MSC

Any clues? I was thinking early turkey tail but someone with more experience with turkey tail said it isn't because the underside of early turkey tail is always white Image number 4 is a different tree with earlier stage growth

Then what is your position? I am genuinely interested to know. You did poke a few holes for sure and I appreciated it because it does help me figure out how to improve my position and you absolutely provided a lot of good prompting for research, as has MigL. Sorry I can get caught up in the spirit of debate quite a bit but hey, at least I don't get as heated or assholish as I used to get when I first came onto this forum.

Well I appreciate you and your passion also. Ehrfucht vom der leben! I've just never been one to ignore the elephant in the room, hence my profile pic! You should have a read of Schwietzers declaration of conscience too, you'd appreciate it. There is also an article called Blacklisting Schweitzer by Laurence S Wittner that details a lot of what was being done collaboratively in the late 1950s and early 60s to sway public opinion against nuclear testing that I think would interest you, if you've not already read it of course! Global zero will probably never happen in our lifetimes but the groundwork has been laid and if people don't pick up the torch, then and only then is it an impossible goal. I'm 30! I've still got a few good years of naivete left in me I think. Regimes rise and fall, Putin, Kim and Khamenei are all mortal men with an expiration date, opinions and policies change. You are old enough to know that the world does in fact change as you've lived through more of those changes than I have. But hey, I'm more than happy to steelman your points. Let's say for the sake of argument, that the dismantling of the global nuclear deterrence apparatus is impossible. I don't think it is but for the sake of argument I'll run with it for a tick. Without people actively fighting against it, it could be argued that our very presence as global zero advocates tempers humanities worst inclinations and decelerates the approach to midnight, while actively accelerating the technogical advancement of defensive technologies. Big stick meets big shield. Mass murder of non-combatants by nuclear weapon = Morally acceptable? Extortion and blackmail of criminals and psychopaths to stave off a nuclear apocalypse = Morally reprehensible? How is the latter not the lesser of two evils in your mind? MigL I respect you as a person I really do but your arguments aren't very strong or convincing to be honest, at least not to me. The reason being that I've read so much on this subject that you're not going to be able to dismantle it all and convince me otherwise with just a few paragraphs. It isn't even my arguments you need to dismantle but the arguments made by people who have been making these arguments decades before I was even born. Like it or not it's the truth. Same goes for @swansont and the arguments he's made, they just aren't very strong or convincing and that isn't on me but on you guys. I'm not the type to listen to what amounts to "because I said so.", I'm sorry but that's just not going to happen. Nobody is suggesting that anyone should let their guard down. Great so now that songs gonna be stuck in my head for a week. Thanks Dim.

As a massive Dr Who fan, this I can appreciate! Will watch for sure thank you!

I'm game! Swansont and MigL need to do a deep dive into Farscape lol

If you start to believe the possible to be impossible, you'll never take steps to achieve what may be achievable. - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-a-world-without-nuclear-weapons-really-possible/ That's me all done with this topic for today. Need sleep. Goodnight MigL.

@J.C.MacSwell I apologise if it felt like that was an outburst directed at you. It genuinely wasn't. I'm just frustrated with RL at the moment and not being taken seriously there. It's also late, my back hurts like hell and I've done nothing but mulch raspberry bushes all day. My frustrations are with humanity in general, not anybody here personally and I make these arguments here because this is the only group I trust to follow and understand. I actually didn't. I said drop a nuke on Raffah, which I mispelled, its Rafah and it's the city in southern Gaza the Palestinians are being funneled into. You and me both brother, you and me both. I don't have confidence in any country that has them. I don't want Iran, Israel, Russia, China, the USA or any country to have them. 90 seconds to midnight and not because Iran has nuclear weapons is too close for any comfort or confidence tbh.

Oh for sure, so choosing the greater evil definitely wouldn't. I'm still convinced the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was definitely the greater evil because it was literal overkill and as many here have mentioned, they were about to surrender anyway and Trumans real motivation for dropping the A-bombs was to intimidate the Russians. - https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/07/atomic-bombing-japan-not-necessary/#:~:text=“Although the bombs did force,%2C unnecessary”%2C he wrote. - excerpt from David Lilienthals diary entry marked "Meeting with the President July 21, 1948, 4:00 to 4:15 p.m." Link to full entry. It should be noted that while Truman defended the decision to drop the a-bombs in public, there is evidence to suggest that his decision deeply troubled him and that he seemed to be suffering from signs of stress and trauma, there is even suggestions that he didn't even realise Hiroshima wasn't as large of a military base as he thought and was shocked and appalled by how many civilians were killed in the blast. Apologies if I'm coming across as overly polemic, I just take this subject very seriously and want to do it justice. I'm spending hours upon hours of research on almost every reply, except my shorter ones during the work day and honestly I'll not stop debating it until the day I die if I have to. Weapons of mass destruction never bring true peace or security. They never have the effect you want until you use them and at that point you are guilty of mass murder, plain and simple and I think it is a betrayal of humanity to justify for a military something that would land us all in jail for the rest of our lives if we did something like nuke a city. The saving the lives of soldiers over the lives of civilians is a terrible justification also, soldiers sign up to fight knowing they may die. The atrocities committed by the japanese military were committed only by the japanese military. The people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were blameless. Historians agree it wasn't necessary, Truman seemed to privately regret it, Oppenheimer blamed himself completely, the American government admitted it didn't need to happen to end the war, one of the most influential ethicists of the time won a nobel peace prize for condemning it and the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons and he is still regarded as highly influential in the field of environmental ethics to this day. What more will people need to convince them? Nuclear winter for 1000 years? All of us here and our planet, our home, have been born and raised under the threat of the mushroom cloud with the nuclear gun pointed at all of our heads. For all of our claims of being the most intelligent species on the planet, we're the only species dumb enough to threaten our own home and existence in such a brutal and violent way. Achieving fission and fusion and using it for weapons and actually using those weapons doesn't prove we are the most intelligent at all, it proves we are the most violent and indeed the most selfish. Better to snuff out just ourselves than to doom so many other species of plant and animal too.

Nuclear medicine too. In the context of this post I'm against nuclear weapons explicitly. Nuclear power, medicine, propulsion etc I'm fine with when due caution and safety measures are used. Good point. You however, didn't answer my "what if you were in Truman's shoes." Question. I've also made many more points than you are choosing to address (which I get because you're busy with your moderation duties and real life but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that there isn't enough time in the day to discuss it all. Why wouldn't you have the stomach for it, if it's the right thing to do? Hume would have potentially argued that the sentiment in your statement should perhaps tell you something about your true moral inclinations on the matter. (Don't misconstrue that as an insult, as I'm suggesting you're actually much more ethical than you think you are by making such a statement.) Is it that you wouldn't have the stomach for it or deep down you feel you shouldn't have the stomach for it? Why did Truman have the stomach to do it? Again, we haven't spoken about Truman nearly enough and I feel talking about him is much more on topic than getting into dicussions over which types of weapon are worse than others. I'm afraid of both and to not be afraid of both would likely lead to carelessness in the transportation of such. I honestly couldn't tell you what I would be more afraid of without actually performing the task. Would be fearful and worried either way, why quantify it? A thought occurs to me, say Netanyahu dropped a Nuke on Raffah tomorrow, and used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as justification for why it's okay to wipe a city of mostly non-combatants from the face of the earth. How would people feel about that? Apples and oranges I know but what if? - from the link I posted earlier. @MigLyou did mention Iran, so what do you think about the above excerpt? Kind of seems like the current state of affairs in Iran was a problem of America's own making to me.

Because you asked what makes depleted uranium (and by extension nuclear and radiological weapons) different from conventional weapons. Yes both have waste products, but I feel like you're comparing apples to oranges a bit. Radioactive materials are far more hazardous than the materials used to make conventional weapons in most cases (I'd agree where biological and chemical weapons are concerned to be fair) and if you are going to claim that they are similarly hazardous, you'll need to provide evidence to back up the claim. I think the difference is that governments are more likely to listen and address public concerns where nuclear energy is concerned than they are where fossil fuels are concerned.

Is it? I hear about much more concern these days over fossil fuel use than nuclear waste, but again the concern is largely ignored by governments. Will respond better later, working. This is a good conversation though! Thanks for having it with me. Not to mention this stick is just as likely to burn the hand that wields it as it is to burn the person being hit with it.

I just wish I knew of an effective way to consistently persuade others if what is actually true. Facts and evidence just don't seem to do it. God damn backfire effect.

Neither would I, although admittedly at a smaller scale. I would be interested in seeing the research on that. The OP asked why the use of nuclear weapons was necessary to end the war, the war may have been going on but we've already covered that so too were peace talks, negotiations for surrender and an internal desire to surrender in Japan which knew it was being badly beaten and was about to have a new front opened onto it via the Russians. As for your question about depleted uranium; Does making bullets or firebombs produce nuclear waste? Which if not handled or stored properly does its own damage to ecosystems without any requirement for a weapon to be fired or detonated at all. Enriching plutonium and uranium does. Reprocessing nuclear weapons does. Making bullets, grenades, napalm and other conventional weapons does not (unless the manufacturing facilities are powered by nuclear energy of course). +1! - Stanford encylopedia of philosophy Put this here so people understand what is meant by categorical imperative. Putting this here so we can all evaluate the man who made the decision to drop the bombs in the first place. We really need to talk about Truman more. I mean look at this shit; @swansont and @MigL time for a serious question. It's the summer of 1945. Truman isn't president, you are. Will you drop the A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Let's move on from whether or not dropping the bombs was right or wrong; Was Truman specifically qualified to decide that it was the right thing to do? Is anyone qualified to make that decision?

My response would be to first state that my ideal is no war, no nuclear weapons or conventional warfare of any kind, is always preferable. But that my ideal is an impossible goal based on what I know of human nature and the lack of control or say that the majority people have in determining how militaries choose to fight those wars. It's not that I find conventional weapons acceptable, just less bad. For a simple reason, the firebombing of Tokyo didn't release radioactive material 50 miles up into the atmosphere and had way less long-term effects on the environment nor longterm genetic damage and radiation poisoning that caused cancer, fetal abnormalities etc. While I understand the residual radiation of those bombs had a relatively short half-life, today we have a number of different types of nuclear and radioactive weapons to be concerned about. Neutron bombs have a much higher radiactive yield, some nuclear weapons have a vastly higher explosive yield, strategically placed dirty bombs in the right (or wrong depending on how you look at it) weather conditions could give radiation poisoning to many more than the intended target and setting off numerous nuclear bombs could bring on a nuclear winter, send radiactive material all over the globe and cause massive amounts of harm to humans, animals and plant life for generations to come. If the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima had a similar radioactive yield as the Chernobyl disaster, they'd have likely remained uninhabitable for much much longer than they did. Genuinely, if I was forced to choose between being burned alive or being given a lethal dose of radiation, I'd pick being burned alive. It's quicker. I wouldn't wish death by radiation poisoning on my worst enemy and I cried like a baby watching Dr Daniel Jackson dying of radiation poisoning in Stargate and was highly disturbed just listening to him describe what he knew was going to happen to him. I was 7 years old when I watched that for the first of many times, and it's one of my strongest memories. I'm going to end by sharing Albert Schweitzers Declaration of Conscience. @MigL I would really appreciate it if you especially would read this. You don't have to agree with it but it did win the Nobel peace prize in 1957 and I believe it is an extremely powerful argument against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I'd also like to add that if a nuclear or radiological weapon was used where any of you are and if we lost any of you to that, I'd mourn you deeply and weep for humanity far more than I already do. I mean I'd mourn your deaths by any means but that way would leave me the most choked. I hope you all die old and peacefully with loved ones by your side and a feeling of serenity looking back at a life well lived.

True, but there is a point I think where there is a deterrent and there is going overboard. Is the nuclear bomb drop equivalent to being fined $1000 for stealing $100 or being fined $1billion for stealing $100? I do actually feel a little conflicted, mostly because there is no way for us now to know whether or not Japan would become hostile again in the future after the war, if the bombs hadn't been dropped and their surrender was secured by lesser means. One thing we can probably both agree on; is that today, there is the deterrent of mutually assured destruction to deter even using WMDs because more than one country now has them. America didn't have to worry about that when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For example we could never get Russia to do a Japan like 180 and cease hostilities in Ukraine by dropping some nukes on them, because they'll just use theirs too. I personally still don't agree with the use of the A-Bombs on Japan, but it happened, can't change that and it has definitely deterred Japan from engaging in the behaviours and atrocities it committed during WWII. No doubt about that. From there I think we can agree to disagree on whether or not it should have been done.

This is why I prefer talking with folk here. It's easier to respect people who are more intelligent than me. It's probably my fault for getting facebook again but a prospective employer wanted to see a fb account before committing to hiring me. Which I'm now gonna just assume is an employment red flag.

Single "white" father here, to a 3 year old girl who will one day have expenses related to her biological sex that I as a man will never have. Even if I exclude feminine hygiene products, she will pay more for haircuts, clothes, shampoos, she will be expected by society to purchase and wear make-up, she will need a gynecologist and the list goes on. So to be clear, guy's don't have the same bills that women do. Fact. If anything, women ought to be paid more than men because the cost of living for them is way higher. Just my 0.007 cents.

Just got called a racist for supporting Black lives matter and Anti-fascism... In what world or on what planet does this make sense? What sort of mental gymnastics does a person need to do to think this way while living in a democratic society that allegedly values equality? Really grinds my gears.

Egg, the egg came first. Every time I hear this problem it never specifies chicken egg, it just says egg. Which leads to a very simple solution; do chickens predate dinosaurs? No. Did dinosaurs come from eggs? Yes. Therefore the egg not only came first but came countless times before the chicken. Hopefully my answer eggceeds eggspectations.

That's a fair point to make, so long as the response is proportional. That said; even in the exact same proportions I feel there are limits. If someone tortured my child, should I torture theirs? If someone murders my child should I also murder their child? Absolutely there needs to be consequences for morally abhorrent acts, but what seperates the reactor from the instigator is, which consequences/reactions are appropriate and what you want the consequences to achieve. I do lay some of the blame for what happened on Japanese military culture at the time definitely and I do see the arguments to be made where you can point to Japans complete 180 into turning into a far more peaceful society than they were before the end of the war. What will it take for the world to do that 180? Does it really have to be losing a whole country or continents worth of people? I know neither of us want that, but it does scare me a touch to think that based on what we have seen from history, that might be the catalyst. I just hope we can learn some other way before that ever happens. Also you are correct, I'd never just randomly punch you and I respect you a lot more than you know. Any differences we've had or will have would always be resolved with words.

Wikipedia is being cited far too much in this thread.

In fairness to him, he had a minor stroke around 2013 or 2014. Nothing that affects his ability to function but we did notice some personality changes. I think for me the frustration comes from knowing that his views now are completely different to the values he instilled in me and my siblings growing up. For example, now he frequently makes quite xenophobic comments, but when I was 3 or 4 years old, my older cousins taught me a very racist song and me not knowing any better, I went and sang the song to my dad and he slapped me pretty hard across the face. To this day I feel like that was the best thing he could have done as it cemented very early for me that racism is not acceptable. So his views today are a bit of a slap across the face too.

Fair enough, some of them definitely are but then imbeciles tend to defy demographics and you find them under every rock trying to squeeze water from it. I'm a pragmatic centrist who sees each issue of political policy as having it's own requirements for dealing with it effectively. If an issue requires a conservative approach it requires that, if it requires a liberal or a more middle ground approach, I'll support that. It really for me depends on what the scientific consensus is; however since I'm not the type to throw the baby out with the bathwater and the fact that I consider myself to be a true agnostic, I'm not ashamed to say that my views on politics are influenced a lot by one particular story from the abrahamic religions, of which i prefer the islamic version, which is the story of the prophet Joseph. Egypt conserved during a time of plenty and then supported it's peoples through a time of famine.

I wonder then what influences a person if they didn't attend higher education at all? Topic for another day I guess.

Japan was actually in the process of brokering a conditional surrender mediated by the Russians, the Russian entry into the war in the Pacific was a much more crucial factor in the japanese decision to surrender than the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The A-Bombs just provided a less shameful reason to surrender by pointing to an enemy super weapon capable of levelling any of their cities, than being afraid of another front of conventional warfare with Russia. Except it is known that it didn't, because he was already trying to convince his ministers to end the war as early as June of 1945. The bombs weren't dropped until August. He was going to capitulate, bomb or no bomb. A lot of people think that Japan Rejected the Potsdam Declaration, they did not. What they did was a little more nuanced. They publicly addressed their answer (to their own people) with Mokusatsu, which the press mistranslated into English as rejected, when it actually meant, in that context, to kill with silent contempt. Basically they ignored the demand for an unconditional surrender from the Allies because the preservation of the Emperors position wasn't immediately on the table, even though it was something the allies were discussing behind closed doors. There was also a disconnect between the Japanese Ambassador Sato, who was the ambassador to the Soviet union, and leadership back in Japan. Japans military leadership had it in their heads that if they caused more massive allied casualties during the expected allied land invasion of Japan, they'd be able to keep some of the land they conquered in a peace agreement, wanting something closer to a stalemate than a surrender. Sato believed his superiors had honestly lost their grip on reality there, as some of the land they wanted to keep, had already been liberated by allied forces. As I said above, Mokusatsu means to kill with silent contempt. As in kill the ultimatum by ignoring it, meaning no formal answer, Suzukis announcement was directed at the people of Japan and the Americans heard about it due to mistranslation in the press. It doesn't mean rejected. Kyozetsu or Kyohi suru means rejection or refuse. If it helps, imagine you asked to borrow a hammer, if I directly say no to you, that is Kyozetsu. If I sneer, turn around and walk away, that is Mokusatsu. What Suzuki was effectively saying, was that the Potsdam conference and what they were demanding of Japan, wasn't even worth the dignity of a direct response. If the bombs had not been dropped, I seriously doubt the war would have lasted much more than a few months. Especially once the decision fell to the Emperor. Why are you surprised when she was Japanese and resident of Hiroshima? Might as well ask British people why they found the blitz offensive. Morality in my opinion is all about point of view because we all have a different perspective on the context of our existence. Yes the japanese were absolutely brutal to those they conquered, civilian or combatant. A lot of it was absolutely evil and morally repugnant. Especially civilian casualties. However, there is an argument to be made in not sinking to someone elses level. 19 billion civilians, or a couple of hundred civilians, I don't think it's the numbers that are the morally significant factors but the fact that they were civilians. The majority of those civilians had little to no control over what their militaries and governments decided to do, especially in Japan which was not by any stretch of the imagination a functional democracy at the time. It was more like Tsarist imperialism if anything. As far as I'm concerned, most extreme military actions that are taken, are symptomatic of diplomatic failures, not the only options remaining. This was definitely true of the A-Bombs. Yes we can't change the past but that doesn't mean we have to like it either. Honestly I'm surprised that you're surprised. Really for all we know her great grandparents or some other recent ancestor was killed in those blasts. Oh good, someone that actually is aware of this. +1 Have you also noticed that most of the historical sources that credit the bombings ending the war come from the USA?