Grant_us_eyes
No bio...
User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
Bold of you to think that I had the cash on hand at the time to just buy a car off-hand.
Mind, the only reason I was purchasing said vehicle was due to a truly amazing set of circumstance that wrecked the engine of my previous one.
I'm still salty about that, as well.
Pro-tip kids - always, always manage what maintenance you can yourself, and not rely on others.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
I'd rather live in a society that I don't need to borrow to function, thanks.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
There was a video on twitter recently of a PoV of someone having to shoot a charging boar utilizing a bolt-action rifle.
I couldn't help but stare at the set of circumstance and think to myself, 'In that situation, I really, REALLY would prefer a PTR-91. Or AR-10.'
Which are semi-auto magazine rifles chambered in 308. Which is a typical hunting round.
And boars have become an endemic invasive species in America as of late.
That aside... I know enough to say that gun culture overall in the US has undergone a quiet, seismic shift who's origins can date all the way back to the initial attempt at a gun ban in the 1920s, threading through the Firearms Owners Protection Act in 1986, Clinton's Assault Weapons' Ban in the 90s, up until today, where you've had a steady increase in constitutional concealed carry.
It's around this point I could probably fish around for how holders of CCWs having less crime rates than police officer, the twisted and uncertain number of defensive gun uses and so on and so forth... but there's still a very American cultural thread that basically boils down to, when the Government gets a bee in thier bonnet and tells thier citizens 'No', there's an instinctive reaction of 'Fuck you, now I want it MORE'.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
That you need a credit score to function in society as a whole should be illegal.
Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm very well aware of how and why credit score functions. I get it.
I was still very well put out when I had to go purchase a new car unexpectedly, only to have the guy who went to check my finances come out and stare at me like I was some lost crytpid and blurt out 'You have no credit score.'
Yes, because I grew up around adults who abused credit cards and paid the consequences and who had no desire to go down that road, thank you very much. Only to find out late that, gee whillickers, if you want to function as an adult in society for some things, you actually need a credit score, and for that, you need a credit card.
Why, yes, I'm still salty about that. How could you tell?
(And before you ask, all my previous vehicles were old, used, family hand-me-downs.)
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
Being unkind, he's just not very smart.
Being alternatively unkind, he's smart but abusing the simplified mythology revolving around how most people understand immigration and how it occurred in the late 19th/early 20th century.
I find it amusing that he's trying to use Italians as an example. If we treated Muslims and Somalians the way we treated Italians back then, we'd have a large number of people loosing their minds over it.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
I have never claimed to be a clever man.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo ago
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.
Grant_us_eyes
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
3mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo ago
I really need to stop playing Vintage Story. But the moment I finally get out, they pull me back in...
Grant_us_eyes
4mo 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.
Realistically, I can't complain. Like you, I pay off my credit card every month, and in an emergency, I've built up a disturbingly large line of credit I could use to buy a great deal many things should a serious need arise.
Given that I get cash back on purchases, said company is basically paying me to use their card.
But, y'know... I wouldn't really cry if I had to give it up. Yeah. I could make that sacrifice. Easy.
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