Grant_us_eyes
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User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
I do not think this is a valid interpretation of the text. How do you interpret "Love your enemies" or "pray for those who persecute you"?
I don't know, I'm not a bibical scholar. I did say my knowledge was limited, and I'd imagine the various translations for the Sermon on the Mount is rife with a whole host of implications; I've heard enough griping about how 'meek' in modern language isn't what Jesus was referring to for his time to eye the modern translation of the bible with skepticism.
Where do you see your interpretation being modelled by Jesus or his disciples in the rest of the text? Where do they force their opponents to break the law?
Well, I don't know. Again, I'm not a bibical scholar. Armed and active resistence displayed in scripture isn't common; most of it is filled with rhetorical brilliance and navigating an unstable political situation.
But that doesn't matter, because in that instance Jesus was arguing for passive resistence, the equivalent of lawfare for the time. Which is smart; going active against a numerical opponent isn't exactly wise...
Peter cuts an ear off one of the men arresting Jesus; Jesus heals the man on the spot. How does that mesh?
Peter was kitted up to strike a roman legionaire sent to arrest a Son of God. (Which god? The romans didn't know.) That implies he was armed and capable; not exactly the image of a pacifist group. As for why the heal, well, you could argue alot of interpretations, depending on how you view things, and I don't consider such that important.
And while not breaking the law, Jesus had no issue resorting to violence as needed, as he did for the money changers, or noting what should be done for those that harm children.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
I'm guessing you're a yankee, assuming you're American.
I'll say 'Yes sir' and 'Yes ma'am' to the janitor and maid, or anyone similar. It's basic politeness. So I'd say this is a definite regional thing.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
Dance classes supposedly have a very twisted ratio when it comes to men and women, but I've heard this can vary from location to location.
I'd like to learn myself, but, sadly, the evenings they offer for classes are already filled up.
Personally, I wish there was a local book club where I live; the one I attended a while back before covid was surprisingly fun, but nowadays I'm not willing to drive 50-miles one way to attend such a thing.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
I was referring to the forced conscriptions Romans could do on civilians.
Key point, they could conscript you for one mile, but anything beyond that was illegal. Hence, 'go with them two miles'.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
The past month or so has made me suspect that Europeans(in general) are obsessively attuned to class in a way that America(in general) isn't.
So they default to class, whereas we default to stereotypes.
It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's very telling, and results in monstrously different assumptions and outcomes.
Grant_us_eyes
5d ago
The original interpretation of the phrase was to mean 'force your enemy to respect you'.
Scripture is best looked at as if it was a philosophy text, meant to be interpreted in the historical context of the time. A lot of scripture is like this; for example, 'If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles' is often interpreted to mean that Christians should meekly and gladly submit to slavery - ah, no. Law of the time allowed for Roman soldiers to force conscription to carry military equipment, but only for a mile.
Meaning scripture isn't telling you to meekly submit, but instead 'If someone seeks to enslave you, force them to break the law'.
As for why modern interpretation of scripture tends to lean this way... Look, I'm no Historical Biblical Scholar, but I'd have to say there's a horde of reasons with no single golden bullet. I could probably go off on a semi-long, barely incoherent rant about that, really.
Grant_us_eyes
8d ago
Maybe you could have said this ten, fifteen years ago. And maybe you can still say it today - 'temporarygunowners' as a stand in for the liberalgunowners on reddit is a joke for a reason - but I'm not so sure.
Maybe it's my odd bubble, maybe it's selection bias, but I can't help but feel that over the past 5 years or so we've seen a rise in gun owners that aren't necessarily red tribe in origin. A sort of twisted inverse of the entire Boomer-ish take of 'I'm a gun owner, but-' that's hard to define in a short, concise way. The kind of people that'll come into firearm forums(atleast on reddit) and start claiming how much they hate Trump and how bad he was for firearms(muh bumpstocks!) while ignoring all the bad behavior from Clinton, Obama, and Biden.
Then, you also have the John Brown Gun Club-type deals, and there's atleast one video floating around on twitter of a blooper reel involving transtifa types larping on the flat range via tactical drills.
Mind - and perhaps I'm reading into this too much - the attitude of those two groups heavily imply that the reason they have said firearms is so they can use it against fascists.
In that light, Robinson doing what he did and how he did it makes perfect sense, imo.
Grant_us_eyes
9d ago
Count me amoung those that have a similar response. I can't really fathom why people think it's good or permissible to go up to someone and effectively nag them about a family member that just passed away.
I get that they think in their minds that asking about them or how they died a few scant days after said person just passed is being sympathetic, but to me it just comes across as ghoulish. Like, I really don't want to talk about this right now. Let me deal with my shit privately, thank you very much.
I'll ask the obvious question before the admins likely delete your post due to lack of effort.
Who?
Edit: Boy, did I get that question answered elsewhere...
Grant_us_eyes
19d ago
Having experienced both, I've found that I much prefer dry heat over wet heat.
The dry air never bothered me much, but I admit I was merely visiting as opposed to living there for a year at a time.
Grant_us_eyes
24d ago
I honestly wish you could remember what historian that was.
I could always use another book to add to my 'to read' pile.
Grant_us_eyes
24d ago
I still recall driving into work and seeing advertisements from various federal agencies on how to snitch - excuse me, inform them on potential instigators and people whom may have attended the J6 protests.
Or posts on my local state reddit celebrating when people were arrested due to being tied to said J6 protest.
I don't recall anything of the sort being persecuted for the BLM riots, or the June 20 riots. This is what I have in my head when people try to claim that left-leaning/associated were treated the same as J6.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
A different audience in Europe. London, specifically.
This particular myth tends to annoy me a great deal, because it's a perfect encapsulation of a tactic I've seen displayed by left-leaning types time and time again - the constant, insistent urge to drag politics into areas that it doesn't really belong(ie, entertainment).
This wasn't Cancel Culture. It was a masks-off moment for a bunch of grifting entertainers that were trying to belong to the Cool Kids Club. Surprise, surprise, the group that made them popular from the start didn't take well to being grifted.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Vintage Story has alot of difficulty gates for survival that give you plenty to do in-game, above and beyond acquiring metals - it can also cause some emergent hilarity. Just last night while playing, what turned into a scouting mission for more pine resin flipped into an effort to capture and bring back a female goat for my domestication efforts before quickly devolving down to fighting for my life against a horde of wolves in order to capture said damn goat.
All because if you make sure your diet has enough variety, it increases your health, and I need to work on dairy production.
Fun times.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Looks at his current play-count for saved worlds
Well, as of late, I'd have to say Vintage Story. As for why? It's hard to place down on one single element. There's just something weirdly appealing about making wine and baking pies in a post-apocalyptic lovecraftian eldritch horror setting were your overall goal is to make it to producing steel. Oh, and possibly figuring out the entire reason for all that post-apocalyptic lovecraftian eldritch horror.
Mechanics-wise, it also has a wide plethora of emergent gameplay. Not requiring containers to store things and just being able to put your tools down on the ground or leaning up against a nearby wall has a charm all of it's own.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
I really need to stop playing Vintage Story. But the moment I finally get out, they pull me back in...
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Susan Cooper's 'The Dark Is Rising' is pure young-adult adventure fantasy and done very well.
CS Friedman's 'Crown of Shadows' series is a personal favorite, and a twisted mix of sci-fi and fantasy and also done very well.
Hell, even the penultimate male-fantasy young-adult book 'My Side of the Mountain' was written by a woman.
I always considered it a bit weird when people bitched about the lack of female writers in fiction, when I turn to my bookshelves for 1970/80s fantasy and flip through female after female writer. If anything, it's the men that are lacking, not the women.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Yes, Escorts provide GFE-stuff. Of varying types, of varying lengths. I've checked. The point I was trying to make is, such an activity as I described it involves a deep degree of investment on both sides of the fence and a level of intimacy that just doesn't boil down to 'these two fuck every so often'. It speaks of two people actively trying to keep together a household and the long time-horizon that implies.
Can't really get that from an Escort, or an OnlyFans.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
A girl with OF isn't going to hold my hand while we walk into Home Depot to pick out supplies for our weekend project.
...well, not unless I pay her an obscene amount of money.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’.
Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’
I fear the steps to solve such issues involve impossible tasks. If the first step on your master plan involves 'First, you must become Swiss', we have quite the road ahead of us.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
"I would rather be a temporary fleshlight for a 9 or 10 than a permanent sex slave and housekeeper for a 5." says one woman, and I can only really fucking hope that this is the opinion of an extreme minority.
I hope I'm right. I'm terrified that I'm wrong.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
People seem to trip over the Constitution a fair bit, operating under the assumption that it somehow developed in a vacuum. But if you look at the political science of the time, no, there was a lot of robust discussion involving all points of the Constitution, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers being just a small part of a larger landscape.
Several politicians of the time make no bones about how the 2nd should be interpreted - that all the terrible implements of the soldier and warfare should belong to all the citizens, barring a few government officials.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Every time I see arguments speaking for Euthanasia, I recall reading the comic Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis.
The first story in said comic series involves a gonzo journalist by the name of Spider Jerusalem in the far future hunting for a story, stumbling across a break-away group being lead by an old companion of his. Said group has taken to utilizing radical body-mods to effectively partially transform themselves into half-human, half-alien hybrids. They're effectively throwing a political hissyfit/riot to get recognized as some sort of special group by the City, so they can acquire benefits and whatnot. Of cource, there's the slight issue that said radical body-modding tech they're utilizing was a failure from the start, hence the hybrid part, as it should have been a perfect transformation, but whatever...
Anyways, the story ends with Spider effectively shaming everyone into calming down and not bashing all the hybrids brains out on the sidewalk, and ends writing a column about the entire circumstance.
One line in said column always stuck out at me, roughly paraphrased from memory, as I lack said comic in front of me to quote verbatim. 'If we were a civilized society, we'd give these damaged people a playground sandbox, a pat on the head, and let them do their own thing in peace'.
If we were a civilized society.
Civilized.
That word, I've always felt, did alot of heavy lifting. Loading bearing, you could call it. If we were civilized. If we lived in a society where a sizable chunk of people that wouldn't take advantage of such a fail-state, that wouldn't abuse the system, that wouldn't twist it for their own ends. If we were mature. Adult. Civilized. If things were only civilized, we could do so many things.
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility. I feel that if people want to do something, that doesn't harm others, they should at least have that option. Suicide included. If you want to check out, well, I personally don't agree with it, and it's not my thing personally, but I can at least understand why some people would want to do so. My odd life has put me in close contact with a wide spread of people, including some older individuals that refuse to change their behavior and have basically decided that if they're going to go out, they're going to go out living life on their terms.
However.
I'll be the first person to play the devil's advocate and note we don't live in a perfect world, that perverse incentives are the quiet ruler that dictates more than I wish, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While personal responsibility and choices is one thing, it's entirely another to give authority to the state.
Do I trust individuals to make good, well-informed decisions that have the best outcome for their future? No. But the thing about believing in personal responsibility is that this also includes the fail state to fuck up in a cataclysmic fashion.
Do I want to give that sort of power to the State and Authority as a whole? Fuck no. I could go off on a long rant here about how I feel some laws and societal allowances have a gargantuan knock-on effect on societal development as a whole in a very bad way, but I won't belabor the point, and it would be distracting, anyways.
Am I being cruel, here? Evil, one could argue? Dooming people whom suffer, physically and mentally, in a state of agony that last as long as they live? Perhaps. Is this fair? I don't know. I wish we had better options. I honestly, really do.
If we were just civilized...
But what I do know is that maybe, just maybe, we want to keep that genie in the bottle for a very good reason.
Grant_us_eyes
1mo ago
Well, see, that's the problem.
It's the exact opposite.
The reason the first movie drew so many nerds and geeks to it, despite the majority of them actively disliking said movie and it's resolution is that James Cameron actually put in the work to build verisimilitude. The entire setup and world-building of the first movie - if you do the background research - is actually really, really good. He basically sets up a cyberpunk dystopia in a very subtle way to explain the whys and wherefores.
Some of the background aspects that always stuck with me was the brutal albeit realistic risks that people signing up for a tour on Pandora would take. You weren't signing up for a tour on a vacation world, but a potentially deadly mission to what amounted to a remote Antarctica Research facility, only ten times worse. If your cryo-pod failed during transit, they would quietly euthanized you, as they couldn't spare the resources to keep your sorry ass alive for several years, and you just weren't that valuable. If you got injured past a certain point, again, they just euthanized you. It spoke of a ruthless business with very limited resources that treated thier employees like replaceable cogs, and with the same care. Brutal, albeit realistic and understandable.
And then there's the ISV Venture Star, which is one of the most gorgeous ships in movie history. Beautiful thing.
The second movie basically takes all the world-building in the first movie and throws it in the trash. Turns out, no, full-brain uploads and backups are a thing, and can be done in a trivial fashion. Whoops, the head security guy knocked up someone and the resultant child got left behind, despite the previous attitude toward RDA's own employees meaning said child likely would have been aborted without so much as a raised eyebrow or blush.
Avatar 2 basically went full Eclipse Phase without working out the implications of what going full Eclipse Phase actually means. Given all the homework done to make the first Avatar movie reasonably work(compared to other movies, atleast), it points overall that James Cameron likely had nothing to do with the writing/worldbuilding and is basically making shit up for the second movie without thinking it through and going all in on selling a message.
Granted, that's what the first movie did, but it atleast did the work to make it actually interesting.
Whoof. Okay. Glad to get that off my chest. All right, I'm done.
My experience with school districts is that anything Principle-level(and sometimes Assistant-Principle) and above are pure political appointees.
Old-style politics, in the form of whom you know. And if you're lucky, they're somewhat competent at thier job. If not...
So it doesn't really surprise me that he got hired. He knew the right people, and they didn't care about his bona fides.
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