JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Here the trick was that the big S pretended the guys he's giving the rings to are not owing him anything, he's just a cool dude giving out free gifts, for the love of humanity and the public benefit. Certainly not vassal loyalty - those were kings or people that saw themselves on the same footing as kings, and didn't see themselves as a vassal to anybody, not even the Valar. When they discovered what's actually going on, it was too late for them. But giving up the game upfront and saying "I am your leader and you are my subjects now" would certainly not work and not how it went in Tolkien's world. These guys were not stupid and very proud and powerful.
And yes, rings are traditionally used - not only in Anglo culture - as a sign of borrowed authority and dependency. But it's not the only use. He literally pretended to be distributing gifts from the Valar and teaching everybody how to do cool things. Including making the rings. That's what Valar did too, and there was no servitude involved. So describing it as if everybody saw what's going on is directly opposite to Tolkien's intent - the whole point is that they didn't understand what's going on, not even the Elves, initially, certainly not humans. It took centuries for them to realize what's up.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
I am giving you those pretty rings, totally gift, because you are so awesome, no strings attached whatsoever, no negative consequences, and henceforth I am going to call you "my servants by the power of the Rings" but don't pay any attention to it, it's just a technical term, there's really nothing to it, does not concern you in any way.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
My employment contract clearly says it'd be a fraud. Criminal career is not for me - it only worth it if you really good at it or have very good connections, and I am neither.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
I don't have a problem with any of it (and equal amount of interest to it) besides one small matter - this obviously has nothing to do with Tolkien or anything remotely connected to anything Tolkien was thinking about, imagining, caring for, having in mind... If they just left his name out of it. But that's of course too much to ask.
For insurance or for healthcare? I pay $0 for the insurance - my employer covers the premiums - but OOP costs can vary significantly. For HDHP plan, family deductible is $3400 for 2 people - which is about $140/month I am on the hook for before insurance starts kicking in. But there are more costs too...
Now, you can say "you must count your employer's payments too" - but then I guess Canadians and Europeans have to count their tax payments too? I mean, where do we even stop? The system is purposely built to hide and distribute the costs so nobody would really know how much anything is costing. You can measure out-of-pocket costs at the moment of consumption, but those aren't the only costs. And if you try to account for all the costs, you very quickly get into an impenetrable maze. This is how it's designed to work. So if you want to ask "how much it costs" we'd have first to figure out what "it" is and what "costs" means.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Yes, I know a lot of places spend significant resources to house and otherwise benefit the migrants. The question is whether they are doing it because they want to (this is frequently the case in the US - at least the wokes in the government do, but sometimes the wokes on the ground too) or because they are legally mandated to. If indeed EU laws dictate that, it's certainly not a sane or sustainable policy, but I see how the migrants would be eager to exploit it.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
at some point this world will end
The flood didn't end the world. It ended the sinners (presumably, though as we all know it didn't exactly work out that way). That's what the covenant promises not to do, and that's what the original question was about - why God didn't destroy "us all", presumably for our sins. That's exactly what happened in the story of Noah, and that's exactly what the abovementioned covenant was about. The Christian (and other religions') treatment of the Eschaton is substantially different from that. And there's no specific trigger condition for it.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
The promise of "I would not use a single one out of infinite possible ways of destroying you" is hardly worth anything, so I don't think that's what it meant. The people at that time may have lived in different societies from ours, but they weren't stupid.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
entitles you to room and board
Does it? I am not sure how it is in Spain, in US asylum claim does not entitle you to anything per se, you have to be actually approved to qualify for benefits, and even those are term-limited. There are ways around it if you land in a blue state with a developed NGO industrial complex (which are all major blue states) but I wonder how that works in Spain.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
Yes, claiming asylum is obvious, but in this case is not necessary as asylum claim protects one from deportation, and nobody seems to want to deport them now. They basically are roaming free, at least within Ceuta, but that's not a very good long term plan - they would need to have food, shelter, facilities, sources of income, etc.
Ferrying 60 thousand people would take a while I imagine? Do they have any checkpoints at the entrance/exit? Do they even have money to pay for the tickets, or ferry company is going to transit them for free?
Also, doesn't seem to be happening: https://cadenaser.com/andalucia/2026/07/31/la-crisis-migratoria-de-ceuta-no-afecta-a-la-linea-maritima-con-algeciras-radio-algeciras/ (they could be lying of course but I think somebody would notice tens of thousands of people suddenly showing up in Algeciras?)
JarJarJedi
7d ago
It's clear that the Spanish government is not inclined to do anything about it. But I wonder - what is the plan on the invaders' side? I mean ok, they took over Ceuta, then what? Are they going to settle there? I don't think local economy is able to accommodate doubling the population - so what's next? Emergency budget grants from Spain to put them all on state welfare rolls? Resettling them in Spain mainland? Just doing nothing and having them take care of getting to the mainland by whatever means they find, or not? Just pressuring Spaniards into leaving and taking over, with Morocco declaring they must extend their sovereignty there for humanitarian reasons? I'm not sure, what's the endgame here?
JarJarJedi
8d ago
Congrats on your achievement, this is great! We are almost the same height, and I've been hovering around 200-210 lbs for a while now, after going down from 230+, and I still feel like I probably need to go at least 10 down. I just did diet + IF, no meds though. It's not easy to keep consistent that way. I don't look "fat" but definitely have some noticeable extra around the belly. Note though if you start to seriously work out with weights, your muscle weight would go up, so it may make sense to start tracking body fat percentage and such, BMI won't really be a good tool I think. I think if you get to 180 while getting some muscle you'd be in an awesome shape, but probably 190 should be fine too.
Second the advice about getting a PT at least for start, to establish the form, especially if you haven't seriously exercised before. And use a tracking app (or just a spreadsheet, doesn't matter really), seeing how you can lift more than last year (no matter what the number is, just that it goes up) really helps keep the motivation going.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
It's inexplicable.
He promised not to. It's right there in the Bible.
Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your [a]descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
I don't know about every place, but there are certainly places where you still can get that. Maybe not spurs, but otherwise I think it's still around.
I've been to Europe many times, and also regularly speak to Europeans and I haven't noticed any change to the hostility. Of course, people have different opinions about things going on in the US (just as Americans have opinions about things going on in Europe) but I didn't notice anything generalizable. That said, I try to associate with people who generally would not do such sort of thing (even among the left there are people who know how to behave properly), and if someone random hated me I probably didn't even notice it.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
One may resent a loud, obnoxious, crass person who is sure the whole world was created for them. But one surely would never respect a person who apologizes for their own identity and existence, and tries their best to pass as somebody they are not.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
That's nonsense, Europeans sneered at Americans when Trump was a TV personality, sneer at Americans now and will sneer at Americans when only historians would remember who Trump was. That's just the way of things.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
The homeless psycho monster problem in America is visible even in the richest parts of rich cities like NYC and Miami.
"Even"? The highly compactized urban congregations pretty much the only place where that problem existed. I mean, sure, you can be homeless in rural Idaho, if you really try. But I don't think you'll find an establishment like Skid Row there. Megapolises are "rich" because they are concentrated, and they have burgeoning homeless population because that's where the feeding grounds are (for every possible value of "feeding").
You go to America on business or for tourism, stay in a $800 a night hotel in San Francisco or NYC or LA,
That's a relatively recent phenomenon. 20 years ago SF was very tourist-friendly and NYC had Giuliani clean it up and LA was pretty decent too. Then the Long March came to its conclusion, the wokes took power and implemented their compassionate policies. Now there's literal shit on the streets. Sigh.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
Britain has lost an awful lot of its Britishness
In Britain, raising a national flag is a subversive act. In the US, it is still largely not so, though in certain places it already is.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
America no longer seems confident enough to assimilate people
That's not about confidence, that's a deliberate act. Woke ideology rejects assimilation and considers it essentially soft genocide. Thus, saying "American no longer seems confident to assimilate" is like describing a mugging as "This guy no longer felt confident in keeping his wallet".
JarJarJedi
10d ago
I am Jewish, so, you know... But in general, I find normal people very rarely have adverse reaction to admitting one is American, or even Jewish or Israeli. Obvious exception are obvious, but in general case if I feel there could be such a reaction, it probably means I am in a wrong place and need to minimize my presence there.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
If you need basic stuff, and are comfortable with paying whatever Antropic is charging (or somebody else pays it for you) just using Claude code would probably be enough for you, it'll take you 80% there. At least that's how it feels right now. There are plugins and skills you can use for the rest, those are highly dependent on your specific usage. Cursor is basically VSCode, that would work too. The rest is just optimization IMHO - i.e. you may squeeze another 10% of productivity by choosing optimized harnesses, and reduce costs by using all kinds of plugins that compress contexts and modify tools to be more LLM-friendly, but this is mostly marginal and TBH I am not 100% sure I know which works better even in my niche, let alone generally. It's too fluid right now to identify any clear winners.
If you are cost conscious or want to use open models or want to dig into highly specialized niche use case which is not covered by generic model, then it's more complicated. pi would probably work as generic harness, I heard decent reviews about it. And I heard people saying good things about Grok Code's free tier, but haven't used it myself yet.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
The existentialists are the worst!
IIRC Tolkien initially intended for the Nazgul to keep the rings and wear them, but later changed it to Sauron taking the rings from them, once the subjugating their wills was complete, and keeping them for himself. I think the final structure was that it was Sauron's will that controls them, and the rings are only an accessory to that.
I am not very good at finding quotes, so if you find something to the contrary then that's what it is - but from what I have read so far everywhere, it doesn't seem to be at least explicit. And not how Sauron worked in general, at least on that stage. He'd pretend he's just a friendly gift giver. So why not accept? Later, of course, he was the Dark Lord, but that was much later I think, and those guys probably wouldn't join somebody like that willingly, they initially weren't evil, just ambitious. That's kind of the broader point I feel - you don't need to be evil and consciously join the Dark Side to get in trouble, the temptation will lead you there subtly and imperceptibly, and you will never sign the Evil Contract in blood, everything will be justifiable and reasonable, until it's too late. It's a very Christian message.
More options
Context Copy link