Not being as happy and being unhappy are not the same.
Regardless, you should read Robert Putnam's essay, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century (2007). He makes it clear that social trust goes down because of it.
Because the culture that's moving in is intolerant of my way of life and wants to piecemeal eradicate it by using the government to incrementally make every bit of the way I live harder, more expensive or subject to capricious enforcement if not outright illegal.
I thought I would be able to get in a good 20-40yr settling down where I did and would only be complaining about this stuff when I was old. It's been about 10 and it's all going to shit.
And yes, I am intentionally not being specific and leaving room for assumption.
> And yes, I am intentionally not being specific and leaving room for assumption.
One thing I've consistently noticed about these kinds of conversations is that people want to be allowed to share racist opinions without suffering the social consequences of sharing racist opinions, but in order to do so they have to hide their true values by masking their language and not actually say anything that has any meaning.
I have nothing in my value system I'm ashamed of, I'll say any aspect of it in any company at all. Is it hard not having a value system like that?
Lol, and that's exactly why I worded it the way I did.
As far are I'm concerned the "wrong kind of people" are the ones with no real problems and a propensity to make ones by gettin involved in other people's business. The fact that those people are mostly white is just random luck of how history turned out.
They show up, they get to screeching in the town hall meetings and before you know it the flock cameras go up, code enforcement is prowling around with a drone, Starbucks replaces the Popeyes, half the businesses you patronize sell out to developers of bougie stuff you don't want, everything costs more, etc, etc.
I'm sure the city wins on paper, it's replacing it's existing people with richer ones. And I'm sure the people who sell stuff to these richer people win, but everyone who was here first loses. We just wanted to pay low rents, drink beer on our front porches and let our kids ride dirtbikes in the street and generally live our lives.
I chose this city specifically because the kind of people I didn't want anything to do with said it sucked so much "my dad dealt crack in the 90s and that's where he'd meet his supplier" and all that, and it was so far away from where they usually like to settle. But with what happened to land values, rents, etc. after 2020 pushed a lot of them out here.
This is so bizarre, your initial comment comes off like the typical "crime is because diversity" people, but it sounds like you have some kind of class conscious issue with affordability?
Articles about two countries cannot be more true than the lived experience of actual residents of Africa. I am Kenyan as well, that article describes something very specific to individual communities in some countries in West Africa, it is foreign to me. The largest expense of funerals that I've experienced in my life is usually paying the medical expenses of the deceased (if the person had been ill for a long time) and feeding the funeral attendees (we do usually get a huge crowd and they generally get lunch).
Another data point: maybe 35-40% of people in Africa identify as Muslim. They usually bury people the same day they die or at worst the next day, and there is no elaborate coffin, usually just a cloth sheet.
Is that because of some heritable presence/lack of intelligence or because scientists feed their children well early in life, have books in the home, and take the time to follow up on their children's education?
Isn't it all relative? Cooling actually isn't a problem at all with solar. I can run my AC full blast during the summer and still get the batteries fully charged before evening.
If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side. Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars. Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.
> If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side.
Assassination of leaders is very common in war.
Nobody claims the US wanted to negotiate a cease fire with the old regime, they want to negotiate it with whatever phoenix rises from its ashes.
> Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars.
You negotiate with the power structure that remains, it could be equally oppressive figures from the same organizations, it could be opposition leaders, it could be labor unions, it could be whomever locally consolidates power. Put public keys on the shells and rockets. One can not credibly claim lack of agency while firing rockets and drones. Old enough to fire? Old enough to get hit!
I just described a protocol to identify who is in power, administration-agnostic Pentagon can demand the Iranians hold a crypto party bootstrap their own web of trust and forward the keys through physicists then IAEA. The web of trust can be established before any voting or alliance forming.
If Iran predelegated all hostilities in the event of regime decapitation, they effectively sent their troops (and population) on a never ending suicide mission.
The longer power vacuum persists the more casualties result.
Ultimately it is more in the interest of both Iran regime and population to even bootstrap this web of trust without Pentagon demanding it!
> Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.
Why does establishing the local power nexus necessarily take decades? The faster it is unambiguously established, the faster negotiation can actually start.
I believe you are fundamentally misunderstanding the actors and their motivations here, in a similar way to the US administration (which also explains this incredibly self-sabotaging war in the first place).
1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
2) You have to understand that Iranian leadership (but also big parts of society!) are actually religious nuts. It's not all for show. They believe that their sacrifice on the earthly sphere will be rewarded in the afterlife. Their considerations aren't immediate material wealth and well-being the same way they are for the Americans. They're willing to endure this long-term pain for what they see as the longer-term reward of punishing the Great Satan.
From the Iranian perspective, they are winning and keeping at it is the rational move.
The US navigated itself into a no-win situation, driven by misguided illusions of imperial power, hubris and (in the case of Hegseth) toxic masculinity.
> 1) The US and Israel have repeatedly assassinated Iranian negotiators when they did come to the table. Who's gonna want to negotiate at this point and put themselves on the kill list next? The repeated shady dealings have ruined the reputation of the US as a party one can even negotiate with.
"coming to the table" is an expression conveying sincere negotiation. One can physically or telecomatically "come to the table" without actually coming to the table!
Consider how North Korea kept pretending coming to the table until it was too late! Perhaps you want another North Korea in the middle east, but I believe most on HN don't!
I would even say that publically confessing what was done to Mahsa Amini (both internationally and domestically) for a prolonged period would be a precondition for accepting ceasefire conditions.
You can not reliably negotiate with a counterparty that is lying in your face.
2) Iranian leadership perfectly understands what they did to Mahsa Amini for example. They can't seriously believe they will go to this afterlife, if they felt they had nothing to hide they would be open about it and portray without shame what they did to her. They use religion the same way the Inquisition used religion: as a loyalty indicator. The actions of such actors in Iran are better explained by those of someone who became complicit (intentionally or by the trickery and pressure of others) and from then on feel aligned by a survival mechanism to keep the skeletons in the closet.
The US can very much find progress, depending on their level or lack of respect for international law, in the sense of civil disobedience (sometimes you break rules to improve a situation): regardless of legality, how would Iranian high society react if US progressively bombs neighborhoods starting from the richest neighborhoods (with sufficient advance warning). As you turn the elites homeless they either display the homeless fate to the next echelon of high society of what would happen to them, or they take the housing of the next echelon of high society for themselves... This puts pressure on exactly the people who were calling the shots in Iran. Legal? not at all! About as legal as signing chemical weapons conventions treaty and then applying hydrogen cyanide on Mahsa Amini...
None of this is relevant, because you still incorrectly assume the US is the one coming at this from a position of strength and capable of extracting concessions.
The world economy, the oil price, the reality in Hormuz and the Iranian regime disagree with you. None of what you propose is capable of changing this.
If the US were to bomb neighborhoods, it would strengthen the resolve of Iranians. Hard power is not an effective solution for the problem the US created.
The inquisition parallel is somewhat apt, but more accurate would be the crusades. Christians took the risk of death because of their religious beliefs, the same is the case here.
Lets take a step back: the reason governments sponsor things like basic science research, solar panel development, space projects etc. Is because they are high risk and capital intensive. The reason industry doesn't do it is because it is too long term. The economy mostly concerns itself with short term incentives and threats. That the world economy votes economically to let Iran be, is just short term financial security, it ignores the threats that Iran poses.
Obviously lots of possibilities exist, for example in the most absurdist scenario, the US demands that Iran evacuates, and announces nuclear carpet bombing plenty ahead of time. Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Iran can not do the same (yet), and the US would like to keep it that way, they don't want another North Korea. They understand the long term price. If other nations refuse to drop their fossil fuel habits, they can either pay the premium price (directly or indirectly by helping secure the Strait of Hormuz) or drop their fossil fuel habits. It's unsustainable in the long run anyway...
What's wrong with another North Korea? They've been much better behaved on the global stage than the US has been. I'd much rather have another North Korea than any state after America's image.
I also strongly disagree with you equating war crimes and R&D.
> Secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, "which belong to the Iraqi people"
The cynical read of this statement (extract resources from the invaded countries in order to enrich the American capital class) is the primary aim for all these conflicts.
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