Neither candidate was ever going to push back against Israel's genocide of Palestinians.
While it was very disappointing the Democrats weren't exerting significant pressure against Israel, and Kamala gave no indication she'd act any different, it was delusional to believe Trump was going to be any different. He was very clear that he supported Israel as well, and he went as far as to claim he'd support Netanyahu even more strongly than Biden. Sure, he sabre-rattled a bit about wanting the war in Gaza to end before he took office, but he also indicated he'd support residual IDF actions (i.e., continued killings of Palestinians) within Gaza afterward.
There was never a candidate who was going to push back against Israel, no matter how much you or I would have liked for there to have been one.
AIPAC has a terrifyingly strong grip on American politics.
The only way to address this and other similar problems is through campaign finance reform, which the incumbents will never allow. It doesn't mean we shouldn't stop pushing the issue though.
Seconded, the Seattle Connections museum is a hidden gem. It really is a living history museum run by volunteers who keep everything working. And so much of it is hands-on, you can make a call from a phone on one end of the building and hear the relays clicking as the call traverses exchanges from several different eras.
I don’t really see it to be honest. I feel like their best and most natural use is scams.
Maybe a different comparison you would agree with is Stingrays, the devices that track cell phones. Ideally nobody would have them but as is, I’m glad they’re not easily available to any random person to abuse.
From what I understand, things will get bad but for 99% of the world, the rest of this century should be bearable climate-wise. There simply aren't enough fossil fuels in the ground to keep it burning longer than 2100~ish anyways. I mean, the problem is very real and millions might die, but at the same time the majority of the billions will do ok as well, so no real cause for nihilsm on that front. Especially considering the mortality rates at the same decades a century earlier would still be significantly higher.
Wars, economic crises and other turmoils however, that's a tough one. Even climate change alone will stress out too many things and exasperate those areas.
It's more like we've had it really good post-WW2 over all, and that will go away pretty soon. Even ocean currents collapsing and acidification of the ocean, as bad as it is, it won't yet be the worst or cataclysmic I'm afraid.
Widespread undesirable situations like that tend to result in humans coming up with solutions too. It took us WW2 to get nuclear energy. It took slavery and colonialism to get us the industrial age. Bad things and good things tend to come and go alike.
And the worst part is, from a societal point of view - it doesnt matter if $companyA wins over $companyB, if the reason they won is that there was more Geico ads than Liberty ads etc.
We allow every space to be overrun with these things, wasting our time and infecting our brains and in the end its zero-sum for the companies and negative-sum for us. No value anywhere is created.
They get paid per ad. Whether the product actually works is not their problem, unless they get a lawsuit. IIRC Facebook did lose a lawsuit over scam ads, but continued doing the process it was sued for, because it's so profitable, and just added a check so those ads don't get shown to regulators.
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