FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
People tend to lack self control. If you had self control you wouldn't be fat.
Its well known that certain medications lead to weight gain: do you believe they do so because they reduce the self control of those who take them? Does hyperthyroidism cause significant increases in self-control, and does hypothyroidism erode self-control? Do GLPs work because they increase the individual's self-control?
If not, then factors other than self-control are at play.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
The legitimacy is legitimately valuable! Even if the election was stolen from you, you gracefully accept defeat unless you have the receipts.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
In 19th and early 20th century Britain you were a homosexual if you liked to be penetrated by men, but if you were the one doing the penetrating you were not considered homosexual. This is similar to the culture of the Roman empire, which saw nothing wrong with man penetrating another man but considered being penetrated to be shameful. All that to say, the conception of the "gay man" as being someone who wants to have any kind of sexual activity with other men is historically quite recent.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
It's peaked, in as much as they can't get any more liberal and have nowhere to go but down.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
I will believe the report of the 7th Army over your no sources cited whatsoever.
My mistake, when I said 'gas chamber' I meant 'homicidal gas chamber'. The camp had a 'gas chamber' but it was never used to kill anyone.
The Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment of the Seventh Army disagrees. Page 33 of the report:
"The internees who were brought to Camp Dachau for the sole purpose of being executed were in the most cases Jews and Russians. They were brought into the compound, lined up near the gas chambers, and were screened in a similar manner as internees who came to Dachau for imprisonment. Then they were marched to a room and told to undress...There were 15 shower faucets suspended from the ceiling from which gas was then released. There was one large chamber, capacity of which was 200, and five smaller gas chambers, capacity of each being 50. It took approximately 10 minutes for the execution. From the gas chamber, the door led to the Krematory to which the bodies were removed by internees who were selected for the job. The dead bodies were then placed in 5 furnaces, two to three bodies at a time."
So we have, on the one side, an SS document (which you haven't produced, though I have been so kind as to produce my source for your to examine) that says that the camp had a gas chamber but that it was never used to kill anyone. On the other hand you have a US report claiming that it was used to kill people, with photographic evidence, and the fact that the gas chamber is still there and can be seen today, and was clearly designed to administer poison gas for the purpose of killing people. Do you have any evidence that the execution device was never used to execute people? Something that would cause me to doubt the fine men in uniform of the 7th Army?
Eyewitness evidence is waaaaaaaaaaay better than archeological evidence when it comes to history. Ask any historian what they would rather dig up: a clay tablet with a contemporary account of an event, or a bunch of pot shards. Better yet, ask them if they’d rather have an ancient Akkadian magically transported to the modern day to talk to, or to find a new pile of old foundations and grave goods from the same era. Eyewitness wins every time.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
What a strange thing to believe. Do you believe parents have no duties to their children, and that children have no duties to their parents?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
We have China surrounded on three sides with allies. Good luck getting your resources from Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
It’s more relevant than PPP, that’s for sure. China is a fairly poor country, comparable with Mexico or Argentina. People have been saying that China will “catch up” to the US for years, but it’s never panned out. It’s looking like China has peaked in terms of GDP growth rate, and they didn’t even manage to achieve a Japanese or South Korean level of wealth before doing so.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
The space is above the map. Open up Google maps and plop yourself down to street view just about any residential area of San Francisco: the buildings are three stories tall at the highest with the vast majority being two stories. Plenty of space if you go vertical.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
The Claim of "the holocaust" is that the Germans uniquely set out to kill every jew in Europe, did so on an industrialized scale and with an efficiency never seen before in human, history, and that it is in a category of horror beyond any other genocide to ever exist including the Great Leap forward, Hoomodor, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and CERTAINLY worse than the Soviet mass killing and expulsion of the German Diaspora post 1945.
The claim of the holocaust is that the Germans acted in a systematic fashion to kill millions of non-combatants, primarily Jews, during WWII. It is certainly not the claim that this is the worst thing that any society has ever done. I believe the standard holocaust "narrative" completely, but I would consider the Great Leap Forward, Holodomor, Killing Fields, the soviet Great Purge, just about everything Japan did to China, the Great Terror of the French revolution, the War in the Vendee, and a great many other historical events equal in kind to the holocaust, with a few greater in degree.
And the testimony of Eisenhower, in his autobiographies and public speaking, and the testimony of the US Army investigations into the camps, and the testimony of thousands of survivors, all seems to point to the fact that Germany killed millions of non-combatants, mostly Jews, on purpose. Primarily through starvation or being shot, but they also definitely killed people in gas chambers as well.
They certainly do not portray the camps as workcamps for enemy aliens. Eisenhower portrays them as "horror camps" where Germans showed "brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency" and whose residents experienced "conditions of indescribable horror". At no point does he blame the conditions in the camps or the starvation of the camp inmates as being the result of collapse, or a loss of life support function during the onslaught of war. Find me the quote where he refers to them as standard work camps, or puts the blame on a lack of supplies rather than the Nazi "bestiality".
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
I disagree. While you have to take the potential biases or other points of unreliability into account when dealing with eyewitness testimony, they are still more reliable for a historian than most other forms of evidence. All evidence has to be interpreted properly, whether it's eyewitness testimony or a pile of bones in the desert. Bones, for instance, can tell us many useful things: some of the injuries this human may have undergone, and whether they had a chance to heal or not, carbon dating information on provenance, gender, level of bone health, etc. If the historical question you are trying to answer is "How did Richard III die" then access to his bones may be very helpful indeed. But if the question is "What wars did Richard III wage, and against who, and why?" then written accounts will tell you far more, and far more reliably, then digging up bones will.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
They're trying to make Japan better by making it easier to access mental healthcare and find ways to fight societal isolation. That you would want them to make Japan better is obvious, what specifically should they be doing to make it better that they're refusing to do? Give everyone a check each month? Let the zombie corporations die? Mail everyone a waifu pillow?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
That makes a great deal of sense, and I would broadly agree. Thanks for clarifying.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
China is a net importer of grain from North and South America, and those trade routes will definitely be cut off. China only has the capacity to feed 65% of its domestic consumption: if you switch everyone to just eating rice you still don’t have enough to square that circle. And the problem is getting worse: by 2030 their self sufficiency will be in the 58%. China doss not make enough food to feed its people, not by a long shot.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2yr ago
I think a big part of it was that internet piracy (as opposed to, say, buying bootleg VHS tapes) was pretty new. Just look at the debate above on whether piracy is stealing on not: everybody was in that boat, and for teenagers with limited funds piracy looked pretty great so most of them didn't try to settle the question too much.
Now we've had several decades to culturally digest the idea of digital piracy, and we're starting to develop mores and ethical norms. In 2002 if you asked me whether the cracked copy of Giants: Citizen Kabuto I copied off of some guy at a LAN party was stolen goods or not, I would have not known what to say. It didn't feel like stealing, it felt like a friend sharing something with me. But it is illegal. But are all illegal actions immoral? At this point, your average teenager would shrug their shoulders and forget about it. I know I did.
Now it seems that the culture as a whole is coming down on the side of piracy being stealing, or at least morally wrong. So younguns today get taught by their elders that they shouldn't pirate, just as they get taught that they shouldn't steal. So for them it's less of a moral conundrum.
So I would say that the lack of novelty is certainly driving some of the change.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. Their plight is almost entirely ignored by corporate media.
This is certainly true if you count by volume. It seems likely to me that Jews may be more persecuted as a percentage of all Jews, because there are very few Jews and billions of Christians. According to the non-profits who care about this sort of thing, 380 million Christians live in countries that have high levels of persecution and discrimination towards Christians.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Suicide is a form of murder: self-murder. We make efforts to stop murders, we should make efforts to stop suicide. Overall, society must signal disapproval of suicide. Cultures that honor or otherwise approve (even the implied approval of not bothering to do anything about it) fall into failure modes that our current society doesn't, without much obvious benefit. See Imperial Japan, for instance, which continued fighting long past the point where there was no hope of victory because their culture venerated honorable death over defeat. It did their society active harm. Their suicide rate remained high up until around 2010, when it began to drop and has continued to drop until today, where the suicide rate is actually a little less than the United States (it went from a high of 25.6 per 100K people in 2003 to around 12.2 today, compared to the US's 14.5).
Why did suicide rates drop so significantly in Japan? Well, in 2007 the government released a nine-step plan to lower suicide rates. Since then they funded suicide prevent services, suicide toll lines, mental health screenings for postpartum mothers, counseling services for depression, and in 2021 created a Ministry of Loneliness whose job is to reduce social isolation. In other words, when the Japanese government tried to make a societal effort towards preventing suicide, suicide rates dropped.
Which is good, because Japan needs every citizen it can get. Population is still dropping, and everyone who kills themselves can no longer contribute to society nor create and raise society's next generation.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2yr ago
As an American of a conservative stripe I would definitely object if my children were shown depictions of genitalia as Kindergartners, and wouldn't really feel "fine" about it until they were, I dunno, maybe 10 or 11? It's just not what you do. You don't show kids penises!
Certainly Americans are more "prudish" about this than other cultures, but that doesn't change anything about the hypothetical, since it was directed at Americans with hypothetical American kindergartners. Things may be changing in certain subcultures, but generally in American culture genitals mean sex and its taboo to combine children and sex. From this cultural mindset the difference between showing a 5 year old a picture of a marble penis and showing them hardcore pornography is one of degree, not kind.
All that to say that the comment that we're not going to show the statue to kindergartners is plausibly just that obvious to the average American.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
If you click on the individual country they explain their reasoning. Here was the reasoning for listing Mexico:
Although the majority of Mexico's population is Christian, many believers live in danger of persecution, particularly from criminal gangs, drug cartels and indigenous groups. In many parts of the country, the presence of criminal groups is growing. Christians who bravely speak out against their activities, or who are involved in community work or evangelism (especially with youth, drug addicts and migrants) are deemed a threat. That makes them a target. In some cases, Christian children or the children of church leaders are singled out.
In some Indigenous communities, those who decide to leave ancestral and traditional beliefs to follow Jesus face ostracism, fines, incarceration and forced displacement. Given that indigenous leaders are those who administer justice in such areas, believers have no one to turn to to investigate wrongdoing and protect their religious freedom. These families can also face harassment from the community, such as property damage, restriction of access to schools for their children, and threats.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
Eyewitness accounts are about the most reliable sources of evidence you get when it comes to history. The more of them you have the better, since you can cross reference them. And there really seems to be too many eyewitness accounts to discount, particularly contemporaneous accounts. Like a letter President Truman sent Eisenhower in 1945 about the problem of finding housing for displaced civilians in Europe in which he writes "Apparently it is being taken for granted that all displaced persons, irrespective of their former persecution or the likelihood that their repatriation or resettlement will be delayed, must remain in camps--many of which are overcrowded and heavily guarded. Some of these camps are the very ones where these people were herded together, starved, tortured and made to witness the death of their fellow-inmates and friends and relatives" and quotes a report from another source (Earl Harrison, an American on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees) who wrote "As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy." And that's just one random letter from Truman, we've got scads of accounts from US soldiers, survivors, and European citizens. Famously Eisenhower held a press conference in 1945 where he said "When I found the first camp like that I think I was never so angry in my life. The bestiality displayed there was not merely piled up bodies of people that had starved to death, but to follow out the road and see where they tried to evacuate them so they could still work, you could see where they sprawled on the road. You could go to their burial pits and see horrors that really I wouldn't even want to begin to describe. I think people ought to know about such things...It is something we have been trying desperately to find out, whether or not the German population as a whole knew about that. I can’t say. It does appear, from all the evidence we can find, that they were isolated areas and this one piece of evidence that the mayor being shown the thing and going home and hanging himself would indicate he didn’t know about it. On the other hand, what makes the story so thin with me is when we find these very high ranking Nazis denying knowledge of it. If they didn’t, they deliberately closed their eyes, that is all. As far as I’m concerned these people are just as guilty as anybody else – those high ranking Nazis – but I think it would be impossible to say, however, the German nation knew it as a whole. But a lot of them know it, because I told them to go out and give them a decent burial. We made a film an hour long and we have made many Germans look at it, and it is not pretty." To say that there are essentially no contemporaneous accounts is simply not true.
If you discount those accounts because they were by Americans, who were at war with the Germans, then you're holding an absurdly high bar for historical evidence. I doubt more than 10% of what we teach in history books could meet such a standard of evidence.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1yr ago
Faith healing would only be easy to prove if it wasn't a miracle: as in, if it was a natural process that repeats itself given the necessary conditions. But nobody claims it's that: the claim is that God directly intervenes. Think about what would happen if you tried to test it: you watch as a faith healer prays to God to heal someone. If nothing happens the faith healer can always say that God chose not to heal her: and if she gets better, the skeptic can always say that she would have gotten better anyway! There are countless testimonies of miraculous healing out there. Even journal articles backed by medical evidence: but the skeptic can always say that something else must have caused it.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Well I think OP means that the US have chosen to ally itself with Israel, a country that routinely does these kind of actions in other countries (including western allied ones).
Routinely? Name one time they shot up a western embassy.
If someone put up missing posters of Gazan children buried in rubble, it would still be a pretty awful move for someone to tear them down. You don't tear down other people's posters, and doing so looks especially bad when the posters are raising awareness of dead kids.
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