yes_really

> There is no doubt he held ideas that are of the left, but he is clearly a very complicated person. I would say he probably leans more left that he does right, but he is not “a leftist.“

By that logic no one is “a leftist“. You can always just state that someone is "complicated" and therefore doesn't fit your ever-narrowing definition of "leftist".

— "Marx? he held ideas that are of the left, but he is a complicated person, he's not a 'leftist'".

— "Obama? he held ideas that are of the left, but he is a complicated person, he's not a 'leftist'".

— "Luigi Mangione? he held ideas that are of the left, but he is a complicated person, he's not a 'leftist'".

— "Angela Davis? he held ideas that are of the left, but he is a complicated person, he's not a 'leftist'".

This just makes discourse impossible. Tyler Robinson assassinated the leader of a right-wing movement and made multiple explicit statements showing a radical-leftist motivation to that assassination. Calling right-wing people "fascists" and imagining oneself as an "antifa" fighting the "fascists" is a case of that leftist motivation. Right-wingers do not call people "fascists" as a motivation to attack them. Texting "I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out" is a case of that leftist motivation. Right-wingers do not say they "had enough of their hatred" as a motivation to attack them. This is not something complicated. It is easy to understand. And refusing to meaningfully use the word "leftist" is the same as simply refusing to engage in the discussion at all.

It definitely is, considering "good" to be a top 10 blitz player like Naroditsky was.

This type of comment is what is increasing division and extremism in the US.

The people defined immigration laws through democracy. Following democracy means following the immigration laws that were defined through democracy, not following what you'd like the law to be.

The opposition of "Rule of Law" is "Rule of Men". If we don't follow the immigration laws defined democratically, it means, by definition, that we would be following some other rules defined arbitrarily by rulers outside of the democratic process. That is very dangerous, because following the democratically defined laws is the Schelling point that typically maintains cohesion of a polity. What incentives do your political opponents have for maintaining cohesion if you simply defect on your theoretical obligations to follow the law that was voted on? Can you really say that doing that would not create more and more division?

> While it is undeniable that the US leads in these areas, it should be pointed out that the distribution of who spends and who has disposable income does matter.

Agreed. But the median American has one the highest consumer spending and disposable incomes in the world.

> Europe is a lot more densely populated than the US. You really should be comparing urban areas in both, or rural areas in both.

OK. But housing in American cities is generally larger than the equivalent in European cities. And housing in American suburbs is likewise larger than in European suburbs.

> Air conditioning is simply not necessary in many places in Europe.

67 thousand people are dying each year in Europe from extreme heat, compared to 3k in the US. I'm sure AC "is not necessary in some places in Europe", but this lack of AC is a real material difference and has real, obviously negative consequences.

Western European cities have been getting more violent.

> The US can be "Winning" the monetary accumulation race while still being a terrible place in most other aspects

The US is definitely not "a terrible place in most other aspects". The US is at the top (or near the top excluding small countries like Switzerland) in:

- Consumer spending;

- Disposable income;

- Size of housing afforded;

- Top university rankings;

- Research and development;

Europe suffers from many things that would be hard to imagine in the US. Only 20% of European homes have air conditioning vs 88% of American homes. This causes real problems. In 2024, there were 62,700 Europeans who died from extreme heat, compared to ~3,000 Americans.

Which country do you live in?

The US are not providing Israel with heavy hardware and ammunition "to kill the Palestinian civilians". Israel seeks to MINIMIZE collateral damage to Palestinian victims while achieving the military objective of destroying the terrorist group Hamas and its military capabilities. The rate of civilians and combatants dead is lower than the average of urban wars (lower than when the US fought in urban wars). Israel performs precise attacks on Hamas combatants and military facilities. It sends communication before performing attacks though radio, leaflets, "sound bombs", etc, to allow civilians to escape even though this obviously hinders the effectiveness of its operations because this allows Hamas to change the location of its combatants and weapons. Israel even flat out cancels some operations on valid military targets (such as Hamas weapon deposits and launchers) in order to save civilian lives. In short, Israel seeks to MINIMIZE collateral damage to Palestinian victims while achieving valid military objectives.

Saying Israel seeks to kill Palestinian civilians is as absurd as saying that the US Federal Highway Administration seeks to kill American civilians in car accidents.

How many German children did the allies take to provide medical care to in WWII?

BTW: it doesn't make sene to compare to Russia. Japan obviously attacked the US. Hamas obviously attacked Israel. Ukraine did not attack Russia.

What is the argument that the war would have ended in a few months? Is it that the US would have reached Tokyo by then? Or Japan would have surrendered before then? Both are hard to believe

I guess technically Japan didn't "make" the US drop the bombs, they just started a war against the US and brought them into a situation where they had to choose between continuing to send millions of its soldiers to die in the the deadliest war of all time, or defending itself against the aggressor by dropping the bombs. Are you happy with that?

Likewise, I guess technically Hamas didn't "make" Israel defend itself. They just fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately against Israeli civilians and launched the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, where 1200 Israelis were murdered, tortured, raped, and/or kidnapped for being Jewish, and brought Israel into a situation where it had to choose between continuing to allow for its population to be a victim of massacres threatened by a total war of annihilation, or defend itself by destroying Hamas.

The fault of this event lies on Japan, not the US. Japan was the aggressor who started the war. Japan was "fighting to the end" and gave no indications it would surrender. It is estimated that the war would go on to 1947 had the bombs not been dropped. That would have caused the deaths of millions or tens oof million more people. It is a tragedy that people died, but the blame lies in Japan's actions, not the US'.

> the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives

FYI it is estimated that the war would go on until 1947 if the bombs were not dropped. There would be millions of American lives lost in that case.

Japan was the one who started the war. Japan was the aggressor. Defending yourself by winning a war against an aggressor is not a "wrong".

Many more people were saved by dropping the bombs than people died in it. And, while it is a tragedy that those people died, that fault lies with Japan, not the US.

How is the energy "exponentially lower"? Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the speed.

What is your thought process for that? Do you think ethnic conflicts do not exist in developing countries? Do you think nonwhite immigrants to the US would not talk about politics? Do you think nonwhite immigrants to the US are unbothered by a rise in ethnical tensions?

For the people downvoting: can you actually provide arguments for why you think these points are incorrect?

If you are downvoting simply because you disagree politically with what I commented, you are going against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We can debate about specific requests from the Trump administration, but it is pretty clear that Harvard has been horrible. The previous administrations completely failed to fix it.

- Harvard has been discriminating against Whites and Asians in admissions for decades.

- Harvard deliberately refused to protect Jewish students against intimidation and harassment. Students camped in school property for weeks against Harvard's official rules. They chanted that they would bring islamic terrorism to America ("intifada, intifada, coming to America"), established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews, and remained there for almost a month while the school simply refused to remove them. [1]

- Harvard's president stated that calling for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily constitute harassment. This is particularly bizarre when contrasted to Harvard's approach to other groups, like when it considers "misgendering" of trans individuals to be harassment.

[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/harvard-jew...

Virtually all Israelis, both men and women, serve in the IDF from 18 to 21 years old. So the criticism is that Meta employs 100 Israelis out of its 74k US employees?

That's 0.1%. The Indians and Chinese immigrants cover a much larger percentage. Does that mean that Meta is controlled by India and China?

> How about this one that says Dick Durban is supporting Hamas because he has advocated for the release of Mahmoud Khalil?

You made a false statement of fact. The tweet never said that. It reads [1]:

> 1/ Canary Mission is apolitical. We call out antisemitism on all sides and have never had a vested interest in a political party. However, Senator Dick Durbin is testing our principles like never before. His defense of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Hamas activist, raises serious moral and ethical concerns. It is troubling that one of our great parties is standing behind a Hamas supporter - a group recognized as a terrorist organization—the same group that perpetrated the massacre of October 7, which included the murder, rape and kidnapping of innocent civilians.

It clearly says that Khalil is a Hamas supporter, not Dick Durban. There's video of Khalil giving a speech defending Hamas' "armed resistance" [2]. Was this a lack of basic reading comprehension or was that a deliberate lie?

[1] https://x.com/canarymission/status/1899487784454508681

[2] https://x.com/canarymission/status/1900204678240928166

> Because supporting Palestine isn't hating Jews

Did you fail to read any of my comments or are you just pretending? Khalil gave a speech openly defending the "armed resistance" of Hamas [1].

[1] https://x.com/canarymission/status/1900204678240928166

The comment said "Zionists and other far right twitter accounts", which means at least 2 of the accounts are "far right". Can you explain how https://x.com/canarymission and https://x.com/CampusJewHate are "far right"?

Those accounts document hatred against Jewish people in Columbia and other universities. How on Earth are these accounts "far right"? Can you link to at least one post from either of those accounts that you would characterize as "far right"?

LOL, how the hell are these accounts "far right"? And how do the accounts invalidate the video evidence and screenshots published on the posts?

Are you denying that Hamas is a terrorist group? Committing terrorism is literally the central part of their operations. Are you denying that October 7th was terrorism? Are you denying that launching thousands of rockets against Israel to kill as many Jewish people as possible is terrorism?

Wait, you were on a team match with Meta for 9 months? That's insane. Is it because you wanted a team in NYC? How common is it to pass the interviews but fail team matching there, if you can work in the Bay Area?

I watched the whole press conference. Here's the summary:

- It was amicable for the first 30 minutes.

- It went downhill when Zelenskyy asked Vance slightly hostile questions saying that Putin would not honor the cease-fire.

- Then Vance responded in a more hostile manner saying Zelenskyy should be more thankful and that he shouldn't be litigating in front of the press. And everyone started fighting.

Honestly, the 3 of them acted badly. Both Zelenskyy and Vance started it. And after it was started, Trump just accepted the fight instead of trying to end it. It's sad this ended this way, especially because the press conference was going well for the first 30 minutes.

In my experience, I haven't often seen the right disparaging "compassion, tolerance and intellectualism". What I usually see is the right criticizing identity politics. For example, this post is about a Biden program that has the following requirements. Would you say this case is an instance of "compassion, tolerance and intellectualism" or identity politics?

> In addition, states had to prove that they promoted participation from minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and “other socially or economically disadvantaged individual-owned businesses.” They also had to create a Five-Year Action Plan that required collaborating with unions and “underrepresented communities,” including prisoners, LGBTQI+ individuals, women, and people of color.

Isn't there a middle ground possible? For example, a guarantee, in law, that the US and Europe send military equipment to Ukraine if there is another war in the future?