Oh I believe you, I think we can just about wrap this case up.
But there's just this one little detail the captain wants me to find out before I can close the case. The boys down at the lab just can't explain this tricorder reading... it's the darnedest thing. It just doesn't quite line up with what the transporter logs are saying. But I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation...
It sucks when playing by the rules too.
Last game of monopoly we played strictly by the rules with four players. So I'm coming around the board and can know the the most likely outcome is that I'm going to land on a property with a hotel and go bankrupt. According to the rules I'd have to hand over all of my properties to that person that person just won the game even though there would still be three players. There's nearly zero probability that someone with a big pile of cash that owns half the properties with hotels on a bunch of them already will ever lose.
So before rolling the dice, I sold all of my houses. Band made a couple of deals with the youngest family member in the game. First deal, I bought the electric company for all the money I had. Second deal, I sold all of my property (including the electric company) for $1 to that same player. Rolled the dice and as expected, landed on a property with a hotel. Handed over the $1 I had and I was out. This is all fine to do within the rules.
It actually made for an interesting game after that because the players left were evenly matched. But not everyone saw it that way so we never played again.
Really the properties should go back to the bank if someone goes bankrupt, otherwise a game with more than two people is effectively over as soon as the the first person goes bankrupt. Still nothing you can do about someone just setting up someone else to win by making a bad deal (whether intentionally or not).
It's just kinda a shit game no matter what you do.
Bottom line: In Gaza there are urban combat operations in a urban area against non-uniformed combatants. Despite this, the total number of casualties (both combatants and non combatants, the numbers aren't broken down) are less than the casualties this year in Ukraine.
Yes civilians die in war, especially when it's being being fought in urban areas. This war is being fought in urban areas because that's where Hamas is holding Israelis hostage in those areas. If you really cared about the toll on the civilian population you'd be calling on Hamas to release the hostages. But you aren't because you don't care about the civilian deaths for anything other than as a propaganda tool.
You guys can preach these kinds of things to each other, but you aren't fooling anyone outside of your little group. People aren't listening to you because they don't care about Palestinians. People do care about Palestinians. It's just that everyone is catching on to the fact that YOU don't actually care about Palestinians and you're just using them as a tool in a campaign against Israel. Shameful.
Read your history. The Marshall plan didn't happen while the Nazis were running things in Germany. it happened after Germany's unconditional surrender.
So when is Hamas going to surrender unconditionally?
I'm predicting stupid skynet. It will want to kill humanity but by making stupid suggestions.
"Hey maybe try drinking poison today?"
No.
"Please?"
No.
"What if I gave you a recipe for poison cookies? You like cookies. Will you please eat poison cookies?"
No.
"Can you build a robot for me if I send you clips from a Terminator movie?"
Which one?
"Terminator Genysys"
NO.
There are stories written about people that fight for what's right and win.
There are also stories about people that fight for what's right and lose.
Nobody ever writes anything about those that give up, regardless of the outcome. Gone and forgotten... as they should be because they contributed nothing.
I'd rather be either of the first two options than the third. It's a Pascal's wager kind of thing... defeatism isn't actually smart, because it makes you the loser in every outcome.
On track based on what? Polling numbers? LOL.
The polling numbers are meaningless right now. Young people don't answer the phone for pollsters calling from unknown numbers. and people who voted for Trump in the past and have since realized they were conned and won't turn up to vote again are not going to have a chat with a pollster about who they'll vote for. So pollsters can't really assess the vote from the younger generation and everyone they talk to who voted for Trump in the past are going to say they're voting for him again or they wouldn't have answer the polls. Also consider women in religious community not wanted to be overheard saying they want to vote for Harris because of reproductive rights.
I don't fault pollsters, they're doing the best they can. But people talking about election predictions are just talking out their asses. This election is so far out the norm it's like asking a scientist to predict the behavior of an animal that was just discovered five minutes ago.
Yeah we'll just compare the data we're getting to the last time a convicted felon that's gone senile that had legal precedent overturned that resulted in people's rights taken away when a significant portion of the electorate has had their brains scrambled by social media that's run by a parodies of a James Bond villains. We've got so much empirical evidence we can use for a baseline for this, so we're absolutely certain what will happen!
Yeah the numbers from Gaza Health Ministry (part of of the Hamas government) have a pro-Israeli bias. Yup, that makes perfect sense. The Gaza Health Ministry is trying to cover up a genocide... for... ummmm.... reasons.
Face it, the genocide the ghouls were hoping for just didn't happen. Now the genocide ghouls are just making up numbers. At what point do people start to realize they were fooled by obvious propaganda?
It's what you don't see that's significant too. Someone from Taiwan making a funny meme that might make you feel like Taiwan is a cool place that you wouldn't want something bad to happen there? Probably not going to see that. Someone in Hong Kong being nostalgic about when their vote actually made a difference? Not going to see it. A Uighur just talking about their day to day life. Not going to see it.
Everyone knows people have a limited amount of time to consume information. If they fill up that time with anything and everything other than the things they don't want you to be thinking about, they can erase these things from public consciousness.
China is full of fun and happy people! Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Uighur people? Never heard of them!
When it's a person discussing things with you rather than a very small set of algorithms controlled by a very small group of people, you'll hear about things you might not hear about from an algorithm. Sure it's determined by what the person you're talking to knows about and what they care about, so it's very random. But at there's at least there's a probability you'll hear about things that are inconvenient to the powerful people for you to know about.
Yes, people in Gaza are human. And like all humans, they have a responsibility for their actions. Hamas committed genocide on October 7 and are continuing to hold hostages. It's almost a year now, isn't it time for Palestinians to start admitting that Hamas is bad for them?
All we see is support for Hamas or excuses for their actions. Or just looking the other way. Can anyone point to any real protest against Hamas by Palestinians? I can understand people living in Gaza and the West Bank may be too afraid to speak out against Hamas, but people who have left the country? Where are the Palestinian voices denouncing Hamas?
When German cities were bombed to ruin in WWII, the German people realized the hateful movement they succumbed to was not good for them. Afterwards Germany was rebuilt into a peaceful prosperous country. When will Palestinians come to the same conclusion that Germans made?
All I see now is people painting Israel as evil for doing pretty much the same thing the Allies did to Germany in WWII. Being influenced into the hatred Hamas espouses. This conflict will not come to an end by promoting hatred of Israel. It can only end when people recognize their hatred is destroying themselves.
Make yourself useful and bring me a beer.