This has been my guess from the beginning, the only logical final objective solution was annexation. If you’re gonna drive everyone living there out and level the landscape it’s obvious you don’t intend for the original people to come back. I said this back in the beginning of November, come 2025 Gaza will just be a normal annexed portion of Israel.

I don’t know if 5e has starting age tables? 3e and Pathfinder do, it’s an optional character creation thing that helps show the general age of most things. It starts off with the starting age of a given race and then has a table with different classes and dice. So for a human the starting age is 15, Barbarian/Rogue/Sorcerer is 1d4, Bard/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger is 1d6, and Cleric/Wizard/Monk/Druid is 2d6.

So a typical cleric starting age would be 16-27. At that point they are a level 1 Cleric and have a grand total of one level 1 spell per day. 5e is more generous and gives them two level 1 spells per day.

That spell should do a lot, and in a small village would be amazingly effective, but at a certain point there just aren’t enough spells per day for everyone. It should actually be hard for adventurers to get healing because the local cleric should probably have spent all his healing for the day by the time they get to him, he can probably squeeze them in tomorrow when he’s recovered spells.

Except that it’s exceptionally expensive. 5e is probably the most forgiving with its currency, a Raise Dead spell costs only 500 GP (assuming no extra fees) and while it’s hard to approximate wealth in the game I found an old Reddit post that approximated it to ~1 GP = ~$1,000. So $500,000 minimum for a Raise Dead.

While there are probably people in your life that would sell everything to bring you back, would you really want them to? How many times could your family and friends pull together $500,000 to raise someone in the group?

If you’re so obscenely wealthy that you could afford multiple Raise Dead in your lifespan you’d have other, more political problems. For example you’d have people lined up down the street asking you to raise [insert tragic story].

Speaking of Political problems, you have to find someone willing to raise you and someone willing to finance it. If the king dies and the Prince takes over what are the odds that he’s going to raise his dad and give up that power? If he’s a bad king it might be hard to find a cleric willing to do so and even if he’s a good king a benevolent cleric might not have 500 GP to finance it himself. You could leave the money with a cleric you trust, but he could always just keep the money. If the Prince isn’t willing to Raise the king he’d also probably go out of his way to hide, protect, or destroy the body to make a Raise Dead by an outside source more difficult.

In setting I think you’re right, a good person, who is exceptionally wealthy, can probably ignore death. Someone like Lord Nasher from Neverwinter probably doesn’t have to worry about a simple stabbing, someone will Raise him in 10 min and probably be rewarded 100 fold. However, if you’re able and willing to attempt that sort of assassination you’d also know how limited the effect would be and probably wouldn’t even try something so simple.

Barak replied “It’s already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa,” which was used as a “command post” for Hamas and as a “junction of several tunnels”

“I don’t know to say to what extent it is a ‘major.’ It’s probably not the only…command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places.”

…

Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, responded, “decades ago, we were running the place, so we helped them.” The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.

“It was many decades ago…that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds.”

If you’re on desktop and open several videos at once (such as getting home from work/school and opening all the new videos on your subscriptions tab) you really don’t notice.

What I do notice are the ads at the beginning, quarters, middle, and end of a video

Does anyone actually care what New Zealand thinks? If New Zealand cares so much they can start taking more people in. From what I understand New Zealand is one of the few countries that takes more quota refugees than asylum seekers. That means they take in less asylum seekers than the UN mandated quota of refugees. The UN quota is 1500 per year so their total intake per year is less than 3000 people.

I wouldn’t say New Zealand is xenophobic, but they are extremely restrictive on immigration, asylum seekers, and refugees. I play a lot of Path of Exile which is based out of New Zealand and they’ve stated that to get a job there you have to move to New Zealand because New Zealand law prohibits companies from hiring from outside of New Zealand unless the company can prove that the needed job can’t be filled by a New Zealander.

The standard of living in New Zealand is fairly high, but it’s mostly because they are NIMBY and I Got Mine.

Oh that’s cool, I ran across the same website while making a comment to another user here.

I’m not super sure how reliable they should be considered to be honest. Looking at Mediabiadfactcheck.com they state that they are mostly factual in reporting but points to their lack of transparency on funding and strongly loaded emotional wording that may be misleading.

Based on the rest of the review it seems that they are really good about being very specific in their statements to avoid inaccuracies. Looking through this article and a few of their other articles they mostly focus on local accounts (X person said this, they live in Gaza) or third party references (Y on Twitter said this based on an article by Z at the BBC).

Another representation of this style of reporting would be this example:

Headline: “The Election Was Stolen!”

Body: New information has come out about an investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. SOUTHERN boy on Twitter shows a video of FBI officials going into the election offices to perform an investigation. SOUTHERN boy also recently posted a potential connection between the investigation and the Trump 2020 election, but it hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media.

We also spoke to Melissa Simpson in Mississippi and she says she and all her neighbors believe the election was stolen.

Since 2020 Trump has been telling everyone that, “The Election Was Stolen!” Does SOUTHERN boys information show the proof to Trump’s claim?

End example

Technically nothing I posted is false, I’m not making any claims myself, but anyone reading this would know the subtext to my article.

A lot of people have no objection about receiving news about Palestinians from blatantly pro Israeli outlets. So yeah, there is one Pro Palestinian source, surely the balanced person would take info from both.

In the real world this is certainly true, there are way more Pro-Israel publications and listening to an opposing opinion is wise, but on Lemmy it seems that the vast majority of active persons have been unwilling to accept any Israel source, no matter how tangential.

The double standards have to stop. Either object against both, or read both and decide for yourself.

There’s nothing to say this person doesn’t, and given the amount of flak Israel related sources get it’s worth noting the bias here as well.

But to always call out just Palestinian sources, it smells of cultural oppression

I completely agree, but I am somewhat thrown by the choice of name by this publication. It just lacks a certain professionalism associated with good journalism. This isn’t to say it’s not a worthwhile source, it’s just not the best name. It’s kinda like if someone named their publication the Digital Revolution, the Uprising, or something similar, I’m just gonna cringe a bit and be skeptical from the start.

Looking online I found this site (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/electronic-intifada/) which reviews the bias of various media sources. Based on this it’s just a group of international journalists with their publication based out of Chicago. Their information seems to be mostly from grass roots reporting or third and fourth party accounts.

EDIT: I wanted to quickly follow up, I’m reading through the article now and it’s a real shit show for navigating. In general I’m not familiar enough with the people they reference that it’s really hard to get a good read on this article. It’s kinda like if I said that a guy I know named Billy works at the city and he said he spoke with the Mayor who said that crime is on the rise, but the Chief of Police released a report to the contrary. Billy could be worthwhile, but I don’t know Billy and I can’t readily find good references to the Mayor’s statement.

Even the representation of the original referenced article by YNet is kinda shit. For example, they use a reference to Syrian Girl on Twitter who is referencing Yoav Zitun on YNet, who is referencing a paraphrased statement from Lieutenant Colonel A. Zitun states that the Lieutenant ordered the Fighters to shoot everything near the fence and later attacked their own installation so that other troops could move up to it. Syrian Girl makes the connection that Zitun’s reporting indicates that the military was blindly killing everything that moves (including their own troops) and EI runs with that sentiment.

In Zitun’s own article (included at the bottom of the EI article) it is clear that unrestricted firing was only in proximity to the fence itself but other bypasses of firing restrictions were approved separately as needed or were taken by Fighters without approval.

In all honesty, if this wasn’t serving as a proxy war that might have been possible, but I think with China, Iran, and Russia squaring up to support Palestine there’s no way we’re going to cut off Israel. From a big picture perspective Israel is the only real ally the US or western powers have in the middle east and even if we dumped them for the crimes they commit it would ultimately hurt the US and western powers to abandon or sanction them.

I saw an article saying that Belgium is considering sanctions against Israel, but Belgium is also a NATO country and only has 24k active troops with an additional 6k in reserves. In 2022 Belgium had the third lowest % GDP military investment out of the NATO countries.

Whether we like it or not the big players in the game aren’t looking at the atrocities Israel commits in Gaza, they’re looking at whether they will have a foothold and ally in the middle east if we have a World War.

We as individuals can take a stance on the conflict without considering the geopolitical outcomes, but to be able to do so we should admit that we are in a place of privilege. I imagine that if news came out that Ukraine blew up a school Poland still would still support Ukraine, because they’re right next door.

At the same time, countries which don’t meaningfully contribute to their own defense should recognize their privilege when it comes to the world stage.

EDIT: Had accidentally called Ukraine Russia, fixed now.

Hell we would probably have deployed troops to Gaza and also to stand by in case of actions from Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, or Syria.

I kinda wish there was more discussion about the long term outcomes. I personally don’t think a two state option is going to work, especially those that hinge on control of Jerusalem. An independent Palestinian state could be established, but would almost certainly be controlled by Hamas or other like minded groups.

Hamas believes in a two state solution so far as it gains territory, but I think that as soon as that is accomplished the long term plan would be to eventually destroy Israel and make a Reunified Palestine.

If this is true then there will never be peace until either Palestine or Israel is utterly destroyed.

Conversely, if Israel doesn’t just take over Palestine completely things are likely to continue as they have since the 60’s. Hamas does a terrorist attack, Israel responds by blowing up a school, rinse and repeat forever because the groups in control of each side are fucking extremist conservative monsters that believe their magical space daddy is right.

I’m not making excuses for the atrocities committed by Israel or Hamas, I’m just laying out the road map for the next 100 years. If you had to pick between Hamas (or Hamas like) controlled Palestine or Zionist controlled Israel which would you prefer?

I guess there is a third and fourth option, the third option is to have no opinion and whatever happens happens. The fourth option would be to, somehow, maintain the status quo and wait till a time where both sides stop believing in the extremist religious dogma. The fourth option could be something like a UN occupation of Israel Palestine to prevent the two sides from killing each other?

EDIT: Also, if you look at the proposed maps for a two state solution you should already know that a two state solution wouldn’t work, it’s like if Cold War Germany had a baby with the Michigan UP and somehow the offspring was even worse.

I have Windows 10, so things may be different for 11 or whatever version you’re on, but can’t you just uninstall OneDrive without specifically closing it? I feel like that’s what I did when it was default installed.

No, you misunderstand what I mean.

Ah I see, you’re correct, I did misunderstand you. I think your point is true, but still lacks finesse in describing the relationship between developers and digital store fronts. I also think you’re disregarding the benefit that the additional 18% cut the developer gets to keep as well as creating partnership options rather than being stuck with a defacto monopoly.

I also don’t think it’s fair to compare GOG or Humble Bundle with Epic or Steam, their purposes and market share is so much smaller than Steam. Epic isn’t trying to compete with GOG or Humble.

Also, you’re correct that the developer is making money either way, but they are making a larger percentage on sales through Epic. You’re probably right that the developers aren’t taking that into account, but they are materially benefited by its success. If they fail to account for that benefit and Epic fails then it will mean they make less money overall.

I think instead of your McDonalds example a better one would be contractors for a large business. Maybe your business frequently uses an electrical contractor and due to special circumstances the field is exceptionally limited (specialty license or security clearance). There is one contractor available and they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. So far this company has been really fair and not abused their power, but a new contractor becomes available. The new contractor has an inferior service line and is a bit slower, but they’re also cheaper. You could just ignore the new contractor and what happens happens, but in the real world it’s fairly common for businesses to diversify service contracts to maintain a pool of available contractors.

Sure, but the idea of fostering a mutually beneficial preferential relationship between two companies is far from new. I’m not saying that the developer has to take a loss, but they could decrease the sell price on Epic while still making more money than on Steam, GOG, or Humble Bundle. If doing so causes more people to switch to Epic it also means they’ll make more money in the long term and in the short term.

I’d argue that the statement that Epic is just as much a customer as the consumer isn’t really true. Epic as a storefront is different from Gamestop as a store front. Gamestop buys the product at a given price and then marks it up to make profit, Epic provides fulfillment and gets paid a percentage of the sale. Epic isn’t a customer in that sense because they aren’t buying and reselling the product.

Yeah, the developers can say fuck it and not help out Epic, but it just furthers the limited monopoly that Steam is. They can’t complain that Steam takes too big of a cut and then make businesses decisions that are counter to that complaint. It’s like complaining about Reddit but choosing to stay there.

I would agree that Epic is a customer in the sense that they are paying for exclusivity, but I think that contract should also include a reduced sale price in it.

EX: Epic pays the developer X dollars so that the first week of the release it’s sold at -Y% of the MSRP exclusively on Epic. After that they can sell it on other storefronts for the MSRP for Z months (with no sales) or they have to refund the X dollars.

hing like that now do ya?

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or if you really don’t understand. If you don’t understand I’d be happy to elaborate.

Weird, you’d think that Google would give them more options than that and allow them to tailor their ads to their audience. I guess this is how google puts forth the minimum effort for the maximum profit. Thanks for the insight.

Well it shouldn’t be at a loss. As the person I responded to pointed out, Epic had a lower fee than Steam so the developer can sell on Epic for less than they would on Steam and make the same amount of money.

Doing so wouldn’t be at a loss, but it wouldn’t make as much profit as possible.

If the developers did choose to sell on Epic for less than it would bolster the Epic store and potentially lead to more people moving to Epic.

If Steam’s fee is 30% and Epic’s is 15% the developer could sell on Steam for $70 and make $49 and they could sell on Epic for $60 to make $51. That’s a 4% increase in profits.

If the Epic store takes off and a large enough user base switches they could maybe increase the Epic price to $62.5 which would result in an additional 4% increase in profits.

Epic’s deal is that they’re offering a lower rate, but the developers aren’t sharing the benefits of that to help Epic grow. If they did the long term profits would likely exceed the short term.

I’d really like to know what the level of input creators have over the ads that appear in their videos is. It feels like some videos are just whatever Google throws out there while some videos seem to have no ads and finally some seem to have very limited ads.

Is there some sort of dial that the creator has behind the scenes that determines how shitty the ads for their video are?

Ads on YouTube used to not be so bad, a 5 second ad that was so unintrusive that I’d just let it play, a 15 second with a 3 second skip, and it also didn’t feel like the same quantity of ads.

Before an ad would roll at the beginning of the video and I’d likely quickly skip it. If the video was fairly long there might be an extra ad in the middle. Sometimes the creator might also have an embedded ad, but I generally don’t mind those.

Now it’s a double 15 second ad at the beginning, only the first one is skippable. Then there is another double ad every 15 minutes, plus the embedded creator ad, and if you make it to the end of the video there is an end of video double ad before it auto plays to the start of the next video and next set of double ads.

Make the ads short and unintrusive or make them long, skippable, but rare. I hate having to constantly tab out to go click the skip button every few minutes.

When the YouTube ad blocker ban started I was on chrome with uBlock and it seemed to be refreshing the block even with uBlock. I thought to myself, “Hey let’s try it with the ads, I’ll whitelist YouTube and support the content creators.” After about 3 days I said fuck it, dropped Chrome and updated uBlock again; I haven’t seen an ad since.

If the developer chooses to do so themselves then it’s likely ok, but forcing the developer to do so likely violates some sort of law.

I imagine that when Epic instituted it’s lower percentage they hoped that developers would sell exclusively on their platform for higher profits. Instead the developers decided to sell on both platforms and just make a larger percentage on the Epic sales. From the developer perspective it would have been wise in the long run to lower prices so that Epic could grow, but that hurts their short term profits and also stymied Epic’s potential.

If Epic’s store grew to truly rival Steam more developers might have jumped ship, but to do so prematurely would be losing a large portion of the potential customers.

Ultimately Epic had to develop a full Steam clone quickly while all Steam had to do was not suck for the end user.

I generally prefer AMD, how are they for Linux?