TitaniumButterfly
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User ID: 2854
TitaniumButterfly
2d ago
This is fairly common in the US in parishes with a background of immigrants who just wanted to fit in to mainstream culture several decades ago.
Agreed that it's dumb though. How can you even do prostrations?
Sometimes you'll see organs, even, in churches that were bought from other denominations.
And every service, and every event, and every informal gathering...
My parish has a custom of celebrating the Ascension every year by going up to the top of our local ersatz Mount Tabor. The first time I participated, I paid attention when the priest went to great lengths to make sure we all knew exactly where to park and what to do, and how long various routes would take, such that we could all be there on time and not miss the service. I was a single father at the time and did my best, but was sweating because I could tell I was gonna be about 20 minutes late.
When I got there, no one else was around. Had I missed it entirely?
The first other parishioner arrived about an hour after that. They trickled in over time, and we did the service about two hours after we'd all agreed we would. No one seemed the slightest bit surprised by this.
Punctuality is about the only thing I miss about Protestantism.
...
My priest told me not long ago that he has such different experiences counseling (ethnic) Americans and Greeks. The Americans, he says, are perpetually-terrified about their own salvation, but generally seem to rock it in life. The Greeks have no concerns about salvation, but he has to work extra hard to get them to do things like hold down gainful employment or make smart decisions about the future. Since I don't know what to say about that I guess I'm presenting it without comment.
TitaniumButterfly
3d ago
I have seen too many of my own family members, and friends, die surrounded essentially by foreign medical workers who only notionally speak their language, can't imagine their values, and don't seem to care about them as human beings at all.
And I suppose this is only going to get worse by the time it's my turn. Not clear whether robo-nurses might be an improvement.
I'd like my end of life care-givers to be young, earnest, hopeful members of my own ethnicity.
...But then I see the kind of things white nurses post on TikTok and...
Hmm. Seems like I have some kind of block when it comes to thinking past that point.
For this explanation to work would require the following:
- Said headgear would have to be constrictive enough to cause major permanent deformation
- All these cultures independently happened to put such headgear on their newborns
- For no apparent reason they'd all have to independently decide that it also increases intelligence
Basically I'm not buying that.
A practice being widespread doesn't by itself mean anything. Bloodletting was practiced on every inhabited continent thanks to its alleged curative properties. However, I think we can all agree that unless you have one of a fairly small set of diseases it's unlikely to make you feel better and the ancients just didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Circumcision is another bizarrely universal practice, though the reasons for it appear to be lost to history.
That's true, but
- Bloodletting is indeed helpful at times, which is why we still practice it
- I actually don't think bloodletting or circumcision were anywhere near as prevalent across as many isolated cultures, though I'm less sure about this
- My point was that no other comparable practice was consistently supposed to specifically increase the recipient's intelligence. No one's claiming that about circumcision, tattoos, or tooth-filing; or if that did happen it was an isolated fluke instead of consistent.
- It's natural for moderns to suppose that the ancients would obviously have associated bigger brains with higher intelligence, but in fact many (most?) of them hadn't made that connection at all outside of ACD specifically. C.f. some cultures supposing that consciousness and wisdom are located in the liver, which can be eaten to absorb it.
If ACD is correlated with bigger skulls solely because elites naturally have big skulls, that's not great for the "ACD increases skull size" theory unless you're going to smuggle in Lamarckian inheritance. It should decrease, not increase, your belief that ACD increases skull size.
Yes, I'm aware. It's almost my point! Which is that it's weird for the mainstream consensus to be that there is no correlation. If anything I'd expect them to lean harder into it as evidence against ACD's effectiveness. I really do think the motivation here is just to keep distance from icky associations with things like phrenology, etc. Certain ideas are simply radioactive to academics and this has all the hallmarks of being one.
Part of the reason I think so, as I said before, is that they're apt to lead with "ACD doesn't even increase cranial capacity" which is a very strong statement. When it's pointed out that it clearly does at least some of the time their backpedaling becomes less convincing the more one presses into it.
TitaniumButterfly
9d ago
Depends upon how high they're falling from, and in what concentration.
TitaniumButterfly
9d ago
I'm a big fan of Arthuriana and may check this out. However, a quick glance at the wiki page suggests that it subverts a lot of things I'd rather not see subverted. While the stance on Christianity isn't clear, I've run into... too many examples to enumerate of ~Arthurian fiction from that era which indulge heavily in eye-rolling disparagement. At least this one doesn't sound obnoxiously feminist?
Curious as to your take.
Personally I adore Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, especially the first two books, which do something really cool by weaving in the Atlantis myth. Also, I think because of Lawhead's progressive brain tumor, his writing seems to have gotten steadily worse over his career after those books, but last I checked (a while ago admittedly) they still stand up well.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Agreed. It's gratifying when someone riffs like this.
I imagine most women would prefer a decent but powerful man over a harsh but powerful man
I'm certain most would express that preference, and about as certain that most would reveal otherwise.
They are truly alien creatures to us men and in such cases we're prone to typical-minding. Women are smaller and weaker etc., but it's a mistake to suppose that they experience the world the way men who are as small and weak would. We tend to evaluate propositions regarding female psychology by asking ourselves whether those same propositions would be true of us if we were in their shoes. But many behaviors which would be vices for males are virtuous for females, however subtly so.
Anyway, the problem here is that different thirsts for a person might be mutually-exclusively satisfied by different strategies. She wants several mutually-exclusive things, because the pareto-optimal reproduction strategy has to sort of multithread and jump to whichever option is advantageous at the moment. She desires to be cherished, adored, and protected; she desires to be taken without consent by the man against whom no other man can stand. It's difficult to imagine what actual human male can fully scratch both itches. But, then, nowhere is it written that complete happiness was ever on the table. It wouldn't seem to be adaptive.
I also happen to know that women are substantially more likely to orgasm with partners who beat them than with those who don't, though I hesitate to mention it because the data is not publicly-available and I have no real way to substantiate the claim. But once you start paying attention, the pattern is pretty clear.
Whether that's good or bad would seem to be mostly up to you.
TitaniumButterfly
15d ago
Just bothered me that she was a man in a woman suit.
TitaniumButterfly
17d ago
I'm not the one to ask either, but while we're at it you might also consider gifting them a new ladder. I like the foldable, extensible aluminum ones. Lightweight, portable, and last forever with occasional treatment of graphite lubricant in the moving parts.
TitaniumButterfly
18d ago
I think Ukraine really broke him. Was painful watching him write fan fiction about it for weeks, months... years? And then something just snapped, I guess.
(100% of this is speculation.)
TitaniumButterfly
23d ago
Haters gonna hate.
I find the "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy!" stickers so obnoxious that every time I see one I'm overcome by the urge to make a custom one along the lines of "WE'RE GOING TO MARS!" with a full-color Elon giving a big thumbs up. I'm not even that big a Tesla fanboy; it's just that they make me want to be so I can signal as hard as possible that I'm not as neurotic, credulous, and vain as they are.
However my lifelong personal prohibition on bumper stickers has served me well to this point and I can't see myself deviating after all these years.
TitaniumButterfly
23d ago
Oh yeah I wanted to recommend Bog Standard Isekai. I've only read the first two books but it's the best pure litrpg I've found yet.
TitaniumButterfly
25d ago
Obviously it's not true
I disagree and insist that you justify your statement.
TitaniumButterfly
28d ago
I think the covid situation had less to do with the disease and more to do with the unpredictable, flailing government reactions thereto.
TitaniumButterfly
28d ago
People are people. They grieve and rejoice the same as we do.
I think this is pretty self-evidently incorrect. Different people seem to have different native capacities for all sorts of things, and that's before we get into cultural programming, head trauma, or psychiatric disorders.
TitaniumButterfly
28d ago
But nobody is going to contradict Fathers of the Church
Except other Fathers of the Church, amirite?
TitaniumButterfly
30d ago
Same (just got to Fulgora for the first time) but I'm increasingly feeling a desire for something like factorio plus population management. A colony rather than a crash site. Trains are more fun with conductors and passengers rather than fully-automated engines and cargo that could just as reasonably be carried by bot or belt.
When I do want the train fix, I edit the settings such that resources patches are at maximum scarcity but also a bit richer. Trains should be all about those long journeys between nodes. It can be done. And this way there tend to be big stretches of unspoiled countryside along the way.
Also a big fan of the cargo ships mod.
Transport Fever 2 is pretty but IMO in sandbox mode it's only worth playing with custom maps manually set up such that the supply chains make more sense. Otherwise the only brickmaker sets up shop three years' journey from the only stone quarry and the game makes this work by paying you absurd amounts of money to make the delivery. The economy generally makes absolutely no sense and I find it breaking suspension of disbelief. Also the game tends toward death by micromanagement when you have to manage the maintenance and depreciation schedules of countless individual buses (e.g.) across the map. But, the sheer beauty and ability to zoom in to street/rail level make the game worthwhile. If you do want to generate and edit custom maps be sure to watch some videos because there are hidden settings to make them extra gorgeous.
In general I find that TF2 makes for an excellent train table sim, but the game elements themselves don't fit right and mainly serve as a fig leaf.
Contrast with Sid Meier's Railroads! which I think is a fun and awesome game despite its age, where laying rail is more intuitive and supply chains make sense because industries tend to spring up near their inputs. The challenge is in competing with AI rail companies, which adds a very fun layer to the game including poaching their vital industries at auction and buying out their stock. Maybe selling some of yours for capital to expand, which makes you vulnerable to takeover in turn. It's fast-paced: a normal game lasts half an hour to forty-five minutes. IDK why this one never got more love but I played the heck out of it when it was current. Installing it now requires some tampering with files and third-party patches IIRC.
Are you at all concerned you'll find stuff that will make you think less of him?
Forgive me for being blunt, but I think it's important to tell you that I don't think this is any of your business or that this is an appropriate time to ask.
My wife isn't technical enough to save my hardware. But I'm wondering if I should set my "personal" files to be at least less obvious or something.
Given that there's some concern about her finding them I don't believe there's any possible justification for you to save such things locally in the first place. Not trying to beat you over the head with this, especially given the above. It's the conclusion I've arrived at after much soul-searching and I wanted to share. As it stands you're just revealing your preference for which you love more.
TitaniumButterfly
1mo ago
Wild. As they say, "It doesn't take all kinds, but we've got 'em."
TitaniumButterfly
1mo ago
Vaporized would be better. This way generated seconds, minutes, hours of hellish last moments.
TitaniumButterfly
1mo ago
A coordination problem, you say?
The genetic legacy which will be squandered by these women not reproducing is a tragedy of historical proportions, but I think we're less than a generation away from the corrective counterswing.
Main problem being institutional capture and the unbelievable amount of human damage which will be committed in the name of pride, i.e. futile resistance.
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