shoo

I really don't understand where this idea comes from of a country with the 40th rank GDP having the pull to mastermind politics worldwide. For reference: their revenue is about the same as Apple, whose lobbying sees less success despite being more politically neutral.

The reason they have international support is because it's convenient and their location + antagonism align with the geopolitics of a large group of states. Isreal is a dog on a leash, what we're seeing Trump do is give them unprecedented lead to genocide at will.

Letting them go this far and long without tugging their collar back to peace talks is not the historical norm, no matter how hard you point at Biden. Did Biden take direct military action to support them? Has any US president?

This Isreali lobbying is a boogeyman; Isreal could dissolve tomorrow and you would see another antagonist spring up in the region with international backing. People are just uncomfortable with their country being aligned with the bad guys of their own free will.

You keep saying this like it's a gotcha when even the barest level of research shows that it's still better.

Emissions from battery production can vary wildly depending on the process used and manufacturing energy grid. According to this study, manufacturing an 80kWh battery will release between 2400kg and 16,000kg of CO2. A commercial lawnmower will have a ~20kWh battery, so in a lifetime with two batteries we'll guess about 1200-8000kg CO2.

EPA says the average gas mower produces 88lbs of CO2 per hour of use. Over a 2000 hour commercial lifespan that's 80,000kg of CO2. And that's putting aside all the other pollutants and secondary emissions from maintaining a combustion engine.

Do a little research before you start your rants next time.

I think that used to be true on older cars, but with modern passenger cars emissions/fuel use for start up is about the same as 10s of idle. No clue if that's true for these big diesel vehicles tho.

Idling diesel is supposed to be very bad but long haul trucks are better at it because they need to keep refrigeration running. Either way, something like 2 minutes of idle is almost universally worse.

Keep incorrectly stereotyping people for ...checks notes... what container they drink from? Very weird hill to die on.

The UN has always been a veto exercise, nothing useful happens there so why would you expect it? It's as performative as the US Congress with even fewer results. One side gets to tell their constituents "I voted for a good thing" and the other gets to say they defended their national interests on the global stage.

What would happen if this did pass, Israel just blushes and let's them through? What's to stop them from doing this in an agreement separate to the UN? Is Isreal really going to go to war with dozens of countries to stop some aid going through? Is the US going to sink their ships? No shot.

All of these countries are just as fine with the status quo as the USA. They just get to pretend there's a valid reason for their inaction.

The entire global stage is at fault here, but the buck magically stops at Daddy USA no matter who's in charge.

Nonsense take. What if I told you alcoholics 1000% never buy glass bottles? That top 10% is cheap aluminum cans and plastic liquor bottles.

Or that glass bottles can be used for things besides beer and soda (iced tea and water for example).

You're making unfounded generalizations about people's health concerns.

Depends on if you have a healthy wild source that can seed itself in. My woodline is almost entirely invasives so it took more legwork to balance it out. I ended up mostly planting small trees/shrubs to shade out the weeds and letting Virginia Creeper spread (love that stuff).

Barring that it probably depends on yard size and local climate. Might be more economical to clear with a sod cutter or spot weed + replace.

Check for local native plant orgs, they can get you plants in bulk. They might also have specific advice, for example if you need to avoid seeding certain plants to protect a vulnerable local species.

While it's better than keeping a barren monoculture lawn, keep in mind that letting things grow with no intervention will get you a lot of invasive species. If you want healthier habitat for your critters try to keep an eye on what's growing and replace the bad stuff with native options.

If you're going as far as throwing out monetary economics, cheap doesn't mean anything. You're just describing equitable transportation access.

Even in that scenario, it's not desirable to have that reliance on a foreign state for such a core function. Power dynamics aside, global supply chains are brittle (as seen during covid).

Don't really care about the competition. I care about having cheap access to [X]. If the competition can't compete, then fuck em. That's not my problem.

This comment is the American consumer for the last 50 years, next step is complaining about outsourcing jobs and lower quality products with no competition.

I understand from your comment that you've read too many sci-fi books to understand what a massive resource sink that would be with negligible benefit. It's pretty basic physics.

We've already got cheap transportation, look how that's turning out for the planet. But I'm sure burning God knows how much energy to launch more junk into space will save the world.

We're already approaching a critical mass of private equity space trash in orbit, what's a few more lowest-bidder megastructures? At least the ultra rich will get their life rafts while we burn.

Because the world has actual things in it like people, wildlife, culture and history. Space has none of those things. Unless you're there working as a scientist to study things that can't be studied on earth, it's pointless.

As of now it's a glorified roller coaster. At its best private space travel could be Disneyland in space. At worst it's just rich people paying to be carried up mount everest for clout but with exponentially more resources wasted.