I mean, we need all the electricity we can get to run all of these datacenters, right? So I think this might be one of those things that the Republicans quietly allow to continue so that the corporate interests can maximize electricity production
> As of Saturday, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,031 more.
The 30,000 number comes from the Ministry of Health. It seems the UN number also aligns with the new 30,000 number. This is much worse than the 3,000 that was reported earlier. But it also seems like the crackdown is over now, and we're still just counting deaths from Jan 8 and 9.
I compare this to the recent protests in Bangladesh, where Sheikh Hasina ordered the military to shoot the protesters and the military refused. The difference between these two countries is proof that people do have the ability to disobey orders from authoritarian leaders, and that decision can have a huge impact.
The difference is that IR didn’t use Artesh (it’s military) to suppress the protests. They bused in its proxy militias from Iraq, who doesn’t care much who to shoot.
I'm Iranian (diaspora from Canada), there are multiple branches of security forces in the regime:
1. The army (air, land, sea, etc)
2. IRGC (revolutionary guards)
3. Basij (a specialized militia within IRCG, often with their own chain of command)
4. Police (for civilian monitoring and control)
5. Guidance Patrol (specialized "morality" police for enforcing Islamic law)
6. Other (undercover, highly trained agents both inside and outside of country)
The reason why it's setup up this way, is to prevent mutiny within the regime.
After the revolution, they realized that they have to setup a system like this to protect themselves, if one of these is compromised.
Currently, Iran is in the process of preparing for a long war with Israel, United States (and their allies in the region). Khamenei has been moved to a secure location and is no longer appearing for "Friday prayers".
He will likely attempt to flee should the regime falls.
I hope that he is captured alive and is forced to stand trial.
He has to answer for every single person he has harmed, both in Iran and elsewhere.
That's remarkably similar to Saddam Hussein organization, except the 5. Do they need that much because they are a minority in the country too?
(Also, were your family part of the mujahideen/OMPI/MEK? I know two French iranian from the diaspora: one had his family involved in the revolution against the shah, and then had to leave when fundamentalists took power, and the other is from a Persian northern clan who supported the Shah and got booted out when the Shah fell, but they still had property (Hashish and poppy seeds if i understood the "import export" subtext correctly) in Afghanistan and northern Iran. Wildly different family stories, both still sad at what Iran became)
Is it really a gotcha that CIA is pushing money towards orgs that are in opposition to a US adversary? Is the French resistance during ww2 tainted because they received support from OSS?
The Nazis didnt go from 0 to industrial scale slaughter either. They also planned for ethnic cleansing by deportation to Africa first.
The salient features are mass slaughter and land grabs motivated by a racial supremacy based ideology. In these respects they are identical.
Those Arabs dont feel entirely safe living as second class citizens in a society where UN recognized genocide of their brothers and sisters goes unpunished and chants of "death to arabs" have become louder every day.
>The 30,000 number comes from the Ministry of Health.
It comes, allegedly, from people from that ministry who were talking to TIME.
I would imagine their contact was probably mediated by the state department - the same people currently gearing up for an Iraq-style invasion.
Later on TIME adds:
>TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
Which is not altogether unsurprising. TIME wasnt exactly the most careful magazine when it came to verifying state department supplied intelligence about WMDs back in 2003.
There are reports from Iranians and admissions from the US that they had people inside the protests to cause chaos.
“The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope,” Mr Pompeo wrote on X. “Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashhad, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchestan," he added.
At least ten killed in Iran protests as authorities issue warnings to demonstrators"
“Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them."
If hallucinated citations are making it to top conferences, do we just have to accept that no one is willing to do the work to ensure that our research is grounded in reality? Perhaps the volunteer peer review system is broken and we need people who are paid to carefully check the citations
If hallucinated citations are making it to a top conference, Is there anything we can do to stop this rampant abuse of AI? Or do we just have to accept that research is no longer going to be grounded in reality?
Not building enough housing? It seems like they've built 164,121 housing units too many. I think that the more correct explanation is that speculative investors are holding onto property indefinitely rather than selling or renting at a loss, preventing housing from falling back to its true equilibrium value.
I.e. insufficient land value tax rates. California created a class of feudal lords with prop 13 who get to reap disproportionate societal resources from newcomers.
Edit: the solution to which is not allowing squatters disproportionate access to others’ property via unnecessarily long court procedures. Residental agreements should be filed with the county just like land sales are, so a cop can quickly lookup who legally belongs and act accordingly.
You can claim whatever rental rate you want as a basis for your financialization agreements, but you should have to start paying taxes as though you are receiving that number as actual cash rent after some limited grace period.
That would stop most of the shenanigans by private equity in the rental markets.
I proposed something else. This occupancy tax is paid by the legal person who has the right to reside in the unit. Either the legal renter (and this would require leases be recorded) or if there is no renter, the entity that is legally allowed to reside in the unit is the owner. There needs to be no grace period.
Subtract this amount out of property taxes owed today so we have 2 taxes that would sum, and can even discount the occupancy tax of the renter based on their needs (old, disabled, poor....)
It's not "indefinite". Most vacant housing units are not vacant for a long time. They might still be under construction or might just be turning over for the next resident in a week.
And if we built more housing units in the Bay Area (increased supply), do you think that would make speculative investors' housing units increase or decrease in value?
The only way for cooperation to be a winning strategy in a prisoner's dilemma is if people have memory/reputation/trust. However, that is very difficult to build in the modern digital world where everyone is a faceless username.
One failure mode is when someone makes 1000 accounts and upvotes everything that benefits them and downvotes everything that doesn't. And you have to balance letting new users into the system with not letting the same user into the system twice, and with not requiring a picture of each user's passport. Or some orange guy convinced 1000 people that what's good for him is objectively good and what's bad for him is objectively bad and facts aren't real and words don't have meanings, which has the same effect as a user with 1000 accounts, but even scanning passports won't help you.
I went to a school in the suburbs with kids from middle class families and lower-middle class families. Many of us wanted to get into the Ivy League schools, but what I saw was that, presumable because of AA, the middle class kids from over-represented minorities (Asian, white) did not get into the Ivies, and the 1 or 2 who did get in were middle class kids from under-represented minorities (Black, Hispanic). But their families were still pretty well-off. Under no circumstances did a kid from a lower-middle class family make it into an Ivy, regardless of race. I really don't get why AA has to be about race, if we just did AA based on parental income alone, I would support it 100%. I think most concervatives would be happy because it wouls support poor whites, and most liberals would also be happy because it would in actuality URMs would still be the most benefited because they are the majority of low-income families. My only assumption is that it doesn't leave any openings for the rich and powerful to game the system, so people with the power to make changes will never make that change.
Two key caveats: 40% of people said their arthritis got better with the placebo treatment, while 70% got better with the radiation. Yes, that's clearly a difference, but it also means that 40% of people don't need to expose themselves to the side effects of radiation in order to get relief from their arthritis. Second, the realy number of people who don't need radiation is actually higher, because this study limited the use of NSAIDs like ibuprofen (Advil) or naproxen, which would probably have helped a lot of the other people. Granted, for people who can't take NSAIDs because of kidney disease or something, maybe this will be an option in the future, but I really want to see the long-term safety data before I go irradiating everyone's knees.
