sp3ctr4l

Yeah, 'aerial battle' would have been the term I used, but hey since when are journalists supposed to know what words mean?

I suppose it is technically possible there could have been some actual close range dog fighting in this giant battle, lots of jets involved still have actual guns, as well as less long ranged and less accurate missiles...

On the other hand:

Holy fuck.

125 aircraft engaged in essentially one gigantic battle?

That is totally unprecedented in the modern era.

So, uh, anyway... Pakistan and India both have nukes, and as best I can tell, both have threatened to use them is things escalate... so... uh... yeah...

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/pakistan-says-three-air-bases-targeted-by-indian-missiles-2025-05-10/

Apparently there is a cease fire, apparently Trump is taking credit for it, apparently it has already been violated?

I am watching India Today's livestream and they are currently saying Pakistan has and is currently still violating the ceasefire, and I have little doubt the Indians are as well.

EDIT: Former Indian Secretary MEA is basically saying Trump's 'ceasefire' is complete bullshit, that India and Pakistan reached their own ceasefire, and though it seems like its falling apart, the other point here is that neither Pakistan nor India are paying any attention to Trump, they have no idea what he is talking about, they have not agreed to anything mediated by the US.

Just to give some context here:

US Dockworkers (Longshoremen) are not all in the same Union.

The West Coast and Hawaii are ILWU.

The Gulf and Atlantic Coasts are ILA.

The ILWU came out heavily against Trump before the election, endorsing Kamala.

The ILA on the other hand... basically decided to time their most recent strike with the latter stages of the 2024 campaign, snubbed Biden on multiple occasions, openly praised Trump on many occasions, both before and after he was elected...

... though I don't think they formally endorsed Trump, its fairly clear which horse they backed.

Teamsters, on the other hand, represent... road maintenance workers, truck drivers, train operators, railway maintenance workers, construction workers, newspaper workers, police, warehouse workers... after over a century of union mergers, their represented industries are much more broad.

And they didn't formally endorse anyone, but uh yeah, similar to the ILA, its very, very clear that leadership prefers Trump.

At least some of the plauges approximating some of what is described in the Torah were real things.

Locusts were certainly a common problem.

Sometimes, you would get an absurd amount of frogs birthing all at the same time from a particularly severe natural climate cycle ... the entitety of the history of Egypt very much involves figuring out how to handle the Nile's flooding seasons.

A red algae bloom could possibly have turned the Nile red, and made it basically toxic.

... But the part where the historicity falls apart is the supposed timing of the Exodus event, and the number of Hebrews involved.

...

Long story short: Traditional religious dating of when Exodus occured basically puts it occuring before the time Yahweh even existed as a monotheistic God, in Israel/Judah/Canaan.

At this point in time, the Levant was largely still a bunch of varying cults/clans based around the polytheistic Caananite pantheon.

Yahweh did not develop into, or emerge, as the singular monotheistic God of peoples in the Levant... untill hundreds of years later, after they had been held captive in Babylon/Persia for many decades, where they absorbed much of thr dualistic framework of the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda as the great good God, vs Angra-Mainyu as the great evil God... and then were allowed to resettle in their homeland by Cyrus.

Roughly what I just described is inline with the actual existing and properly dated texts and artefacts from the relevant regions.

When Exodus is tradtionally supposed to have occured... Caananites were still worshipping El, Ba'al, Ashera, Astarte, Anat, Dagon.

El and his son Ba'al more or less merged into Yahweh over time, and gained many attributes of other members of the Pantheon... this is why Yahweh is a jealous god who does not suffer any idol worship, worship of his progenitors.

...

The other huge problem with the Exodus story is the numbers of Hebrews involved.

The Torah is very explicit at a few points about how many men there were... and what you end up with is something like 2 to 3 million people leaving Egypt, spending 40 years lost in Sinai or possibly Arabia... all while leaving literally no archaeological evidence of such a huge movement of people.

2 to 3 million people leaving Egypt is utterly absurd. Its comparable to the estimated entire popation of Lower (Northern) Egypt at the time of the traditional religious dating.

There is nothing in any Egyptian records to indicate anything like that number of people up and leaving.

What there is, is a good number of mentions that small numbers, as in hundreds, maybe thousands, of Caananites ... well if Caanan was having a bad drought, or had just had some kind of city state conflict... Egypt would fairly routinely allow some refugees to basically graze their herds in Egypt, or even a few of them would settle into being farmers, or do trading caravans.

There is no evidence whatsoever that millions of Hebrews, or people who would in the future become Hebrews... ever lived in Egypt as a slave class, and then all left at the same time.

To me, the actual main problem with the interactions between Moses (as a proxy for Yahweh) and Pharaoh...

... Is that for the majority of ultimatums that God instructs Moses to give to Pharoah... God also 'hardens his/Pharoah's heart', which compels Pharoah to not comply.

Like, outside or above the scale of things threatened... God literally mind controls Pharoah, manipulates his emotions, and forces him into saying no, not acquiescing or truly negotiating.

This happens multiple times.

So now... God isn't just an asshole threatening insane plaugues and death... God is just puppeting Pharoah at these key moments, so basically God is orchestrating this entire chain of events... he was in total control the whole time... God is thus just punishing the Egyptians, while also doing a kabuki theatre, a false flag, whatever, to make it look like they actually had choices and chances to avoid this, to make it look like they willingly defied his will... when this was not the case.

This takes God from a belligerent asshole into now also being a sociopathic, deceptive manipulator.

Its abuser mentality.

What are you talking about? That's not what happened.

If that is what happened, it wasn't that bad.

If it was that bad, you deserved it.

Oh, yes, that's ... a whole thing as well.

Wonderful time to be Autistic in the US, what with RFK Jr (the guy with the actual brain worm, life long anti-vaxxer, who is now in charge of essentially medical policy in the US) describing all Autistic people as literally pants-shittingly stupid, saying that he'd like to take all people using any kind of psychiatricly prescribed medication to detox, no electronics, farm labor camps.

... I wonder if Canada would accept an asylum petition from Americans who either are, or suspect they may be Autistic at this point?

Omae wa mou shindeiru.

I agree, the poor phrasing of many questions is annoying.

But as best I can tell, that test is the most widely recognized as valid initially screening test, in that it essentially never produces false positives (neurotypicals do not score 65 or over).

It is also supposed to be properly administered by a professional who is sufficiently trained to address questions you may have about how to answer the questions.

On one hand, if it isn't a big deal to you, than I absolutely do not want to pressure you into pursuing it just for my sake.

On the other hand, I am reasonably confident that taking issue with the poor phrasing of many of the questions... is itself an indicator, to some extent, that you are more likely to be higher up in the score, on the spectrum... because constantly asking to further specify things that are poorly or ambiguously worded... is a common trait of Autists.

Neurotypicals tend to barrel ahead with the first possibly ambiguous meaning or question answer without reflection or reconsideration.

Autists tend to do the exact opposite.

... This is part of the reason you're supposed to do this test with a trained professional observing/proctoring, when you go for a formal diagnosis.

Sure, yes, making your own art would be better in one sense, one way of looking at this, but I guess you don't appreciate the whole 'turning it against itself' aspect of this.

Turning a system against itself is the literal definition of subversion, in the context of complex systems, anyway.

Sure, its not as subversive as intentionally poisoning AIGen stuff to stupify itself over time, but I do think this counts.

Its not like you have to get the AI to draw the image every single time anyone sees it, we can still copy and paste images, host them where many can see them, etc.

To me, there is a sense of 'art' in the subversion itself.

If the theft machine already exists, and you don't have the ability to destroy it, contain or restrain it more directly... using it to generate propoganda against itself, its creators?

I think that's a clever use of it.

Like, would you say that that one piece of ... kinetic/performance art, where its just a machine that you must go up to and hand crank, and it spits out penny by penny at the rate of minimum wage...

Would you say that isn't art because it forces the art 'experiencer' to perform exhausting wage labor, which is simply 100% bad, all the time, no exceptions?

I mean, when Elon bought Twitter, I, having never used Twitter before, created an account just to scream at him, and I managed to get banned in a few hours.

But to attempt to answer your question: Arguably, technically, yes, but it really only matters if it significantly fucks with Elon, or inspires other to meaningfully resist him, or aide those he oppresses.

One person doing that?

Flash in the pan.

Coordinated , consistent swarm, of people or bots, doing this untill the entire site goes down?

Even better: hack in their and reroute it to fucking DDoS itself?

Maybe a bit more meaningful.

I find the use of AIGen to essentially advocate against itself to be fairly clever.

Its not like you have to burn down a bushel of wheat's cropland every time you copy and paste an already generated image.

I mean, you joke, kind of, but a massive, MASSIVE amount of QAnon bullshit that drives current rightwingers in the US is literally nothing but inventing fake demonic pedophile cults and putting anyone they don't like in these made up cults...

All so that they can demonize others, and what this functionally does is give these nutjobs an infinite well of whataboutisms to either shift a conversation about pederasty and child abuse in any christian church/sect ... over to 'the even worserer badderer people'...

...or just do something akin to a 'no true scotsman' and claim that anyone in any church who is a pedo or child abuser... well actually they're not a real christian, they're a secret demonic cult member who is embedded in the organization to both commit evil and also to discredit the church when they are exposed.

The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it claims to do.

These people invented what is essentially their own new religion, a religion dlc, which entirely serves as a mechanism to avoid and make impossible discussions of actual child sa, abuse, going on in the institutions they revere.

If you are subverting the means or process of exploitation against itself, well, that's pretty subversive, anarchist, punk.

If you're doing that in the digital realm?

Pretty fucking cyberpunk.

These idiot tech bros whoooshed over understanding the cyberpunk genre as a warning of what not to do, and instead adopted its aesthetic and are just now building that world, as its villains.

Well fine then.

Time to reclaim our culture.

I am not saying that homes shouldn't have good construction and maintenance standards.

I am saying that in general, an occasional spider in your room is very likely there because it is hunting other pests that would pose far more risk to your home and yourself than the actual spider.

Please actually read the link I provided and educate yourself.