous, though I was there with my boyfriend so we mostly just enjoyed the parties and made some great new friends. I had such a fun time, contrary to my expectations, that we’ve actually signed up to do another one in Europe later this summer, and that winter Caribbean cruise will probably become an annual thing for us.

The biggest issue involves the logistics on the ground, and in places with extremely high food insecurity, there tends to be little to no legitimate government, and so getting anything done involves dealing with local gangs and warlords. It doesn’t matter how much money you have if every shipment you send will just be stolen at gunpoint and sold to fund the local thug’s next golden toilet. This is not a problem that can really be solved by throwing money at it.

Just for the sake of completeness, the actual history here is that Ancient Greek has the latter Phi Φ which, during the classical Greek era of around the 5th century BC, was pronounced as a particularly strong /p/ sound that produced a noticeable puff of air, as opposed to the letter Pi π which was a weaker /p/ sound. It’s the exact same story with Greek Theta θ vs Greek Tau Τ and Greek Chi Χ vs Greek Kappa Κ. This distinction is called ‘aspiration’.

The Romans obviously had quite a lot of contact with the Greeks and took a lot of Greek words into Latin. However, the issues is that Latin did not have these aspirated sounds natively, and so they didn’t have an simple way to transliterate those letters into the Latin alphabet. The clever solution they came up with was to add an <h> after the aspirated sounds to represent that characteristic puff of air. So, they could easily transcribe the distinction between πι and φι as “pi” and “phi”. Thus begins a long tradition of transcribing these Greek letters as ‘Ph’, ‘Th’ and ‘Ch’.

The awkward issue is that languages tend to change over time, and by the 4th century AD or so, the pronunciation of all the aspirated consonants had dramatically shifted, with Phi Φ becoming /f/, Theta θ becoming the English <th> sound, and Chi Χ becoming something like the <ch> of German or Scottish “Loch”. This was generally noticed by the rest of Europe, and other European languages tended to adopt these new pronunciations to the extent that their languages allowed, though some languages also changed the spelling (see French ‘phonétique’ vs Spanish ‘fonético’). Plenty of languages kept the original Latin transcription spellings though, and thus we have the kinda goofy situation of ‘ph’ being a regular spelling of the /f/ sound in English.

So, tl;dr: Ph was just a clever transcription of a unique Greek sound that basically was a P plus an H. Then the Greeks started pronouncing it as an F, and so did everyone else, but we kept the original spelling.

Who is ‘they’?

You’re acting like there exists some single high council of concerned people who have unilaterally decided to pin all childhood woes on the phones, when this is a single article primarily about a particular group of UK parents who’ve focused on this issue and who presumably were never in contact with this American psychologist.

How do you know that these parents haven’t also considered helicopter parenting and free play? Do you know them?

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Well, on the plus side, now you know to actually read contracts before you choose to sign them.

In the meantime, enjoy your iPhone.

If the cost of not voluntarily choosing to get myself into bad contracts is being a smug asshole, so be it.

If the phone costs $500, they simply increase your monthly bill by $500 / 24 months = $20 a month.

It’s a bit more complicated than this, and they’ll likely have some interest built in as well, but functionally, it’s no different than being given a loan to buy the phone and then paying the loan off over the two years. That’s why carriers often require a credit check before doing this.

I’ve personally clicked on Instagram ads and made purchases from them. This has pretty much always been for various events, and I don’t really have any regrets there. I’ve seen some cool plays and gone to parties that I’d never have known about otherwise.

I can’t imagine what would ever drive someone to click on a random banner ad though.

So Verizon gave you a phone for no upfront cost, and they’re shitty for making you pay for it if you decide to dash away early?

Fascinating threshold for shitty behavior you have.

The funny thing about Lemmygrad people is that you could tell me that this comment was an intentional caricature and it’d seem just as likely as it being genuine.

If you’re under the impression that Israelis universally support Netanyahu, I have a feeling you’ve never actually talked to any.

He’d be gone by lunchtime.

Why?

There’s this narrative that Israel is completely dependent on US aid and would be powerless without it, but I don’t think that’s obviously true. What military is going to meaningfully threaten them? Jordan has no interest in another giant wave of Palestinian migrants (given that the last one led to a coup attempt), nor does it have a significant military. Lebanon hardly has a genuine government. Syria is a mess. Egypt does have some legitimate power, but also has no interest in a massive war right next to them.

The only regional power capable of meaningfully threatening Israel is Iran, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Sunni coalition do not want massive expansion of Iranian influence.

Not to mention, Israel has already defeated all of its neighbors, simultaneously, twice. I’m fairly confident that the only thing that would actually happen if the US stopped sending aid is a bit of a dent in the Israeli economy.

I’m gonna take a wild guess that most Lemmy people use Android, and the suggestion that someone might prefer an iPhone is triggering to someone whose sense of superiority comes from their choice of operating system for some reason.

One big thing I’d mention is that, shockingly, housing costs have a massive impact on homeless rates, independent of other factors that you might think would be more relevant. West Virginia and Mississippi are hardly bastions of economic prosperity or developed social services, and yet, they have some of the lowest rates of homelessness in the country, while California and New York are giant economies with huge social safety nets, and also huge homeless populations.

Why? Because the core reason someone becomes homeless is that they can’t afford a home, and even if someone’s life is completely unraveling, rummaging up $500 for an apartment in West Virginia is still much much easier than getting the $3000 that the same apartment would cost in New York City. As we’ve seen rent prices explode in HCOL cities, you see subsequent increases in homelessness. This isn’t complicated.

More direct interventions have their place for sure, but the single biggest thing we could do is actually build some god damn housing and not let Karen and Steve veto it because they think the parking lot it’d be replacing has historic significance as a pretense for not liking change or “urban” renters around.

The political problem is that voters who are paying rent tend to be annoyed by the government giving people apartments for free.

Housing first as a model is legitimate and works (at least more than doing nothing or maintaining terrible shelters forever), but the political resentment it builds is a real problem that no amount of finger-wagging makes go away.