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TitaniumButterfly

Blank and pitiless as the sun

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joined 2024 January 18 23:49:16 UTC

				

User ID: 2854

TitaniumButterfly

Blank and pitiless as the sun

1 follower   follows 3 users   joined 2024 January 18 23:49:16 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 2854

Disorderly conduct for saying a word someone asked you to say.

I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

I've found it helpful to ask them, just so we're sure we understand each other, what specifically is so bad about nazis. Like, the mass murder, sure, but that's fairly historically common. What is it about nazis in particular?

Obviously some people take the question very poorly, but that saves us both a lot of time.

I'm extremely sensitive to faces but I do think Shiloh is a sweet name.

well if it's a trip to the chocolate factory I suddenly feel just fine

Per google, age of consent in Minnesota is 16.

Oh yeah, modern women do generally seem to be a lost cause. I found mine through church. Cheerfully cooks and cleans while perpetually proudly pregnant. Happy to be a woman. Thinks politics is for me to worry about. Loves me and makes sure my home is nice to come back to after work. Highly recommend -- but don't think her expectations for me aren't at least commensurate.

In the ghetto

What is it you're after, btw? Dating apps seem calibrated for hookups. If you want marriage material it may be better to look elsewhere.

EDIT: Sincere apologies. Responded to wrong post somehow. I'm very sorry.

Too much salt can definitely be a problem.

'ate carrots. 'ate lentils. Simple as.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

Real Charlie Bucket hours.

Tar paper. Not because color, but because it jams up a system not built for it.

Tongue in cheek, of course. I knew I was going to marry her the moment I laid eyes on her. Was like I'd seen her a hundred times before in my dreams going back to teenage years, and recognized her instantly.

I used to more often than I do now. OTOH my car definitely always has several blades in it (mainly serious-business titanium scissors, box cutters, and the odd diagonal cutter if that counts) and I'm rarely far from my car.

Used to carry a leatherman all the time but it's not quite comfortable in the pocket or on the belt and after losing a couple I stopped bothering.

On my first date with my wife we got locked into a remote state park -- gates closed and locked and stuff -- and she was wowed when I had the tools, know-how, and willingness to dismantle the system, get us out, and put it back together with no one the wiser. Did I plan for this to happen? Consciously, I don't think I did. Subconsciously... probably. Definitely knew it was a strong possibility and had let myself out that way before, so was confident that if it came up it'd go well.

Anyway I had to make sure she was capable of holding a flashlight competently while I work on something.

In Japan, the secret to human interaction when you yourself are not Japanese is: Be predictable.

Germany too.

"A real man doesn't complain."

Sid Meier's Railroad (2006) - I never liked train games. Maybe this isn't even a very good train game for the people that really love train games. But it worked for me.

Still my favorite train game by far (unless we're counting Factorio). Hard to get it to work now though.

Railroads! is fast-paced, fairly intuitive, plenty of variability, and a full game doesn't take too long. It's just fun in a way that I mostly don't find other train games to be. I think because it's optimizing for gameplay instead of trying to be a realistic simulation.

Also, and this is big, industries actually set up near their input resources! One of the things that drives me crazy about, for example, Transport Fever 2 is that there'll be one brick factory and one source of stone and they'll be on opposite sides of the map and it can take literally years to get a shipment over. Oh, and then there's no market for the finished good anywhere nearby even once they're made. The placement just makes no sense. TF2 gets around this by making every shipment worthwhile to deliver, more or less, which isn't how things work!

Railroads! instead encourages the player to prioritize the placement of high-value lines to make money quickly, and then invest that surplus in developing more complicated supply chains and industries. While also managing stock price and heading off opponents, of course.

Finally, there's just enough maintenance/upgrade pressure to scratch my itch, without it becoming a sprawling nightmare to manage like TF2.

The only real complaint I have about Railroads! is that the train table mode has no option for restricting town growth, so instead of setting up a picturesque little train table it always ends up as sprawling cities.

Hunter Thompson filmed a snuff film at Bohemian Grove

No, look -- I have friends in the Bohemian Club and the Family (which split off) and have spent some time on campus. There are many interesting things I could tell you, but nothing like that. They're just summer camps for extremely successful men who want to goof off with each other without dealing with the public. They're more interested in forming cover bands and putting on silly stage plays than conspiring about anything. I mean, I'm sure they do plenty of that elsewhere, but not at the Club. That's just not what it's for. And they don't even seem to get any slack on regulations. For example, a little creek wandering through the woods got designated a 'navigable waterway' (absurd) and so they can't rebuild a cabin that slid down into it.

The food is very nice though and the best part about it is that it's an extremely high-trust environment. You can just walk up to anybody and he's gonna be very interesting and capable of a great conversation and happy to talk to you because if you're there you're pre-filtered for talent, success, and urbanity. Politics vary much more widely than you'd think, though due to the average age most people are fairly boomerish and mainstream. From my perspective they mostly come off as naive neolibs and have the same sensibilities (re: race and sex) you'd find anywhere.

Anyway the instinct to mistrust the elites is good and right, but they go to the Club to re-live being teenagers at boy scout camp and have a good time, not to discuss work or, uh, kill people? Yeah I'm pretty sure that never happened. It's all much, much more normal, and even boring, than I expect you to believe.

ETA: Something that might help illustrate the vibe is that if a member has his cell phone out in public he's kicked out of the club for two years. If he brings a guest and the guest has his phone out in public the member is still kicked out for two years! This has nothing to do with secrecy. It's about creating a pleasant, relaxing in-person social setting away from the world. Scrolling or taking work calls there would be totally contrary to the point of the place and they're serious about maintaining the vibe.

It's also currently a steal at 70% off.

Ancient book written by ancient Near Easterners for ancient Near Easterners, or inspired, incorrupt and infallible guide for all men of all times and places?

Well, I'd say neither. The NT at least was written by the Church for the Church and meant to be interpreted within the Church and its living tradition. C.f. 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

Re: the rest, I don't think it's fundamentally possible to write any text such that e.g. someone from a culture which intentionally raises people to be hostile towards and incapable of understanding that text, can be expected to receive it well and understand it. I think it would make sense to say that, even if the Bible were 'inspired, incorrupt, and infallible' (it's clearly not; indeed there is no one 'Bible' in the first place), it would be reasonable to expect some degree of contextual literacy and adoption of the mindset of its authors to be intelligible. Otherwise the claim is that someone raised to believe 'down' means 'up' should instantly be able to understand that the text means what it means.

And at that point you're essentially arguing that the text on the page should flow or shift around to become intelligible to people who don't even speak the language; who perhaps can't even read; who perhaps are blind and deaf and can't even hear it spoken.

That this seems like a tall order isn't pertinent in the context of (alleged) divine action. We even see something like that described at Pentecost! But I think it more appropriate, and instructive, to notice that Christians throughout history have never held such expectations for the Bible, up until the Reformation at least, which is indeed a point against that movement.

See also Acts 8:26-35. And in that light, the only thing crazier than a non-Christian who insists the Bible fails on its merits because it's not immediately-intelligible to the uninitiated, is a Protestant who insists that it is, actually.

Yes. It would be terrible to find ourselves in the position of trying to figure out how to live Christian lives by interpreting the Bible from this extremely-removed modern perspective.

I am the kind of person who struggles to believe in the supernatural given the world now makes sense without it.

You might be interested to know, then, that the distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' is fairly recent, artificial, and peculiarly Western. In Orthodox Christian theology we see the whole concept as a tragic, and frankly idiotic, mistake.

But also I've gotta disagree. The world makes no sense no matter how I look at it. The concept of The God is great for filling in gaps, such as how the material universe exists at all or how we're conscious, but opens up a lot more questions. Take that away though and I'm fairly puzzled by those things, plus why there are physical laws, etc. in the first place.

I think an important question is whether there is such a thing as objective 'good' and, if so, what that is and how we might know. 'Natural' explanations obviously can't touch this, and I don't see how life can be lived without it.

Well, what does 'follow Jesus Christ' mean, then? Ignore everything he said but think fondly of the nicer parts?

The political hit from having been caught lying about this would be high (well for Republicans, anyway)

I'm not a Republican but from where I'm sitting it looks like their opponents already uniformly assume the worst about them. I don't think there's much difference between being accused of this and getting caught doing it. The disgust is already priced in.

Decided to take a break from Twitter for a while and for some reason thought I'd do better on reddit. Opened up a thread full of thousands of people raging about and mocking Elon over something he allegedly said. Looked it up and found out he never said it at all. Pointed this out to a few people. Universally downvoted of course, but one of them bothered to respond and tell me that "It doesn't matter. This is exactly the kind of thing he would say."