Especially Israel

Why? They rolled Iran’s proxies, and (if western media is to be believed) Iran itself has been shown to be a paper tiger. Their big ballistic missile attack was neutered, and the big air strike on their soil was reported to be very devastating to air defenses and missile construction.

So we have a situation of Schrodinger’s Iran. They are simultaneously super dangerous, and to quote Kamala Harris “Iran is greatest U.S. adversary.” Or they are no match for Israel’s superior technology and intelligence agencies.

This is why I’ve argued that technology, in terms of actual benefit for people, peaked many years ago. I won’t try to pinpoint a date, but we have past peak technology from this perspective.

After that peak, advancements in technology have mostly just served as means to control the population or extract more from us (see enshittification) and have not been of benefit to the average person.

Technology allows for actual hard power to be concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer. I don’t mean like a dictator with an army behind them, but a dictator and small group with enough tech to control everything. You are right, and it’s extremely concerning.

I don’t have any inherent support either side, and there’s too much history along with bias, propaganda, and outright misinformation to make a determination of who the “good guys” are, if anyone.

However, in such cases I will support the underdog on the principle that you don’t really want one side to have too much power over the other. That’s how we end up with things like ethnic cleansing and genocide. If Palestine (and Lebanon) had powerful militaries, you wouldn’t be seeing the mass devastation and huge loss of civilian lives. I’d prefer to see the sides more balanced so that they can keep each other in check.

Another angle to consider is that I consider the state of Israel to be actively harmful to Americans on the basis of:

• using our tax dollars to commit mass murder against civilians, including a staggering death toll for children

• infiltrating our government, interfering with our elections, and having an undue level of influence on American policy

• corollary to the preceding point: they support getting Trump back into the White House

• training American law enforcement, who then use their oppressive tactics on Americans

• similarly, technology they develop for surveillance and other means of control being used on Americans

• directly attacking our First Amendment rights

Bottom line is I’d say everyone sucks, but in different ways. But I am anti-Israel on the basis of them being way out of control (and without anyone to keep them in check) and due to the threat they pose to the American public.

Housing price increases are actively harmful to those who want to upgrade, since it increases the incremental cost of upgrading.

Yes this thinking really underestimates the cost of driving and devalues your time.

And as you mentioned, long commutes are uniquely unhealthy.

It’s more along the lines of “buying is generally better than renting, but there are about 100 different factors to consider.”

The “3 dots” menu is sometimes referred to as a “kebab menu” if the dots are vertical and a “meatballs menu” if the dots are horizontal. I think it’s weird, but I have heard it used in instructional videos before.

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/k/kebab-menu.htm

Yes, this is probably my single biggest one. Particularly:

opt out of those you’re done with (say your post/comment got popular and you’ve had your fill from the replies).

Lol Fark, that takes me back

There is a trade-off between efficiency and durability on incandescent light bulbs. They did sell bulbs that lasted longer, but those had lower lumen/watt.

For generic bulbs, the cost of electricity was significantly greater than the cost of the bulb. It was cheaper to replace bulbs more frequently than to waste electricity.

There should have been only one.

Underrated benefit of Lemmy is that it isn’t infested with bots the way its larger counterpart is. Reddit has really turned to garbage.

Lower quantity of content here, but more authentic

I concluded a while back that no lives matter to those in charge. We are all expendable if it furthers the goals of power and the almighty dollar.

Once you accept this, other things start to make more sense.

If it were anything other than money, it would be considered a hoarding problem in need of treatment.

I’ll mention 2: Station Nightclub fire footage and a video of pigs being buried alive in response to a disease outbreak.

Lathes are no joke. There’s one that really stuck with me, I think at a Russian factory. “Dismemberment” does not accurately reflect what happened.

What kinds of problems have you ran into using Lemmy in a browser on the phone? I use Firefox and set it to “desktop mode” and haven’t had any issues.

My issue with technological progress is that at this point most of it seems like it is no longer of benefit to the average person. Rather it is more about ways for corporations and governments to control us or extract more (e.g. money, data) from us. Most consumer tech is trending towards enshittification.

The exception to this is medical advancements.

I always wonder how many people who think eating meat is murder, evil, etc. have actually watched animals die in the wild.

My issue pertains more to forcibly breeding animals into existence for the sole purpose of exploiting them, and also the often terrible conditions they are kept in. I consider hunting and fishing to be more ethical than industrial animal ag, so long as it is done in a responsible manner (yes, I know this is subjective).

Nature is brutal, but industrial animal ag has absolutely heinous abuses.

United: “Fly the friendly skies”