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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • That may be so, but it doesn’t stop it from being a complicated situation. What happens to US international relations when the rest of their allies come to the conclusion that they’ll be met with bombs and threats when they don’t respond to requests the way the US wants? If the US does far, far less, how much less is enough and how much is too much? What happens when Iran, its proxies, and other adversaries of Israel realize that its biggest ally no longer has its back?

    I’m not telling you that calling for an end to the bloodshed is wrong, it’s not. I’m not telling you that the United States and the international community are doing enough to pressure Israel to respect human rights. I don’t think anyone knows enough of what’s going on behind the scenes to say for certain that enough is being done and what’s going on in front of our eyes says that more is required. What I am saying is that complex, world issues are complex and we cannot have a full understanding of them, nor a productive discussion about them unless we acknowledge their complexities.

    Edit: I do appreciate the breakdown of how a threat works though.



  • I don’t think many people are saying that the morality of a genocide is complicated, but I think plenty of people ARE saying that classifying a genocide when no two look alike and both sides of the current conflict obfuscate and lie about the facts is complicated. A lot of people are saying that responding to a genocide occurring within an entrenched conflict in one of the most volatile regions on the globe where nearly every major world power has involvement and interests IS complicated. Many of those saying that international diplomacy is complicated understand that when the most important allies of a nation violating human rights pull their support too hard or too fast that that nation is likely to accelerate its plans to try and accomplish its goals before further repercussions prevent it.

    We certainly shouldn’t let these complexities prevent us from speaking out regarding what we feel is right, but pretending they don’t exist only serves the most cynical and self-serving of political interests. Resolving human rights abuses is always more complicated than slapping a genocide or not genocide label on the situation and saying “genocide bad” or “not genocide okay.”








  • Several of the trade groups that sued New York “vociferously lobbied the FCC to classify broadband Internet as a Title I service in order to prevent the FCC from having the authority to regulate them,” today’s 2nd Circuit ruling said. “At that time, Supreme Court precedent was already clear that when a federal agency lacks the power to regulate, it also lacks the power to preempt. The Plaintiffs now ask us to save them from the foreseeable legal consequences of their own strategic decisions. We cannot.”

    This has to be one of the better, legal “go fuck yourselves” I’ve ever seen.


  • Isn’t this just the story of the allied powers in World War Two repackaged into science fiction? The members were:

    The British who were sort of friends with the Americans but regarded them as less civilized and less experienced in running a nation.

    The French who literally fought the Hundred Years’ War against the English.

    The Soviets who didn’t like any of those people and proceeded to argue with all of them thereafter.

    The Americans who had existed for a little over a century, invented the nuke after winning a fight with a World power in an ascendant phase, and decided it was on them to guarantee World peace.



  • I love the topic, and the passion, but if you’re looking for constructive criticism I personally feel that this piece could benefit greatly from a few academic sources and a little reorganization.

    On the whole the article is focusing on voter apathy, of which the statement “I’m non-political” is a symptom. Try to focus more on the subject of voter apathy and less on the particular statement. The statement is fine for a headline and an intro but as another commenter has already noted there are other reasons individuals might attest to apolitical feelings. If you reference a study on voter apathy in your introductory paragraph you can pick out the leading causes or use a few of the findings of the study to structure the rest of your article. Focus each section on one cause or finding with references back to the original source and another work or two that are focused more specifically on that subject. This will lengthen the article and lend it more true substance.

    Consider combining the what can be done and where to look sections into your summation. As the purpose of this piece is to examine a social ill it is ideally suited to a “call to action” summary and these are the perfect sections for it.

    Lastly, you would do well to cut down on “I” statements. They rarely engage the reader and can feel out of place when writing about a subject as universal and academic as voter apathy. For your opener think about something along the lines of “How many times has this happened to you: You’re discussing the events of the day with a friend or acquaintance only to get into the meat of the discussion and suddenly be met with the phrase ‘I’m not political’…” It directly engages the reader by asking them to participate in the thought exercise and makes the anecdote personal instead of second-hand.

    I hope any of this helps. I think you’ve got a good start here and I look forward to what it could be with a little more meat on its bones.



  • The Free Beacon is a rag. All of the charges they are talking about are their own. The article focuses on only one of the charges as it’s the only one not already specifically addressed by a plagiarism investigation sparked by their own charges. That one instance seems to center around two paragraphs and two footnotes. Only one of the paragraphs is more than one sentence long and all of them are descriptions of the contents of sections of the voting rights act. It would be pretty tough to reword that content in too many ways. Oh, and the article straight up admits that the author she supposedly plagiarized looked over the sections and told them that they come nowhere near academic plagiarism. There, now no one else needs to read that substance-less dreck.

    Oh, and weren’t The Free Beacon the ones who funded Fusion GPS opo until the Steele dossier came out and they decided to trash fusion without ever telling anyone they were the ones funding them?




  • I don’t know that it’s all that obscure, but with Halloween coming up you should see Tucker and Dale vs Evil if you haven’t already. It’s a role reversal of the teens in the woods trope. Two redneck buddies (Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) are renovating a hunting cabin when they save a young woman who knocks herself unconscious in the lake. Her friends think the rednecks are creepy killers and proceed to attack the two in an attempt to save their friend. The teens end up accidentally killings themselves one by one all over the rednecks’ property scaring the hell out of everyone involved, and that’s just the beginning.