If Israel uses nuclear weapons, that's the end of any shred of sympathy left for them in the world.
There would be massive political consequences for Israel. Sanctions, embargoes, no more ability to travel abroad, the end of any hope of any positive diplomatic relations with other countries, etc.
I'm not that optimistic, they're already accused of genocide in Gaza, rightfully so, and even the european countries that supposedly recognize the ICC in Hague don't arrest Netanyahu. US will of course back them up, as always.
As a result of Israel's actions over the last 2.5 years, world public opinion of Israel has tanked. There will already be serious consequences for Israel down the line because of that.
But it can get worse for Israel. Use of nuclear weapons is a massive taboo, and if Israel were to cross that line, it would be impossible for any government to continue to support Israel.
> Israel were to cross that line, it would be impossible for any government to continue to support Israel.
The same could be said for running a massive pedophile and human trafficking ring, but that line has been crossed and it seems that nobody seems to want to address the country that's found itself at the heart of it all.
>that's the end of any shred of sympathy left for them in the world. There would be massive political consequences for Israel
They genocided Palestine. They are bombing the shit out of Lebanon and will likely ethnically cleanse them too. Words have been said but no action has been taken. Nobody seems to give a shit.
Bibi could parachute into Mecca, take a shit on the Ka'aba, draw the Prophet (SWT) eating pork, and all we'd get would be a strong finger wagging from the US, Russia, France, etc... and no action.
>Sanctions, embargoes
Mossad has gathered enough blackmail over the years to ensure these won't work.
>no more ability to travel abroad
over 10% of Israel has dual citizenship with another country (mainly USA, Russia, France, Poland, Ukraine). Such restrictions won't affect them.
> the end of any hope of any positive diplomatic relations with other countries, etc.
Define "positive". Look at what Epstein did, yet the West as a whole (UK, France, US, etc) plus some MENA nations still hold Israel in the highest regard and refuse to critique them, much less break off diplomatic relations. I think you're being naive here
But not with continuity, not popularly over that whole time span.
If it's something we're all accustomed to and comfortable with, why even mention that it was being used in the distant past? The article is trying to simultaneously argue "try this new term they, it's easy, everybody's saying it now, it's modern, you'll love it" and "this term is not at all strange and new, you're silly if you feel uncomfortable with it because it has always been used." It's trying to have it both ways in its wrangling.
Do people also casually use it to refer to humans, or is it just me?
In my experience, everyone who complains about the use of the singular "they" uses it themselves all the time when they're not thinking about it.
The reason why there's any debate at all about the singular they is not because it's new and strange. It's because beginning in the mid-18th century, influential grammar textbooks started discouraging its use and advocating "he" in its place. Many generations of kids have grown up being told in school that the singular "they" is wrong, but despite that, it has remained a very standard part of spoken English.
Really, are you sure singular they was in widespread intemperate use, like today, prior to these influential Victorian grammarians?
OK, but they were influential, so they influenced the 1850s and subsequent decades, making this usage currently new and strange, because for a century or more people used he instead. Why deny that? To persuade them with the implication "we never got accustomed to saying he, turns out you didn't ever speak this way, it was just an illusion"?
I'm not sure what matters in persuading people to speak differently, but saying that a term is being revived, rather than being a complete neologism, is ... admittedly a little bit persuasive, but it doesn't much help with the glaring issue that it's still a major change from what we're used to: and there are additional valid complaints, firstly that it removes information, and secondly that it's used less sparingly than it was in the past. It's now commonly written, in formal texts where clarity matters.
This was for clarity in the phrasing of legislation.
I've picked up a rumor that this 1652 book encouraged the use of he in gender neutral contexts: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-170... but I can't find where. It might just be an exaggeration based on the part where it says "The Maſculine is more worthy than the Feminine, and the Feminine is more worthy than the Neuter." But there's no doubt that the 17th century, never mind the 19th, was stuffed with sexist bastards in influential positions. So what's the use in pointing at the past, or even at the present, to say that some of the time they used they? Fundamentally you still have to argue for why, or why not.
> OK, but they were influential, so they influenced the 1850s and subsequent decades, making this usage currently new and strange, because for a century or more people used he instead. Why deny that?
They only succeeded in influencing formal writing. Singular "they" continued to be a completely normal and heavily used part of spoken English.
> but saying that a term is being revived, rather than being a complete neologism
It's only being "revived" in formal writing. It is style guides that are changing, not the way that normal people speak.
> there are additional valid complaints, firstly that it removes information
It allows you to not specify that information. Sometimes you genuinely have no idea what gender the person you're talking about is. "Someone is knocking on the door. I have no idea who they are."
> Fundamentally you still have to argue for why, or why not.
The argument is that style guides and grammarians artificially banned people from using a completely regular pronoun in formal writing, and that the alternative they offered (gender-neutral "he") is extremely awkward. We already use this pronoun this way in spoken English. We should be able to write it too.
1/4-1/3 EVs is an underestimate for somewhere like Shenzhen (probably for Beijing too). It's going to be well over 50% there. And virtually all scooters will be electric.
You're right about the smoking, though. It's a massive problem.
it's definitely not underestimate for Beijing where I stayed for 3 weeks this summer, maybe you count PHEV as EVs, many of those cars which look like EVs are actually hybrids, only in late 2025 China reached 50% newly registered BEV+PHEV cars plus there are lots of previously registered cars and if we count only BEVs the percentage will be much smaller, actually I think 1/3 of BEV on the road is quite an overestimate from my side
are NEV common? sure. do BEV make majority of cars on the road? for sure not
there are basically none scooters, they use either (e)bikes or electric motorbikes/mopeds (these are not new, they used them en masse already 10 years ago)
Looking into this a bit more, it seems that 20% of the total number of registered vehicles in Beijing are NEV vehicles, but that a far larger percentage of cars on the road at any given moment are NEVs. That's because almost all taxis (and buses) are NEVs.
By the way, NEVs might have only reached 50% of new registrations across all of China in late 2025, but in Tier-1 cities, it has been far higher than 50% for years. It's extremely difficult to even get a license plate for an ICE car in major Chinese cities. You have to enter a lottery, with a very low chance of winning. Even if you do get a license plate, you're banned from driving on one weekday every week.
It's extremely difficult even to get NEV license plate, trust me I talked with many of those taxi drivers who drove me every single day during those 3 weeks about how much they paid for car, how long it took to register it. The benefit of NEV passed years ago already, even for NEV license plate you have to wait years.
The IDF is not law enforcement. It's a foreign army. It treats Palestinians with utter contempt and has no problem with killing them. Its job is to protect Israeli settlers who are taking Palestinian land and to prevent the Palestinians from resisting Israeli rule.
Comparing the IDF to law enforcement in a democratic country is not relevant.
What does that have to do with the subject of this thread at all? Christians are also terrible to gay people, and European societies have only very recently (in the last two to three decades) become somewhat more tolerant.
In the context of Israel-Palestine, this issue is only raised in order to somehow justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, a la "They deserve it because they're not as enlightened as we are."
It’s relevant because most commenters here hold moral standards that are completely self-undermining because they choose to not apply them to the “oppressed” group.
Consider that it doesn’t matter how genocidal Israel’s Islamicist neighbors are. The IDF occassionally targets civilians when they shouldn’t. Meanwhile Israel’s neighbors don’t even draw the distinction.
The IDF killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza.
"But Muslims don't like gay people" does not justify that.
And saying the IDF "occasionally" targets civilians is just completely divorced from reality. They've been systematically attacking civilians for more than two years straight now, racking up a kill count of more than 80,000.
Western governments don't fund their neighbors. They do fund Israel. You have to live up to the standards of the patron such as observing western rules of engagement, treatment of prisoners, and human rights in general.
Western governments do fund Israel's neighbors. This includes Egypt (one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid), Jordan, Lebanon (including indirectly through UNIFIL and UNRWA), Syria, and Iraq if they count as a neighbor.
Patrons don't necessarily apply any standard evenly.
Egypt receives US aid in exchange for maintaining good relations with Israel. That's the deal they have with the US. It's basically the same with Jordan.
The IDF is a foreign occupation army, not the police.
At least in the US, the police come from much the same communities as they patrol, and there's some sort of democratic accountability. Don't like the police? You can vote for local government candidates who will implement reforms.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary violence at the hands of foreign soldiers. The IDF is not there to protect Palestinians. It's there to protect the Israeli settlers who are taking Palestinian land. If Palestinians don't like how the IDF behaves, tough luck. Palestinians can't vote in Israeli elections, so they have zero say in the government that exercises ultimate authority over their lives.
This is a fundamentally different situation from policing in the US.
Based on the US State Department cables that Wikileaks released all the way back in 2010, Russian fear of NATO expansion into Ukraine was not just a talking point.
Internal State Department cables from the embassy in Moscow say that entire Russian security and political establishment viewed it as a critical national security threat.
> Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch
a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
There are warnings throughout the cable that Russia may decide to invade Ukraine over the issue of NATO enlargement. In other words, the claim that this is just a Russian talking point is itself just a talking point.
But it is a talking point. The cable simply shows an American diplomat who has swallowed the hook and reiterates how Russians want to be perceived as thinking. One of the main efforts of Russian diplomacy is to invite foreign dignitaries and representatives to Russia, surround them with "researchers" and "experts" working directly under Kremlin guidance, to create a false impression for guests of how "Russian experts" "really think". This creates so-called useful idiots who unknowingly become champions of Putin's regime, believing they possess some inside knowledge that others lack.
The narrative shared in the cable is hilariously detached from reality to anyone who is intimately familiar with modern Russia. Putin, who lets OMON beat and sexually assault peacefully assembling (not even protesting!) Russians within sight of his office windows, is supposedly worried about the treatment of Russians abroad.
You're saying that the US embassy in Moscow doesn't know how Russian politicians and military figures think, and is full of useful idiots.
Another theory is that the US embassy has constant contact with Russian political and military figures, is very familiar with how they think, and accurately reported their views back to DC in order to help the US government formulate its foreign policy.
Ironically, I think you're the one who has swallowed a narrative hook, line and sinker.
Since it developed nuclear weapons, Israel has never been invaded by a foreign country. Israel launched the 1967 war, and in 1973, Egypt only attacked occupied Egyptian territory. Same for Syria.
The fact that the 1973 war only occurred in Egyptian and Syrian territory actually had a major impact on how other other countries reacted to it.
Even the US - Israel's main backer - basically treated Egyptian and Syrian war aims as legitimate.
There is a widespread belief that Israel would have used nuclear weapons if the Syrians and Egyptians had broken through to Israeli territory, and that this was one of the major American motivations for resupplying the Israelis during the war.
It's even possible to set the cameras up in such a way that they only store data when a traffic violation occurs. That would address the surveillance issue.
I have a strong sense that the primary objection people have to red light cameras is that they don't like getting caught running red lights, and that the surveillance argument is a rationalization, not the real objection.
Automated traffic law enforcement is surveillance. The fact it's limited in scope and functionality doesn't matter. It's still surveillance.
All surveillance increases safety. The cost is freedom.
Do you trust humans with the ability to judge the situation and the freedom to decide to run a red light if they think it's safe? Or do you surveil every intersection and punish all infractions regardless of conditions or the existence of actual victims?
For people like me, it's a matter of basic human dignity. I want to be a human with the capacity for judgement and the power to act on it. I want to decide for myself. I want to live in a society that recognizes this. I won't sacrifice this dignity in the name of safety.
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