omfalos
Nonexistent good post history.
User ID: 222
omfalos
1yr ago
Probably since ancient Sumer
"Here at Ea-nāṣir and Sons, we are committed to providing a well-trained and motivated team to safely produce copper products that meet industry standards and ensure customer satisfaction."
Commenting on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Coronation Sermon
Nobody has made a post about the coronation yet. There weren't any major culture war incidents. It went off without a hitch in other words. I'm reaching to find something to talk about. Here is my reaction to the sermon given by the archbishop of Canterbury during the ceremony. The sermon states the ceremonial role of the British monarch in plain terms and tries its best to skirt around the fact that the king has no power. He likens Charles III to Jesus. Here is the full sermon:
https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/05/06/archbishop-of-canterburys-coronation-sermon/
We are here to crown a King, and we crown a King to serve.
What is given today is for the gain of all. For Jesus Christ announced a Kingdom in which the poor and oppressed are freed from chains of injustice. The blind see. The bruised and broken-hearted are healed.
That Kingdom sets the aims of all righteous government, all authority. And the Kingdom also sets the means of all government and authority. Jesus doesn’t grasp power or hold onto status.
The King of Kings, Jesus Christ, was anointed not to be served, but to serve. He creates the unchangeable law that with the privilege of power comes the duty to serve.
Service is love in action. We see active love in our care for the most vulnerable, the way we nurture and encourage the young, in the conservation of the natural world. We have seen those priorities in the life of duty lived by our King.
Today we have the honour of being in this Abbey with so many who show such love; you work with charities and organisations, you build community, you serve the nation in Armed Forces, in emergency services, and so many other ways. Next door are 400 extraordinary young people in St Margaret’s, whose lives speak of service. Around the world in the Realms and Commonwealth are so many more. You live your lives for the sake of others.
The unity you show, the example you give, is what binds us together and offers societies that are strong, joyful, happy and glorious. They bear heavy weights for us.
The weight of the task given you today, Your Majesties, is only bearable by the Spirit of God, who gives us the strength to give our lives to others. With the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the King is given freely what no ruler can ever attain through will, or politics, or war, or tyranny: the Holy Spirit draws us to love in action.
This is promised by Jesus who put aside all privilege, because, as the first reading tells us, God will give all things for our sake, even His life.
His throne was a Cross. His crown was made of thorns. His regalia were the wounds that pierced his body.
Each of us is called by God to serve. Whatever that looks like in our own lives, each of us can choose God’s way today.
We can say to the King of Kings, God Himself, as does the King here today, ‘give grace that in thy service I may find perfect freedom’.
In that prayer there is promise beyond measure, joy beyond dreams, hope that endures. By that prayer, for every King, every ruler, and, yes, for all of us, we are opened to the transforming love of God.
The archbishop likens Charles III to Jesus, not by elevating Charles to the level of a god, but by bringing down Jesus to the level of a man. Christians believe that Jesus was both a man and a God. The fact that he was and is an omnipotent deity is essential to Christian theology. But having the limitations of a man is what makes the telling of Jesus' life in the Gospels a compelling story. The archbishop's sermon depicts Jesus as a very talented preacher who relies on the power of persuasion to save souls. This aspect of the Gospel story most closely resembles Charles III's role as archon basileus of a parliamentary democracy. But unlike the British monarch, Jesus had real power to back up his preaching.
The sermon oversells what Charles III can accomplish with mere persuasion. It states with confidence that "showing unity" and "giving a good example" are sufficient to "bind us together", to "offer a society that is strong, joyful, etc." and to "bear heavy weights". By speaking of the ceremonial role of the British monarch as sufficient to accomplish the duties of kingship, the archbishop leaves no consideration for what happens if persuasion fails to produce the advertised results.
I was raised Christian but became an atheist a long time ago. When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair. My naïve understanding of Christianity when I was a Christian was influenced by growing up in an individualistic culture and a school system organized along individualistic lines. Every person was tested by God individually, I imagined. Sharing notes or copying answers from other test takers was not part of the test. I believed my choices in life would just determine whether or not my soul was saved. But the thought that my choices in life could be the determining factor in making somebody else a good person literally never occurred to me, and if it had, it would have greatly discomforted me. I would have perceived it as an added burden. Again, it would never have occurred to me that other people were sharing the burden of making me a good person. I would have perceived the sharing of responsibility only as an increased burden. I imagine that people raised in collectivist cultures perceive the sharing of burdens as generally resulting in a decreased burden. The concept of a mutually supporting community taking collective responsibility for the salvation of their souls is probably much closer to how people thought about Christianity in the past. It almost gives me warm fuzzy feelings, but I still find the chaotic, random nature of it discomforting.
Service and helping people is the unifying theme of the archbishop's sermon, but there is something lacking in his call to service. I like to help people. I like to be of service. I like giving people presents. I like teaching. I'm pretty good at it. But something I don't try to do is influence friends and family and coworkers to make them better people. I shrink from any situation where somebody is doing something immoral that I could intervene to correct. It's one thing teach somebody practical knowledge, and quite another to stage an intervention.
Christianity used to take the collectivist approach to saving souls. It wasn't enough to lead the horse to water. Responsible people had to dunk the horse's head and make it drink. The king was often the one doing the dunking. Since the time of the Glorious Revolution, the power of the state has grown enormously. But liberal democracies impose artificial limits on how they use their enormous power. Faced with equine dehydration, or any other societal problem, the solution must be more education, free counseling and state-sponsored therapy. It's fitting that the land of the NHS should refer to kingship as a service. The solution is always a service. Yet there remain certain classes of societal problems that are best solved—or that can only be solved—by issuing a command.
If everybody was hooked up with Neuralink and forced to literally feel the collective suffering of humanity, it would result in people with chronic pain all getting murdered (as painlessly as possible.)
Various betting markets currently have "will Trump tweet" at 70-80%.
This is one of those sentences that would confuse the hell out of people if it was sent back in time to the year 2005 through a timewarp.
omfalos
1yr ago
What were they supposed to say?
They could have said, "We are taking this opportunity to announce we are shutting down our organization and donating our assets to more deserving charitable organizations."
omfalos
1yr ago
To put a more positive spin on it, you could say that people obsessed with politics are only a minority of the population.
omfalos
1yr ago
I wish they hadn't done this, but now that they have, I'd like it better if they followed through and arrested him, rather than threatening it and never following through. Issuing a steady stream of threats and never following through is worse than following through.
omfalos
6mo ago
I think the US government should legalize freedom of association, allow the formation of ethnic neighborhoods, and devolve more power to the neighborhood level. I don't think what I support should count as white nationalism, per se, because it doesn't explicitly favor white people, and it falls short of creating sovereign ethnostates. I think the USA is like the Ottoman Empire, and I support preserving the empire and creating a millet system rather than breaking the empire apart into nation-states as happened historically to the Ottoman Empire.
omfalos
1yr ago
Welfare states are a way for people who love systems to also love people.
omfalos
1yr ago
Exploring the Set of all Possible Story Ideas
There are a set of tropes which one may call woke tropes that seem ubiquitous in television and movies. Genius women vs. stupid men, black heroes vs. white villains, mixed race families with a black father and a white mother. They seem ubiquitous, though perhaps they only seem that way because they stick out more than the polar opposite tropes. Has there ever been an attempt to quantify the prevalence of particular tropes in television and movies? Somebody posted a compilation of "anti-white propaganda" in the SSQS, which was rebutted with a random sampling of Superbowl commercials that were not noticeably anti-white. Many people here agree that woke tropes are overrepresented in Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. It seems to me that woke tropes are a real phenomenon, but the question is why... and relative to what?
To truly quantify the overrepresentation of tropes would require taking the set of all existing television shows and movies and seeing where they fit within the Set of all Possible Story Ideas. For every television show with a black hero and a white villain, there is a polar opposite show with the races reversed that never got made. Some spaces within the Set of all Possible Story ideas have been explored thoroughly, while others are unexplored. Books with protagonists that are professional writers seem pretty well done-to-death. Plays set in New York City, plays-within-plays, movies set in Los Angeles, movies about making movies. These ideas have all been thoroughly explored because authors and screenwriters write what they know. One explanation why movies and television have woke tropes is because professional writers live in New York and Los Angeles and know a lot of genius women and genius black people in real life.
By contrast, a novel which captures the inner life of a mentally retarded person is elusive and largely unexplored. Writing a book is beyond the means of most mentally retarded people, and professional writers have trouble portraying characters who are so vastly different from themselves. Even the lives of ordinary people are largely unexplored, because ordinary people do not write novels, and professional writers have trouble writing ordinary characters. It is easier to create a clown or a buffoon than it is to write an accurate depiction of a person with slightly below average intelligence. Another reason why stories about ordinary people are unexplored is because audiences demand stories that are extraordinary. There is a realm of possible story ideas that do not get explored because they are boring to audiences. Every person's life is a possible story, but most people's lives are not extraordinary. Audiences will not see a movie about a store clerk who does not have a wicked sense of humor and does not get up to crazy hijinks.
A writer can take an ordinary story and make it extraordinary by tweaking a number of variables. A natural or man-made disaster can be added to an ordinary situation to make it extraordinary. In a sporting event between a strong team and an underdog team, it is ordinary for the strong team to win and extraordinary for the underdog to win. By definition, underdogs should lose more than fifty percent of the time, but a survey of television and movies would reveal an underdog win rate approaching 100%. The underdog trope is an inherent feature of story-telling since it is the most basic way make an ordinary story extraordinary. Many of the tropes I called woke tropes can be seen as variations of the underdog trope. Maybe the reason writers have genius women vs. stupid men and black heroes vs. white villains is because they think of these as extraordinary role reversals of the ordinary state of affairs in real life. Or at least, they think they are subverting the expectations of the audience.
But it seems like audiences are getting tired of having their expectations subverted over-and-over again. Have audiences become so fatigued by underdog stories that they will pay to see the Bad News Bears lose to the Yankees? Or pay to see an intelligent white male hero triumph over a stupid black villain? Probably not. I think the underdog trope is an inherent feature of story-telling that television and movies will never escape from, and woke tropes will continue to be featured as variations of the underdog trope. I think the solution for people who are fatigued by woke tropes will come from AI story generators. AI story generators work for free and do not have to worry about writing stories that will draw in audiences. That means they can explore regions of the Set of all Possible Story Ideas which are less extraordinary and less laden with tropes. AI story generators will also just produce massive quantities of stories. Regardless of whatever woke biases or trope-seeking behaviors are programmed into them, the sheer quantity of stories generated will result in the Set of all Possible Story Ideas becoming more fleshed out and explored. Maybe most of these stories will never be adapted for television or made into movies. But when audiences tune on their television and see Genius Black Lady #3547 triumphing over Angry White Man #7821, maybe they will draw some comfort knowing that an AI story generator created a simulated universe containing billions of stories where the underdogs lose most of the time.
omfalos
7mo ago
Spitting is represented onomatopoetically by the word patooey. The letters p and t accurately represent they way the lips and tongue are formed when spitting. First, the lips are pursed to make a p sound. Second, the tongue is pressed against the teeth to make a t sound. Pushing the tongue forward should also push saliva or toothpaste forward so that it collects behind the lips. Third, the diaphragm contracts to builds air pressure behind the tongue. Fourth, the tongue and lips open simultaneous to allow air to pass through. This amounts to making the p and t sounds simultaneously. Try telling your kid to, "go patooey!" I believe teaching her the word patooey may actually teach her to spit.
omfalos
7mo ago
The way that ripples spread in ponds supports your conclusion. The topography of watersheds is somewhat analogous as well. The way that prisms refract light makes me think of immigration, too. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of your point is snail shells.
However, one could just as easily argue the opposite point by making reference to the waxing and waning of the moon, the patterning of warts on toads, the Nitrogen cycle, bees, cracked glass, or the formation of snowflakes.
omfalos
7mo ago
I wouldn't even think that 100% "Jewish" ownership meant that that "Jews" controlled the economy
This reads like something a fashy person would say through a sock puppet account that pretends to oppose antisemitism while making self-defeating arguments.
Also, how is it that your reply was made ten hours ago, but I am only able to see it now?
omfalos
1yr ago
It would be cool if the Supreme Court had the ability to initiate national referendums on court cases or to convene citizens' assemblies via sortition.
omfalos
5mo ago
I do not like Whatifalthist. I listened to a few of his early videos and became convinced he knows less about the world than I do.
omfalos
6mo ago
Iran has used a proxy to prove they can fire missiles at Israel from Iranian soil.
omfalos
4mo ago
By the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love had given to me
12 drummers drumming,
22 pipers piping,
30 lords a-leaping,
36 ladies dancing,
40 maids a-milking,
42 swans a-swimming,
42 geese a-laying,
40 golden rings,
36 calling birds,
30 French hens,
22 turtle doves,
and 12 partridges in 12 pear trees!
omfalos
7mo ago
The reason why OP's post is objectionable is because OP is doing a thing. He wants to post a quote about how Jews owned a large percentage of property in Slovakia. He considers the high percentage to be noteworthy and wants to share it with The Motte, and yet, he disguises his reason for sharing the quote by pretending to refute it. He pretends to make an argument that the large percentage is not noteworthy, while expecting the reader to reject his pretend argument and conclude that it is indeed noteworthy.
OP wants to make posts that speak truth to Jewish power but feigns to believe that the moderation team of The Motte will silence him if he does so in an open and forthright manner. He adopts the guise of an antisemitism skeptic who tries to refute hate facts and fails. I think as well that OP expects his disguise to be recognized. Which means his true intention is not even to deceive but simply to express resentment that his posts speaking truth to Jewish power are unwelcome on The Motte.
Your post makes me think of recapitulation theory, which observes that a human embryo passes through stages of development resembling the ancient ancestors of humans. The fertilized egg is a unicellular eukaryote suspended in primordial soup. The blastula and gastrula have anatomy resembling a cnidarian. The embryo neurulates and becomes like a worm or fish. And when the baby is born, it behaves like a little monkey. Your program of education seeks to extend this process of recapitulation into the more recent stages of our species' evolution. Babies would be reared on a Stone Age diet, inculcated into a Bronze Age mindset, schooled with a Classical education, socialized in a Feudal hierarchy, enter the workforce under a neo-Luddite economic model, and then finally be set free to enjoy the full fruits of Enlightenment, Postmodernity, Post-scarcity and Transhumanism.
(Continuing further on this tangent, if humanity must be replaced by robots, then I hope we are replaced by robots that reproduce organically and pass through an embryonic human stage before maturing into full sentience.)
omfalos
1yr ago
Having children should be made a prerequisite for graduate degrees, professional licenses and public sector employment.
omfalos
1yr ago
I found this article to be somewhat informative.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/11/what-everyone-got-wrong-on-the-brazilian-elections/
omfalos
1yr ago
A possible solution to your quandary is that a black criminal underclass did in fact form in the intervening years between emancipation and the creation of Jim Crow laws. The black ghetto subculture that colonized Northern industrial cities during the Great Migration was not a novel development but grew out of a preexisting subculture that had existed for generations in small Southern cities dating back to emancipation.
omfalos
5mo ago
I've noticed that people very seldom use the plural possessive apostrophe after s.
omfalos
6mo ago
Every Israeli needs a wearable Iron Dome to protect them from blade and projectile attacks. Border security won't be enough because the Palestinians can fly over the border in ornithopters or tunnel through the sand. Mass surveillance is a technological solution that ultimately relies on human beings to interpret the data. Having the prescience to predict attacks before they happen is a rare gift, and the Israelis don't seem to have anyone with that gift.
This is a troll post where you pretend to make an argument that 38% property ownership is not high enough to justify discrimination against Jews, while intending for the reader to ignore your argument and just react to the 38% figure as being too high.
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