Does nothing to dispell the impression that their readership is collectively unzipping.

This. Medically speaking it probably still counts though.

Normalize and incentivize publishing negative results!

+ Normalize and incentivize attempting to replicate existing findings!

With these two recommendations we'd speed up discovery exponentially.

I get the impression students in the US get treated sort of younger for longer, e.g their PhD students still attend classes.

Someone that acts confident when they shouldn’t, is colloquially known as a “conman”.

No, that's incorrect.

A "con man" aka Confidence Trickster is a grifter who gains your confidence in order to scam you.

Having false confidence in itself does not mean someone is necessarily a swindler. It could just be that they are delusional or misinformed.

To answer the first question, sorry I keep breaking it into smaller components but again, separating it out makes it clearer. If we look at:

• what the IDF intentions are

• what their actions are

• what the effects of their actions are

What people think kind of depends on how well we think it matches up and whether we think the first one is actually an okay justification for the third one.  Like when is it okay shoot when you can see there's someone in the crossfire.

What their intentions are

The IDF and mainstream Israeli politicians publically stated intention is to "destroy Hamas" in order to protect the safety of Israeli citizens both in Israel and in the part of Palestine that Israel is occupying. Hamas is a broad term encompassing both militant (eg militant) and civil (eg Health Dept) organization. Some politicians have gone a lot further and said their intention is to remove most Palestinians from Gaza. Some have said that no civilians are innocent, but these are minority viewpoints.

What their actions are

This is where it gets tricky, and some of it is contested. What is common ground is that  they have chosen to use an unusually large number of bombs in a built up environment full of civilians, using huge bunker buster bombs, and drone bombing of targets suggested by AI. It also involves a ground offensive, and there appear to be "kill zones." The IDF has set itself numbers for "acceptable" number of civilians per kill, which may be high, and also permits itself to bomb hospitals and schools. Here is an article which covers some of the AI concerns. They also keep tight control of humanitarian aid and limit what enters. There are allegations that are disputed, of widespread deliberate killing of wounded and civilians and children. We may find forensic evidence in the mass graves. The IDF dispute it.

The effects of their actions

• I've covered this already above, but what stands out is the unusually high number of civilians and medics being killed, compared to other modern wars that involved urban warfare. To put the total mortality into perspective, during the Bosnian Genocide 3% of the population were killed over a 2-year period. 1.5% of the Gaza population have been killed in 6 months. The mortality statistics we have are for known deaths, those still buried in rubble are extra.

• Using satellite images of before and after, analysts estimate 57-60% of buildings in Gaza are destroyed, rising to 75% in Gaza City. We also know the hospitals were bombed.

• During the current war monitoring of humanitarian aid entering Gaza has drastically reduced the amount going in. (Before this war, Gaza did not function self-sufficiently.  A significant part of the population (many were refugees) relied on humanitarian aid.

• NGOs on the ground report that the current numbers of starving people will meet the technical threshold for it to be designated famine, by May.

For many of those who are on the side of civilians, there is no possible justification for killing this many people to get to each millitant. International law (eg Geneva Conventions) specifies how to treat civilian populations, and many international experts think that these rules are being breached. Moreover, the blocking of humanitarian aid is problematic, whatever the rationale.

Most of us live in civilisations where we do not find it acceptable to kill innocent people as way to also kill guilty people.

Honestly, just get yourself an account that allows you to see who votes and vote order, it will save you a lot of paranoia.

3 of the first 11 upvotes are people I recognise and have interacted with. It's obviously not sockpuppets.

If the downvotes I can see, two of the first 3 are people I've recently interacted with as well.

I'm a non-US fediversian and I upvoted it because I thought the headline was funny and because I sympathise with Americans for having to choose between these two old men (who aren't even Bernie Sanders, which would have been more understandable).

It's a point that only makes sense if you don't pay attention to international geopolitics.

Small countries have a vested interest in the upholding of international law because they are vulnerable, so they quite often stick their heads up above the parapet for it. E.g. when the Rohingya Genocide occurred in South East Asia a small country in West Africa, The Gambia, are the ones who took them to the ICC.

As for South Africa, it has a very long history of criticizing Israel for its apartheid. Bishop Desmond Tutu made international headlines by calling it an apartheid after his visit to Israel and Palestine. Moreover, during Apartheid South Africa era, Israel was one of the big weapons suppliers to the Apartheid regime (which was at war with its neighbour) when many countries were boycotting it.

The entire African Union are quite sensitive about what Israel does.

If you know anything about history, it makes perfect sense that South Africans would be leading the charge here (which they have done consistently).

We will never even know if anyone in Guantanamo is even a terrorist though.

You just assume they are because that's what Rumsfeld and Cheney told you.

But without due process there's no actual way of determining it.

They're being a bit futile. If your default sort is active it doesn't hide any downvoted comments.

And if you're on an instance like Kbin or Beehaw, downvotes don't even affect vote count because the downvotes are not federated.

That's just semantics though.

People lived there, they had houses and fields and orchards and olive plantations and businesses, they lived normal, free lives with their friends and families.

All that has been taken away from them. I don't care if you call it "owning a country" or not, the reality is that their lands and livelihoods were stolen using violence.

Doesn't matter. Human rights are inalienable.