I think you replied to the wrong person (or at least I got the notification for your message), because yeah, I absolutely think Gaza meets the definition of a genocide.
"the source is that I made it the fuck up" for the COVID thing. Not a single reputable source says that.
I actually agree with the Gaza thing though. It's fair to say that they should have added that as part of the first paragraph and not as the title of the article. At least initially.
But it's also true that the only reason the Gaza genocide has become politicised is because of Israel's status as a key US ally. If the exact same actions had been taken by a wildly unpopular government in the west like Iran, I'm sure no one would be complaining about it being called a genocide after so many reputable organisations have called it such as well.
Which begs the question: is the politisation really coming from those calling it a genocide or from those who don't want to do so?
But... Literally the Gaza thing follows the definition of genocide, and has been called genocide by international governing bodies. What else do you want? I'm sure if there are other opinions, they can be added under a "controversy" tab, but the accepted definition of the Gaza issue was a genocide. Genocides don't need to succeed in exterminating all members of a group to be considered such, they need to destroy the social fabric of a community either via forced displacement, mass murder or widespread violence. This is what happened in Gaza.
But I agree, debating Gaza in depth is not worth it here. I also agree many people were jumping the gun prematurely in pushing for a "genocide" tag before there was any official source claiming it, but after two years, the genocide tag was the most substantial and officially supported position, which means it's the responsible way to frame the situation. You can add all nuance and opposing views later. For the record, if there had been no major international consensus reached on the use of the word "genocide", I wouldn't agree with including it as the main descriptor for this conflict.
Facts are difficult to measure, but the responsible thing is leaving the definitions to actual experts on the matter, even if experts can get it wrong. Because non-experts are prone to manipulating and misunderstanding key facts that then snowball into entire myths and belief systems.
You say the COVID lab leak theory is no longer a conspiracy theory, but I haven't found a single reputable journal that supports that claim, so... What are your sources?
They break guitars, for one. That's literally their company policy.
Their minds explode the moment they visit Japan, one of the least vegan friendly countries and simultaneously one of the most tofu loving ones
Is that how it is in the US? It has been super hard to find even one in Japan. Everywhere I go they seem to be sold out. I'm not looking to buy right now, but even then, all stores have big SOLD OUT signs for it.
Depends on when the leader dies and how the movement splinters.
I mean, fair enough, but also, we really shouldn't be making it even entertaining new definitions for words based on online ragebait.
Not at all. Incels are almost overwhelmingly misogynistic and into a lot of weird pseudo scientific shit. Incels are those claiming they deserve women but at the same time don't deserve them because they're too beta and all the rich alphas are getting 10 chicks a second, so they excuse their lack of success with dating in a lot of made up bullshit to delude themselves into never improving as people.
Incels are not just virgins, they're basically a cult, and thinking people use it just as 'virgin' is either deliberately obtuse or ignorant
Gurgling
Interestingly enough, I love fictional movies, TV shows and comics/graphic novels/manga. It's just with books where I get bored extremely easily if I don't feel like there's a tangible connection with the real world.
I guess I approach books with a "time to learn" mindset, and not necessarily as sources of entertainment. Even though I very much enjoy learning about history, and find it entertaining.
I read a lot, too, just not much fiction. If you look at my Kindle library, I have bought like 50 books since I got it, around 10 are fiction, and all are about 30-40% through, none are finished. The remaining 40 are either history books or textbooks for my other hobbies. I have only dropped 2 of them.
I have a handful of fictional books that I have finished and thoroughly enjoyed: Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez, Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, the Harry Potter Series (when I was younger), the Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa and the Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe.
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Oh the "I made it the fuck up" is actually a very popular meme, so although it's aggressive, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference than a direct attack to you as a person. The meme for reference
Anyway, the lab theory isn't the most insane theory as it stands, and as you say, it's not crazy at all to think of technicians being irresponsible. However, it does tend to share a lot of room with the actual conspiracy that COVID was a coordinated man-made attack, and in fact, the two were almost completely undistinguishable for a good chunk of the pandemic. To the point where I thought you definitely meant COVID being lab-grown as a coordinated attack, and not an accident, which I do believe is far more likely.
So yeah, Wikipedia is written by humans who do either have biases or who are too quick to judge situations. But overall, it is still one of the most impartial and reputable sources we have online.
As for Gaza, I definitely don't think most people who feel icky calling it a genocide would be so hesitant if Israel weren't a US ally, or allied with western values in general. Like I said, there is virtually no world where other non-allied governments doing the same thing wouldn't be almost unanimously called a genocide, as shown by the Rohingya genocide, which is almost never questioned as such.