There were also eras of peace in the Middle East when empires had complete control. And a hell of a lot civil wars in Europe when Rome ran things.

Europe has also been a warzone forever.

Negotiate for what? Release of Hamas prisoners when the planner of the October 7 massacre (and current leader of Hamas) was released in a previous exchange?

The only thing they're holding out for is more donation money from people angered over the suffering of Palestinians. Hamas has monetized the suffering of Palestinians, so why would they want a ceasefire?

Hamas is incentivized to let the suffering continue. But eventually the IDF will find whatever hole Sinwar is hiding in. Once he's out of the picture maybe whoever takes his place will have some humanity and surrender to put an end to the bloodshed. I don't hold out much hope for anyone in Hamas doing the honourable thing though. They're warped people that think that death is a good thing.

WordPress is open source, there's a foundation and stuff. The Matt Mullenweg, the guy that started the software and CEO of Automatic (which is the main company) is super upset that WP Engine (another company) is using the software without contributing much to the foundation.

I mean it's a valid gripe, but there's not much anyone can do about it. But Matt Mullenweg is, like you say, being super weird about it.

The GOP is the "drill baby drill" party though.

The Green Party is not going to win. The only message that voting for Jill Stein will send to the Democratic party is they need to move more to the center to get more reliable voters. It's already heppening. Harris doesn't like fracking but she's not going to ban it and she has to talk about increase US oil production to get votes from people she knows will turn up and won't flake out and vote green or be uncommitted or whatever.

If she wins she will be more inclined to fulfill promises made to the people who actually voted for her. Sure she'll need to represent everyone, but there'll be far more people that voted GOP she'll need to represent (and entice to maybe vote for her in the next election) than green party voters.

I used to love using the self-checkout. But then it became a trend among the corporate overlords here to get all paranoid about people stealing food, so now they have the weight system calibrated too strict. Now if you breath on the items in the bag it locks you out and someone has to come unlock the system to continue scanning. So it's not really worth the hassle, and seems kinda pointless since an employee has to unlock the system after every few items.

Yeah Iran's Axis of Resistance will destroy Israel any day now... any day now... soon... someday?

Iran's bullshit Axis of Resistance is like a scrawny guy that constantly gets his shit destroyed by someone that's simply stronger faster and more skilled at fighting than he is . Everyone tells him to throw in the towel, but still just keeps on wanting to fight. And keeps getting his asses kicked.

It would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that these assholes embed themselves in the civilian population and get a lot of people killed besides themselves.

The Axis of Resistance has been a complete failure for Iran. Hamas is hiding in their holes in the ground, Hezbollah had their entire leadership wiped out in two weeks. If the Houthis were smart (they aren't) they'd stop their attacks on shipping and hope everyone forgets their part in all of this. Iran itself hasn't shown much capability in attacking Israel with their rockets. The only thing they've achieved is to make people feel sorry for them.