@owasow Meanwhile, in the actual Singapore, inequality is the highest of any sovereign first-world country, even worse than the United States. The government is just better than American governments at keeping it hidden from the tourists.
@Colinvparker It's not only a TV thing - real-life hostage takers do it too, and Hamas occasionally does it as well. But Hamas's MO has long been to demand prisoner releases to even give signs of life. Not for nothing, the agreement it made with Egypt (which for a few hours the media said was the ceasefire agreement with the US and Israel too) said that only during the first phase of the ceasefire would it tell Israel how many hostages it had exactly.
@interfluidity Yeah, I saw the pic. The isomorphic mimicry of Singapore is so stupid. It's especially stupid that Israel promulgates it, since its model of development is entirely different and it has enough ties with Singapore to know the difference ("villa in the jungle" vs. the economic center of Southeast Asia).
@interfluidity I don't think of it in terms of that. Rather, since the Gaza Disengagement, there has been a fantasy among Israelis that Hamas could build Gaza to be like Singapore (and not, say, like Jordan) but constantly chose violence instead. Zero clue about what made Singapore tick, just amplification of the attitude that everything bad that happens to Palestinians is the Palestinians' own fault.
@interfluidity Of course, the standard anti-Zionist and pan-Arab line engages in a similar fantasy that Palestine (or a pan-Arab state) would be a fully developed country if Israel were destroyed and the Jews sidelined, rather than, again, a middle-income country with the same social problems as Egypt or Jordan (or Lebanon).
In the Lazar poll from yesterday, the prewar coalition is at 46 seats. The opposition's 74-46 advantage is a bit soft in that Religious Zionism is below-threshold, and in an actual election when it had any risk of not clearing the threshold it would run with Otzma again, but even that only softens the advantage to 73-47 or at worst 72-48. The poll was taken after the ICC indictment of Bibi, Gallant, and Hamas leaders; Bibi is not getting any rally-around-the-flag bounce from this.
@gryzzly The polls have been so consistent since the war started that I'm not even sure individual revelations like this are so important electorally. Everyone knows conflict management has failed, some are just trying to cope by bleating about final victory.
@interfluidity The parts of the quoted article talking about the Dominican Republic's growth are really interesting too - and as always for me, there's an infrastructure angle, in that Santo Domingo got the idea of building a subway from New York, but then didn't outsource planning to American consultants, and instead built it its own way at some of the lowest costs per km in the world.
The Gaza Strip is less than 2/3 the size of the City of Chiacgo.
It has about 89% the population of Chicago.
What should be going on there is debate on which metro lines to build next. Not where to hide from a war forced upon them by corrupt fascists (on both sides. oh, and are fascists ever not corrupt?).
@Gurre Freight is less important - Gaza is small and freight rail shines at very long distances or for heavy goods.
The other issue is a Gaza-West Bank connection. There are some road plans; for rail, best solution is to extend the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway into East Jerusalem, then connect Gaza City to the Israeli network, and give the future Palestine Railway slots organized like the Russia proper-Kaliningrad trains or the interwar Germany proper-East Prussia trains.
@DiegoBeghin@Gurre Yes! Zoologischer Garten was the main West Berlin station, with regular trains making no stops in East Germany. There were also cross-border trains, the border station being Friedrichstraße (with an international zone for West-to-West connections on the S-Bahn), and derails to prevent Eastern drivers from using the infrastructure to escape to the West.
Trump says China is building a secret army inside the US -- as if his racist minions didn't already have enough reason to attack random Asian people. https://x.com/atrupar/status/1793787772198690990
@philipncohen The closest thing China is building to an army in the US is American investors lobbying on behalf of TikTok, who are also major Trump donors.
I hate how whenever US liberals defend immigrants they have to say how hard working they are. I just want it to be known that I support immigrants who are just as lazy, if not even lazier, than me.
@rebeccawatson You may hate it, but I and the other immigrants I know react much better to the mentality you criticize than to the mentality (prevalent in e.g. Sweden) of "immigrants are a terrible burden we must all share as a moral duty even though they're all lazy criminals who refuse to assimilate to our superior values." The mentality you criticize is praise for immigrants; the Swedish mentality is the opposite.
@Colinvparker@elliots Yes, and this is also how night buses work. In New York, the rule at night is that passengers may get off anywhere along the route that the driver thinks it's safe to stop at. Service planning is also based on taking the drive time along the route and adding a small factor to account for such stops, since there's no traffic.