Fully agree. Just wanted to provide an argument why having commercial truck drivers have some English proficiency could be beneficial for safety. Requiring a 3 month English course for those unfamiliar with the language as part of getting a CDL would do the trick. But that wouldn’t hand money to private prisons, would it?

But the inconsistency is the problem.

Take a look at the top signs about driving on the shoulder. Who is to say there aren’t twenty more variations?

Maybe a couple of

“Driving on shoulder mandatory”

“Trucks on shoulder only”

“Passing on shoulder permitted”

“$100 fine for driving on shoulder”

“Keep shoulder clear”

“No trucks allowed on shoulder”

There doesn’t seem to be any standard. It’s just text.

Doesn’t the US have a shitton of unstandardized road signs which are just words?

I feel like you have to have some English proficiency to understand them.

AI is worthless if you are unable to tell hallucination from fact.

But just like NP hard problems, verifying a given solution is much easier than coming up with one yourself.

What does that even mean?

My comment argues that claiming antisemitism includes discrimination against anyone who is a semite has zero historical basis. It would also now exclude many Jews who are not semites yet were targeted by the Anti-Semites.

Of course genocide is bad. But anyone arguing Palestinians should be genocided because they are all “antisemites” will never be convinced by arguments. Therefore, there is no point in attempting to adjust the definition of antisemitism.

Antisemitism is defined by hatred of Jews, as coined by the German group Anti-Semites who wanted to have a fancier name than Jew-Haters.

It doesn’t really matter for anything that Palestinians are akshually semites.

It’s like arguing that racism is not a thing because technically human races do not exist outside pseudoscientific eugenics.

Ah, alright then. I didn’t really understand what your comment was referring to at first.

Hamas is still the legal successor of the PLO in Gaza though?? Everything the PLO signed/declared is valid in Gaza until Hamas revokes it. That’s literally how succession of states/governments works. There hasn’t been a revolution in Gaza, it has been a (relatively) peaceful transfer of power.

This occurs regardless of what you think of one authority. Governments do not void anything and everything the previous government has done.

It’s utterly insane you consider civilians to deserve death. I will never understand how anyone with a working moral compass can justify killing civilians. People like you are the fuel genocide engines run on.

196 countries signed and ratified all 4 Geneva Conventions, with 174 of them having further ratified the procol I quoted.

Most signatories are not “on board” with Israel ignoring this document, unless you somehow believe Western countries are the only countries to matter. And even then, there are various notable dissenters such as Ireland.

The Geneva Convention absolutely apply to international conflict, otherwise no country would bother with upholding them at least partially.

Why does Israel even fight the ICC instead of simply ignoring it? If it had no impact they could save the attorney resources they are spending. It’s because it very much impacts them in terms of international relations. Every single international treaty relies on trust alone. Become untrustworthy and you will get worse deals.

And it does very much apply to Gaza. The internationally recognized representation of the state of Palestine who claim jurisdiction over Gaza has signed it shortly after becoming a non-member state of the UN. There is no country on this planet who has signed the Geneva Convention but considers Gaza to not be bound by it.

Also, before Hamas even existed, the PLO declared themselves bound by the Geneva Conventions. The only reason they didn’t sign the declaration was because the UN didn’t consider Palestine a state. Hamas has not rescinded this declaration from what I have found.

By the way, there is no “application” for civilian status. Either you are a civilian or you are not. And no one on this planet considers reservists to be soldiers unless they intend to kill civilians. A 100 year old Israeli in a hospital bed would be deserving of execution according to your definition.

Ok? Don’t quite know how this relates to my comment about international legislation behind armed conflict and the definition of “civilian” though. Did you respond to the wrong person?

I do not care about what Hamas is or isn’t, nor do I care what Israel says it is or isn’t.

Hamas is bound by Articles 1 and 2 of Protocol 1 of the 4th Geneva Conventions:

Article 1:

(4) The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.

Article 2:

In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.

The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

Palestine is generally considered to be under alien occupation and therefore falls under this protocol.

And what is a combatant?

Article 44:

(1) Any combatant, as defined in Article 43 , who falls into the power of an adverse Party shall be a prisoner of war.

Article 43:

(2) Members of the armed forces of a Party to a conflict are combatants, that is to say, they have the right to participate directly in hostilities.

And a civilian?

Article 50

(1) A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A (1), (2), (3) and (6) of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.

(Note: article 4 A goes into more detail as to who can become a POW. Basically anyone who is armed or accompanies the army during conflict.)

From those articles it clearly follows that reservists who are not activated are civilians.

It does not necessarily follow that Hamas is a terrorist organization, nor have I ever claimed it was. The right to armed resistance is still bound by international law such as this protocol.

Attacking reservists who are not activated violates the Geneva Convention and is nearly universally considered - including by Palestine, which has signed the Geneva Convention - to be a war crime.

This includes civilians - which deactivated reservists are - in occupied areas.

Ukraine is similarly not allowed to attack occupying Russians in Crimea who moved there after 2014, despite the fact all male Russians had military service.

Israel uses the exact same argumentation to kill “combat-aged” men - that is to say, male Palestinians who look 14 or older.

Also, being an occupying civilian during a conflict does not allow an opposing party to arrest them. They are afforded various protections, especially by the 4th Geneva Comvention.

That’s like the least noteworthy aspect of German anti-piracy action out there tbh.

There’s an entire industry around identifying people who torrent and fining them 4 digit amounts as well as forcing them to sign a declaration never to pirate again in their lifetime (which, when broken, results in contractual fines a magnitude larger). Don’t want to sign? Tough luck, have fun losing a lawsuit forcing you to sign it.

The cases where large companies do win won’t make news though. “Large companies settles with individual” isn’t really headline material now, is it?

Also, small companies != people. Neither me nor you are a company and even small companies have significantly more resources available to them than someone who just created the next Lord of the Rings and didn’t see a penny.

There are significantly more companies who would rather start killing politicians than see IP law gone. They rake in billions of shareholder value, much moreso than any AI company out there.

I never argued that copyright law is necessarily wrong or bad just because we went millenia without it. What I am arguing is that these laws do not allow people to create intellectual works as people in the past were no less artistic than we are today - maybe even moreso.

Have you seen the impact of IP law on science? It’s horrible. No researcher sees any money from their works - rather they must pay to lose their “rights” and have papers published. Scientific journals have hampered scientific progress and will continue to do so for as long as IP law remains. I would not be surprised if millions of needless deaths could have been prevented if only every medical researcher had access to research.

IP law serves solely large companies and independent artists see a couple of breadcrumbs. Abolishing IP law - or at the very least limiting it to a couple of years at most - would have hardly any impact on small artists. The vast, vast, VAST majority of artists make hardly any money already. Just check Bandcamp or itch.io and see how many millions of artists there are who will never ever see success. They do not benefit from IP law - so why should we keep it for the top 0.1% of artists who do?

the chimp would tell the bear

I thought the bear had died?

The rich want to do it because of AI. That’s it.

They can already take whatever you create wihout giving you a dime. What are you gonna do, sue a multi-billion dollar company with a fleet of attorneys on standby? With what money?

They would certainly just settle and give you a pittance just about large enough to cover your attorney fees.

Do you know why companies usually don’t do this? Because they have sufficiently many people hired who do nothing but create stories for the company full time. They do not need your ideas.

Copyright didn’t exist for millenia. It didn’t stop authors from writing books.

Putin shouldn’t be quartered. He deserves the boats (with full medical care to ensure he remains alive and conscious for as long as possible).

I don’t think pedophile is accurate here.

It’s power difference why someone would want to “date” a 16 year old. It allows for very easy abuse which is usually the main motivation. Sexual attraction to children is less likely because far fewer people are pedophiles than abusers.

Both the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice have applied Radbruch’s formula numerous times. Its first court appearances were in cases concerned with National Socialist crimes. The defendants in those cases argued that, according to Nazi statutes valid at the time of their acts, those acts had been legal. The courts used Radbruch’s formula to argue that some statutes were so intolerable that they had not been law in the first place and consequently could not be used to justify the acts in question.

This is the current interpretation of the meaning of “law” in Germany. Laws which are entirely unjust must be disobeyed.

Though this is different from an administration ignoring the rule of law. In that case it’s fairly obvious that violations of laws can be prosecuted by any following administration.

Not quite. Immigrants intend to stay forever, while expats don’t (in my opinion).

That is, if these self-called “expats” do intend to stay forever and obtain citizenship they very much are immigrants who don’t want to call themselves immigrants.