It’s not about the production cost, its about the opportunity cost.

A quick google search tells me a national ad costs $200k-$1m for a 30s slot. That means 5 seconds of screen time costs $30k-$150k.

When I started dealing drugs, I did it because my friends and I were smoking trash weed and we wanted to secure a good supply of quality product. It worked out well. My car was clean. I didn’t sell much.

A few years later when I turned 23 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. My life fell apart, I was bedridden, I went through a medical bankruptcy. That is when I began to deal drugs to survive. For a few years I paid my bills by selling weed, ecstasy, adderall, mushrooms, acid from the bed where I spent 95% of my time. My car was dirty.

Was I just a regular person? I dont know

It’s a broad generalization, I’m not suggesting some new law of nature.

I think you have to ask: why are people dealing drugs?

Some people sell drugs because they are desperate. These people are dealing with extreme poverty, trauma, mental and physical health issues, etc. Their cars are messy.

Other people sell drugs because of the economic opportunity. In my experience, these people pride themselves on cleanliness, timeliness, and customer service. They have clean cars.

Saying “maybe people are the problem” is reductive and unhelpful. But I agree with you broadly, religion is just a system or a tool, it can be used for good or evil.

To judge if religion is a good system or a bad one, we can use a cost benefit analysis. This is what we have been attempting to do in this thread.

But when it comes to sensitive subjects like religion, many people have a tendency to avoid, overlook, and deny the associated costs.

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.

But that explanation is lost to time.

One translation I read suggested a probable explanation.

Rasputin’s phone advice was the same as many modern quacks: keep the patient away from modern medicine and doctors.

So the hemophiliac prince was no longer given his normal cocktail of drugs, which probably included a new medicine for the time: aspirin.

Stop giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac and his condition (temporarily) improved. The best explanation for the people at the time was “magic”.

The world finding another oil and gas reserve is like an alcoholic finding a secret door to a fully stocked bar.

We’re probably going to drink ourselves to death.

One of the major issues in this case is that Obama set a precedent when he assassinated 16 year old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki without a trial.

The reality is that the Democrats go low, and Republicans use that as a new standard to go even lower.

Even if we overlook the unimaginable horror these humans are enduring, this is terrible policy.

Sde Teiman detention is now the world’s leading terrorist recruitment center, and I have little doubt that its graduates will be seeking revenge on the West with suicidal furor.

Yes the Ford F-150 can be used to commute, but you dont see UPS purchasing a new fleet of F-150s to deliver packages. People dont usually accept that level of inefficiency when the price tag is measured in billions.

My point was that the US has a variety of child-shredding and apartment-exploding warplanes that they would be happy to sell to Israel, so why did Israel choose the plane-destroying version instead?

Other commenters gave a good answer: these are likely in the F-15E family, which are equipped to shred children and explode apartments.

The F-15 is an air superiority fighter. It is designed to destroy other aircraft, and has little use in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

So when these are delivered in 5 years, who will Israel be attacking? Lebanon? Syria? Iran?

This deal feels more like a short-term bribe to keep the US military industrial complex on Israel’s side.

This asshole destroyed the public option, then a few years later my life was destroyed by medical bankruptcy.

It is sad that he got to live a full life surrounded by loved ones. He deserved so much worse.

Rest in piss, you wont be missed.

Hamas would be in a far superior negotiating position if the released hostages were saying that they were treated kindly and cared for

You should read the accounts of released hostages then, many of them have publically stated they were treated kindly.

This horrific recounting of captivity and rape is an outlier.

We can’t afford to wait until November.

Can’t escalate a genocide if they’re already dead.

Biden is going to lose if he continues his genocidal policy in Gaza.

People like me put pressure on the Biden admin to change course. By engaging in good faith criticism, I am trying to get Biden elected.

People who refuse to criticize Biden enable him to continue on this losing path. Enabling the worst of the Biden administration’s policies is helping to elect Trump.

Orange man is so bad that you’ll actively support a genocide, very enlightened, great job.

Or maybe people have a legitimate moral concern when their country is aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide?

Can I ask, what evidence would you need to see to conclude there is a bias at WaPo?

If AMZN wanted to buy a propaganda operation, they wouldn’t kill every anti-Amazon story. That would ruin WaPo’s credibility and thus waste their investment. Instead they would kill only the handful of most damaging stories, while also frequently posting tepid criticism of AMZN, which would give us the “evenly split” result you use as evidence.