The rural population isn’t the issue, it’s suburbia which is where the majority of the US population lives.

It’s not dense enough for public transportation to be viable and it’s zoned in a way that makes pedestrian traffic a non starter.

Suburbia causes a lot of problems. I understand why it exists - owning a house with a yard is nice. I personally wouldn’t want to give that up to live in an urban environment if I didn’t have to

Working long solo sessions of people leaving me the fuck alone tends to be correlated with me getting projects done.

No joke, 50th anniversary of the first F16 flight is coming up very soon.

Granted the guts of that plane have been upgraded over and over, but still.

Eh, I’m here to relax and have fun.

Not be told I’m a piece of shit who deserves to be executed because I had the audacity to be born every ten minutes.

Why does everyone keep saying child poverty?

Like, do children in other countries have some sort of massive wealth I’m not aware of?

I’m excited for it for the same reasons.

I don’t have skill in art or coding.

But AI platforms have let me produce things that work for my personal needs that would be beyond my abilities before starting the project.

Do I need sources for the failed invasion of Kyiv?

Everyone knows about it.

It’s called qualified immunity.

The idea is that if a police officer accidentally violates someone’s rights while trying to do their job and wasn’t aware they are not at fault.

It’s not a law but the result of a court case. Many of us want a law passed to remove it.

Yeah. This is the one that came to my mind.

Dude straight up ended his career. His band members left, label dropped him and his colabs said they wouldn’t work with him anymore.

Turns out he was a lieutenant in the oath keepers and the FBI grabbed him. Last I heard he made a plea deal and got put into the witness protection program.

He is the band and it can’t exist without him. Even if he could continue, he’d have to rebuild it from the ground up.

It’s a shame, I really Loved Demons and Wizards, the iced earth / blind guardian colab group.

… Based on some song lyrics I feel I should have seen this coming when looking back though.

The vast majority of Israeli’s were born there at this point.

It’s not a stolen home to them. It’s the only home they’ve ever known.

What question do you want answered? Most of what you stated seemed to be rhetorical.

Why is this "Where do they go? 😞 " question relevant only now and only one way?

Because someone specifically told me that every Israeli should just leave Israel?

Are you not following the converstation here?

That’s what makes the whole thing complicated, isn’t it?

Israel shouldn’t have existed to begin with and when it did, it shouldn’t have acted the way it has since its inception.

Yes, Israel is to blame for Hamas having power in Gaza today as well.

I’m not arguing that Israel isn’t a bad guy here.

What I’m arguing is I don’t see an alternative that doesn’t just kick the can down the road.

considering a lot of them have second citizenships elsewhere…how about those places?

That only accounts for maybe 20-30% of the population these days. Most Israelis alive today were born in the country, not immigrants.

So again, where do they go?

And go where?

Yes, they are doing a genocide.

I’m not sure what other options are available at this point though.

Hamas is extremist to the point where they would be doing a genocide as well if they were in the position to do so.

People say separate the Hamas from the people, but that’s really hard when the members of Hamas are of the people and have the support of a good percentage of them.

If Israel invades on foot and Hamas is threatened they can simply fade back into the population and wait to try again. And the general population will support them in doing so.

The creation of the state of Israel was a mistake and the rise of Hamas is the direct result of decades of apartheid practiced against the Palestinians by the Israeli state.

… But as the issue stands today, I can’t blame Israel in taking extreme action to end the conflict that’s dragged on for nearly a century now.

There is no reasonable path to peace. A two state solution would end with the states at war anyway as both states have extreamists who want to genocide the other in government positions.

And there is no where that would accept the Gaza population as refugees even if you could get them to leave.

So what’s left?

Sure, like I said, there is going to be harm the black market creates.

I still feel there is a good chance for a net positive here.

prohibition doesn’t work

My first gut response was ‘We should outlaw murder, I bet that’d stop murder from happening!’.

But as hilarious as it is, lets ignore the hyperbole.

The fact is that laws never stop all the activity they are intended to prevent. If they did we wouldn’t need a court system.

No, the question is does the law do more good than bad for society?

Smoking causes 480,000 extra deaths yearly according to the CDC.

And smoking related illness costs around $300 billion annually in the US.

As we both agree, outlawing the sale will not prevent 100% of usage. But it will almost certainly prevent some usage.

And I agree that a black market will form and that black market will cause some societal damage.

So the question is, will the affects of the black market created by prohibition do more damage to society than the reduction in existing societal damage that we should see from prohibition?

Considering the above statistics, it may be worth the gamble.

I’ll note that you have nothing to refute with.

There is no oxymoron.

Smoking is harming oneself.

Selling is harming another.

They are not equivalent.