FlailingAce
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User ID: 1084
FlailingAce
2d ago
Just on a quick look through the list there's quite a lot of odd choices. Like why does seventh grade have so few items, most of which are short poems - and then they double up on Robert Frost and Langston Hughes? Why?
What was the goal here? It doesn't seem like breadth of cultural understanding. It seems more like a list put together by a committee with a few busybodies each pushing their own favorites and no clear criteria for what to include. Why is Pride and Prejudice, essentially Victorian era chick lit, required reading? Answer: who knows?
Like many such efforts, I can get behind the concept but find the implementation unimpressive at best.
Jonah is essentially about the mercy of God. Your claim that God 'chickens out' is embarrassingly backwards - the people of Ninevah clearly respond as required to Jonah's warning, which is why they are spared. What's interesting is that Jonah doesn't want them to be spared. That's why he initially tried to avoid God's call, not because he was lazy but because he hated the Ninevites and hoped they would be struck down. The ending of the story is the whole point - that God can destroy or give mercy to whomever he wants, and it's not for humans to complain because we have a limited perspective. Jonah tried to avoid God's call because he disagreed with God's plan, and it's only when he repents of that in the depths of metaphorical hell that he's saved. It's quite an interesting and layered story.
I get the vibe that you're some kind of angry atheist type? It's possible that if you'd been properly taught Jonah and other Bible stories as a kid you would have more respect and understanding for them, and maybe less hostility towards God.
FlailingAce
8d ago
And all of the media coverage could have been avoided if people had just treated it as a curiosity and a medical condition
This is a little disingenuous. It was treated as a curiosity and a medical condition. It was specifically the activists who declared that it is an identity and absolutely not a medical condition, which was the genesis of the whole controversy.
Transvestites have been a curiosity since time immemorial. Dysphoria has been a medical condition in the books ever since we've had books. Don't pretend like it was the anti trans lobby that made this an issue.
FlailingAce
16d ago
Of course education has been bad for a long time, but the fact that it's bad doesn't mean AI isn't making it worse.
As for the data centers, there's a lot of independent reporting on this from people living near them on immediate harms. There's damage to groundwater that makes the local tap water undrinkable, there's constant noise levels in residential areas.
On a larger scale, data centers are now responsible for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and projected to rise. This paper estimates it at $25 billion in environmental damage per year.
There's also other more subtle impacts. For instance, the Utah data center project is expected to produce a heat island effect that would raise temperatures from 5 degrees during the day to up to 28 degrees at night, potentially preventing the dew point condensation effect and quite literally killing local ecologies.
All of these effects are being ignored in the name of progress, and the costs of these externalities are being paid by the people living in these areas who have no say in the matter.
FlailingAce
17d ago
I think that last sentence exactly shows why you're out of touch. I'm not complaining about the effects on internet culture. I'm talking about the extreme damage to our education system, where students use LLMs to complete the assignments that were created by LLMs and will be graded by the same LLMs, and the data shows massive loss in basic knowledge and critical thinking skills. I'm talking about the environmentally catastrophic data centers being erected over the protests of the people living there. Real harm to actual people in the Real World.
Since you didn't bother to Google it, I won't bother putting in too much effort either. Here's a link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/terdawn-deboe/2026/05/21/companies-fired-workers-for-ai-now-they-want-them-back/
FlailingAce
18d ago
I guess you haven't been following this? Or know anyone who works in a big company?
Huge amounts of layoffs have occured predicated on the expectation of efficiencies from AI. Some such companies, once they discovered that AI did not improve efficiency, have been forced to rehire the people they fired, while others just used it as an excuse to cut down their workforce a la private equity, disregarding the long term health of the company. Either way, it's harming workers.
FlailingAce
19d ago
You said
the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.
This is a statement about your feelings.
No, it's a factual matter that can be verified by observing the speech and behavior of that class of people. That's why I described your response as reinforcing my point, because you explicity stated your own contempt for the median person. I'm not sure how you don't understand this?
FlailingAce
19d ago
Sorry, no. If you just go back and look, I originally responded to your claim that
The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything.
by arguing that the median person's position on AI is essentially rooted in the (correct) belief that AI and tech bros in general are contemptuous of them and their concerns. This is not a 'slop' view nor is it a 'demand to have your feelings coddled'. It plays out in all areas of the AI ecology, from billionaires paying off city councils to build data centers that almost every constituent opposes, to companies firing large parts of their workforce because of 'AI efficiencies' that don't actually exist, to the degradation of our public education system by replacing teachers with AI tools that don't work... shall I go on? AI boosters are deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to destroy the lives of the 'median person' and treating that as just an unfortunate externality of their race towards godhood. It's the very definition of evil.
FlailingAce
19d ago
Thanks for reinforcing my point! Somehow, in your view, it's impossible to disagree with your take on AI without being 'pathetic' 'anti-human' who can't 'cope with their own failures'.
I rest my case.
FlailingAce
19d ago
This is a field where we are excelling, if America is going to right itself and bring about a new age of American prosperity this is it, this is the chance.
We have spent trillions of dollars on AI tech, not turned a profit, and not been able to build even a modest moat around the technology.
What if we had spent those trillions of dollars on literally anything else? We could have the best automated manufacturing in the world, or advanced medical technology, or any of a dozen other things that would bring actual prosperity to the nation as a whole.
You seem to be conflating 'we spent a ton of money on this' with 'we are excelling'. The whole point is that AI is a bad investment!
FlailingAce
19d ago
The median person who hates AI thinks a literal bottle of water is obliterated from the universe every time you query chat gpt for anything. Almost all of the concerns raised by the median anti-ai person are retarded propaganda produced by slopulists who, correctly, think of them as cattle that they can lie to with impunity in order to gin enough outrage to propel them into office, keep them supporting their slop rage social media account or because they're genuinely foreign spooks trying to retard our progress.
Actually, this exact perspective is the thing that the median person hates about AI. The water usage isn't the issue, the slop isn't the issue, the fact that AI doesn't produce any value for the median person and instead makes much of their life notably worse isn't the issue - the issue is that pompous 'tech elites' think they're better than us.
I'm personally of the opinion that the AI ecology in its current instantiation is evil in almost every single way, but the biggest way it is evil is that it's a transparent attempt to destroy the lives of everyone who isn't a part of that ecology. It's a predatory economic model, and the prey is that median person that you have such derision for.
FlailingAce
21d ago
Oh good we're back to 'I'll ignore literally everything you said because I have no response to it'. And then you wonder why so many Protestants have a negative view of Catholics.
FlailingAce
22d ago
I don't know who you think you're arguing with about 'denying the fatherhood of God'. That's a radical position that I certainly don't hold.
I also, again, think we should honor Mary - probably higher than any other person, save perhaps John the Baptist ("among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist" Matt 11:11). However, Catholic dogma requires me to believe things about her that I think are clearly false.
First, that she was conceived free from sin, and indeed never sinned at all. From Catholic Answers: "However, Mary was “saved” from sin in a most sublime manner. She was given the grace to be “saved” completely from sin so that she never committed even the slightest transgression." The article then goes on to argue that even though Romans and 1 John clearly teach that 'all have sinned', that Mary could be an exception since Jesus was also an exception. In other words, Mary was just as holy as Jesus. An insane argument in my opinion, but that's how Catholics have to justify their dogma! Besides all this, Jesus specifically rebukes Mary in the gospels. There's also no reason whatsoever to believe that Mary was conceived free from original sin except for the idea that Jesus needed a womb free from sin - but 1) God could make the womb sinless at the point of Jesus' conception, or any manner of other arrangements, and 2) this argument leads to infinite regress, because if Jesus needed a sinless womb, then Mary would need one too, as would her mother, and grandmother, ad infinitum. The whole thing is patent nonsense and directly contradicts clear biblical teaching.
I can go on, since most of the Marian dogmas are likely false, but that should give a basis for further discussion if you're interested.
FlailingAce
22d ago
Sooo you don't have a response to the concerns about Mary?
Why are you on this website if you're not interested in defending your positions? Asserting without evidence that anyone who disagrees with you must be the same as James Talarico is not a defense.
FlailingAce
23d ago
As an ex-Catholic, the concern has always been 1) false doctrines about Mary that are considered obligatory dogmas and 2) adoration of Mary that rises to the level of worship, which is due to God alone. Nobody has ever said the problem was 'honouring Mary too highly'. I don't understand why Catholics are so universally arrogant and wrong whenever I encounter them online.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Russian confirmed losses are unusually low.
Where are you getting that from? I just read today that Russia lost more personnel than they recruited for the fifth straight month. Those are Ukraine's estimates but they're far from 'unusually low'.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I actually don't mind this result. As far as Trump's corruption goes, this is more or less justifiable.
What I cannot accept is his behavior to enrich himself and his family through crypto scams and pay to play, even going so far as to pardon clear-cut criminals because they donated to his campaign. That stuff boils my blood. He used to say 'drain the swamp' but seems to have pivoted to 'become the swamp'.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Yup, that's pretty much where I was at before I read the linked article. However it now seems to me that both the scale and the completely unabashed nature of corruption in the Trump admin is in a league of its own.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I don't think corruption is valent anymore to most people. To generalize the views I tend to see: if you're on the right, you don't believe all the mainstream media lies about Trump, or alternatively you tolerate Trump's misbehavior because we NEEDED him to save our country; if you're on the left, you already assumed Trump was the devil so this kind of thing is just another drop in the pond.
But I actually had my mind changed on this recently. I don't know if we have any other Tangle readers here? They posted an extensive piece on Trump's corruption a few weeks ago that kind of opened my mind to the extent of what this administration is up to. Article here. I'd be curious to hear what other Trump supporters' thoughts are on it. I've noticed since reading it that my emotional response to Trump has become more negative, and I think I'm more open to left-wing commentary on the Trump admin. Was this what i needed to de-program me from MAGA brainwashing? Only time will tell.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Are you willing to expend resources? Matchmaker services still exist but are somewhat expensive. They seem to cater to careerists who missed their early window to find a mate, which may be what you're looking for.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
You should be giving away every cent you don't strictly need and praying until you can no longer stay upright
This is not what the Christian life should look like, it's a caricature. We know because it's not even what Jesus' life looked like. He prayed a lot, but he did lots of other things too, including apparently being a full time carpenter for most of his life.
Christianity teaches that God has a unique purpose for each of our lives, and the only way to discern it is to submit to the Holy Spirit and trust in His Providence.
In fact one of the big issues we Evangelicals have with Catholics is that their salvation relies on their behavior and on the grace provided by the sacraments. The problem is that no amount of holy behavior can get you to heaven, only Christ's grace - but that grace is freely given, and we can in fact have confidence in our salvation.
Catholics who take their faith seriously end up like Martin Luther, who famously would spend hours every day in Confession. That is, until he developed his understanding of Sola Fide - our salvation is only through our faith in Christ.
There's not to say we shouldn't pray, but a Christian prays because we want to hear from our Father, not because it will earn us eternal life if we do it enough.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I don't enjoy EDH either. I haven't played cEDH, it might be more my speed, but the casual EDH games I've played are all about each player durdling around to put together their fun theme or whatever, and I get the clear impression that people dislike interaction or even attempting to win. For me the whole enjoyment of MTG is the challenge and puzzle of outplaying an opponent. EDH in my opinion just doesn't have that.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I understand you. The ideal height difference imo is 5-7" so that's tough for you to find! Bigger differences can still with though, my brother's wife is a solid 12" shorter.
God doesn't need to be sympathetic. The purpose of the Bible isn't to make you think God is a chill dude, it's to describe his actual nature.
Also, the mercy in this story isn't capricious, in fact it's the opposite. God gives Ninevah the opportunity to repent, and they take it.
Anyway, the point of this story isn't God's treatment of Ninevah, it's Jonah's response to it. The person reading should see themselves in the person of Jonah, who seeks to avoid God's will for his life. Even a child can understand this basic theme. Jonah gets in trouble because he tries to flee from God's will, and is saved when he returns to that will. This concept is deepened by the context of Jonah's reasons for fleeing (his hatred for the Ninevites). There's no contradiction, this theme of Jonah's anger is an expansion of the simpler concept.
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