A small cross section of a tube steak, obviously

I don’t think it’s very simple at all.

According to the CBS, about 40% of Jews in Israel were born to a father also born in Israel. Given the relative youth of the Israeli population and the fact that it’s been nearly 80 years since Mandatory Palestine existed, the number is probably quite a bit higher (especially because that number only relates to the fathers, not the mothers), but even if only 60% of Israeli Jews are descendants of settlers, that’s nearly 5 million people. Out of a total population of about 15 million people living in Israel and Palestine combined.

A poll published in may showed that more than 80% and more than half of all Israelis support forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and forced expulsion of Arabs from Israel, respectively. That’s five and eight million people. (The poll itself was only published in Hebrew, but I think this is the link).

How can a unified, peaceful country actually be created without “giving into their sentimentality” when somewhere between a third and over half of them feel that way? What is additional punishment? A country cannot afford to imprison that large a proportion of its population, and fines would exacerbate the resentment. I could see some form of community service in the form of war cleanup and having to physically, literally deal with the results of a genocide working to reset people’s perspective on it, but it’s not as though they’re not aware of what’s happening. I don’t know that simply being confronted with the viscerality of the genocide they knowingly support would do much, especially with such a high proportion of the population who do support it.

I’m not saying that the answer is to just give in to the demands of genocide supporters. I’m saying that it’s hard to imagine a workable solution and simply evicting and heavily taxing a whole bunch of people is going to lead to resentment.

It’s like this in (non-major city) Germany, with one exception: if you blink before locking your bike up, it’s gone. I’ve seen laptops in public areas sit undisturbed for hours, but almost everyone I know has had at least one bike stolen.

One tricky bit is, if you’re declared legally dead, you immediately become an illegal resident if you’re still alive. And DOGE has already declared a number of people dead by misinterpreting a few databases.

I can almost imagine this being written by Douglas adams, but the consequences a little too depressing. You know, in contrast to the complete destruction of the earth

I can’t see descendants of settlers who are en masse being kicked out of their homes and heavily taxed coming together to peacefully build a society with the people whom they ceded their homes to and whom they’re paying those reparations. Can you? How would you go about it without making them so resentful that they either refuse to help rebuild or start attacking the institutions of the new single state?

I see the philosophical balance your solution would bring and it’s what I would want to do if I suddenly found myself a settler/settler’s descendant, but I don’t think enforcing it will lead to lasting peace. Perhaps with an education system that truly integrates children and teaches all of their history, without whitewashing any of it. But I think there’s a very strong cultural attachment in Israel to homeschooling, and don’t know if enforcing public schooling would create further resentment.

Oh, there are a thousand ways they could improve their current way of handling it. I just don’t know what the best way would be, though it would definitely involve eminent domain. I guess a lottery system for determining which families get the ancestral home?

I used to take solace in the fact that people smarter than I were in charge of this, so they could do better than that as a solution, but I’m increasingly skeptical that they actually will.

Yeah, I don’t know how to solve the issues of two separate families feeling ownership for the same location (fifty years ago, a Palestinian family including several living members was evicted from a home, and an Israeli couple moved in and then died, leaving their property to their children who played no role in taking the property from the Palestinians), but the solution is not to deport all of the Israelis from the region.

My first instinct would be that the government would need to build a LOT of desirable housing and offer a cash incentive to all current and former residents to cede ownership claims to other properties in exchange for the deed to one of the newer properties, but it immediately occurs to me that the wealth difference between the average Palestinian family and the average Israeli family is probably large enough that there would essentially be a self-selection bias. Especially given the fact that poverty and food insecurity reduce our ability to make good financial decisions.

I can’t think of a resolution for that situation that doesn’t involve someone feeling resentful. I’m not saying they have equal claim- but I know that the descendants of settlers are also people, who don’t want to be evicted from the (stolen) houses in which they were raised, and sowing resentment has not helped the region in the past.

I don’t know anyone dumb enough to find out. That is viscerally unpleasant to imagine doing. It’s some of the most sensitive tissue on your body and you’re supposed to sit directly over water that was boiling a few minutes ago?

He estimated in 2014 that Liverpool’s boycott of The Sun had cost its owners £15 million per month since the disaster, in 1989 prices.

Heartwarming

He’s trying to flood google results for low emissions vehicles

Sometimes I just want to vomit forever. That’s so malignantly perverse

Gen Z was around 12-27 years old during the election. I think part of it could honestly be due to brain development.

Yes, it’s more sporadic in Germany, but because it’s less of a police state, they sometimes have to get creative. I don’t disagree that the US is measurably worse in basically all categories, but Germany’s not exactly good. It just goes to show that all cops are bastards.

Orwell was writing what he knew

They used to be glorious though.

Yes, though you mostly need to watch out for raw/green potatoes, and most cases of potato poisoning are not fatal.

I think most of the nightshades can be poisonous/deadly in some way- eggplants can be bitter enough to upset your stomach if you don’t prepare them right, tomatoes are just a mutation away from being poisonous, and peanuts are highly allergenic. AFAIK, only one person has died from capsaicin, but he had a heart condition. That one will still definitely fuck your digestive system up though.

Don’t forget his brother, Rabbi Chang.

I was super proud of myself last month, because I saw the leaves of a potato plant for the first time and my first thought was that it looked like tobacco. Turns out, tobacco’s also a nightshade!

Botany is fucking weird, but especially nightshades: staple carbs, deadly poisons, fucked up psychotropics, nicotine, capsaicin, a bunch of semisweet edible berries (from physalis to tomatoes to eggplants), and of course, peanuts.

They’re fucking monocots, so way the hell removed (like onions). But none of these plants even share a family, order is the closest it gets.

They’re as closely related as a human and a lemur.

The Spanish just got confused between the names batata and papa and called them similar names. Yams are even further away from both sweet potatoes and potatoes.