Technically your tax dollars aren’t being used. The US sells arms to israel. We don’t just give them away. So the US is benefiting from this war but not funding it.
The way I understand it is the money is given as grants to israel that have a stipulation that they need to be used to buy US military equipment. Basically it’s taxpayer money being used to buy from american companies via a 3rd party. War is a racket. Your taxes go to the MIC, not israel.
She specifically enacted an absolutely financially disastrous tax cut that ballooned the national debt for extremely little gain in her extremely brief tenure.
BBC News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for BBC News:
> MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
Islam is discriminating towards women, and is a problem in large parts of the world.
Israel is “only” a problem in a small local area.
That said, I do not condone Israels actions in Palestine, as I see it, Israel has violated the international trust that was the basis for allowing the state to be formed, and Israel as a whole is basically an illegal state.
Good thing the we never overthrow the government in any country to install a dictatorship which oppresses women in favor of a more moderate government. All the fault of those brown people not wanting to be enlightened like us Westerners.
So no dictatorships installed by Luxembourg? I guess your claim was a lie.
And you were banned for defending the recruitment of child soldiers, which is a war crime. I’m not sure why you’re lying about that either. People can check the modlogs.
It absolutely happened. This is such a silly lie. You were also warned multiple times that you would be banned if you didn’t stop defending the Houthis from recruiting child soldiers.
And now you’re lying that you never defended them? You can’t even be consistent in your political beliefs?
Can you quote the part where I defended the Houthis using child soldiers? Oh wait you can’t because that never happened you just make things up.
According to this logic if someone says they like Joe Biden forgiving student loans that means they are supporting the Genocide in Gaza.
But of course it doesn’t, because you only separate the action from the actor when the actor is a white liberal. Suddenly you discover nuance and all colors of gray.
If you had only said that before, you would not have been banned in the first place. You were given multiple chances to say that. I will, however, unban you.
I expect your next thing will be to insult me for doing that too, so go for it.
If you’re going to pretend you weren’t unbanned, I can go ahead and ban you again… No point unbanning someone who won’t acknowledge that they are no longer banned.
Up to you.
Edit: I’ll give you an hour. If you don’t want to admit you’re unbanned by then, I guess you didn’t want to be in the first place.
Well… you made your choice. You could have literally said something like, “It’s about time you fucking unbanned me you complete and utter asshole,” but you clearly would prefer to complain about being banned than being unbanned. No point unbanning someone who doesn’t want to be unbanned.
Hah, I kinda can’t believe I read through this drama, but I did.
Squid, as an outside observer, I saw this:
You are both offended. Considering that aspect alone, this is a hard position to find a resolution from.
This ban seems to have been the result of a single comment thread where you assert that he was lying about facts. He asserts that he was not. I’m sure there’s more nuance, but there was a disagreement, I think that’s the gist of it.
You made a peace offering of sorts, offering to unban him if he jumped through a hoop and admitted a fact you thought he was denying. He had no problem jumping through that hoop and he clarified his position. Though he also claimed there was no wrongdoing in the first place and challenged you to specify the wrongdoing that occurred. That’s him going on the offense, implying that you did something wrong. In response you ignored his question and moved the goal post. And then the combination of his stubbornness and your defensiveness resulted in him being banned again.
So, I get that he’s being stubborn, but he is also being honest. You are not really being honest. Continuing to argue your point while holding the ban over him and requiring him to make more concessions or else… That’s not really fair.
Well I guess to spell it out more bluntly, I think you’re being unreasonable.
I also think it’s obvious that he wasn’t pretending he was still banned, he simply wasn’t moving on because he didn’t feel he should have had to essentially apologize for something he didn’t do. What he wanted was recognition that the claimed reasoning for the ban was wrong.
Unbanning him at that point was great, but he still wanted more. Perhaps expecting more was unrealistic for him, but he wanted more, that’s why he was still arguing.
So I don’t know, probably just dropping it at that point may have been the right thing, but banning him again was petty.
That would be because it was so petty and stupidly vindictive that not only did it get deleted, the whole community got deleted for lack of moderation.
Replacing the word Muslim (Islam) with Jew in my original comment would make it false.
And just because there’s a weird comment to the story I linked, doesn’t make the situation the story describes less discriminating against women, which is typical for Muslim countries.
I have met Muslims that pride themselves for putting women “in their place”, for speaking while they were talking with their husband.
It’s disgusting when muslim men behave like that, and that were muslims living in a country where women have equal rights by law, and it’s illegal to discriminate against them.
So they are traitors to their new country, which is an all to common thing among Muslims.
If they love the oppression of their home country so much, they should stay there.
And in your infinite racism you have classified the actions of those men as what Islam prescribes without ever having done any research.
If they love the oppression of their home country so much, they should stay there.
Most of them fled because America destroyed their country. A culture of death and oppression glorifying its military at every step.
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."
Most of them fled because America destroyed their country.
Ah yes Americans made the Muslims discriminate against women. Several Muslim countries have not been in conflict with the west for decades, and they’ve had no progress in that time. Iran got clearly worse when they introduced their own sovereign rule. Turkey has gone backwards the past decade, Saudi Arabia and UAE are decidedly hellholes, clearly by their own choice. Absolutely zero to do with influence from the west.
Islam sucks, I’ve never met people more discriminating against women than Muslims. And I’ve met a lot of them. Also this is not anecdotal, we can see it by the regulations of Muslim countries.
There’s far more folks who claim to be Jewish going to a foreign country to kill brown people and colonize their land.You must have never seen them.
Oh wait. When it comes to them you suddenly are able to differentiate. For Muslims you can’t. Because you’re simply a racist brainwashed by American media into believing the people that have been mass murdered for the past 50 years are actually the aggressors.
If you were Chinese you’d be advocating to throw Uyghurs in concentration camps.
Oh wait. When it comes to them you suddenly are able to differentiate.
I’ve known Muslims from Iraq, Marocco, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and a few I don’t now which country are from. I can differentiate between them just fine.
the people that have been mass murdered for the past 50 years are actually the aggressors.
I never mentioned anything about them being the aggressors, that doesn’t change that muslims discriminate against women more than mostly anybody else.
Also I’m not from USA, so it seems like the one here who is prejudiced without reason is you more than me.
I never in any way condoned terrorism against mosques or Muslims, or claimed Muslims can’t be good people.
Yes absolutely the Muslims are often the victims as we see in Palestine and UK.
But why do you continue to argue a straw man, that has zero to do with what I claimed?
You haven’t even denied that discrimination against women is widespread among Muslims.
And obviously any feminist will have some problems defending an Islamic regime. How is that strange to you?
Telling women to “shut up because the man is speaking” has nothing to do with Islam and is prescribed nowhere. You saw some Muslims acting bad against women. That’s bad. It is not relevant to Islam
What you are conflating is tribalism and Islam. The Taliban is a perfect example of this. Islam clearly states women are allowed to go to school. The worlds first university was created by an Islamic woman. Yet the Taliban refuses to let girls to go to school. Why? Because they don’t follow the rules of Islam. Yet media paints the Taliban as “implementing the Sharia” while it is clearly not the case.
Islam Does Not Ban Girls’ Education. So Why Does The Taliban? " : Tribal Influences: Sami Yousafzai, a veteran Afghan journalist and commentator, argues that the Taliban restrictions against women are linked to social customs and cultural practices in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Currently there is no Islamic regime in the entire world. Islam has a form of governance called Sharia and the only people who claim to implement it are those who pick parts they like and ignore parts they don’t like such as the Taliban.
And obviously any feminist will have some problems defending an Islamic regime. How is that strange to you?
It’s hard to generalize but Islam mostly falls under second wave feminism. The third and fourth wave feminism were more about sexuality than female autonomy.
You haven’t even denied that discrimination against women is widespread among Muslims.
The hijab has intentionally been painted as a symbol of oppression since the American “war on terror” where dehumanization of Muslims was necessary to create an excuse to “free them from oppression”. This is extremely similar to 1970 where America needed to “free the oppressed Vietnamese from Communism” by firebombing their villages.
Muslims do not discriminate against women this is a narrative painted by media. There certainly are tribalists, especially in poorer regions of the world. However they discriminate against women despite Islam not because of it. It is very similar to American Christians who abandoned about the “help thy neighbor and feed the poor” part and have transformed into a cult of guns and racism.
No, I didn’t see it, they bragged about it, explaining that a woman has no place speaking when the men are talking, unless her man allows it.
Also there are now reports from UN that Afghanistan is the most dangerous country for a woman to live in.
I linked the story earlier about how women were shot for not stopping because they didn’t cover their hair properly.
In Saudi Arabia, women were not allowed to drive cars until recently. Like at all!!
The evidence is so overwhelming about discrimination of women in Muslim countries you can’t possibly honestly deny it.
Nope, most states require either a certain percentage/number of registered voters for a party or a state-wide petition to get onto the ballot. The only 3rd party on all 50 states’ ballot is the Libertarian party. The Green party is a distant 4th place, as they often need to regather signatures and new petitions every 2-4 years.
If a new party was formed for 2028, it might get enough ground in one state, not any to really sway the balance of the Electoral College.
It's that he lied on his forms about his residence. These people are fucked up. No idea why he needed to lie about living in NY, but when you fill out these kinds of forms, you're not allowed to fuck around, rightly.
oh, i understand why he was disqualified. but like you, it doesn’t make any sense as to why he would lie. i guess you can trust a brain worm to fill a form accurately?
“The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves”
US Constitution Amendment 12
The presidential and vice presidential candidates that the electors vote for cannot be from the same state.
He has absolutely no shot of winning any electoral votes or even a state’s popular vote. RFK is not a serious candidate. He’s a crazy person who happens to have a well known name that others are using to try and spoil an election.
If he falsified his permanent residence so that he could side step a (admittedly stupid) rule that state electors votes don’t count if both the president and vice president candidates are from their state, then he falsified his application for nothing, since he has no chance of winning CA in the first place.
It’s from the 12th amendment. A state elector must vote for at least one candidate from a state other than their own. So electors from Nevada could place both their Presidential and Vice Presidential electoral votes with an all-California ticket but California electors may not. There was talk of Kamala picking Newsom for VP but she’d have to change her residency for that to happen. Everyone would know that would be BS and possibly cost her California’s electoral votes or her candidacy in the second state, so she picked Walz instead (not the only reason but you get the idea). Kennedy got caught pulling a fast one so here we are.
If you don’t actually reside at your legal residence, it’s invalid. It’s like moving to a new house and not updating your driver’s license. You don’t get to claim that you live at your old house - your license just becomes invalid until you fix it.
I just don’t understand why people keep believing this man is going to pay his debts. This is the same guy that declares bankruptcy like it’s a sign of honor.
Ok so, going to the CNBC article and my own memory, as charitably summarized as I can:
Boca Chica is originally built with certain parameters and specifications, before Musk announced they would be doing all of the testing for Starship at that location.
Then, SpaceX just started doing so, and then asked for permission from relevant regulatory bodies … later.
At this point, Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube did a video or two specifically going into the details of exactly how bonkers it is to do huge scale rocket testing basically half a kilometer away from protected nature zones.
Then, one of the Starship tests blew apart huge parts of the launch pad after Elon had said that would not be a problem.
Then, Elon folded on that notion, and built the water deluge system and modified the launching configuration, without getting any permits beforehand from relevant regulatory agencies.
So the run off from all that water has been going into a protected natural environment for… about a year now.
The EPA began investigating this in August of 2023, and informed SpaceX they were in violation in March of 2024.
Literally the day after SpaceX was formally notified their water deluge system was in violation, SpaceX did its third Starship test, again using the water deluge system.
Now, cue SpaceX lying all over the place, saying that they’ve been told they were allowed to do this the whole time, and that there were no detectable levels of mercury in the discharge, even though their own permit that they belatedly filed indicates the detectable level of mercury in the discharge were about 50x the safe level.
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its permit application that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health.
To conclude:
“Further wastewater discharges could trigger more investigations and criminal charges for the company or any of the people involved in authorizing the launches,” he said.
Eric Roesch, Environmental Engineer
Basically, the environmental aspects of this have been a known and ongoing shit show for over a year, but have only been covered by a few YouTube channels and blogs, vastly drowned out by the cacophony of SpaceX fans.
I highly suggest every one check out Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube, they have been calling bullshit on SpaceX for a while now.
In particular, one interesting vid they did shows that a former NASA administrator bullshitted her own request for project process to get it awarded to SpaceX, using blatant double standards.
I say former NASA admin because quite quickly after rubber stamping a huge amount of taxpayer money toward Starship development, she now works for SpaceX.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but wouldn’t diluting the runoff with more than 1:50 ratio with fresh water fix this problem? If it’s joining a large body of water down the line, wouldn’t that effectively negate the problem?
I don’t know anything about the area or it’s ecosystem. But it seems like being close to protected wilderness is kind of a prerequisite for this kind of thing, because you can’t have human inhabitants nearby. And it seems that logically, large swaths of unoccupied land would be zoned as such until there was a need for some kind of development.
I am far from an expert on the toxicity of mercury (and that’s nearly certainly just one kind of pollutant in this scenario), but it seems unlikely this would solve the problem.
The same amount of mercury is still being emitted, it just might lessen the amount that gets absorbed by immediately local soil… and just disperse it a bit more evenly over a longer range eventually mostly pooling along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Which… is still part of a protected natural environment with endangered species living in it. As I recall, there is specifically a species of endangered turtles that live in this area, so, they’re still fucked, along with I think some other endangered birds, reptile and small mammals.
What they should have is a proper method of containing this dirty water, filtering and extracting dangerous chemicals, and a proper way of disposing those.
But that would require foresight and planning, which is anathema to Musk’s ‘move fast and break stuff’ style of ‘rapid iteration’.
Also, It is not true that large sections of uninhabited land are necessarily zoned as some kind of protected habitat. It is true there are lots of areas of the US where this is the case, but not totally.
Musk was trying desperately to get NASA to let him use Cape Canaveral for Starship, but they viewed this (correctly, in hindsight) as too risky.
So, when they said no, and he had deadlines to meet, basically said ‘fuck it’, took his existing facility and massively illegally upgraded it far beyond what was legally allowed by initial use permits, and just did everything Starship there, generally completely ignoring any concept of ‘regulations’ that might apply to this.
He could have actually given investors and NASA themselves more realistic budget and timeframe ideas for how expensive and time consuming it would be to do this properly, but he did not.
What they should have is a proper method of containing this dirty water, filtering and extracting dangerous chemicals, and a proper way of disposing those.
It is also important to note that the dirtiness of the water may have been misreported. It seems possible that this story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report. The actual concentration of mercury may be 1000x lower.
One of the fundamental principals of the RCRA is that dilution is not an allowable solution to pollution. Otherwise, you could just say that any amount of pollution is below applicable concentrations after it mixed into the oceans, atmosphere, whatever. And any company could emit as much as they wanted as long as they diluted it. Oil spills could simply be left alone because they’d eventually distribute throughout the earth.
Concentrations must be considered as they occur in their process streams. The process stream must meet certain requirements first and foremost, and it must be further checked to see if that could significantly affect the air or water in which it is emitted, just to make sure its good to go since water flow, temperature, and wildlife migration change throughout the year. The same is true for air emissions as well.
Just a small correction about the pad exploding/water deluge system.
They were already working on the water deluge system before the pad blew up. They simply didn’t think it was going to explode like that since it worked as expected during the half thrust test, and the water system wasn’t ready yet.
Why would you wait to have something else ready if you think what you have is going to work?
All the physics modeling they did and live tests showed that the concrete should work.
When it looks like something should work, you test it. They had approval to test it after showing it should work.
These people are launching and landing rockets at a pace never done before, they know how to model these kind of things. Now obviously something went very wrong here, but it wasn’t just a willy nilly choice.
You test the things that you think will work, otherwise you never know if they’ll work.
While the concrete may not have been their final decision for Boca Chica, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a possible solution for other location where a large quantity of potable water isn’t available.
Edit: just further to possible other locations, the concrete if it worked, wouldn’t allow the rapid turn around time they want as they’d need to set new concrete vs piped water ready to go. But for a launch location that maybe wouldn’t need the rapid cadence, maybe it’d be perfect and cheaper if it’d work.
LOL. Dude, they weren’t even sure that the ROCKET wouldn’t destroy the pad (edit: as in, the WHOLE launch pad including the tower). They’re literally making the largest most advanced rocket ever. There are countless unknowns until you test it.
I just find it hilarious that your trying to say people shouldn’t test things all their tests and modelling says should work, because this OTHER thing, that’s also never been tested at the same extreme levels, might work better, but you know, maybe not.
I’m done with this conversation before I feel more inclined to violate rule 1.
The goal of the program is to figure out what does and doesn’t work.
There are numerous zero single failure points all over the ship currently as they figure things out.
Using the concrete was a way to test if they could set up a launch pad easier. ALL their tests and modeling proved it should work.
Tests and modeling aren’t the end all be all though and sometimes things you don’t or can’t anticipate happen and then you remodel with the new info. This isn’t a high school project, it’s rocket science.
There was nothing bullshit about testing it out.
The goal of IFT1 was don’t blow up the entire stage 0. They didn’t blow up the entire stage 0. They learned the concrete doesn’t work, but also hopefully they were able to learn WHY. And if they found a why that why may lead to it being attempted again in the future maybe even by someone else.
No, I’m not an engineer (and that’s an Ad Hominem fallacy). But for the love of god, SpaceX is a terrible company because they launched a rocket with INTENTIONALLY missing heat shield points to see what would happen (edit: all while knowing if certain heat shield tiles failed it would guarantee the complete destruction of the ship, that would obliterate any crew you’re oh so concerned about in this test phase!), and even launched their rocket with wing flaps that they suspected would be destroyed by the hot plasma and had already made changes in future designs! God forbid they test a ablative concrete launch pad that survived all their real world tests and showed it should work in models.
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its permit application that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health.
Upon closer inspection, it seems possible that this discrepancy is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report. The actual value may be closer to 0.113 micrograms per liter, not 113.
I highly suggest every one check out Common Sense Skeptic on YouTube
They lost their credibility as soon as they started hating on Musk for clicks and views. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of valid criticism of Musk, but criticizing anything and everything related to Musk no matter what has become Common Sense Skeptic’s entire brand and business strategy. I don’t think they can be considered an unbiased party.
As of right now, the original blurb I quoted from the CNBC article has been modified to this:
SpaceX said in its response on X that there were “no detectable levels of mercury” found in its samples. But SpaceX wrote in its July permit application — under the header Specific Testing Requirements - Table 2 for Outfall: 001 — that its mercury concentration at one outfall location was 113 micrograms per liter. Water quality criteria in the state calls for levels no higher than 2.1 micrograms per liter for acute aquatic toxicity and much lower levels for human health
CNBC is currently sticking with their report. This is not factually inaccurate information, it is a clarification, a specification.
Perhaps SpaceX could actually provide evidence that they submitted a version with the typo fixed, that TCEQ is ‘currently updating the application’, or that other lab tests corroborate that the 0.113 number?
Either way, doesn’t change the number of complaints the TCEQ received, that SpaceX was releasing deluge water for roughly a year without permission to do so, that they were told to stop doing that and then did it again literally the next day.
They also wrote <0.113 on table 16 at the same outfall.
Table 2 and 16 also have 139 and 0.139 for sample 2, reversed so T2: (113/0.139) T16: (<0.113/139)
No matter how you look at it, that’s extremely shoddy reporting by CNBC. Whoever wrote that report also needs to have a long chat with their supervisor.
Also SpaceX claims they had permission to do it based on existing rules they are under, AND TCEQ was there to help with the first test even. The EPA had factually incorrect information when they requested they stop, and then gave the A-OKAY once SpaceX corrected their misunderstandings.
edit: Selenium also goes from 2.86 to 28.6 on sample 1
They were alerted that this would be an issue and they went forward with no exceptions anyway. Might want to have some interviews with the children of Republican legislators in Idaho…
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