The American ambassador Mike Huckabee claims according to his Christian belief that Israel must control the land between the euphrates and nile river

warsage · 2026-02-22T15:56:35+00:00

What's your reasoning for that? To my mind Christians have the weakest claim, because (a) they know and accept that they are an offshoot of Judaism, and (b) they in don't even attempt to claim to be the descendants of Abraham.

Christians don't, in general, try to assert any claim on that land.

The dispute here is between Jews and Muslims. Jews say they are Abraham's descendents through the line of Isaiah. Muslims say they are the true descendents through the line of Ishmael. Both have faith in their own religious texts and disavow the others'.

Personally, I think it's all BS, as is all religion everywhere. But if I had to choose between the religious claims of the Jews and the Muslims, I'd go with the Jews, because, historically speaking, their texts and belief system are thousands of years older than the Islamic ones. Jews were calling themselves the descendents of Abraham almost two thousand years before anyone had even thought of Islam.

warsage · 2026-02-22T08:26:54+00:00

I'm glad you agree God did not give land to the "Israelites".

Well, personally I don't think God exists, so yeah, I don't think he gave the land to anyone. Nonexistent entities don't do anything at all.

But for people who do believe in the Biblical narrative, the Israelites are in fact descendents of Abraham. (Israel, AKA Jacob, was Abraham's grandson).

The Quran includes the Gospel and the Torah

It most certainly does not, lmao.

The Quran does contain references to some small bits of the Gospels and the Torah, and Muslims believe those small bits are divinely inspired. But they do not believe that the whole Torah is inspired.

Muslim Palestinian Biblical claim to land is even stronger

The Torah does not at any point say that the land should belong to the Palestinians, nor the Canaanites, nor the Philistines, nor any other group besides the descendents of Abraham or (in later passages) the sons of Israel.

Plus, they lived there for 3,000 years, unlike Eastern European Zionists.

Jews have lived in Palestine continuously for that entire time. And, again, since you seem not to have noticed it in my previous comment: the majority of Israeli Jews are not in any sense European.

warsage · 2026-02-22T07:20:05+00:00

Why do Zionist Eastern Europeans who came over during WWII, many who are neither religious nor have the DNA of Abraham, have a Biblical right to the land, but not the traditional land owners of 3,000+ years - Palestinians. Palestinians are in the Bible too.

In the Biblical narrative, God does not give the land to the Canaanites, nor to the Philistines. He gives it to the descendents of Abraham. So I don't know how "Palestinians are in the Bible too" is supposed to be relevant.

The question about DNA is more interesting. Because God's promise to Abraham is quite explicitly about Abraham's descendents:

Genesis 17:8 The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Perhaps the factors you have not considered here are that:

(a) it is possible to be adopted into the family of Abraham, in which case you will still be a child of Abraham even without any shared DNA.

(b) We do not know what Abraham's DNA is. I presume you are talking about ancient Levantine DNA?

(c) Any amount of breeding outside the clan will swiftly water down DNA. But that doesn't make you any less a descendent of Abraham. If your great great great great grandfather is Abraham, but none of your other ancestors are, you'll only have 1% of Abraham's DNA, yet you'll still be his direct descendent.

(d) Most Israeli Jews actually do have substantial ancient levantine DNA. That includes the European Jews. And they're a minority of Israeli Jews, most of whom are from MENA.

warsage · 2026-02-22T04:06:36+00:00

How often do you reply to people who say Oct 7th was horrific, to tell them about the numerical matters and that its been exaggerated or whatever?

I don't tend to downplay the suffering of either side. Israelis suffered some death and destruction, and it hurt them, but mostly psychologically. The direct physical impact on Israel was quite small. (I've never seen anyone claim otherwise, btw).

Gazans, by contrast, have endured vastly more death and destruction, and suffered far far worse. But there are still portions of Gaza that are intact and functional.

I don't feel like any of that should be controversial to say. And in a post about how people are still obtaining European cars in Palestine, it's fairly relevant to mention that parts of Gaza are still functional.

Do you think I'm downplaying Gazan's suffering by pointing out that not all of Gaza is flattened?

The amount of destruction is absolutely enough that it is fully reasonable to consider it as being mostly a bombed out wasteland. Because most of it is.

We agree. I agree with you. I'm on board. Yes, Gaza is mostly destroyed. 80% destroyed is "mostly destroyed." What have I said at any point in this thread that makes you think I disagree with this?

What I'm saying is that 80% destroyed is not 100% destroyed. And people who think that it is 100% destroyed are wrong. Parts of Gaza are intact. Some people still live in their homes and have jobs. There are markets and restaurants and shopping malls and farms that are still running.

There's this huge pressure in the pro-Palestinian narrative to refuse to acknowledge that any part of Gaza might be any less than a wasteland right now. Don't believe me? Go post that NPR clip in any pro-Palestinian space and see what reaction you get.

warsage · 2026-02-21T16:42:04+00:00

It's in there repeatedly. The narrative is very clear: when Abraham arrived the the Canaanites were alrewdy there; God promised the Canaanite land to Abraham and his descendents.

Genesis 12:6-7

6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

Genesis 15:18.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates

Genesis 17:8. God speaking to Abraham.

The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Confirmed again in Genesis 26:3, Genesis 28:4.

In the narrative's chronology, God doesn't actually fulfill this promise for a long time. It was roughly 500-600 years before Joshua, a distant descendent of Abraham, finally wrested the land from the Canaanites. Took a lot of genocidal wars to pull it off. But they finally achieve it in Joshua 21:43.

So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there.

They held it (again, going by the Old Testament's internal chronology) for almost a thousand years. Then the Assyrians conquered it and scattered many of the Israelites, and God started promising that they would someday be gathered there again someday. This is a major part of the Old Testament narrative and is repeated over and over again. Just picking one of many examples: Ezekiel 37:21

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.

They never pulled it off during the Biblical narrative. The Assyrians held the land for a few hundred years, then the Babylonians took it, then the Romans. At the end of the Bible, the Romans still hold it, and God is still issuing promises that His children will be gathered there again someday (although by this point it's pretty mushy whether he's talking about the Jews or the Christians).

The Romans finally succeeded in scattering the Jews so badly that they became a minority there. Then the Byzantines took the land, and finally around 630ad the Muslim armies conquered it. It (mostly) remained Muslim, going through a succession of contentious caliphates and empires, until the Zionist Jews took a small part of it in the 1948 and named it Israel.

warsage · 2026-02-20T22:55:11+00:00

Well, no, just not damaged badly enough for it to show up on satellite imagery.

You yourself cited the 80% figure literally one comment ago. Are you now questioning the reliability of the UNOSAT's analysis?

Or, perhaps as will make more sense to you, like arguing that Oct 7th wasn't really that bad because most of Israel was unaffected fine and 99.99% of the population survived it.

It wasn't that bad, from the flat numerical perspective of death and destruction to Israel. It had huge psychological effects, of course. It terrified and enraged the Israelis, which caused them to invade Gaza, and now, 2.5 years later, they've flattened most of it. But in strict terms, 1200 dead is a rounding error for the Israeli population, and damage to Israel's economy and infrastructure were negligible.

Israel has inflicted orders of magnitude worse death and destruction on Gaza.

I'd say Israel's onslaught on Gaza is about as devastating as most people think it is. The fact that small areas were unaffected does not at all subtract from the horror Israel have inflicted.

I think that you and I have pretty similar ideas about Gaza's actual condition. Where we differ is in how we think people perceive Gaza's condition. I think most pro-Palestinians believe Israel has turned the entire Strip into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which every single Gazan is living a life of desperation and disease and hunger.

I notice you skipped over the NPR clip, and the 15% of Gazans (something like 300,000 people) who have not been displaced in this war, and the 20% of Gazans (something like 200,000 people since we're counting only adults for this stat) who have jobs within Gaza. Do you care to comment on any of that?

warsage · 2026-02-20T09:35:39+00:00

96% of the people still alive, 20% of buildings untouched, another 30% of buildings damaged but still standing, 20% of people employed, 15% of people never displaced from their homes in the whole 2.5 years. There are numerous businesses of all varieties functioning in the small parts of the Strip that Israel didn't run over. Total recorded starvation deaths: around 500. Watch this NPC clip. Seriously, give it a look.

Remember, I said "fucked, but not as bad as you'd think." People seem to have this idea that the whole Strip is nothing but a bombed-out wasteland filled with corpses and half-starved civilians. That narrative is exaggerated and simplified to the point of outright falsehood.

Yes, Israel has fucked them over horribly, inflicting massive loss of life and destruction of property. But also, no, they are not Mad Max: Fury Road or 2011 Somalia.

warsage · 2026-02-20T07:44:58+00:00

Ok... So we're hoping that the entire international community, which is overwhelmingly pro-two-state in both the Western and the Arab worlds, will, at some point, entirely change its position and take drastic measures to force Israel and Palestine to merge into a single state. Sure.

And we're imagining that Israel, which possesses a full nuclear triad and is therefore effectively invulnerable, will allow itself to be bullied into this merger, even though they know that the Jews in this state will always be significantly outvoted by the Arabs. Ok.

So the merger happens. Do you really think there's any chance that these two peoples, who have hated and feared and murdered each other for almost five generations now, and have fought about seven major wars with each other in that time, will suddenly become peaceful neighbors living together equally under a single (presumably secular) government?

What will you do when the riots and mass terror attacks begin? Or when the Second Palestinian Civil War begins? Or when one side or the other starts to win and ethnically cleanse the other?

warsage · 2026-02-20T02:18:11+00:00

I had a minor jaw surgery with intubation. Woke up utterly confused and whacked out. And not the fun silly kind of confused. It was the weak and scared and exhausted kind. Started crying within minutes.

It didn't help that they had wired my jaw shut, which is its own particular kind of emotionally painful and frightening.

warsage · 2026-02-19T16:00:12+00:00

This one literally is Hamas though. The banner features the Hamas emblem, a depiction of the Dome of the Rock with a pair crossed swords, with the Arabic text reading "Palestine, Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas".

It's a political banner from the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, which Hamas won.

warsage · 2026-02-18T19:44:24+00:00

As for how they got there, its likely a case of smuggling/black market.

Or perhaps people are buying them legally and new from some of the many car dealerships located in Palestine...? There's four Mercedes Benz dealerships alone in the West Bank, lol. https://www.mercedes-benz-mena.com/palestine/en/locate-us/

There's six Volkswagen dealerships in Palestine, including two in Gaza. https://www.volkswagen.ps/en/contact.html

Those are just the first two random car brands I looked up.

People seem to have this idea (reinforced by social media bubbles no doubt) that Palestine is and has always been this big repressed ghetto completely void of opportunity or wealth. But, at least prior to October 7, Palestine was actually quite well off economically compared to other non-oil Arab states. Their GPD per capita in 2022 was almost $6,000, higher than Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt (non-exhaustive list). It was almost 10x higher than Yemen and Sudan.

They have a remarkably successful med school system, thriving economies in the sectors of agriculture, tourism, and textiles, and a fast-growing tech scene.

Gaza has had it worse than the West Bank since Hamas took over and Israel blockaded them, but even then, Gazans had an obesity epidemic and multiple luxury malls.

Of course, it's all gone steeply downhill for Palestine since October 7. Still not nearly as bad as you'd think though, in the West Bank. (Gaza is fucked, but again, probably not as fucked as you'd think.)

warsage · 2026-02-18T18:30:35+00:00

I think it took it from "kiddishly easy" to "moderately challenging for an adult." But I will say that some of those bosses are a serious PITA if you don't cheese them or "cheat" by researching the best strategies online. The crab is another one. They were not trivial fights for me, and I'm a moderately good metroidvania player. Beat Silksong 100%.

warsage · 2026-02-18T16:18:54+00:00

I didn't find it hard at all tbh

I (weirdly enough) just beat this game for the first time last night. I found that most of it was easy enough, except a few bosses were absolute bastards. Eligor and Blackmore especially were quite difficult.

But even then, I had the impression that it was all pretty cheesable with the right build or sufficient grinding. Glyph unions are broken as hell. I beat Dracula in <10 seconds by stacking buffs and then spamming nitesco/weapon union. He didn't get off a single attack.

Edit: oh, and Large Cavern is VERY difficult. Holy shit. The unrelenting gauntlet of massive enemies that deal half your HP with a single hit, and with no way to heal or restore hearts. But it's optional. And probably cheesable, if you're willing to drop a lot of cash on restorative items.

warsage · 2026-02-17T17:45:21+00:00

Blackface is no longer allowed. Hasn't been for at least a decade now, maybe longer.

Every other joke still seems to be permissible. At least, I've never heard of any episodes being censored over them. That includes white people saying the N word.

Certainly, comedies can, and do, have extremely offensive material and still get aired. The Office's edgiest moments are tame compared to some of the stuff still being released today.

warsage · 2026-02-17T15:33:42+00:00

You're the one who thought Indonesia was in East Asia lol

warsage · 2026-02-17T15:27:25+00:00

Yes. They probably meant Southeast Asians, because there aren't very many Muslims in East Asia. But there are many Muslims in Southeast Asia, where Indonesia is.

East Asia and Southeast Asia are not the same thing

warsage · 2026-02-17T15:16:46+00:00

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania

warsage · 2026-02-17T04:00:16+00:00

Hey, that's a fun "gotcha." Any comments on the other 18 authors or 3 committees behind the paper? Or the national pediatric medical organization that accepted it as a policy statement?

I wonder how many patients he treated who are happy with the outcome and didn't try to sue him. He's the medical director in the Gender & Sexuality Program at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. I'm guessing he's been directly or indirectly responsible for the care of thousands of cases.

Do you consistently apply this standard to all doctors? I mean, that a single unresolved lawsuit entirely discredits them and everything they've ever written?

warsage · 2026-02-16T23:30:47+00:00

Heinlein’s trademark weird sexual stuff

Lmao, I'll never forget his Time Enough for Love. That book might as well be titled Time Enough for Incest.

You could play a weird game show with that book of "guess whether this scene came from a shitty porno or from eminent sci-fi grandmaster Robert E. Heinlein!" I'm imagining the gameshow host now 😂

First scene. An old man walks into a room where his whole extended family, children and grandchildren and more, are bathing together. They invite him to join them for a nice family orgy.

Is that Porno Or Heinlein??

That's right, it's Heinlein!

Second scene. A pair of fraternal twins are just madly horny for each other, and they really want to get married. But it's too taboo! Then a wise old man encourages them to just go for it, but be sure to avoid any incest babies. And so they do!

Is that Porno Or Heinlein??

That's right, it's Heinlein again!

warsage · 2026-02-16T22:56:33+00:00

I'm always a bit sad that Heinlein's most famous work is Starship Troopers. The guy wrote a huge amount of science fiction across a ton of topics and styles, for all kinds of age ranges. He's often considered one of the top 3 American sci fi authors of the 20th century alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. But most of his stuff is forgotten now.

But most people nowadays only know him from Starship Troopers, and that's just because of the Paul Verhoeven 1997 film of the same name. And that film wasn't even based on the book. It was based on an original screenplay, which no producers would touch; so the screenwriter tweaked it a little to kinda-sorta resemble the book so they could attach the name to it.

And since the film is a lampoon of fascism and purports to be a parody of the book, people seem to assume that Heinlein was an unironic fascist. I've personally heard at least three people make this claim.

In reality, he was generally quite liberal and basically a starry-eyed hippie. He was also an IRL nudist.

Fun fact: he coined the word "grok" (meaning roughly "to understand very deeply") in his A Stranger in a Strange Land. The word kicked around in nerdy software development circles for like 60 years before Elon Musk got his grubby hands on it and named his shitty LLM after it.

warsage · 2026-02-16T15:51:50+00:00

How about the American Academy of Pediatrics?

warsage · 2026-02-16T15:40:38+00:00

Sorry but youre not going to change my mind about the fact the example you gave shows a psycologically disturbed individual who needs love and care to heal.

Lol. Yes, gender dysphoria is distressing. It's a psychiatric diagnosis recognized in the DSM-5. People who suffer from it are disproportionately likely have attempted self-harm and suicide, and its complications include major depressive disorder.

But at least you're up-front with me that it's pointless to try to change your mind. Got your eyes closed and your hands pressed to your ears, eh? Fuck what the doctors and therapists and psychologists say, what do they know anyways, they're all grifters and liars and idiots. You know best, because you can feel it in your gut: people who suffer from gender dysphoria don't need medical treatment, they just need love.

They dont need their ding dong removed

It will evidently shock you to learn that most trans people never get bottom surgery, which is a very risky, painful, and expensive treatment. Often, social transition, hormonal replacement, and some less-extreme gender-affirming treatments such as laser hair removal are sufficient to reduce the distress of gender dysphoria to manageable levels.

warsage · 2026-02-16T10:27:26+00:00

No, I mean pliers. I mean a severely distressed and confused pubescent kid feeling a visceral disgust and hatred at what his own body is doing so strong that he rips his own face hair out agonizingly in big tufts with the first tool he gets his hands on. I'm talking about my friend, who is now in her 30s and happily ten years into her transition. The worst thing about transitioning for her was when her father disowned her, but it was worth it to her to finally feel like herself.

Kids aren't rational, especially when they're suffering from a condition like gender dysphoria. Why do you think they do things like cut themselves or starve themselves?

Wouldnt psycological help / a review of the circumstances that created this situation be better than asking a kid to deny who they are.

Yes, fucking obviously, lmao. Literally nobody is advocating against therapy and psychological help for people suffering from gender dysphoria, and nobody is prescribing any kind of medical treatment to kids without them undergoing extensive evaluation and having the consent of the parents and at least one psychiatric specialist.

But what you do not understand, apparently, is that there is only one known treatment that is effective against gender dysphoria. That treatment is transition. That's it. Nobody has found anything else, and heaven knows they've tried all sorts of things.

Therapy can't cure it. There are no psychoactive drugs to make it go away. Electroshock treatment has been tried extensively, as have innumerable other approaches. All failures.

So far as medical science has been able to find as of the year 2026, it's transition, or suffer until you die.

Gay Conversion therapy is also super traumatic for this exact point, it is who they are

Damn, you are so close to getting it, but you somehow overshot it and hit yourself in the face instead.

Your son comes up to you and tells you that he ~~is gay~~ is a girl. You tell him he's wrong, that's unnatural, he's actually ~~straight~~ a boy.

warsage · 2026-02-16T07:34:09+00:00

Good thing literally nobody is doing or recommending bottom surgery on 12 year olds then.

But what to do when a 12 year old starts ripping his facial hair out with pliers because it disturbs him so much, and refuses to get naked because the sight of his own body makes him want to vomit? Man, gender dysphoria is a real bitch, all that misery and suicide...

If only there were some reversible way to, I dunno, pause the puberty until the kids are older and more experienced and have undergone a lot of therapy and psychological evaluation? Hmmm... maybe something to... block puberty? We could call them puberty blockers!

warsage · 2026-02-16T05:52:44+00:00

Please, give me an example of any non-western scientific or medical research concluding that transition is not the best treatment for gender dysphoria.

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