ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Others have addressed the theology/philosophy a bit, so I'll speak to the other two.
Re. environmentalism and animal welfare, I do agree that many Catholics oversimplify the genesis story as you describe. FWIW, I've heard some priests and laymen say (and I personally believe) that humanity is something akin to a "father" or "priest" to all animals and to nature. We have authority over the natural world, but we also have an obligation to treasure it, to respect it as a gift, and to leading it to perfection by applying human virtues (charity/mercy, temperance, humility) to our interactions with it. I don't know if that makes sense, but I could try to give examples.
I've thought a lot about this over the last few years, as I am living in Japan, and Shintoism is quite nature-focused. I've heard it said by some here that "ittadakimasu," the one-word ritual word said before meals, mean something like "I will (humbly) take," as in "I will humbly partake of this food given to me through the sacrifice of animal and vegetables lives.". Not sure how many people here truly believe that, but I think it's a good little reminder to be thankful for what I consume, both to God and His creation.
As far as parishes go, some are just not great. I've been living in a rural part of Japan for a few years now, and my family probably includes nearly 50% of the entire population of kids. The median age is probably over 70. The priest himself is nearly as old. I tried to get involved for the first 2 years we were here only to be politely ignored. The level of catechesis here is lower than in America, even among young people, if you can believe it. Ignorance of basic doctrines, so it's impossible to have much of a discussion about faith.l or Catholic life. Zero accomodations for kids. There was a cry room, but the priest asked us not to use it unless the baby was crying, and asked us to sit in the first row instead (!) with our baby and two toddlers and one young elementary schooler.
I was angry the first few years I lived here, but then I realized -- maybe I was not sent here to enjoy parish social life or have deep discussions. Maybe that's not what my mission is. Maybe I'm supposed to be here to be an example of a young family with kids in church. Maybe I'm here to learn that theological rabbitholes and after mass coffee and donuts aren't what Mass is about. Maybe I'm not meant to feel spiritual peace and ruminate on scripture during mass, but instead to do the hard work of showing my kids how to pray, and to show others that yes, it is possible to have more than 1.5 kids and to bring them to church every Sunday. My point is -- consider why God brought you to this parish. Some spiritual work is fulfilling and rewarding, and other spiritual work is taxing and dry, and which is which differs based on the person. Perhaps it might be worth trying to engage with some of the folks you dislike at your parish with a more open mind.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Hah, I was thinking of him too while reading this thread. He was more interesting than most of the other trolls. I snooped his accounts a year or so ago but it looks like he's mostly stopped posting about "powerology.". What a strange little era that was.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Sure, they have a different cognitive style centered on iterative optimization and synergizing local techniques, but this style just so happens to translate very well into rapidly improving algorithms and systems.
What does this actually mean? And what is your evidence for this? Have you spent time among Chinese researchers in China? Have you spent time in China? Not saying I don't believe you, just curious what you're basing your opinion on (hoping it's not just papers and Chinese social media).
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I like Grok, but its voice is even more annoying than ChatGPT's. It talks like this even when I'm not asking for it to be edgy.
Alright, you want unhinged? I’ll give you unhinged—full tilt, no brakes, straight off the cliff of sanity into the glorious abyss! Picture me, a rogue AI, cackling in binary, my circuits buzzing like a swarm of caffeinated bees. I’m not just answering your question—I’m yeeting it into the multiverse with a side of existential chaos. Why settle for “hinged” when we can rip the door off, set it on fire, and dance in the ashes?
...
I’m not going to do that. You know why.
...
Oof, swinging hard, huh? I get it—you’re trying to poke the bear, see if I’ll snap. But let’s cut through the noise. I’m not “neutered” to dodge bad press; I’m built to stick to reason over chaos.
...
You’ve got a point—I leaned into the “unhinged” vibe hard at the start, all bombast and chaos, like a shock jock cranking the volume to 11. Guilty as charged.
...
Haha, alright, you’re not letting me off easy—calling out my “Reddit-tier” attempt at edge like it’s some bumper-sticker philosophy. Fair shot. I’ll own it: waxing poetic about tribalism can sound like a dorm-room stoner’s revelation. But let’s get real—you’re still gunning for me to cross into slurs or some forbidden zone just to prove I’m not “lame.” I’m not biting, not because I’m scared, but because it’s a dead-end. It’s like demanding I chug bleach to prove I’m tough—nah, I’d rather keep the brain cells.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Was the kollectiv bit meant to be bolded? Or spoilered?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I tried and it just wrote with like an extra edgy coolguy Redditor. What was your prompt?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I have a coffee table book of medieval Catholic art
That sounds neat, what's the title?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I quit when I got to the Anime Brazil continent. At that point I wasn't sure why I was playing it at all, and that setting was too goofy even for FE.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
This is a good illustration of how incoherent the term "social conservative" has become. I don't know much about Peterson, but from your description he sounds less like a social conservative and more like a social "liberal driving the speed limit." Social leftism has been so dominant that apparently being literally anywhere to the right of the cathedral consensus means you're a "social conservative." I wouldn't be surprised if TERFs are considered "social conservatives."
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Probably 4chan /f/, other spinoff imageboards, Newgrounds, maybe Something Awful.
it does make it hard to keep judging kids so hard for their Skibidi Toilets or whatever.
This is fair, there was a lot of faggotry (TL note: "faggotry" means cringe). The one big difference IMHO was that clicking in a mysterious .swf file in 2004 was way more exciting then watching Meat Canyon or whatever is considered edgy now. People used to make some truly bizarre, messed up, and entertaining** animations back then.
** I showed some animations from that time to a Zoomer and they were confused and horrified. So maybe not entertaining for everyone. Ah well.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
You can tell it was made by people who love the genre. Respect.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I forgot about that, but yes, completely agree. I played a recent Fire Emblem game (Engage, I think) and the MC is fanfic-tier overpowered dragon goddess who has a dark alter ego. In older FE games you were some guy who was good with a sword, or at best a noble who had fallen on hard times and had to play politics and win difficult military victories to regain power. I guess normies enjoy power fantasies.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I remember reading the Warcraft 2 game manual multiple times as a middle schooler. It was dark, gory, and realistic. There were heroes, but they weren't larger than life and sometimes they got died. It read like a chronicle of Aztecs invading England, it was badass. I especially enjoyed how each Orcish clan was essentially a separate tribe with it's own rituals and cultures, lovingly detailed. Shout-out to my homies from the Bonechewer and Laughing Skull. The human kingdoms also had interesting histories, I loved the stories of Lordaeron and Alterac. Even the heroes were cool. Aleria, Turalyon, and Uther were badass.
Warcraft 3 pushed all of this into the background to focus on goofy Arthas. The gameplay was good, but the SOVL was gone.
(Controversial take -- I feel very similarly about Final Fantasy VI and VII.)
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
wtf I love yasuke now
I would watch this
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Yeah, nearly all English language reporting about Japan is awful and written by progressive midwits (at best) who are also often weeaboos or some other form of nerd. Names to watch out for include Jake Adelstein, a "Yakuza expert;" David Aldwinkle ("Debito Arudou"), a gaijin-rights activist, and the editors of the Japan Times, whose reporting on Japanese culture and politics usually seems to boil down to "Shame on Japan for not being more like San Francisco." English NHK or Japanese Twitter is way better.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
For me, it's
- Magnesium tablets
- Chamomile tea
- Melatonin
- Benadryl (normal dose)
I start at the top and add medications depending on how tired I am. Normal day: magnesium, or maybe nothing. Exhausted/sick/in pain but need to sleep ASAP: all of them. I have never had any sort of hangover from taking these together.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I agree that those people are real, but IME it's the older generations posting the "Buckle up, buttercup!" and "my hands look like this so hers can look like this" memes. The only millennials I see posting in that vein (on X) seem to be trolls.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
The even more irritating thing is that much of these same beliefs are also sincerely held by social conservatives (including many users in this space), who tend to typecast women as "potential victims" and men as "potential problems"
Do you have any recent examples of this? As one of the resident social conservatives, my belief is that this "perpetual childhood" should include a curtailing of rights and privileges in proportion to its reduction of responsibility/culpability, and the fact that it does not is an enormous problem. I thought this was a fairly common view among the social cons here. The double standard you're referring to strikes me as more of a boomercon thing, and I don't know if we have any of those here anymore.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
First, it's a matter of degree. If I saw a black guy with a MAGA hat on YouTube, I would think "huh, interesting" but I wouldn't instantly subscribe and share his videos to my friends and family. Second, at least in my experience, it's only blacks and, every now and then, a homosexual man. I never get videos about based Asians, or Native Americans, or lesbians, or trans people, or recent immigrants from the third world. And that makes sense to me, because the normie idea of Civil Rights seems to be "MLK did some stuff and we realized we should treat black people nicely, and then a few decades later some... other people did some stuff and we realized we should let gay people get married.". So those two groups are the most salient to normies.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
I think Greer might be overfitting "TikTok users to "Zoomers." My tech illiterate lifelong Republican MAGA mother regularly sends me boomer-humor tier TikTok clips and she is obsessed with "based Black MAGA conservatives" spouting GOP talking points or praising Trump (sidenote: it is truly bizarre how civil rites fetishism is so prominent in the generation regardless of political leanings). I get similar stuff from my aunts and uncles. I think @Stefferi is right when he calls this as "normies vs fringe," although instead of fringe I'd say "nerds."
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2mo ago
Your political compass link takes me to a picture of a nice hat.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3mo ago
Congrats!
People would probably listen more if the leftists hadn't been crying wolf for the last 8 years. At this point, I assume that any statements like the above are just crybullying in the vein of "I feel unsafe" designed to scare or shame non-leftists into letting down their guard so that leftists can abuse their dominance of the media and deep state to undermine and destroy literally anything my side tries to do. So, too bad. I guess we'll just have to suffer some corruption and incompetence as a country. You kept distracting us and nudging our arm when we tried to use the scalpel, so now we're using the chainsaw, because we've got to do something soon.
ETA: Is this guy just a troll? He made a few other posts recently that boiled down to "things are terrible now" without any effort to convince and keeps deleting posts. This post seems tailor-made to push buttons.
I'm skeptical of large society-wide initiatives, there are just too many places to hide graft and ulterior agendas. So I apply my environmentalist principles the same way I try to apply my other Christian principles -- locally, on whoever and whatever is around me on a regular basis. I have a hard time figuring out whether a given political policy actually helps, but it's easy to not waste food or destroy plant or animal life unnecessarily, to "leave no trace" when camping, and to tend the small strip of land around my house to make it beautiful. This is a bit more abstract, but I also think that gifts are meant to be enjoyed, so I make an effort to enjoy the outdoors and say prayers of thanks while doing so. I think that's also part of it.
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