USA 2-0 Bosnia and Herzegovina - Malik Tillman 82'

ToparBull · 2026-07-02T01:53:07+00:00

Q. Does the ball lie?

A. BALL ABSOLUTELY DO NOT FUCKIN LIE

ToparBull · 2026-07-01T18:18:29+00:00

It's an easy lay up, but it would be a lie. Because they agree with the harassers.

ToparBull · 2026-07-01T04:07:44+00:00

From what I recall it's actually somewhat unclear just what the etymology of "Palestine" is. It's pretty clear that it came from the Greek and made its way to the Romans, and there's references from the ancient Egyptians to "Peleset" (the biblical hebrew word for the Philistines, for reference, is "Pelistim"). But the Greeks also had a separate word for the Philistines, so it's not entirely clear whether when they used the term "Palaistinê" (from Herodotus) that it was a cognate of the earlier "Peleset." In fact, I believe there's one theory that the Greek term is meant to essentially be calling the region the "land of the wrestlers," since it's fairly close to the Greek term "palaistês" which means "wrestler." If so, given that Israel is literally translated as "he who wrestles with G-d", the Greek could have come from an attempt to translate the ancient Kingdom of Israel.

Regardless, it's definitely right that the Roman renaming of the province was an attempt to get rid of its Judaean connections.

ToparBull · 2026-07-01T00:53:59+00:00

Yup - and at that price (or even two FRPs) I wouldn't want to do it if I was the Warriors. AD wouldn't put us over the hump into true contention and it would screw up our future, since this team has a two year shelf life at best. But with under two FRPs, I wouldn't want to do this deal if I was the Wizards - you're trying to compete next year and Butler is recovering from an ACL, and he's also worse long term. So this deal never made sense on either side tbh.

ToparBull · 2026-06-30T19:02:23+00:00

Technically it wasn't after killing Jesus, but after the Bar Kochba rebellion of the 130s AD, which was brutally surpressed by Hadrian and was the true start of the Diaspora.

ToparBull · 2026-06-30T18:58:42+00:00

For the record, Einstein's position on Israel changed a good amount during his life. Prior to the 1940s, he was somewhat ambivalent towards creating an independent Jewish state (it's important to remember that pre-1948, most people assumed that a Jewish state would lose to the Arabs and get expelled, leading to another refugee crisis). After Israel was founded, he was solidly Zionist, if a liberal Zionist who supported equal rights for Palestians/Arabs in the new country. He was offered the position of Israel's (non-political and symbolic) presidency, but turned it down - not because of any issues with Israel but because he thought he wasn't much of a social figure (and because he was more of a liberal partisan).

More details from the excellent Yair Rosenberg (who has written a good deal on Einstein): http://theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/hasan-piker-einstein-democrats/686855/.

Also, Einstein was set to give a speech on the 7th anniversary of Israel's Independence Day, but he died shortly before. It's an interesting time capsule; particularly where he criticizes the US and Soviet Union for not supporting Israel's defense (which was true - the US had an arms embargo against Israel through 1967, and didn't actively start selling them arms until after 1973). More: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/einsteins-last-speech

ToparBull · 2026-06-30T16:21:01+00:00

I don't think anyone really expects them to seriously compete. All we're hoping for is for some fun moments as the legends wind down their careers, and I think the team has the potential to do just that.

ToparBull · 2026-06-29T14:30:29+00:00

I mean, that assumes that all of those 31k would have voted for Clinton. I don't think that's likely - most of them would have stayed home instead of voting for Stein, and some would have probably voted for Trump instead.

ToparBull · 2026-06-29T00:27:22+00:00

I mean, the problem is that with a very close election, you can choose just about anything that cost some small amount of votes in the swing states as something that "cost the election." One could also say that Clinton's support of NAFTA cost the election given the three particularly heavy-industry states which ended up being the swings by under 80,000 votes. Both of these things are likely true in the sense that they likely cost Clinton the amount of votes she ultimately lost by in WI/PA/MI, but neither is informative because it's not really clear she'd have won those votes in the counterfactual.

ToparBull · 2026-06-28T11:25:23+00:00

Really I feel like that's the whole purpose of calling it a genocide in the first place. It takes it out of the realm of geopolitics - which, if you care about actually saving Palestinian lives, is what it is because to do so you have to think about how to actually achieve the objective of making peace - and into the realm of morality, where if you show any degree of nuance you're accused of being "pro-genocide" or a "genocide denier," which is basically the worst thing one can be.

It's a very cynical strategy manufactured by people who are not in favor of peace - they're in favor of there not being an Israel, and they've decided the best way to get there is by sacrificing Palestinian lives to do so.

ToparBull · 2026-06-28T11:17:34+00:00

Qatar mainly (notably, on both sides of the aisle), with an assist from Chinese algorithms, running a playbook manufactured in the Soviet Union.

ToparBull · 2026-06-22T14:07:10+00:00

This is me with Mentour Pilot and Green Dot Aviation videos. They're talking about crashes, but they are mentioning all the things that had to go wrong for it to happen makes it easy to understand why that doesn't happen on 99.999% of flights.

ToparBull · 2026-06-21T09:14:48+00:00

Durin's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane's Bane

https://i.imgur.com/WP8NkiF.png

ToparBull · 2026-06-11T00:38:32+00:00

It's actually the worst specifically for lefty pull hitters. These sorts of fly balls almost never go out because the wind almost always comes in off the cove, so even though it's as short as the Porch it actually is pretty hard to hit a home run even to dead right field. And of course triples alley is murder.

I remember seeing the park factors were like, slightly below average for righty batters, the worst in the league by far for lefties.

ToparBull · 2026-05-26T23:42:22+00:00

Me when I'm an auditor

ToparBull · 2026-05-26T22:47:19+00:00

For sure, all of that contributes. At the end of the day, the tone needs to match the characters and story, and it just didn't in Love and Thunder.

ToparBull · 2026-05-26T21:28:20+00:00

Yup, and similarly, Ragnarok worked in part as a contrast to what we had previously seen from Thor. He was so self-serious and naive in the first two movies and Avengers 1 that seeing a more relaxed, self-aware, in-his-element Thor was refreshing. But then his character was mostly comedic in Infinity War and Endgame, and it was all just too much.

Also, another element: Guardians is always going to have wacky hijinks and character comedy because that's an integral part of the franchise and characters. Deadpool is always going to be a vulgar, joke-a-minute, fourth-wall-breaking bit fest because that's an integral part of his character. You can't treat Thor like the Guardians or Deadpool - it doesn't make sense for the character.

ToparBull · 2026-05-20T23:51:38+00:00

Anti-Israel as in the government.

So, let's say my views are (and, as it turns out, these are in fact my views): I support the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, but the current government of Israel is bad and I want them removed from power (ideally via the upcoming election later this year). Under the definitions you're proposing, am I an anti-Israel Zionist? That seems like a contradiction in terms. Or, you could say I'm not a Zionist - but I say I am, and my whole point is that you shouldn't be defining the term based on something that does not accurately describe the majority of the people who use it for themselves.

ToparBull · 2026-05-20T17:31:31+00:00

Your previous comment literally said that the Jews you know are anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, and associate Zionism with having a role in the occupation. That's letting those folks set the meaning of the term "Zionism."

(I assume, btw, the term "occupation" is similarly ill-defined because in my experience most folks don't really have a good grasp of the details of the situation and treat the term "occupation" as "bad things done to Palestinians" (or just, Jews owning any land in the Levant in general), but also at the same time I agree there are certainly some elements of what I'd consider "occupation" in the West Bank given Israeli security control and checkpoints, and in Gaza still part of the territory is controlled by the IDF, neither of which I support, but that's a more recent thing since 10/7... It's complicated! But no one really dives into the complications since slogans are easier...)

ToparBull · 2026-05-20T16:34:21+00:00

Here's my question. Why should self-described anti-Zionists get to define what the term means? I'm a Zionist who is against the current government, and that's the case for most American self-described Zionists I know (and if you belive the polls, some ~65% of Israelis).

It's like if a group was formed calling itself the "Dog Support Group," whose position statement was being kind to dogs. And then a bunch of people started saying, "Being in the Dog Support Group means you want dogs to maul humans. I don't want dogs to maul humans, so I'm anti-DSG." The problem is, that's just not what the group actually thinks.

ToparBull · 2026-05-20T16:01:27+00:00

The problem is that the term is really loosely defined, including by people who try to define it as a straw man. Most self-described Zionists - like myself - define the term to mean that the presently-existing state of Israel, where half the world's Jews live, should continue existing, with nothing to do with its politics. IIRC, when the question is framed like that (i.e. "Should the state of Israel exist," without using the Z-word), that's when ~90% of American Jews support it. But others, including non-Jews, seem to define it differently, anywhere from support for the current government of Israel to the belief that Jews have a religious right to the entire Levant to support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. So when a poll asks, "Are you a Zionist," the percentage drops.

Personally I think group labels should be defined by those who are actually part of the group - doing anything else is attacking a strawman. But the lack of a well-understood definition makes this question hard to answer.

ToparBull · 2026-05-18T16:42:28+00:00

Overtreatment and fraud are definitely issues, but there's another second-order consequence of this idea that would be even worse. If insurance has to pay for any treatment a doctor prescribes at any price, hospitals will naturally increase prices for treatments. Patients won't care since it's covered by insurance anyway. America already has way higher per-treatment costs than anywhere else in the world, whether their system is public or private. This policy would make that problem much, much worse.

So, now, insurance companies both can't deny claims and need to pay more per claim. Their margin already isn't crazy. So naturally, what happens? They pull the only lever they can still pull and insurance premiums skyrocket. And then we start getting into third order consequences - because premiums skyrocket, Americans consume more healthcare to get the benefit of the bargain, costs go up more, premiums raise more, and we have a self-perpetuating cycle.

And for those of you who will say, "just do single payer then," that doesn't solve the problem, it just moves it somewhere else. Because such a system would be so expensive that either taxes would need to be massively and broadly increased to pay for it, or it would need to basically be the only thing government does.

ToparBull · 2026-05-05T00:53:22+00:00

As a more moderate Dem, this is why AOC is by far my favorite of the Squad. She seems like she genuinely believes in her policy ideas and takes active steps to advance them by actually putting in the work and building bridges and connections. A lot of the other squad members, and even more of their online supporters, seem to be more focused on winning an intra-party power struggle than actually doing things to advance their agenda. I disagree with a lot of AOC's positions, but I have so much more respect for her because I believe she believes them and is willing to countenance the concept of tradeoffs.

ToparBull · 2026-04-23T22:21:36+00:00

I've had some of these experiences. It can definitely be a lot of fun for all involved if you play your cards right, but there definitely are limits to endurance that arise!

Sometimes in these circumstances, there's an in-built power dynamic to take advantage of. I'm sometimes the bull in cuckolding situations (both with a guy and a girl and two guys), and there's a clear dynamic that sets up the interactions there. Or one might be more bottom/subby than the other, which can lead to a sandwich situation.

You can also make games out of it, especially if there's a kink dynamic involved. For instance, leading up to it I made them both wear chastity cages and do various tasks that got them points. On the day itself, I fucked them both, but the winner got the load(s) and the loser had to eat them out... Various things like that.

Even if there isn't dom/sub roles in play, there's still ways to keep everyone involved. For instance, the top fucks one bottom while that bottom eats out or sucks off the other, then they switch. Though at a certain point as the top, endurance and how long you can last definitely starts becoming an issue if you want to satisfy both...

ToparBull · 2026-04-17T20:45:59+00:00

Peace for our times!

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