one thing that doesn't fit is that I would expect a majority of nouns to be according to the animate / inanimate split. but from my (not so vast) knowledge, the split is either (mostly) the last letter of the word, or a list of suffixes
> I would expect a majority of nouns to be according to the animate / inanimate split
Well, as I understand, the actual animate/inanimate split was there at least 10 000 years ago (or more)! And the language has gradually changed over the years until it's barely recognizable. For half of the period that passed we didn't even have written languages, and can only approximately deduce the words by tracing their common origins in related languages.
See how modern English has changed in 500 years from the earlier Middle English — as a non-native English speaker, I can barely recognize a few things, and it's otherwise completely unintelligible for me. Now multiply that change by at least 20x.
So how words are split between genders in modern languages - has very little relation to how they were before. For example, in modern Spanish, masculine gender is a fusion of Latin masculine and neuter genders. So technically if we say that in Classical Latin there was still a statistically significant animate/inanimate split between masculine and neuter genders - nowadays it's the same single gender in Spanish.
In France there's this law that cheating on any official exam gets you a 5 year ban on any other official exams. That includes finals, but also the exam to get the driver's license, among others.
A hungry tick is much more likely to make your life miserable because you’re significantly more likely to encounter one in ecosystems with both species.
Given the utter paucity of wolf attacks on humans (vastly, incomprehensibly lower than the rates of Lyme disease), this is a deeply silly thing to worry about.
It’s really clear, sometimes, who hasn’t seen a place that isn’t paved.
This feels like a generalisable cognitive bug with our species.
"Kill all the wolves, die as a result from invisible bacteria carried by tiny arthropods - or from Type 2 diabetic heart failure, as getting out for a hike and staying safe is now too much hassle".
So I don't necessarily disagree with you but people way more rugged than we are and who didn't even knew what a paved road was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
> Moreover, what I observed is that urban professional class populations are usually way more in favor of wolves reintroduction than rural working class population.
Perhaps their reasons is an economic one (wolf attacks on livestock) and not an human safety one ?
It is definitely an economic one. I occasionally help on a sheep farm which has not been attacked. But colleagues on farms in neighbouring counties have had sheep killed by local wolves. Even if they publicly claim they they lost a lot of money and work (which is true) they also say also fear for their safety. However, in private they are not worried, they know the wolves will flee as soon as a human appears.
Well because they would risk losing a handful of sheep occasionally (which the government would likely pay for anyway). Also the prevalence of general cultural hatred of natural habitats and ecosystems prevalent amongst some sections of rural populations.
> was decided to get rid of wolves a long time ago.
Outside of islands like Britain that only really happened in the 1800s after wolves stopped being a threat anyway. Also interestingly enough in quite a few places in Western Europe more area was deforested and exploited for agriculture between the medieval period and the 20th century than now. That naturally made cohabiting with wolves and bears a bit problematic (now there are way more forests and protected areas, of course this only really applies to Europe not North America)
people might not like it if it was targeted, but if it got slightly damaged (and currently functional) as collateral damage to a military target, I assume more people would be okay
This is all wishy washy without an actual court, but I’m dubious this would rise to that standard.
From what I can tell, international law requires attacks to be distinct and proportional. Distinct meaning they distinguish between civilian and military targets (you cannot intentionally attack civilian targets), and proportional meaning that the collateral damage to civilians is proportional to the military value of the strike.
This probably doesn’t meet that bar. Cutting off water is bad, but 20k people is a fairly small population for this kind of thing and presumably the US won’t stop them from repairing it (that probably would be a clear cut war crime). Presuming Irans government is functioning, this should be extremely hard for those people but probably not lethal. Trucking water around is an option, even if it’s not great.
My problem is that this happened after Trump repeatedly and emphatically threatened to target civilian infrastructure. It could be an accident, or it could be exactly what he said he would do.
The countries currently bombing Iran have boasted for years of their precision targeting systems. They've also made countless statements that show a willingness to targets civilians and infrastructure [1].
At this point, every direct hit on a school or a water source or a charity being accidental collateral damage just doesn't ring true.
Either they've been lying about capabilities (and all the precision strikes were undergone with reckless disregard for human life) or they have the capabilities claimed and are doing exactly what they said they would.
... and Iran's islamist regime has for 5 decades boasted of committing warcrimes, inside and outside of Iran.
Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.
"But Iran did it!" is not the clinching argument you think it is. If killing civilians is bad for Iran to do, then it's bad for the US to do, and you can't commit the same evils as the ones you're using to justify your actions.
You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.
You misunderstand the argument I'm making. Legislation is only what is enforced, is only it's consequences, otherwise it is about as relevant as pointing out Iran has severely violated the "magic for all" legislation of Equestria.
As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal.
The world has chosen to not enforce war crime legislation under any circumstances, decades ago. Specifically, the agreement is the Rome statute, which essentially says that no government can ever be accused of a warcrime except in one of two circumstances. One, the government one whose soil it happened agrees to enforce war crime legislation AND asks for a conviction (Iran has not, and will not, do this). Either that or the UNSC convicts you.
Other than those 2 situations, war crimes aren't possible. And this is not something the US has chosen but the world has agreed. If any parties are responsible for that, it's Russia and China.
By the way, Iran has managed to commit bad enough warcrimes that China, Russia, US, France and the UK all agreed they were guilty of warcrimes. The US has not.
If you're going to talk morality you have a similar problem. Every moral system I've ever seen has an enforcement mechanism, and it's always the same: if somebody starts acting immoral, you "get to" violate morality towards this person. You get to violate rules to stop the problem. Normal restrictions, against violence for example, are lifted. And without anyone's permission, by the way. YOU have to judge for yourself if you're in such a situation. There is even tolerance for some reasonable amount of collateral damage.
Example: Somebody starts, or even threatens, to kill a child, you can empty a clip of bullets into them. You can break their bones. You can hit them with a bat. Hard. That's fine, sometimes even described as "heroic".
And if you empty a clip of bullets into a random person, well, that's against morality.
You can do a lot of things to such a person that would never be acceptable under normal circumstances. In fact, in western countries, violating normal rules to prevent worse outcomes than those rules are meant to achieve to is a duty. This goes from being forced to help if someone's in real trouble to if you are blocked by a red light and refuse to violate the law and prevent an ambulance's passage, that's a serious crime.
You read that right, under those specific circumstances not violating the law is a serious crime.
There is no moral or legal system that has an absolutist view like your statement makes. 12 year olds think like that. And of course, if you actually read this law, you won't find such an unqualified rule.
No of course not. The problem is that the point of morality is to achieve a just world. Therefore using morality to allow one side to commit more crimes must be immoral, even if the actions taken to prevent are pretty bad ones. Any moral system must allow for this if it is to exist.
In other words: shooting someone to prevent a murder is not immoral. Despite the fact that shooting someone is obviously immoral under almost all circumstances.
The problem is that you believe that everybody being affected is on a particular side. Collective punishment is a Geneva Convention war crime, and it is immoral because it causes more harm than good.
Does it really need to be said that the Geneva convention rule about collective punishment does not apply to your gas bill? Yes, what happens in the world affects you. How unfair!
I said nothing about gas bills. You should not punish all the children in a murderer's city because the murderer doing bad things means you're allowed to do bad things.
That's not how ethics works. We give the state the ability to mete out punishment in cases where that punishment or the threat of that punishment helps the citizens' safety. Administering collective punishment does the opposite.
True. Hitting the water reservoir is childsplay compared to the targeted attack on a girls' school with which the US decided to open this war when Iran was signalling agreement to make a deal. It also still makes the US far more reserved in its willigness to kill civilians than its ally which dragged them into this war.
I expect nothing. In theory, northern Israelis would evacuate, just like how southern Lebanese evacuates when Israel issues a warning. Of course the main difference is that Israel seldom issues evacuation warnings. Iran has been shouting "death to Israel" for 50 years.
I was okay with most of the skimping with spirit airways, but what really annoyed me was their delays. I can plan ahead not to bring luggage and to sit cramped. But arriving at my destination 5 hours later was a deal breaker for me. I don't know if there are statistics for how delayed they are vs competitors, but after my second flight with them, I decided to fly with airlines that are more punctual.
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