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SubstantialFrivolity

I'm not even supposed to be here today

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joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
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SubstantialFrivolity


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
I'm not even supposed to be here today

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Also I'm now at the point in my life (maybe an age thing) where I simply do not feel significant 'shame' over attempting to do things authentically.




Based. And I do think it's an age thing. Perhaps it's because as you get older you feel secure in your social circumstances (you have found your people, you know they aren't going to ditch you even if you make a momentary fool of yourself), but either way it seems to come with age. Or as CS Lewis put it: "When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, I think your complaints (perhaps the wrong word but hopefully you know what I mean) are quite valid. In fairness on the first, a good church will never pretend that its members are perfect or anything, but many Christians possess a level of self righteousness and hypocrisy that is truly galling. And I certainly understand the frustration of feeling as though God is just leaving you to do your own thing, rather than being a friend who actually helps you in your life. I myself have never had a direct experience with the divine, though I have (since returning to the faith) had things happen that I find difficult to explain by way of anything other than "God must have helped me out there".


But my experiences (such as they are) and the ones I related from my dad ultimately aren't proof, which is something I don't expect I'll ever get. It seems like God, for whatever reason, never really reveals himself to people so strongly that any reasonable person would believe that he must be at work. Lots of people (smarter people than I) have tried to explain why, so I doubt I can add anything of value to that discussion, except to agree that it does seem to be true regardless of what the reasons might be. I think that this is why faith tends to be of the "God of the gaps" nature which you find unsatisfying (and I can't blame you): it seems like God always requires people to take some leap of faith from "this seems true but I can't prove it" to "I'm going to believe in it anyway".


For what it's worth, I would say that the struggle (my own journey of faith took me something like 10-12 years with insights coming only occasionally), does seem worth it in hindsight. It sucked at the time. But having gone through it, I was able to arrive at a position which I feel much more strongly certain of than if a mysterious stranger had appeared to give me the answers. I hope that it will be the same for you, if it isn't already - not per se that you will come back to the faith, but that whatever answer you do arrive/have arrived at feels right to you because you came by it as the result of trying really hard to seek the truth.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The biggest thing I can think of would be my beliefs that were involved into me going back to the Christian faith, I guess. I was left at an impasse for a long time as I figured out what to believe, having concluded that there must be an uncaused cause at the beginning of the universe, and that this cause could reasonably be called "God". That wasn't very useful though, because it didn't tell me much about the nature of this deity that set everything into motion. So I was at an impasse.


Eventually, I was reflecting on a couple of experiences that my dad had shared with me which seemed to be clear evidence that the god he believed in (the Christian god) was real and made himself available to us. One time, he said that when he was internally despairing about his life and asking God why he still had to endure its trials and tribulations, time came to a complete stop (from his perspective) and he heard the voice of God clearly say "you're here for [my mom]". On another occasion, he said he was doing a reading at his church, and when he looked up he saw the loft above the congregation filled with angels. I thought about these things, and concluded that I believe these two points to be true:


    

  1. My dad was telling the honest truth of his experiences. He might be mistaken, of course, and he might joke around about other topics, but he would never outright lie (nor joke about something this serious to him).
    2. 

  2. He was not hallucinating or otherwise imagining these experiences he had. The way he tells them, they were too vivid to be anything other than real.
    3. 



Taken together, these two things logically mean that my dad must have truly experienced the things he did (cue CS Lewis: "if she's not mad, and she's not lying, then logically she must be telling the truth!"). Which quite neatly solved the dilemma I was having with trying to determine what I thought the nature of God was. My dad is a Christian, and his god is real, therefore God must be like the Christian god (though I can't rule out other views of God as being inaccurate). Based on that I started pursuing the Christian faith again. Needless to say these beliefs I have about my dad and his experiences are pretty damn load bearing. I have since found other reasons to believe in my faith, but nothing quite so stark and compelling* as what I outlined here, so it would be quite a crisis for my worldview if someone were to prove those things wrong.


* Compelling to me. I realize that to someone who doesn't know my dad, these experiences he had have absolutely no evidential value, which is why I have never tried to use them to persuade someone else to believe (nor do I plan to).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hell yeah dude. I'm happy for you!




It feels good. It feels considerably better than I’m usually willing to admit things can feel.




I know exactly what you mean. The first time my wife told me she loved me, it felt so good I was certain l could fly next.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah I consider myself a Sanderson fan and by far my biggest complaint about the guy is that he seems to let Tumblr/Reddit (same thing these days) dictate his writing a ton. It's really grating.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, if your only opportunities are coming from Discord then you're in trouble. If it's just one source then you're fine. But either way, that doesn't mean you should disdain the chance to take a shot if it comes up. The guy who has other chances loses nothing by seeing what happens on both fronts. The guy who only has a chance on Discord should cultivate better chances, but still should shoot the best shot he has available to him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe, maybe not. But I think @ThomasdelVasto has the right of it here. Assuming that the girl in question isn't someone you know through other means (i.e. you don't have better chances to ask her out), you get the best chances by shooting your shot. I'm not saying you should make Discord your primary means of meeting girls, but you also should take your opportunities when and where you find them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for December 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm really sorry to hear that, man. I will pray for him, and for you. I hope you aren't too hard on yourself for not visiting more - it's genuinely hard to see the ones we love as much as we would like, and doesn't reflect a failing on your part. You're doing a great thing by trying to give him support, keep it up!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To accept any theist view, one has to find some element of the world that cannot be explained by physics, else parsimony demands we not introduce the relevant deity.




That is one hell of an assumption you smuggled in there. And as far as I can tell (maybe I'm missing it), you don't argue for it, but just take it as given. I don't think it is true though. You can certainly declare it axiomatically if you like, but the thing about axioms is that nobody has to actually agree with them if they don't want to, so I think it robs your argument of much persuasive power if you choose to take that route.


Good post btw, obviously I disagree with it but still good stuff. I'm too tired to really give you the vigorous discussion it deserves, but I do appreciate it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not a coffee guy and I wouldn't dream of speaking for coffee. But I am a cheese guy, and I'll tell you right now that mass market cheese is almost without exception garbage. Sargento, and all that stuff? It's not worth the calories. Tillamook is decent but even that pales in comparison to any cheese you can find in Wisconsin from a typical grocery store. So yeah, mass market versions of a product tend to be an inferior version, because they cut corners. It's something I've seen first-hand, and while I'm not in a position to comment on the coffee debate it would hardly surprise me if the same rule applies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah me too man. I'm glad I don't measure my self worth by salary because I would need an intervention after this thread, lol.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Packers looked like SB favorites, but they have scuffled and just lost their best player for the year.




I was lucky enough to get to attend that game, but man what a disaster it turned out to be. I didn't think the Packers were playing that well before the injuries (they seemed to be slowly losing ground after the early lead), but the injuries really put the nail in that game's coffin (and the rest of their season, I imagine). Injuries are a part of the game, but it's still a real bummer to see it happen to your boys.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 19, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think that's a fair assessment. One can dislike the mass market version of $thing without disliking $thing as a whole, because the mass market version is almost always a watered down, lower quality version of the original. If the mass produced coffee came first, you'd have more of a point, but it didn't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Which is? You were supposed to get a list of features, it's always supposed to be there, what do you do?




I'm not saying "panic is the wrong thing to do" in the situation they had. It might be the right thing to do! I'm just saying that blaming the language for the programmer choosing to panic is a bad line of argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It’s not lost on me that Rust used to be a Mozilla project, and everything I see suggests that the culture that pushed out Brendan Eich lives on there.




Yeah unfortunately this is very much the case. I like the Rust programming language, but the Rust community is incredibly toxic. One of the worst communities online imo.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well that's technically not true, they did. It's just that calling .unwrap(), a function which will immediately abort the application on error, counts as "handling" the error. In other words, the path of least resistance is not to actually handle the error, but to crash. I argue that this isn't a better outcome than what would have happened in C, which would also be to crash. Sure, the crash won't be a segfault in Rust, but that doesn't matter if half the Internet dies.




It is by no means the path of least resistance to unwrap errors. It's just as easy to write if let Ok(foo) = bar and handle the error in a non-panic way. The simple fact of the matter here is that the Cloudflare programmers went out of their way to crash if the program got to an invalid state. What is the language supposed to do to prevent that, not allow unwrap? That would hardly be an acceptable solution as unwrap is genuinely useful in some circumstances. People are quick to pick on Rust for this but I don't think there's anything Rust, or for that matter any programming language, could have done to prevent that outage.




Rust has these things called unsafe blocks that let you do unsafe memory operations, closer to what you would be allowed to do in C (though granted, I have heard convincing arguments that unsafe Rust is still generally safer than C). So the path of least resistance is not to do things the safest way, but to just surround everything in unsafe if you get tired of fighting the borrow checker.




This is a terrible argument. First of all, surrounding things in unsafe blocks doesn't do a damn thing to get rid of errors with the borrow checker. The borrow checker still applies inside unsafe blocks! And the CVE in Linux wasn't caused by "just surrounding everything in unsafe", but by a logic error inside the unsafe blocks they needed to use for their purpose. Again, what is Rust supposed to do? Not allow unsafe? It would be useless for its target audience then.


Lots of Rust people will admit the language has problems. I'm one of them; I think that the language has plenty of flaws. But what they aren't going to do is accept bad arguments that ask impossible tasks that no language can do, or that would render Rust unfit for its domain. Nor should they.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can't say I've ever seen a situation where that would pose an an actual barrier. People are always propping doors or letting someone through at the same time as them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I live in Denver, and we have both IHOP and Waffle House. What does that mean for me?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I confess I've never seen Evangelion. But from what I gather, you'd have to be a child soldier with crippling emotional issues to be the protagonist of that. So I think you're safe, lol.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for December 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Congratulations!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Er... what? I'm not making any argument of the sort, simply observing that most any time I see someone expressing the "that's to be expected" point of view it's because they are actually happy the guy was murdered. I'm not sure how you get from there to some kind of thing about victim blaming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is true that one can say "this is a canary in the coal mine, CEOs take note" in a manner where they are not endorsing murder, just warning that it's likely to happen if things continue as they are. But in my experience, most people who say such things about the United CEO's murder are absolutely tacitly endorsing it. Perhaps not all, but it's enough to make one leery of anyone else who shares such a sentiment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also bets on which one will come in the fluffer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for December 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bro just heat your house. It's not rocket surgery. The house is cold, therefore you are cold.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is very much outside the scope of my expertise. I met my wife through online dating, so there's that. But otherwise I don't know how people are meeting, I just know that they do as a result of seeing people's stories over time.