Sorchist

Does anybody have any idea how to evaluate Israel's claim that it wasn't them, that it was a Palestinian rocket towards Israel which went wrong and hit the hospital?

Other than just assuming that whatever side you don't like is lying?

I honestly don't have a heuristic to evaluate that other than "the side I trust less must be lying about it"

And I'd like a better way to find out the truth than that

That is a pretty wild definition of "racism" as "the idea that there are races."

But I kind of see how you got there.

The idea that human beings can be carved up along certain lines (demarcated by skin color and ancestry) and that there are significant differences between human capability across these dividing lines - and that justifies power differences and relationships of oppression between those groups -- those are the ideas behind racism, which expresses itself in oppression and injustice.

But the fact that people do carve up humanity along those lines, and therefore people find themselves put in these categories we call "races," and have different experiences and opportunities based on which one they find themselves in -- that's a fact. It's not racist to acknowledge it -- indeed, in a way, it would be racist to deny it because it would be denying the reality of oppression.

So "the idea that there are races" = "people are inherently and biologically divided up into 'black', 'white', etc and this indicates fundamental differences between them" -- that's racism

"the idea that there are races" = "there are 'races' because there are structures in the world which are built on the idea of 'races' having inherent biological differences, and these structures affect people" -- that's accurately recognizing that racism exists.

Does that make sense?

The way the text here it phrased, it sounds like McCarthy wronged the Democrats by giving them nothing, and they're getting him back by letting him go. But the article makes it clear that they asked for nothing and he expects nothing from them, and respects that.

No need to imply animosity and back biting between McCarthy and the Dems that isn't there.

It's more like "you do your thing, we'll do our thing, and that's OK, no matter how it turns out."

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he would not give Democrats anything in exchange for their votes to help save his Speakership, after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) moved to force a vote on ousting him.

“They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything,” McCarthy said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“Hakeem runs his conference,” McCarthy said of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “He’s going to have a conference, and everybody’s going to talk about it, and I’m not going to put Hakeem in any position, and I respect whatever decision anybody makes.”

I'd say that having three different words for "because" increases nuance. As the link to merriam-webster's article pointed out, you get a nuance of formality between "because" and "as"; "as" is somewhat more formal. I'm not sure if there's another nuance between "because" and causal "since" but smart money is on there being one (if you survey the use of the two I bet you will find there are very subtle differences of usage there -- there almost always are nuances of difference between supposedly synonymous words, even if they're only differences like level of formality).

I don't think you can put this at the feet of BIG DICTIONARY.

Dictionaries are generally descriptivist and don't preach. It's style guides and individual angry language weirdos who preach.

That's the right thing to do. Help people who need help.

"I'm gonna only help people who support me, if you don't support me I'll fuck you over" is a Trump way to think.

I had read that the Biden administration kept pressuring the railways behind the scenes after the strike was averted till the unions got what they had wanted in the first place anyway.

I don't know where I first read it but this link seems to confirm it.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave

“We’re very happy about this. We’ve been trying to get this for decades,” said Artie Maratea, president of the Transportation Communications Union. “It was public pressure and political pressure that got them to come to the table.”

Do you live in a country where the government would put a gun to YouTube's head and say 'YOU HAVE TO KEEP BROADCASTING THIS MAN'S CHANNEL, PUT ADS ON IT, AND SHARE THE AD REVENUE WITH HIM, WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT, UNTIL AND UNLESS HE IS CONVICTED OF A CRIME"?

That seems weird.

Doesn't he though? He's gotten grumpy about helping the Ukranians with internet from time to time, and he's declared that Russia should get to keep Crimea. I bet if the invasion of Ukraine happened today he'd have refused to help Ukraine with Starlink at all, he's so far down the far-right rabbit hole.

ZING!

Bold of you to assume he started with actual data

Here's an unbiased source.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/population-decline-by-state

People are indeed getting the hell out of certain blue states, NY, CA, and IL, probably cause they're fucking expensive to live in - at least in the big cities where most of the population is.

And FL, TX, ID, SD, and MT are picking up population. ID, ST, and MT are tiny population wise so any change there is a blip, but people seem to really be moving into FL, SC, and TX, for whatever reason.

This data is a couple years old so it wouldn't reflect recent legal and political changes.

Here's the thing though. Changes in total population of a state on this list are all between -1% and +2%. That matters, but it's not like whole towns are being depopulated or anything.

The brain drain issue -- doctors fleeing red states -- sounds like it's considerably more dramatic than that, given that most TX counties have zero gynecologists and a significant fraction have zero doctors.