George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

@TruthSandwich @mcnado At the end of the day I guess it’s Israel’s decision how they want to attack Hamas but it is a decision, their hands aren’t tied, they’ve got options. I have to believe if they wanted to that they could kill fewer civilians but they have chosen not to.

That may be the right military solution, it’s not clear to me that it is and from a great distance I don’t know that Israel actually knows what it’s doing. It’s hard to tell if there’s a strategy here or just blind anger.

I also find it hard to believe that they’re going to be able to kill their way to peace, they will presumably be able to degrade Hamas and maybe that’ll be enough but I’m not optimistic that we won’t be seeing this all again in a few years.

That being said, I know I’m all over the place here. I’m thinking in print, I’m reacting to my own experiences and guilt at being part of a different pointless war.

@TruthSandwich @mcnado Israel has agency and their government has decided to take actions that have resulted in significant civilian casualties.

You can say that Israel doesn’t target non combatants but that’s just semantics. You can call dead kids “collateral damage” but I don’t imagine that’s any comfort to the loved ones they leave behind.

War is a catastrophic failure of civilization, it’s an obscenity, it’s unfortunately something that seems to be wired into the human brain.

None of this is in any way an excuse for Hamas, they also had agency and chose an unforgivable and brutal course of action. The world would be a better place without them.

(And if you want to make the observation that as a veteran of one of America’s wars I’ve got no standing to criticize others, that’s a fair observation. I’ve seen a war from the inside and I can’t say I was impressed)

@tristansnell Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to dunk on those two all day long, but apparently that’s not true. There’s something wonky about why it’s a bench trial but it’s apparently more than just a checkbox.

@jerry As a confluence hostage/user I’d say the internet had it coming

@freemo @jeffowski

Thanks, good to know. The graph I had didn’t go that high.

@freemo @jeffowski

It looks kind of flat to me (see graph 11 in https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/statistics-on-u-s-generosity/ ), perhaps the numbers would be different if the data were more granular at higher income levels but 2-3% seems to be the number above ~ 50k/yr in the us.

@aphyr I really like the deep storage idea, that’s neat!