Word problem, inspired by NASA moon clocks:
Quito is 2820m above sea level. I live at sea-level. From my perspective, about how much is the life expectancy of a Quito-an reduced by virtue of gravitational time dilation?
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation ht @dpp the formulas are right there so it's just plug 'n chug, right? right?)
@jcrabapple I have complete and total faith in you.
@jcrabapple yes, but now you have to maintain it.
@Alon @MisuseCase as Russia is reminding us this week, you can always spin your most ridiculous intelligence failures into a crisis you needn't let go to waste.
@Alon @MisuseCase The non-targeting of people not right-wing and under 60 (even just a few years under 60) I can testify has worked very effectively.
@MisuseCase @Alon Right. Yet another tragedy is Israel simply has no credibility when it claims it was a terrible mistake. Terrible mistakes do happen in war! But it's hard to conclude from Israel's behavior broadly that it would not at least shrug off the lack of discipline that enables such events in the same way it shrugs off and abets settler violence in the West Bank. (If Israel cared abt "hasbara" at all, controlling that is the first thing it would have done. It's shocking they have not.)
@Alon @MisuseCase There are and have long been a lot of idiots on the issue. The whole "settler colonial" edifice, Franz Fanon, a "right to resist" when what resistance means is murder and provocation of armed conflict. A treasure chest of idiocies, and yes Oct 7 brought out lots of idiots.
But it's tragic how effectively Israel choices are making an effective case that it wasn't the idiots who were idiots.
@Alon @MisuseCase I sure hope it's not happening. But if it's not happening, then it's already the day after, so what now? Why is North Gaza starving? What will be done to prevent that?
@Alon @MisuseCase English language Haaretz has comported itself pretty admirably, I think. But I'm skeptical all the perspectives you find there make it into local, non-print media.
@Alon @MisuseCase I have no idea who Leifer is. I quoted that line because it maps to my (again very limited) experience with people who before all this I'd have called liberal Israelis, that they simply have a very different (and I think objectively not defensible) understanding of what is going on.
@BenRossTransit @Alon Do you think that is because there is a near-complete expert consensus that diplomatic status did not protect, or that the Times very generously to Israel chose to quote the subset of experts who would make that case?
My interpretation is the latter. It's a very generous piece. If you think Israel is being unfairly treated by the hedging in the title, I'd ask you to consider honestly whether you'd apply such stringent standards in other contexts.
@MisuseCase @Alon I think you may be making my point. It is easier to be sympathetic to Israelis if we imagine that they just aren't seeing, in the local, Hebrew, press, what we are seeing and seeing and seeing. 1/
@MisuseCase @Alon Individually, we all of the experience of our government doing what we oppose, all the time. But in fact our government has a very difficult time doing what *collectively* we actively oppose. You might have opposed Iraq, but the broad public either favored it or was deferential to experts and politicians who did. Here and in Israel, strong public opinion does matter. /fin
@BenRossTransit @Alon let me ask you, in a war is there ever not a great deal of unfair portrayal? is that so special?
in the Western press, you can make at least as strong a case that there is a tendency to overcaution + overly generous interpretations of Israel’s actions.
one of the first things i wrote about all this was about the stupidity and counterproductiveness of accusations like “genocide”. but, to be fair, my reticence seems less and less defensible.
@Alon i hope you are right about turning against, soon. my impression from my own limited contacts is much more defensiveness and a sense of unfair portrayal than acknowledgement that Israel has turned itself into a pariah in the eyes and hearts of many people once sympathetic by its own, actual, not-al-jazeera-fabricated choices. i just presume, qua the quote, that they are shielded by a bubble of patriotic media. if that’s not the case, i don’t know what to think frankly.
the docs treat us as second class, but i feel like this is a win for team Type=forking
@Alon i guess they know it about as well as they know no civilians were killed at Shifa. there’s always someone saying anything. nevertheless Israeli’s perception of the war and the perception of followers of media in any other country, even their closest allies, seem very starkly at odds. (this is a sympathetic take. if this were not true, it would be hard to understand or forgive how Israel as a political community tolerates its country’s actions.)
Can anyone point to a comprehensible explanation of why this is? Is it some kind of relativity effect, like time is very different if you are traveling near light speed?
“Because there’s less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad more quickly – 58.7 microseconds every day – compared to on Earth.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/02/moon-nasa-coordinated-lunar-time
ht @danjac@masto.ai
@Alon mentions The death toll and quoting Biden are quite different than seeing the kind of imagery and interviews the rest of the world is seeing.
Naftali Bennett can say “*No civilian was killed*. Not one.” at Al Shifa. Israelis, but no one else, can consider that remotely plausible.
Israelis vaguely know the world is getting a bad impression, which they consider unfair. They have no idea, viscerally, how horrible even the depictions in cautious, sympathetic US media have become.
“the horrific violence and incipient famine in Gaza receive little coverage in mainstream Israeli media” #JoshuaLeifer https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/opinion/netanyahu-protests-legacy-war.html
"Though it seemed completely automated, [Amazon's] Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped." #MaxwellZeff https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-ditches-just-walk-out-grocery-stores-1851381116 ht @vonkarama
