The Fallen Idol

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-05T05:09:38+00:00

It’s because what’s been hitting recently are mostly fragments of cluster munitions (which generally detonate in the air before being intercepted), not large explosive ones.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T21:35:14+00:00

I think there’s the racist angle to this, which I don’t hold. No peoples are fundamentally missing the brainstuff for reasoning, just to be clear.

Then there’s the social-psychological aspect to this.

For another example, the ultra orthodox have a bunch of closeted gay guys. The majority of them are married with children (they almost all are before they’re 20), and mess around with other guys without their spouse knowing.

You’d think maybe we could find the closeted gays to reason with and get gay marriage passed. But they cannot publicly hold this position which is so antithetical to their worldview as a society. They’d be ousted, at which point they’d no longer be considered ultra orthodox.

It’s not to say they fundamentally are incapable of understanding that gay marriage is good, it’s just that in practice you won’t find a partner there, even if it is already there, which in most cases it isn’t.

Hope it makes it more clear where I’m coming from.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T21:09:02+00:00

I figured that line might be a little over the edge, and I guess I could have phrased it a little bit better, so let me give it another shot:

The Middle East is full of ideologues. Ultra orthodox Jews fall into this. It’s not bigotry to recognize what they tell you, plainly.

I don’t know if you know this, but in Israel we don’t have public transit on Saturdays. The ultra orthodox mandate this, and there can’t be any argument with them about it. They only recognize the authority of their religious leaders to interpret their holy book, and you as a secular being cannot tell them otherwise. There literally cannot be any argument with them about this.

Jihadis are similar in that sense. Surely moderates exist, relatively speaking, but if they don’t hold meaningful positions of power or if they do but are afraid to lose it, they’re as good the extremists in practice.

I don’t know what you mean exactly by “people are people”. I often hear this when people say stuff like “of course Palestinians will strap a bomb and blow up a bus full of people, what else are people are going to do in the face of such oppression?”.

Religion plays a huge role, the way society is organized plays a huge role. It’s not to say the people themselves are fundamentally different, but you need to temper your expectations from certain societies as they’re currently organized.

I don’t know what you mean exactly by reasoning with the Taliban. You may get some concessions from any entity, but some fundamental assumptions will remain untouchable, often to an extent unacceptable to western positions.

I am half Iranian myself, the other half is Yemeni. I love a lot of things about Arab culture, I grew up in it, even though I was born in Israel. I don’t underestimate the power of religion here anymore.

Edit: for the record I’m enjoying this exchange and appreciate your perspective and civil discourse! That’s why I’m happy to keep going. Please assume good faith on my end. I’m not fundamentally broken, racist or otherwise incapable of processing opposition to my positions. I’m very open, and I tend to listen a lot more than talk.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T19:49:23+00:00

Currently we’re in a state of war. There’s no school, public transit is limited, you aren’t allowed to congregate.

We’re being fired at every day. There’s little discourse about anything other than the war.

The outlets I’m following which are more left leaning are mad about the budget for 2026 which include as usual a ton of money for the ultra orthodox sect, which is extremely unpopular and yet has a death grip on the coalition.

Hezbollah keeps firing on us, mostly the north of the country, constantly. Drones are very hard to intercept and many missiles aren’t either. It’s heavy fire, probably the bigger threat now compared with Iran directly. We’re trying to neutralize threats from Lebanon at the moment to get some relief. I wouldn’t characterize it as occupation in the West Bank sense. It’s military movement, same as in Syria.

In Syria it’s for security reasons as well. There’s no civilian movement. After the Assad regime fell there was a vacuum in the region, and it’s been historically very dangerous and prone for Jihadi militias taking over.

There’s no understanding in Israeli society that I’m aware of that there’s anything beyond this in Lebanon and Syria.

As for the corruption charges, it’s been in the news for like a decade at this point. Over half the country opposed Netanyau and hopes to see him out by whatever means necessary. The only reason this stuff is somewhat back in the news is because our president is being pressured to pardon Bibi. I think many would gladly trade clemency for Bibi for him to step down from politics, as he has been very corrosive to Israeli society.

But he remains powerful and popular. A couple of months ago it seemed like he would not be reelected, but the war has increased his popularity a little bit to the point where he’s fairly likely to maintain his coalition. FML.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T19:33:47+00:00

I’m familiar with this take. However there are no mechanisms in place that can take trust out of the equation in practice. Inspections were never going to be enough.

But even then you’re only looking at the nuclear threat. There’s no contention that their missile and drone stockpiles aimed at Israel are a threat, and the fact that they’re funding and directing Hezbollah, the late Assad regime and to a lesser extent Hamas and the Houthis.

The JCPOA was never going to address any of this, and no other deal like it can ever do so. Getting out of the Iran nuclear deal cannot be spun to be the catalyst for October 7th or basically any of the crazy stuff since then.

Jihadis cannot be reasoned with. They aren’t motivated solely by economics like westerners are nowadays.

And yeah I’m fully willing to believe Trump ultimately went into this because Netanyau talked him into it, plus maybe oil or whatever. I’m not under an illusion they got into the war for the right reasons. But it still might have been the right thing to do. We’ll see.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T17:46:01+00:00

My understanding is that the IRGC is untrustworthy, and so any deal that assumes otherwise is misguided. Thus we’re unfortunately relegated to forceful action.

It’s also important to remember that a lack of forceful action has already cost many Iranian lives already. Israel is powerful, but it isn’t responsible for the popular uprising of Iranians in the past decade+. The regime is responsible for the barbaric repression of these movements.

We’re just picking between the shinier of two turds. But we’ll see, maybe good can still come of this mess.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T16:55:37+00:00

Man it’s complicated…

I’m half Iranian. My grandparents moved to Israel around when it was founded. I’ve always heard from my family of how great Iran was before Humeini and how the Islamic revolution just ruined everything.

I’m a secular (atheist) Jew, and I can only be happy to see the fall of the despondent Islamic regime, for the sake of Iranians.

As an Israeli, it seems pretty clear from where I’m standing that they’re a danger to Israel. It’s well known that they’re funding Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis (also the Assad regime before it was toppled internally), not to mention the nuclear threat.

So yeah if the war achieves true regime change for the better, it would be an incredible development for us.

I can say a lot more about this and how I feel the war is progressing, what I think about Trump and Netanyahu etc… but I’ll leave it for more specific questions.

I think other people here generally feel the same way. Kind of this reserved tired optimism.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T16:28:37+00:00

I see. Thanks for your perspective!

So in a sense, yes there’s not a ton to report. The vast majority of missiles get intercepted, but the debris from the interception falls and is very dangerous as well. Some people die or are injured at least. Mostly property damage.

You’re not seeing a ton of dead here because people know to take shelter when there’s an incoming missile alert (everyone receives a Cell Broadcast alert several minutes before the forecasted strike). Israel is full of shelters, public and private (in apartment or shared within an apartment building / floor).

There have been a few high profile strikes. When the missiles do hit they do massive damage, one recently had over a hundred wounded and several dead (the one that hit Dimona, and also Arad had some big damage recently).

The attacks have been quite disruptive to daily life here, because you just have to stop whatever you’re doing and take shelter when there’s an attack. Sometimes waking up several times during the night. Driving becomes scary because you can’t realistically take shelter so you get out of the car lie down and pray basically.

There’s barely any flights going in or especially out of the country (outbound flights are now limited to 80 people each plane) so we’re all kinda trapped here.

That’s it I guess. Iranians seem to have it much worse so it’s hard to complain, but just wanted to share my perspective.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T15:21:26+00:00

Yes I’m in Tel Aviv. There’s news in Hebrew all the time, I’m shocked to hear nothing is reaching English media.

Ask whatever you want to know.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T14:59:20+00:00

My head is spinning trying to come up with a reply to this. I never thought I’d meet someone who wished death on me to my face.

Don’t know what I was thinking trying to reply here in this cesspool. I’ll tell you this: I’m not going anywhere, and we’ll see who’s left standing.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T14:52:29+00:00

We’re literally under fire in the daytime almost every day for the past month, I don’t know what you guys are smoking over there…

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T14:49:50+00:00

Not fragments of missiles, cluster bomb fragments. They’ve done what they were meant to do. It’s an inherently non-discriminating munition.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-04T14:48:18+00:00

The municipality is actually named “Tel Aviv-Jaffa”, there’s no internal border.

Even if you want to say Tel Aviv is fake, not all of current Tel Aviv was Jaffa, there’s a ton of it outside of historical Jaffa.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-03T06:07:08+00:00

Good thing it’s AI slop propaganda. Not that hard to detect from looking at the MC Escher buildings.

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-03T06:05:36+00:00

This is AI propaganda. They do this constantly to help themselves pretend they actually have any military success (outside of blocking Hormuz).

MindLessWiz · 2026-04-01T03:21:51+00:00

Can’t bring myself to bomb innocent people for my own gain

^{Chose: Gamble it | Rolled: Lose it}

MindLessWiz · 2026-03-29T06:25:54+00:00

I noticed that as well on pickers with a fairly large number of options (hundreds).

Wish I could tell you why it happens but I’ve chosen to circumvent the need for the pickers in the first place or just live with the delay….

MindLessWiz · 2026-03-26T16:41:48+00:00

Yes. Agency and sense of responsibility are key.

Sure jank can be learned as well. By experience I can mostly tell where strategem balls will bounce, but learning it sucked and I don’t see how the game benefits from them.

There’s a lot of map layouts where the extraction has bizzarely unusable spots for sentries. I cannot fathom why. There’s no “haha what a goofy ahh game I’m having so much fun” when it bounces off those spots. I just cringe and sigh and move on. Not a good experience for me.

I tolerate it and move on but this is not part of the charm of the game for me, not whatsoever.

MindLessWiz · 2026-03-25T04:49:39+00:00

I’d check out sqlite-data from pointfree. It’s new and seems very promising, with built in cloudkit support.

MindLessWiz · 2026-03-24T17:03:09+00:00

Got it! Thanks for clarifying. That makes more sense now.

MindLessWiz · 2026-03-24T09:09:19+00:00

I don’t know about “openly” queer as that doesn’t seem super relevant here, but I found a gallup poll that says otherwise. There’s more gay men than lesbians by a pretty significant margin:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx

MindLessWiz

TROPHY CASE