OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Sometimes I worry that I neglect growing in prayer by focusing on theological and apologetic details, which the Imitation of Christ is pretty harsh about. But Joe Hesmeyer recently said something along the lines of "If you love your wife, you find out everything you can know about her. Same with God." which makes me feel better about all the minutia I've gotten absorbed with.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Thanks for the correction! If it's a theology or spiritual advice question I've got The Motte covered. When it's a political question... I don't really know.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Here is what I have heard:
Theologically Conservative Frontrunner: Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Budapest, Hungary. Primate of Hungary.
Theologically Centrist Frontrunner: Cardinal Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Theologically Liberal Frontrunner: Cardinal Tagle, ex-Archbishop of Manilla, Philippines. Currently head of Vatican Evangelization.
There will not be any top-down changes to the Spirit of Vatican II, because the Spirit of Vatican II had nothing to do with the actual documents of Vatican II, which are all fairly benign. The Spirit of Vatican II is going to be demolished over the next twenty years by the rise of young conservative priests.
Going to start following https://x.com/pope_predictor
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
A lot of what you remember about being a kid isn't going to be relevant until your kid's older. Sounds obvious, but it isn't. Even if you had younger siblings, you may have blacked out the first three months of their lives from your memory.
Reading to a baby is a way to get them exposed to the phonology of the language they are immersed in. Genuine baby books that have good rhymes are rare though. Bill Grossman is one of my favorite children's poets, then there's Seuss and Silverstein. At that age it's not really about the pictures yet.
At around 1-2 years old, it's all about the pictures. They can't follow the plot too well, but they will love to point to things and have you say what they are.
Diaper blowouts are a thing that you can't really avoid. Always have a change of clothes for the baby, and maybe a second shirt for you and mommy. If diaper blowouts get common, that is a sign to go a size up on diapers.
The first three months are just about teaching a baby to eat and sleep. Because these things are best learned at home, we don't really travel outside the house without the baby except for maybe a 10 minute walk during their most wakeful time. Doctor visits are the exception and you'll have a ton of them until the baby is 6 months old. If I have to, I'll go shopping with the baby but kids can't sit in grocery cart seats until they are 1 years old.
Lots of parents like to use baby chest carriers. I struggled with "baby wearing."
- Baby is near the boobs and can smell milk. This makes baby hungry and cranky.
- Can't lean forward, it's hard to do things. Some women claim they can do the dishes, sweep the floor, and dance like a Disney princess while baby wearing. I cannot.
- Baby overheats.
- If baby naps in the carrier, they only take a short nap and then are cranky. I've never had a baby nap 1.5 hours in a chest carrier the way they do in their proper bed. (A baby will happily nap in a car seat carrier for hours if you let them.)
- If you get two kids, and the older one needs to be picked up, you can't. A stroller keeps my arms free.
I recommend getting a stroller system that works with your car seat. Baby falls asleep in the car and then you can transfer the car seat to a stroller. Baby stays asleep up until the doctor's testing reflexes.
Books I read and stuck with me:
Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct by Abigail Tucker. Talks about the changes that will happen with your wife. It's almost as significant as a second puberty and comes with many challenges and benefits.
Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman. What sets this apart from a lot of baby books is that it suggests relaxing and not trying to deliver the perfect experience to your children is how to raise the happiest children.
Babywise - the most controversial book ever and you can probably get a lot of the good advice elsewhere, but here are the good things I got from it:
- Sometimes we wake a baby if the time is appropriate.
- Babies are just like humans in that they will get hungry and sleepy at around the same times every day, if you are consistent in feeding them and getting them sleep at around the same times every day. Not so much in the <3 months age range, but 4 months and older for sure.
- Nursing should take 20 ish minutes, switch sides and interact with the baby to keep the baby awake, don't let the baby snack on foremilk and never get hind milk.
- Burping works by consolidating little bubbles into bigger bubbles. I feel like my technique improved once I understood that.
- The schedules in the book were helpful guides.
In the end, the baby year is the hardest, and the first baby is the hardest. But babies are pretty simple. The complicated stuff comes when you try to figure out what "Authoritative" parenting means.
The only thing I can recommend for the Toddler years is to repeat back what you think the kid is saying before responding to it. A lot of preschool/toddler conversations go:
"I Want X"
"We need to do Y instead."
"I want X!!!"
"We need to do Y instead. Don't you want Y?"
"I Want X!!!"
"I know you want X. X is really great. I'm sorry we can't do X right now."
"OK."
With and adult, they would understand that when you bring up Y you're also addressing X. But a toddler doesn't make that connection, especially when they're emotional. Sometimes just addressing X directly, even if you're not adding anything of value, is what they need. They just need to know that you understand them.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Specifically here, Melito is explicitly talking about Jews. There may be some devotional aspect intended, that recalls to us our sins and their consequences, but look at the context:
O Israel, what have you done?
Is it not written for you: "You shall not spill innocent blood"
so that you might not die the death of the wicked?
"I" said Israel. "I killed the Lord."
Why? "Because he had to die"
You have erred, O Israel, to reason so
about the slaughter of the Lord.
He had to suffer, but not through you.
He had to be dishonored, but not by you.
He had to be judged, but not by you.
He had to be hung up, but not by you and by your right hand.
This, O Israel, is the cry with which you should have called to God:
"O master, if your son should suffer,
and this is your will,
let him suffer indeed, but not by me.
Let him suffer through foreigners,
let him be judged by the uncircumcised,
let him be nailed in place by a tyrannical right hand,
not mine."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
He had to suffer, but not through you.
He had to be dishonored, but not by you.
He had to be judged, but not by you.
He had to be hung up, but not by you and by your right hand.
Melito of Sardis, "On Pascha," writing sometime between 120-160.
It's important to remember that Christianity rejects Consequentialism - even if God can bring good from evil, it's still bad to be the one whose hands are in the cookie jar. It was God's role to save, not humanity's role to pin Him down into a specific method of salvation.
Indeed: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5364502/trump-bukele-el-salvador-deportation
"The question is preposterous: how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?" Bukele said.
And video, the quote goes longer: https://x.com/Osint613/status/1911845751606423938
"We're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. You want us to go back to releasing criminals, so we go back to being the murder capitol of the world?"
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
For future's sake, I lost the bet and paid up. Never been happier to lose a bet.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
I was referring to European countries making it almost impossible to fire an employee without a solid record of misbehavior and prior notice.
America decides, "We will only have free trade with countries that maintains worker accidents under a certain threshold and has solid enforcement against slave labor on exports."
Then Europe says, "We'll make our own free trade organization with countries that have a good enough social safety net and do not allow companies to fire their employees willy nilly." And the US gets kicked out of the global trade anyways.
Except that would never happen, because they would love to sell to us. It's mostly a thought experiment to try to assess where the line is that we wouldn't' allow countries to cross. China at one end, Canada at the other, where is the line drawn?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Thank you for hearing me out, I was worried I came across as too harsh, but it looks like I'm only medium harshness comparatively.
If you ever want to talk with someone about your doubts, philosophy, the Bible, etc, feel free to DM me. I also highly recommend Jimmy Akin for a rational (though he was doing it before the Rationalists, he's just likely autistic) explanation of Catholic teaching. And I have Joe Heshmeyer and Dr. Brant Pitre to thank for making the Bible seem coherent and reasonable. All three are all over Youtube and have books out.
One of the biggest difficulties smart people run into with Catholicism is that a lot of what you find in books and online is classified as "acceptable theological opinion." It's a small "t" tradition and hasn't been made dogma. Even a Nihil Obistat on a book doesn't mean that everything in it is 100% dogmatically true, it simply means "nothing (currently) obstructs," there's no outright heresy in it. That doesn't stop people from acting like their particular theological hobby horse is 100% set in stone and disagreeing with it is tantamount to leaving the Catholic faith.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
Yes, this is true. I would be for a kind of trade union that where the main requirement for entry is not exploiting their workers or environments (and maybe combined with a military pact.) Of course, the EU might have a different understanding of what that means than the US...
I don't know if this is because you're a convert, but it seems like your problems are not with the Catholic Faith, it's with the people in the pews next to you. Ultimately, I only really need from the Church access to the Sacraments. 99% of my spiritual development has happened at home. How often do you go to Confession and receive Communion in a state of Grace?
I recommend reading Fire Within to see what the end result of spiritual progress would look like. Having an idea of the goal in mind can help a lot. If you already have a goal, what is it? From what you wrote, it seems like your biggest goal of becoming Catholic was to flee an Atheistic Identity while still holding Atheistic Suppositions about the world.
There have been times and parishes where I don't interact with anyone at all, pray silently instead of paying attention to the homily, receive the sacraments, and walk away. It's wonderful when the Church can also provide social opportunities, but it's not often that this happens.
Augustine and Aquinas are not infallible and their philosophy isn't infallible. The Church has not committed herself to their philosophy, even in cases where she uses the phrase "Transubstantiation" there is no commitment to the Accidents/Substance distinction of Aquinas.
If you really need a change of scenery (and a church that doesn't treat Aquinas like Scripture) see if there are any Eastern Catholic churches near you. A benefit of finding an Eastern Catholic Church over converting to Orthodoxy is that Orthodoxy will make you go through initiation again, while you'll be able to just go to an Eastern Catholic Church without a fuss. But I would rather you try Orthodoxy than disappear.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2mo ago
- Comparative advantage. The essential idea is that each country produces things it is good at and exchanges them for things it isn’t good at. If you reduce trade by creating tariffs, that makes everyone poorer. I won’t dwell on this because there are many good explanations of comparative advantage on the web.
The thing I haven't seen anyone really address is that usually, the Comparative Advantage in question is lax safety and environmental laws. Sure, we have less land well-suited for Cocoa plants than South America. But the reason why it's cheaper to build a factory in China than the US is because China has no qualms with forced labor, unsafe conditions, and pollution. The government of China is able to force people to produce things that there is no demand for, including brand new ghost cities.
Are people just ok with this, morally and ethically? Is there any concern that this is a strategy that China has been employing to explicitly hollow out the American Industrial Capability which won WWII for the Allies?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I don't know if it makes it better. "At the time I had no idea I'd cancel the reciprocal tariffs a couple hours later!" But of course, it's also all according to plan.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I assumed he was saying that in a "buy the dip" and "please stop selling" sense, not that he was actually going to start taking steps to raise the stock market again...
Whatever happened to the fig leaf of "This is not financial advice, but here's what I'm doing..."
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
Most of my (Christian) circles have been tepid on "Believe," largely because making a general argument for believing something isn't very strong without making an argument for a specific happening. It's not clear that there is a category that can be called "Religion and Spirituality" which can be generalized, that includes various world cultural practices, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Arguing for Athiesm vs Religion in the general doesn't work out super well.
Oren Cass is the guy to watch right now. Trump's plan is basically what Cass has been begging for the past couple of years (though Cass understandably feels like Trump's implementation could use some work.) Below are all from Oren Cass-run outlets:
Policy Brief: The Global Tariff: https://americancompass.org/policy-brief-the-global-tariff/
O Canada! Time to Talk Tariffs: https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/o-canada-time-to-talk-tariffs
The One Word that Explains Globalization's Failure, and Trump's Response: https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/the-one-word-that-explains-globalizations
America's Three Demands https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/americas-three-demands
No Pain, No Gain On Canada and Mexico Tariffs: https://commonplace.org/2025/03/25/no-pain-no-gain-on-canada-and-mexico-tariffs/
How to Think About Liberation Day: https://commonplace.org/2025/04/04/how-to-think-about-liberation-day/
And bonus essay: China’s Tariff-Dodging Move to Mexico Looks Doomed" https://archive.is/m7a9L
Edit: Bonus X thread Tariff roundup: https://x.com/JamesNeilMeece/status/1886136306264129707
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
I guess my 31 year old unemployed brother that weighs 400 pounds and plays Halo all day and occasionally destroys the plumbing and breaks the toilet seat and makes my 68 year old mother clean up the mess will just have to get out his tacking hammer and get busy.
These people might be screwed, but it would be nice to catch a guy like this when he's 18-25, before he's 400 lbs and has a decade of habitual sloth. There are many people right now in their prime years who have the potential to turn out like this brother, and changing the incentives might prevent them from falling into such a grim fate.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
Is your friend my father? After all the kids left the nest, my father divorced my mother to move in with his aging dad with a large house in Southern California. He took care of my grandpa and the house until my grandpa passed away, and is now trying to keep the house value up and sell it for "what it's really worth." The house is 60+ years old now and most developers just want the land. I worry he's going to pass away before he sees any profit from the investment that robbed him of the last decades of his life.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
People seem to misunderstand the suit comment. It's not like Zelenskyy cannot afford a suit. It's not a class commentary.
World leaders dress to send a message. Zelenskyy knows this, it's why he has been wearing his black outfit since the start of the invasion. The black outfit shows that he is a wartime president, fighting an existential threat to the last man.
Trump doesn't want the Ukraine to fight to the last man. He wants a peace. Suits are the clothing of negotiations and treaties.
The clothing is one of many things that caused yesterday to break down.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
It was sent out Saturday night and has a deadline on Monday night. There could be people who work Saturdays and have Mondays off who will not see it until too late.
I can get behind the idea of explaining what you do and how it serves a specific directive from Congress (everyone should be able to explain this much). I have to send my boss a similar missive every week. But the way Musk is doing this seems solely for the purpose of upsetting people without thinking it through.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
As you build your shiny, state of the art system you are purchasing items from other businesses and those items will be taxed.
If you're just saying that, "As things get less expensive, VAT will decrease," then yes, that's true, but so will the amount of UBI needed to maintain a standard of living.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
preventing immigrants from making better lives for themselves also qualified.
This is not actually inherently evil. The Church teaches that there are many justifiable reasons to secure a border and not accept all newcomers.
Killing a baby in the womb is inherently evil whatever the circumstance.
I understand the confusion surrounding "what side should a Catholic take?" The truth is, don't. We live in a time of Exraordinary Antipolitics and should be content with calling out evil when we see it without actively hoping for evil that we're more comfortable ignoring to succeed.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
Ever wanted to learn more about congressional hearings on UAPs and the proposed coverup, but most sources either avoid going into depth or assume that you already know lingo and who's who?
Jimmy Akin's Mysterous World recently did an episode on the secret government program Immaculate Constellation. As always, it's pretty informative and measured.
Found this resource that seems pretty in depth of who is electable and where they stand:
https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/cardinals/?_papabili=1
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