The thing says “video unavailable” for me, but this YouTube video from Associated Press seems to have at least the same frame shown in the thumbnail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUE7_rlO2RM&list=RDNSyUE7_rlO2RM&start_radio=1

They don’t. There’s typically a compass in phones that provides information useful in determining direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetometer

Mobile phones

Many smartphones contain miniaturized microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) magnetometers which are used to detect magnetic field strength and are used as compasses. The iPhone 3GS has a magnetometer, a magnetoresistive permalloy sensor, the AN-203 produced by Honeywell. In 2009, the price of three-axis magnetometers dipped below US$1 per device and dropped rapidly. The use of a three-axis device means that it is not sensitive to the way it is held in orientation or elevation. Hall effect devices are also popular.

Where traffic lights were dark, drivers treated the intersections as four-way stops.

Good job, North Carolinians.

My local experience has been that when traffic lights are dark, drivers – who have a questionable understanding of “traffic takes turns a car at a time in clockwise order at a stop sign”, much less “treat a flashing red signal as a stop sign”, much less “treat an out traffic signal as a stop sign” – just enter a state of total confusion and start randomly driving however.

I mean… fuck around and find out?

If you mean Hezbollah, sure.

The IRGC guy who was working with Hezbollah here is gonna be Iranian intelligence, though, and I doubt that Israel specifically is going after the IRGC. I mean, Iran’s ultimately involved in all this, sure, but aside from some missiles that we and Israel mostly shot down, it has mostly acted against Israel via proxies. Like, if Israel wanted to nail the IRGC, they’d probably have hit stuff in Iran.

I don’t think that Israel’s likely to initiate against Iran directly, though I did just read some news discussing whether Iran might initiate direct hostilities against Israel, and then we might go after Iran, which I think is probably a more-likely route for the IRGC getting hit than Israel specifically acting against Iran directly.

digs up page

https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-pagers-920ced5349562163eeb96d6a5a768e89

Hezbollah, however, is Iran’s chief ally and proxy group, and Tehran may have to respond to retain its credibility with its partners in the axis.

“Iran is very much in a policy dilemma right now,” said Firas Maksad, of the Middle East Institute. On one hand, clearly it very much has wanted to avoid an all-out and direct confrontation, given its long-standing preference for asymmetric warfare and using proxies.

“But on the other hand, a lack of a worthy response given the magnitude of the event will only encourage Israel to push deeper past Iran’s red lines,” he said. Not responding also sends a signal of weakness to its regional proxies.

Any direct Iranian involvement risks dragging Israel’s chief ally, the U.S., into the war, just over a month before the U.S. elections and at a time Iran has signaled its interest in renewing negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program.

EDIT: And I’m skeptical that Iran’s going to get directly involved here. The Iranian government issued a statement, and it wasn’t “we’re going to clean Israel’s clock”, but just generally urging Muslims in the area (not, like, Iranian Muslims) to fight Israel, and explicitly put Hezbollah at the forefront. So I suppose they probably aren’t looking for a direct conflict with Israel:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-khamenei-calls-muslims-confront-israel-after-nasrallah-killing

Israeli “criminals must know that they are far too small to cause any significant damage on the strongholds of Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Khamenei said, adding: “All the resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah.”

He also urged Muslims to stand alongside the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah and support them in “confronting the usurping and wicked regime.”

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” he added.

There’s some sort of scissors for cooking, cutting chicken and stuff, that has a name that I forget. “Cooking shears”?

kagis

Kitchen shears.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=kitchen+shears

I don’t use them, but they are a thing.

I don’t see people “forming a cult”.

• Apple does a walled garden that I don’t want but some people are fine with. If you give them a bunch of money and these days entrust them with a bunch of your data, they will give you a pre-set-up environment that works well. That’s fine for a lot of people.

• Valve does a successful electronic storefront that has synergized well with the Linux world. God forbid Microsoft were in their position. They aren’t DRM-free, but you can use GOG if you want that, and the commercial game world was not going to go DRM-free.

• Kagi takes money, provides privacy for a search engine and some perks; they let their customer be a customer rather than the product. I use it myself, am happy with it. That’s a tradeoff that I’d wanted for a while, and would like Google to provide with YouTube.

• GitHub wouldn’t be my own choice for source hosting in the Microsoft era, but so far they seem to be getting along reasonably well. They provide functionality that’s needed, source hosting plus issue tracking, and their system is pretty usable.

• Mozilla does Firefox, which is much more customizable than Chrome. I use it!

• I don’t know what 404 Media does. Some sort of tech reporting, looks like. Okay, fine.

If you don’t want to use any of those, you can probably avoid all of them, other than maybe GitHub if projects you use are hosted there.

I decided in the late '90s, when Apple killed the Mac clone market and took things towards a single-vendor platform, that it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but for some people, it’s fine. Other than 404 Media, which I don’t know about, I don’t have any problem with the others here, and some are companies that I’m fairly happy with.

“Don’t trust Google! It shows you the bad stuff! Only trust Truth Social for your information!”

I don’t use a spoon, but I do twist it on the plate or bowl to get a “ball” of spaghetti (or linguini or angel hair).

While it’s not directly-related to this news item, I was reading the text, and the next news item in the CNN feed on the conflict has Iran warning Israel that it cannot attack Iranian diplomatic facilities, as they are inviolate. That caught my eye:

Iravani also “strongly” warned against “any attack on [Iran’s] diplomatic premises and representatives in violation of the foundational principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.”

I think, from memory of reading the Vienna Convention for some other conflict, that that’s not an obligation on parties other than the host state. The host state (the Lebanese government) commits to not entering Iranian diplomatic facilities when it permits establishment of same, but I don’t believe that other countries hold any obligations towards Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon.

kagis

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

Article 22

1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

kagis more

This Reddit comment from several months back does seem to agree, and is talking about this conflict:

https://old.reddit.com/r/internationallaw/comments/1btv5f7/embassy_protections_in_war/kxpg19y/

First of consulates and embassies are protected under different Vienna conventions, respectively the Vienna convention on Consular Relations of 1963 and the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations of 1961. They confer broadly similar, but not identical, protection to embassies and consular premises.

Both of theses conventions confer on the receiving state an obligation to protect the embassies and consular premises cf. on diplomatic relations art.22 and 45(a), on consular relations 27(a) and 59, but impose no duty on any third party to protect or respect these premises.

Therefore Israel has no obligations towards the Iranian embassy/consulates other than those conferred generally to civilian objects under Jus ad bellum and IHL. Neither IHL nor Jus ad bellum has any special protection of embassies or diplomats.

Regarding locations in third countries it would be a violation of the sovereignty of the third country to conduct millitary operations on their territory (definition of aggression (A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(b)). An embassy could be a legal millitary target under IHL, but attacking it would constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the third country.

On the other hand allowing your country, including embassies on your territory, to be used for acts harmful to a country, outside of those acts generally accepted under under customary law applicable to neutral states, would be a violation of the sovereignty of the country injured. Those two countries have a duty to peacefully resolve that conflict and not resort to armed conflict. It could, if severe enough, constitute aggression on the part of the state hosting the embassy cf. A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(g and f).

Israel would be obligated to not violate Iran’s embassy in Israel, though (though I doubt that those two have diplomatic relations).

kagis

Yeah, looks like they don’t have diplomatic relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the two states become hostile and the current Iranian government does not recognize the existence of Israel. The back covers of Iranian passports read: “The holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine”. Both countries have severed their diplomatic and commercial ties with each other. Iran does not recognize Israel and refers to it as a Zionist entity or a Zionist regime.

So the Iranian-embassy-in-Israel situation probably wouldn’t come up; no Iranian embassy in Israel for it to affect.

That being said, if Israel were to hit Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon, it’d presumably tick Iran off, but I don’t believe that it’s an issue from an international law standpoint; it’d be like any other building in war.

I understand that water reacts with it too – that is, the gas that it releases reacts with the water in your eye, so if it reacts somewhere else, that’d be better. I’ve seen a recommendation to cut it under water. That seems like too much trouble for me, but I at some point in the past, I did start quickly rinsing the onion after the first cut so that there’s water on the onion and knife and cutting board, and it does seem to significantly reduce the impact; it’s never really been a problem since then.

kagis

https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/59688/why-does-cutting-onions-cause-tears

Propanethial-S-oxide is the major cause of the flavor and aroma of onion. However, it is a volatile compound i.e. vaporizes very quickly.

when propanethial-S-oxide comes in contact with cornea, a small amount of it reacts with water to form sulfuric acid. This sulfuric acid is the cause of itching and irritation in eyes due to onion.

Looking elsewhere, I also see a couple recommendations to chill the onion in a refrigerator prior to cutting it, and several webpages saying that it worked well for them.

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/how-to-cut-onions-without-crying

I left the onion in the refrigerator for 24 hours and then peeled and chopped it like usual. No tears! No burning! I cut the entire onion without needing to grab a tissue. While I felt a slight irritation in my eyes towards the very end, overall it was painless. I was surprised this method worked so well since onions aren’t a produce item that generally need to be refrigerated. However, if it helps prevent blubbering, I’m all for it.

I’m not sure what’s going on here. I saw one page that said that it makes the gas coming off the onion cooler, so it drops away from your eyes. Not sure if that’s the actual mechanism, and I’ve never done it myself.

Some people may plan ahead well enough to be able to refrigerate their onions in advance of needing to chop them; I’m not really that organized, myself.

The prophecies say that one day, all vehicles in the region will be parked at the Pawnee County courthouse.

Note, just to be clear, that this is federal legislation, not Oregon state legislation.

Ah, okay, fair enough.

It’s not in some counties in Nevada.

But everywhere else in the US, this is a no-no.

Yeah, I have family who say that they’re gonna be out for an estimated three days. But, hey, that’s doable. They’re gonna lose climate control for a few days, lose stuff in a refrigerator or freezer. But it’s not too bad.

I’m assuming from the fact that you can post that you still have some form of Internet access going. IIRC cell towers have diesel generator backups that come on automatically. And a lot of folks out there have some kind of emergency inverter generator, cars can provide a small amount of accessory power (maybe 100W or more) and lithium batteries, and small solar panels are more widespread than they were just a few years back. Not enough to do a lot of things, but getting light and communications is a lot easier, even in power outages, than it once was.

Hmm. I haven’t been following it, but was Hezbollah really that centralized? It seems like a super-bad idea if you’re aiming to fight guerrilla war.

EDIT: This says ~300:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-09-28/ty-article/these-are-the-command-centers-and-buildings-attacked-by-the-idf-in-beirut/00000192-385f-dc91-a1df-bedf69f10000

The Israeli army carried out an airstrike on Hezbollah’s central command in southern Beirut on Friday, killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with approximately 300 people, including other members of the group.

I mean, that’s obviously still a really successful strike, but you’re talking maybe an order of magnitude fewer people.

https://viewer.weather.noaa.gov/water#layers=42904+40090+42133+41707+41708+41709+41631&x=-92.96832&y=40.68848&z=8.4&panel=legend

Has kind of a nice visualization of the flooding and related information.

I’d guess that they mean that they reliably show up in an assortment but aren’t many people’s favorite.

Wikipedia is under a Creative Commons license.

$100 crude target

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that that probably wasn’t a number resulting from a bunch of economists and computers spending a long time crunching numbers to try to produce an optimal target for Saudi Arabia anyway.