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What you wrote is just a perfect example of a new-age antisemitic trope known as "Holocaust Inversion" -- https://fathomjournal.org/holocaust-inversion-and-contemporary-antisemitism/ What has been called ‘Holocaust Inversion’ involves an inversion of reality (the Israelis are cast as the ‘new’ Nazis and the Palestinians as the ‘new’ Jews), and an inversion of morality (the Holocaust is presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of ‘the Jews’). More: those who object to these inversions are told – as they were by David Ward – that they are acting in bad faith, only being concerned to deflect criticism of Israel. In short, the Holocaust, an event accurately described by Dan Diner as a ‘rupture in civilisation,’ organised by a regime that, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, ‘had no other clear principle except murderous hatred of the Jews,’ is now being used, instrumentally, as a means to express animosity towards the homeland of the Jews. ‘The victims have become perpetrators’ is being heard more and more. That is Holocaust Inversion. The false equivalencing of Israel and the Nazis, she says, ‘elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did.’ And as Anthony Julius points out, the Zionist=Nazi trope not only says to the world that the ‘Zionists are to the Palestinians what Nazis were to the Jews’, but also that ‘the “Zionists” and Nazis share the same Fascist ideology’ and that ‘the “Zionists” were complicit with the Nazis in the Holocaust.’ By inverting reality and morality, and by recklessly spreading accusations of bad faith, Holocaust Inversion prevents us identifying the changing nature of contemporary antisemitism and is an obstacle to marshalling active resistance to it. Yup, and hey, you're entitled to your opinion no matter how odious it may be. However, I will stand on the side of "active resistance" against hatred and bigotry from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum.

Don't forget the scary '70s rabbits! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down_(film)

I honestly don't see the point -- you've already made up your mind, and anything I say you'll just use the eye roll emoji -- right? I mean, you showed a few pictures of a tiny tiny minority of Jews that have never supported Israel and in fact long before this latest war they never supported nor believed in the state of Israel because to them it can only be God that decides such things -- so I explained all this, and what I did get in a response? the eye roll emoji. By the way, most Israelis and Jews in general do not support the current government and want Netanyahu out (good riddance I say)! But aside from the eye roll emoji you're adding some pithy little sayings such as the one you include above, and such sayings are a complete distraction from an actual logical argument. "war is the rich man's terrorism" -- go tell that to the Ukrainians! Tell them that they should just stop fighting and let Russia murder and take over their country because you believe "war is terrorism". Also, "terrorism" is never a poor man's war, terrorism is just that, it's mean to strike terror in the hearts of civilians that have nothing to do with any war. In fact, it's well known that terrorism is typically used for political purposes, which is exactly what Hamas did. Hamas couldn't care less about Israeli lives, AND they couldn't care less about Palestinian lives, so long as it meets their warped political agenda.

Heck of an RPG haul I did finish Double Dragon Gaiden recently -- if you need a break from those long long RPGs, it's a fun one. Honestly you'll be done with DDG in a few hours. I'll write a short review of it soon -- curious to hear what others thought of it!

I love cat/kitten/pet/wildlife videos, I really do. However, we've all seen that before, it's also 10 years old. Just saying, some new content is appreciated

I would say the link you included above to the "Middle East Eye" news is about as unbiased as Fox News -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Eye Middle East Eye was launched in London in April 2014. It is not transparent about its ownership. It is formally owned by a company called M.E.E. Limited, with a lone director Jamal Bessasso. According to its critics, Middle East Eye began to form in London when the Islamist influence of Al Jazeera was beginning to wane in 2013 and that several Al Jazeera journalists joined its team. Jonathan Powell, a senior executive at Al Jazeera was a consultant ahead of its launch, and registered the website's domain names. Jamal Bassasso, a Kuwait-born Palestinian living in London, was the sole director of Middle East Eye's parent company MEE Ltd. Bassasso was a former director for the registered agent of Hamas-controlled Al-Quds. You're getting your news from the former director of Hamas-controlled TV and you expect people to believe this -- now that's funny.

And...???

There is a small (very very very small) group of Jews that reject Israel's right to exist because they believe that Israel should and will become a kingdom again when God's will's it so -- until then, in their mind we should just relax because it's all part of God's plan! Those are the Jews you linked above -- so, yeah, "false flags" is pretty accurate here https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anti-zionism-among-jews

After this horrible war is over, and hopefully it will be over soon, I'm sure a ton more of information will be released, analyzed, debated, etc. Regarding the hospital, I have no doubt Hamas used it to an extent. Whether there were tunnels directly connected to it I do not know. Here's the full article by the Post -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/21/al-shifa-hospital-gaza-hamas-israel/ Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a former senior law of war adviser to the U.S. Army. “It’s certainly not conclusive. The ultimate question is whether the assessment of military advantage was reasonable under the circumstances.” After arresting the hospital’s director, Ahmed al-Kahlot, Israel released an interrogation video Tuesday in which Kahlot admitted to being a member of Hamas and said the hospital was under the control of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the group’s armed wing. In response, Gaza’s Health Ministry said the statement was made “under the force of oppression, torture and intimidation” to “justify [Israel’s] successive crimes, especially against the health system.” I'll never agree that two-wrongs make a right, but Hamas either knew this would happen (good publicity for them) or they underestimated Israeli resolve. Or both.

I imagine (haven't verified) that in Hebrew the term "settlement" is used to describe new construction such as noted above. But, the more important fact, is that this "settlement" falls within Israel proper, and does not impinge upon Gaza.

I think it's likely that Hamas and others are calling them "settlements" simply as propaganda because they have never accepted Israel's right to exist.

But actually --

3 Dunkin Donuts employees arrested after allegedly threatening customer https://www.yahoo.com/news/3-dunkin-donuts-employees-arrested-221353420.html Police said the girlfriend tried to order doughnuts. The woman told police that the employee was rude, and when she asked to speak to the manager, the employee on the other end of the intercom said he was the manager, using explicit language, police said. Police said the woman drove toward the drive-thru window when one employee walked out of the back of the store, followed by two other employees. During this altercation, the three employees brandished handguns, police said. Police also said one of the three employees chambered a round, pointed the gun at the male customer and said, “Ya’ll gonna die.” Police have arrested 17-year-old Jesus Dominguez, 20-year-old Luis Arturo Dominguez and 19-year-old Elijah Richard Garcia. All were charged with aggravated assault and given a $100,000 bond.

Large AI models can now create smaller AI tools without humans and train them like a 'big brother,' scientists say https://www.businessinsider.com/large-models-can-create-new-smaller-ai-tools-scientists-2023-12 A team of scientists from MIT and several University of California campuses, together with AI technology company Aizip, say that they can get large AI models, like the one that ChatGPT runs on, to essentially replicate automatically. "Right now, we're using bigger models to build the smaller models, like a bigger brother helping [its smaller] brother to improve. That's the first step towards a bigger job of self-evolving AI," Yan Sun, CEO of Aizip, told Fox News. "This is the first step in the path to show that AI models can build AI models." "Our technology is a breakthrough in the sense that for the first time, we have designed a fully automated pipeline," one of the researchers, Yubei Chen, added. It "can design an AI model without human intervention in the process."

If this is true, and I say "if" because this sounds like propaganda and not anything real -- but should it be true, it's absolutely disgusting and sounds completely illegal. I honestly can't believe that Israel would allow this. Honestly, the more I read about it, the more it sounds false "our soldiers will enter the home and we will be able to start the construction in the Gaza Strip" Israeli soldiers do NOT work for any construction company just as Wall-Mart can not call up the National Guard! So yeah, I think it's what you would call "fake news" and I certainly hope so, because I can't imagine anyone including Israelis believing there is anything moral or right about this.

@Richardhead congrats! That's wonderful to hear

Gershon Kingsley Very important composer in early electronic music. In fact, his most famous work, Popcorn composed in 1969, was the first synth-pop instrumental to become a #1 hit (in Europe). He also wrote and reimagined many classic works from Mozart to contemporary Americana --

Tragic for sure. I don't know the circumstances, could very well be that the soldier involved (I heard it was just one) was trigger-happy and should be court-martialed. Or not. Again, I don't know the details and I'm sure an investigation is underway. I do agree that this is a terrible tragedy and I do also know that Hamas often will disguise themselves as Israeli soldiers, or Israeli civilians, in order to try and ambush Israelis -- that's what Hamas did on Oct 7th.

That one line shows how wrong you and biased you are. Everyone knows that Hamas is not a "radicalized political party" they are a terrorist organization that wants to annihilate the Jews, America, and everyone that does not conform to their form of Islam. That's a fact, it's in their charter -- https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. The Islamic Resistance Movement: The Movement's programme is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgement in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps. The basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Moslems who have given their allegiance to Allah whom they truly worship. What's going to happen in the future? Israel will destroy Hamas. While there will always be some terrorists lying in the shadows, Hamas is going to be a mere shadow of what it once were. There will be an international committee overseeing efforts to rebuild Gaza, AND make sure money no longer goes to building terrorist infrastructure nor purchasing weapons. People who supported Hamas, such as you, will absolutely be seen as on the wrong side of history.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, I thought it was a very well-done film. I wouldn't mind watching it again, I loved the cinematography and overall vibe. However, I recall thinking the movie was "very good", better than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I'm not sure I would say it was "great" -- but then again, I should watch it again. I am curious how different the novel is and if it's any "deeper" than the movie?

The Day Before Dev Says ‘Shit Happens’ As It Deletes Everything https://kotaku.com/day-before-zombie-mmo-steam-refunds-1851092622 That’s what the Russia-based development team wrote in response to a player accusing them of overhyping the game when they knew it was bad. “You guys are an absolute disgrace to the Video Game Industry,” wrote Twitter user Kypershot. “This was our first big experience,” Fantastic wrote back. “Shit happens.” The big question remains: was this malice, incompetence, or both? Did the studio try to swindle players or just get out way over its skis and crash into the side of a mountain? One thing that is clear: “shit happens” appears to be the extent of Fntastic taking accountability for the mess. Players have already spotted the studio seemingly attempting to rebrand as “8 Points” on Kickstarter, Steam, and elsewhere so that the stink of The Day Before doesn’t rub off on its other projects. Fntastic has so far been unresponsive to requests for comment.

That's certainly fair. There's no clear evidence that this was intentional. That said, clearly there was a lot of misleading and "weird" stuff happening -- from a month ago The Strange Saga of The Day Before https://www.ign.com/articles/the-strange-saga-of-the-day-before

How do you define "scam"? If a developer promised you a beautiful game, that's an MMO, with tons of zombies, stellar gameplay, etc. and what you got was NOT an MMO, what you got was barely playable, what you got had almost no zombies, had terrible gameplay, and was nothing like what the developers promised... is that not a scam? And if not, why have the developers disappeared? Why have they erased all their social media contacts, all their videos, etc?

The studio, Fntastic, released their first game on Steam in 2018. It has over a 70% approval -- https://store.steampowered.com/app/864550/Radiant_One/ Their game in 2021 received "mixed" (58%) approval. However, even before Fntastic's first game, the studio went by a different name, "Eight Points", and released their first game back in 2015. It too, was overall well received, or at least "decently received" (70%+ approval) https://store.steampowered.com/app/526160/The_Wild_Eight/ Point is, this is not a new studio nor college kids who were overly ambitious. Check out the impressive trailer from 2021 -- And fast forward to today... How The Day Before went from Steam darling to disaster The zombie survival game is one of gaming’s biggest flameouts ever https://www.polygon.com/23998966/the-day-before-what-happened-fntastic-shutting-down Just four days after launching on Steam, The Day Before developer Fntastic announced that its game was a “failure financially” and that no more updates would be released for the early access title. Fntastic, saying it lacked the funds to continue, was closing. The studio then wiped its YouTube channel, deleting all official uploads of The Day Before gameplay trailers; its CEO has disappeared from social media; and the game itself has been pulled from sale on Steam. The game’s publisher, Mytona, said on social media that it’s working with Valve to provide refunds. If it's not a scam, why would the developers just disappear and wipe out all their social media etc? The consensus, which seems logical, is the the developers took the money and ran. There's NO WAY they did not know this was going to be a disaster -- again, look at the trailer from 2021 vs what was actually released.

Steam responds to The Day Before controversy by announcing 'The Day After' sale on survival games https://www.gamingbible.com/news/platform/steam/steam-responds-day-before-controversy-announcing-day-after-374976-20231213 Haha! well played, Steam