What fraction is under 18? It’s hard to tell by looking at the graph. I want to calculate what ratio of combatants to civilians killed a number of 70% implies.

Many senior Democrats were calling on Biden to resign long before he got covid, but he repeatedly made defiant announcements that he would never resign (and Harris supported him). He’s the guy who said that he would only resign if God told him to! His covid infection appears to have been mild (lasting less than a week), and he resigned not because of it but because pretty much the entire Democratic establishment (led by Pelosi) told him that he must.

There are two components to this question. Did many in the working class feel that Democrats had abandoned them? And is Trump’s economic policy actually better for the working class than Harris’s? I think the answers are “yes” and “probably no”. However, voters don’t listen to economists. If they’re not happy with the status quo, they vote for disrupting the status quo even if experts tell them that that’s a bad idea.

I suppose Sanders thinks that the working class would have supported a Democratic candidate who proposed a leftward (as opposed to Trump’s rightward) disruption. My guess is that that isn’t true and socialism is still a dirty word in America, but who knows?

If the quotes are accurate then I think my original reply still stands, just without that first paragraph. I don’t understand how anyone could argue that the Israeli army has already achieved all its objectives in Gaza. Maybe it should withdraw because the remaining objectives are impossible to achieve, but that’s a different matter.

Petty leftists weren’t even a significant part of the problem, IMO. Biden is very unpopular, people didn’t want more of the same, and Biden’s vice president looked like more of the same. However, the Democratic party was too hierarchical to nominate the sort of candidate that they needed to nominate.

Hell, they nominated Biden himself even though his age could have given them a perfect excuse not to nominate a sitting president. He was only forced to step aside once his inadequacies were undeniably obvious to all, and even then he was like a child throwing a tantrum. History is going to remember him as the emperor with no clothes.

I see. That makes this hard to interpret, given that a lot depends on the specific language that he used.

I’m not sure that the problem was going too far towards Republicans rather than not going far enough, because I expect that the leftists staying home stayed home in solidly blue states. I think that the political positions that many people here on Lemmy wanted Harris to take would have been extremely unpopular with the electorate.

With that said, it might have been impossible for Harris to move to the right convincingly, because she couldn’t plausibly distance herself from Biden’s unpopular policies. I wish the Democrats nominated someone who could have criticized Biden in a way that Harris could not.

There’s no quote of Gallant saying that the army has achieved all its objectives in Gaza. It’s just something an anonymous source said that he said. What the article quotes him saying on the record is

He reportedly told the families that the idea that Israel must remain in Gaza to create stability was “an inappropriate idea to risk soldiers’ lives over”.

and

“The IDF commander and I said there was no security reason for remaining in the Philadelphi corridor,” Channel 12 reported him as saying. “Netanyahu said that it was a diplomatic consideration; I’m telling you there was no diplomatic consideration.”

That’s strong criticism but far from “nothing left to do”.

(I’m not sure how fighting this war but then withdrawing from Gaza without creating stability would be in Israel’s long-term security interest.)

If you’re a billionaire intent on becoming even wealthier, that usually implies that you really enjoy being a successful businessman. I don’t see why business success for its own sake would be inherently less satisfying than other sorts of accomplishment.

Don’t forget about device drivers. I can’t even install a newer version of Android on my Android phone because the community never managed to get the antenna to work after upgrading the OS.

Most financially secure people still work full time. I suppose that in theory, they’re able to quit their jobs without suffering immediate, catastrophic consequences but if they actually did that sort of thing, they wouldn’t be financially secure for long.

(In my experience, many financially secure people actually work much more than full time. I think they would be better off if they didn’t because at some point time becomes more valuable than money, but they have the sort of personality that compels them to. This is often related to starting out without financial security.)

The very rich can do crazy stuff without consequences but they’re such a small part of the population that I don’t think comparing oneself to them is useful.

There’s no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn’t be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies

(I’m not picking a side in the “Are fetuses people?” debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)

Heh, I walk around naked with the blinds open because where I live, people would need binoculars to see me and if they choose to, their resulting suffering is their own fault. One advantage of being unattractive…

I think people value private outdoor space differently than public outdoor space. I don’t actually have a balcony but I think I would usually prefer a private space to a public one, even if the public one was much nicer.

That’s funny. I see all the skyscrapers around here with balconies and I get jealous, but I never thought about the fact that I almost never see people on those balconies until I read your question.

I wanted a balcony but the real estate agent politely implied that I couldn’t afford one in the area where I was looking for housing. With that said, I can see myself using it for just an hour or two a week while the weather is nice. I like the idea of sitting out on the balcony but I expect that in practice it would be noisy out there and boring on my own.

Update: He’s definitely dead. According to the NYT:

The Israeli military confirmed that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was killed on Wednesday. His body was definitively identified by the Israeli authorities, the military said.

Ah, that’s good to hear. Odd that the article didn’t mention it…

Why would they announce this before they were sure?

When I’m around other people, I tend to do what they expect me to do. I suspect that this is mostly due to the shame associated with failing to meet expectations when the person with the expectations is right there right now (as opposed to being in the future). I think I would have gone completely off the rails years ago if I didn’t have family members willing to come stay with me (or let me stay with them) during bad times (bad here being periods of depression which would make it almost impossible to do anything alone).

People who aren’t my family are actually more effective. I suppose that’s because I know my family will love me anyway even if I keep disappointing them. I had a boss at one job who worked with me very closely every day and I was an excellent employee there because of that. It was the happiest period of my adult life, but then the company went out of business. I’m still friends with that boss.

One time, I hired a woman to come do household chores with me once a week, because I would be too uncomfortable to sit there doing nothing while she worked. Another time I paid a guy to stop by every morning for ten or fifteen minutes to make sure that I left for work on time. I was never late even once when he did that, but after he became busy with something else, I never hired a replacement.

I don’t usually have someone helping me. It feels like hiring an expensive babysitter and I’m ashamed that I would need such a thing as an adult. (I tend to feel lots of shame…) I can reason that an expensive babysitter is better than losing my job, living in squalor, etc. but so far I haven’t been able to change how I feel.