I have seen this exact story a bunch of times. I haven’t bothered to complain. I just chalk it up to a Lemmy thing.

They don’t. Until June 2024, Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) were exempt from military services under an arrangement known as Torato Umanuto. Furthermore the draft only applies to male and female Jews, male Druze, and male Circassians in the first place. All other ethnic groups are excluded.

Haredim have historically been very active on the far right of Israeli politics. They’ve made up a significant portion of settlers and have been major proponents of the expansion of settlements. Their loss of draft exemption last year was met with widespread protests but some are hopeful it will eventually contribute to political change. Policies like this are slow to take effect though, and generational prejudices don’t disappear overnight.

I don’t want to be drafted either but I think there do seem to be cultural benefits to universal conscription and mandatory military service. These countries seem to be much less willing to go to war than countries where only certain classes or groups of people are represented in the military.

Three of the worst offenders, the US, Russia, and Israel, are examples of the latter. The people making the decisions to go to war tend to be in the class or group that avoids military service.

That’s them being diplomatic. The truth is that they’re intimidated. Their speech is being chilled.

Nice country you have here… a real shame if something were to happen to it!

That’s my read on the situation!

That’s not particular to Americans. Lots of people put their heads down rather than try to fight. Look at Russia!

This phenomenon is called depoliticizaton. Philosopher Vlad Vexler talks about it often.

Reminds me of German chancellor Franz von Papen. He was instrumental in bringing Hitler to power but he never accepted responsibility for it, even though he lived until 1969!

Except Los Angeles. We don’t need that kind of superficiality here!

This does not contradict what I said? Vegetarians and vegans are not the same thing. Vegans do not eat eggs or dairy (or honey or any other product derived from animals). Vegetarians have no such restriction, they just don’t eat meat.

Hitler wasn’t a vegan. He ate eggs and dairy products, according to his doctor.

I dunno about the others but I heard Zuck was building some kind of Bond-villainesque volcano super-base. Presumably he’s going to put a lot of his stockpiles there.

There are plenty of Christians who specifically and deliberately oppose attempting to make life on earth more like heaven. They’re not being hypocrites for this, this is their belief system. To disagree with them is to wade into a theological debate, not just a political one.

Civilization series AKA dictator simulator!

They’re downright awful. They can survive much higher temperatures than most other pathogens which means cooking often fails to destroy them.

Exactly. He’s serious about wasting everyone’s time and distracting from his attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. He’s serious about flattering Trump with delusions of grandeur about a 19th century gilded age of “spheres of influence” so that the US abandons Ukraine.

Putin still has a lot to worry about though. The European sleeping dragon is getting restless.

This is what he originally wanted to do. My guess is that the engineers said it ain’t gonna happen.

If you disconnect a big part of the grid then you end up with way too much power being produced for the rest of the grid. If you aren’t able to shut down generators in time then you can severely damage the equipment on the grid and cause cascading failures that take down the entire grid.

One major outage I remember was the 2003 Northeast Blackout. I recall having to barbecue dinner for a couple of days while waiting for power to be restarted. Had to spend a lot of time outside because the indoor heat was brutal without air conditioning!

His cameo in Home Alone 2 was free. He was the owner of the Plaza Hotel at the time and he insisted on the cameo as part of the payment for using the hotel for filming.

Geography matters because people form identity groups within their geographic areas. People in rural areas have very different wants and needs than city folk. So it’s only natural for them to vote for different representatives.

Art of the steal.