As a kid I went to church with my family and it was full of nice people who wanted to help others and were very kind, lots of my parents friends were and are from church.
Unfortunately, it is gut-wrenching for me to be in church. I feel terrible, because I simply don't believe any of it. To stand there and be phony and pretend to love and believe in Jesus just kills me.
Adafruit in particular is very good at providing step by step tutorials on how to use their products, most of them that are nontrivial have a little example project to go with them.
It's also been a good one-stop shop, if you want a little character display to go with your esp32 project they will have one, along with addressable LEDs, battery circuitry, etc.
If you're an American, what could protesting Iran possibly accomplish? They are already sanctioned out the wazoo and our government already doesn't like the government there.
In fact, I believe if the U.S. wanted to really help the Iranians, they should have lifted the sanctions in exchange for Iranian government easing some of the domestic laws.
I don't think sanctions are that helpful in establishing democracy, and even if they were, taking the population hostage in order to instigate an uprising is morally quite dubious.
In any case, U.S. has recently proven to be a dishonest actor, so even if above was correct I would still not want them to do it.
P.S. I was born in communist Czechoslovakia. So I have seen an organic regime change, and the Iranian one is IMHO too violent to be the moment.
> they should have lifted the sanctions in exchange for Iranian government easing some of the domestic laws...
No authoritarian regime wants to go down the same way Gorbachev, Husak, and Honecker did by meeting the opposition halfway.
Most regimes learnt from how China cracked down in Tiananmen and how SK cracked down in Gwangju, especially countries like Iran that are much more structurally similar to Maoist China than the 1980s Eastern Bloc, as much of the Iranian economy is owned by the Bonyads (Islamic charities), State Owned Enterprises, and regime affiliated conglomerates who wouldn't expect to retain economic control if Iran didn't remain an Islamic Republic, and the footsoldiers of the Cultural Revolution (yes, Iran had one too called the Inqilab e Firangi or "Revolution against the West") are the ones in charge.
The current violent crackdown is similar to that which the Iranian regime used during the Green Movement back in 2009-10.
The IRGC has a headcount of around 100k, the Police 300k, the PMF in Iraq (which have now been mobilized across Iran) have 200k, the Liwa Fateymoun (Shia Afghan militia) have around 3k-10k, and Liwa Zainabiyoun (Shia Pakistani/Pakhtun militia) have around 5k-8k personnel.
That's around 600k personnel who are ideologically aligned with the regime, have seen combat in Syria or Yemen, have had experience cracking down on anti-regime protests on multiple occasions, and have the means for a violent crackdown in a country of 90 million people. And that's ignoring personnel that the Houthis or Hezbollah can send despite being battered by Israeli strikes.
On the other hand, the SAVAK during the Iranian Revolution only had 5K personnel in a country of 40 million.
A lot of people will refer to Syria as an example of a counter-revolution, but the Syria's population was significantly better armed during the Assad regime compared to Iranians today. Before the Arab Spring it was common for the then Syrian government to send disaffected Sunni troublemakers across the border to Iraq to take potshots at the Americans and let them solve the problem [0][1][2][3]. This was how Jolani/al-Sharaa and a number of anti-Assad revolutionaries got their start as well.
I sincerely hope the Iranian people get the ability to choose the government that is right for them, but based on the lived experiences of my friends and family in authoritarian states, I sadly think the Iranian regime will stand.
> No authoritarian regime wants to go down the same way Gorbachev, Husak, and Honecker did by meeting the opposition halfway.
What "regime wants" is irrelevant. "Regime" is a collective construct, and people can collectively change it. Which is what happened there, and I think it shows that peaceful transition is possible. The way these regimes have changed was by people collectively realizing they don't want it, without foreign interference.
In this case, authoritarian U.S. (and possibly also Russia) projecting power into Iran is making things worse. (Czechoslovakia was in that situation - on the way to peaceful transition - in 1968, but it was externally interrupted from Russia.)
> I sincerely hope the Iranian people get the ability to choose the government that is right for them, but based on the lived experiences of my friends and family in authoritarian states, I sadly think the Iranian regime will stand.
I agree with you, and I said above that I believe it is too violent (and you confirm that). There is decent amount of research that shows that nonviolence is a more reliable way to change regimes towards democracy.
> The way these regimes have changed was by people collectively realizing they don't want it, without foreign interference
Not really.
Every single regime change has happened because a veto player decided to withdraw support for the incumbent regime. This has been documented for decades by Kuran, Karelian & Peterson, Ulfelder, and Hummel.
Once the incumbent regime begins shooting, they have no choice but to double down because statistically incumbents in an authoritarian regime will not continue to retain their positions if they back down.
For incumbents, you either do a managed transition (eg. Pinochet) or you double down on repression (eg. Deng). Vacillating in the middle ends up leading to mass mobilization and shows internal stakeholders that there is little downside to defecting to the protesters side. And that was the mistake Gorbachev, Husak, and Honecker made.
I have family in VN and go there fairly often, and given the nature of business in Asia have often bumped into their decisionmakers often. Much of their leadership was in Czechoslovakia, GDR, and Poland from 1986-91 on internal security or military scholarships, and the primary takeaway they took was to
1. Sustain economic growth to buy support and increase the revolutionary threshold by adding an increased economic cost
2. Dramatically expand the size of internal security bureaus (most Warsaw Pact members had 0.01-0.25% of their population be members of internal security organizations, but states like Iran and Vietnam are trying to maintain a 0.5-1% population ratio instead)
3. Double down on repression once the bullets start flying. My SO grew up in the Central Highlands during the ethnic tensions turned protests in the 2000s [0]. Once two protesters died after arrest, the BCA decided to double down. They began summarily executing protesters on the street, ambushed protesters in side streets and opened fire, hunting protestors using unfed dogs, and openly distributing small arms and ammunition to trusted party members and US-Vietnam and/or Sino-Vietnam War veterans, and giving them a blank check to enforce "discipline". That said, she was from a Bac 76 family so they were in a better position.
I guarantee you Iran's leadership thinks the same way. And from the looks of what is happening in Iran, their leadership is using the exact same playbook.
> There is decent amount of research that shows that nonviolence is a more reliable way to change regimes towards democracy.
Yes, but this is because an authoritarian regime allowing non-violent protest to occur means they have lost control, becuase the revolutionary threshold has been hit such that mass mobilization by civil society has happened and does not have a high cost - thus implying their grip on power and monopoly on violence has decreased. This is what Kuran highlights.
First, Oct 7th was not the start, but it can seem like that to those that regard Palestinians as subhumans who do not deserve liberation and instead are destined to live under the shackles of apartheid, blockade, and occupation.
Secondly, there are various reasons why there is no protesting in this case. Maybe it’s because Israel is the child of US foreign policy? Or perhaps it’s because US veto protection is what has allowed Israel to get away with so much across its history? Or heck, maybe it’s because our taxpayer dollars fund the Israeli gov to the tune of billions of dollars annually (and don’t come with the “it is just weapons” bullshit; money is fungible).
On the other hand, what exactly would be accomplished by protesting against Iranian government repression on US soil or on US campuses?
This post was about Iran. Do a Google search for "impact of a sharp object to the face" with quotes and tell me again it's not worth 5 minutes of protest.
To demand the US invades Iran? Do you think the Iranian fuckheads killing their own citizens care about the words of a group of people in a different country? A country which already sanctions Iran to the point that a protest doesn’t change anything for them unless the demand is for the US to invade them?
>The voices that are silent are the ones that are shouting from the rooftops when Israel does this to Palestinians.
Depends on the protester and what they are protesting but many of Israel protests have been against US continuing to support/fund Israel and want US government to do something different.
Iran on other hand is US sanctioned and US actively works against it, very different relationship then with Israel.
> The voices that are silent are the ones that are shouting from the rooftops when Israel does this to Palestinians.
When Israel does this to Palestinians with US made planes and US made bombs, bought largely by US tax dollars? Over and over again for more than 2 years? Shielded from consequences in the UN by the US? Seems pretty sus that Americans would protest that in particular.
The purpose of protesting Israel's human rights abuses is that lack of awareness, misinformation, and propaganda, are key pillars in the policies that make them possible. Protests (and online complaints) are ineffective enough already, we don't need to layer an unclear goal (what would you be hoping to accomplish?) on top of it all.
> The voices that are silent are the ones that are shouting from the rooftops when Israel does this to Palestinians.
As the comment you just replied to says, Iran is already sanctioned and bombed, while Israel gets billions in military (and other) aid from US and the rest of the West. It's abundantly clear that there's a difference.
And furthermore, so you have to have a decibel meter perfectly calibrated for every tragedy that happens on planet earth, or your arguments are nullified? Preposterous.
Should we talk about all of the victims on October 7th that were killed with munitions Hamas doesn't possess as well? I wouldn't call leveling Gaza "targeted strikes". Seems more like wonton destruction to me.
I think there are voting rings and bots downvoting anything that goes against a certain agenda here on HN. I read many posts about it here as well, nothing we can do, but I don’t think the downvotes are organic.
One government is committing a genocide against a neighboring sovereign state. Why does a person have to condemn every atrocity to condemn genocide without being accused of being an anti-Semite? They don't need to, is the answer.
Our sanctions are the reason why their situation is difficult. They are having the intended effect. And the protests plus the calamity are wanted by the west.
Not too long ago (three months ago?), either here or on Lobsters, an iranian programmer was basically pleading for help because he had built some type of A.I. system, but there is zero market for it in Iran, and he is blacklisted from working with / for anyone in the US.
I want to make films that look like Denis Villeneuve's Dune. (Just to cite one example, not that I'm interested in replicating his style.) How am I supposed to do that?
You know what my sci-fi films look like? This is one of my productions, and it cost over $10,000 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24s-AmqR5k (I don't even have a real link to the finished film, apparently. I don't typically do sci-fi because it's so inaccessible to do the things we want to do.)
We actually did a bunch of rotoscoping and VFX work for this. It was not bad for our budget, but I'm so tired of this. I have always dreamed of having my films look exactly like what I see in my mind's eye.
Why should I have constraints, and why should my audience dictate my constraints? It's my life, and I have a desire for my own creative output. My number one judge is myself, not you or anyone else. I make things to satisfy me.
I'm especially disheartened (?) angered (?) by non-artists stepping in to tell me this. People who haven't spent ten thousand hours on it.
> I want to make films that look like Denis Villeneuve's Dune. (Just to cite one example, not that I'm interested in replicating his style.) How am I supposed to do that?
As an artist you should know that being able to achieve whatever you want with whatever level of effort you want and get the reception you want is often not achievable
> As an artist you should know that being able to achieve whatever you want with whatever level of effort you want and get the reception you want is often not achievable
I love being told this over and over.
> the reception you want
I'm doing this for me. I live my life for me.
I'm lucky that I get to make friends and meet amazing collaborators in this journey.
The tech that you are defending is going to put your profession out of work. If you can write a prompt that gets you exactly what you have imagined for your movie, then your entire craft has been obsoleted and can now be achieved by anyone with an imagination (or even without).
But ever since the YouWatch app came out in 2029, consumers could just say what they wanted to watch and get a personalized film tailored to their exact personality type. You just couldn't make money with single-version films any more, and nobody did. They shut down all the film schools, and destroyed all the archived knowledge online.
It was hard to get your hands on a camera anyway, after the passage of the Protecting Children And Securing American Economic Development Act (BIGGEST PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST Act) in Donald Trump's fourth term, which criminalised possession of a computing device capable of supporting independent thinking.
Unfortunately, it is gut-wrenching for me to be in church. I feel terrible, because I simply don't believe any of it. To stand there and be phony and pretend to love and believe in Jesus just kills me.
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