Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified

The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.

But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.

Beeper already deregistered the numbers, but it takes 24 to 36 hours for Apple servers to forget the deregistered numbers.

The two things go hand in hand, though.

Degraded messaging gets branded with green bubbles. Green bubbles - i.e. non-Apple phones - get associated with degraded messaging. Non-Apple phones get pidgeon-holed as crappy phones for messaging. People get bullied into buying iPhones.

These must be those death panels Republicans warned us of when the Affordable Care Act passed…

He’s running for the office of President of The United States of America, and the multi-billionaire who owns what is still one of the world’s most influential social media platforms openly spouts antisemitic rhetoric.

It seems pretty fair to ask a candidate about his view on that issue.

Then she had an anchor baby. Then her parents became citizens through chain migration.

All things that Trump supporters absolutely hate and want to punish harshly: they’re hollering about shooting people at the border, they’re in favor of family separation, they want to round up people and deport them - except when it’s Trump’s own family.

For Trump supporters, “law and order” always means “rules for thee and not for me.”

Roman concrete structures still exist after 2000 years. If you want to “hide” the CO2 somehow, then concrete doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Yeah. Wanting a Tesla 5 years ago is very different from still wanting a Tesla today, in 2023, after Elon has told everyone, in public, exactly who he was.

Since you seem to know a lot about Tesla: when people pay those $12,000 for the “Full Self-Driving package,” does Tesla tell them they can’t use it when it gets cold outside?

I’ll tell you exactly how I’d feel about that, I’d feel that you shouldn’t kill innocent people from the countries that the terrorists hail from in response, because I’m not a shitty human being.

“I think this shouldn’t be done” is a non-answer.

You have avoided the main topic to try and make a point that is still unrelated to the topic at hand. We are not talking about helping Palestinians. I don’t know how you still don’t get it. You’re intentionally ignoring it and it is really starting to piss me off.

You’re the one who has made exactly zero suggestions about how to stop Hamas.

Have you lost even one single word about Hamas mass murdering civilians? Have you lost one single word about Hamas torturing people, beheading people, burning people alive?

No?

Why not?

Is that just acceptable to you? Are you just a shitty human being?

Or is that, to you, just something terrorists do, so we should ask, collectively, just shrug it off?

If you genuinely think this, you’re insane.

So your tangible answers are:

• Doing a better job at controlling their borders.
• Partner with the dozens of countries you are allied with.

That’s your answer of how a nation should respond to a terrorist attack that killed 1,400 civilians, where the attached committed the most inhumane, vile atrocities?

Put yourself in the Israeli civilians’ shoes, say 1,400 of your fellow citizen - men, women, children, babies - have just been murdered by a terrorist organization that rules an adjacent territory in the most gruesome way: decapitated, shot, bludgeoned, burned to death. How would you feel about that?

And how would you feel about it if then somebody told you "well, why don’t you just control the borders a little bit better and partner with your allies?’

You are asking a question that is totally unrelated to the topic.

Because you wrote a post that was totally unrelated to my question, and totally unrelated to the entire conversation before it.

The entire premise of the conversation was that Hamas might not even exist today if Israel had only chosen to help the Palestinians.

If your entire reply to that topic can be summed up as “well, too late for that,” then I agree with you.

I fail to see the point in trying to help them if you are actively blowing them up to stop a terrorist organization, you should do that before you do anything else, it’s literally a prerequisite.

How do you feel that Israel should have reacted to the 10/7 attacks?

These are basically small concrete boxes sunk into the ground. They’re only meant to stick out a bushfire for a few hours.

You could probably just keep a few bottles of oxygen or a carbon dioxide scrubber stashed in there, just in case. If you can spend $10,000 on one of these bunkers, spending a few hundred more isn’t going to make a difference.

Anything longer than a few hours would get dicey anyway without room to move around, without room to stash water or food, without a toilet or beds.

And the cause for the blockade before 2012 was that Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip, murdered its political opponents, and instituted a reign of terror where elections were suspended indefinitely, dissent was impossible, and Palestinian “collaborators” were abducted, tortured, and murdered.

And the reason for the end of the ceasefire in 2014 was that Hamas abducted the teenagers, followed by Israel imprisoning 350 Palestinian militants, followed by Hamas launching rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from Gaza.

That’s the problem, isn’t it - whatever any side does in this conflict, it’s easy to find justification for it if you only go back fast enough in history. There are more than 2000 years of history there, full of conflict between the various ethnic groups. If anyone wants to find justification for current atrocities, it’s always easy to point to atrocities previously committed by the other side.

That said: do you really believe that Hamas wild simply cease its terrorism, its atrocities, its rocket attacks, kidnappings, torture, murder and simply decide to live in peace with Israel if the blockade were to be lifted tomorrow?

You wrote a lot of things, but I still don’t see an answer to the question there.

Is that because you don’t have an answer?

Not blockade the Gaza strip, for one.

How would that make Hamas go away?

Egypt and Israel are blockading the Gaza strip because it’s under the control of a terrorist organization.

If the question is “how could Israel help the Palestinians in a way that would make the threat if Hamas disappear,” how are you envisioning that this would happen if Israel ended the blockade?

See, that’s the problem, though: you’re already presuming that people who don’t simply go along cheering facile, generic solutions like “why don’t the Israelis just help the Palestinians” - as if things were that easy and as if that thought just had never occurred to a single person in the past 70 years of murderous conflict - must be insincere.

So for the record: no, I’m being sincere. Bombing innocent civilians in Gaza is very obviously objectionable, and indiscriminate bombing is a war crime.

At the same time, I can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization which just committed the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel, committing unspeakable atrocities and murdering hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Israel.

So with that premise established: what would be some realistic ways for Israel to help Palestinians in a way that would make Hamas go away and end that particular threat for Israel. Because that’s the proposition: that the terrorist threat from Hamas could be ended if Israel only helped the Palestinians instead of bombing them, correct?

Yeah, some of the MAGAt Nazis have already announced that they will keep laying down a wreath every year on the new statue that is being cast, no matter what.

It would be hilarious if they held their solemn loser ceremony around a giant dildo every year!

So you’re assuming that asking for a qualified answer about what should be done to “help the Palestinians” is the equivalent of “cheering on the Nazis?”

if Israel would put in the effort to help Palestinians

That’s sounds good.

What would that look like?

As a reference: from 2014 to 2020, the UN spent $4.5 billion in Gaza. NGOs have poured in hundreds of millions, have opened schools, have financed hospitals, have distributed aid. USAID has spent billions of dollars, the European Union spent hundreds of millions of Euros just to put in reliable water infrastructure. Just recently, Israel agreed to open the borders to Gaza so a number of Palestinians could work in Israel and live in Gaza.

But Hamas has been intercepting foreign aid, has seized donated supplies, has interfered with aid workers, has used schools and hospitals financed by the UN and NGOs as terrorist headquarters, as weapons caches, as launching sites for missiles, as prisons and torture sites to hold, torture and murder opponents.

So what, specifically, would you suggest?