OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9hr ago
Agreed, "stuck in the woods with" sounds like a "Most Dangerous Game" situation. "Stuck on a deserted island" prompts the listener to think of cooperation.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17hr ago
I once lived in a place where bears occasionally appeared on our driveway. Pretty awkward.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I minored in Linguistics and one of the introductory classes used an older edition of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Language-Files-Materials-Introduction-Linguistics/dp/0814252702
It's a pretty good place to get started and then figure out what topics interest you the most. For example, historical linguistics was the most interesting to me and it was fun to use it to make up fantasy languages that sound realistic (Because it's just a real language with some common deletions and vowel shifts.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I am not a trained apologist either, but I think I can provide further background to your question about Scriptural Infallibility in a Catholic Context.
The Catholic Church would say that the Bible is infallible, but in a very narrow way. I don't want to quibble about words, so it makes sense to just say, the Bible isn't 100% infallible, in the way that word is commonly used today.
The Bible contains exactly what God wanted it to contain. It contains every spiritual revelation necessary for a person to be granted peace with God and know, love, and serve Him. That said, God didn't set out to give us a treatise on Natural Science.
Every Scriptural passage contains four meanings in it: literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical. The fourfold senses of Scripture—the literal, allegorical,moral (tropological), and anagogic senses—were first proposed by John Cassian (ca. 360-435). By way of example, Cassian wrote, “The one Jerusalem can be understood in four different ways, in the historical sense as the city of the Jews, in allegory as the Church of Christ, in anagoge as the heavenly city of God ‘which is the mother of us all’ (Gal 4:26), in the tropological sense as the human soul.”
The allegorical, tropological and anagogical senses are infallible. The literal is infallible only as far as it points to an allegorical, tropological or anagogical meaning.
For example, Genesis is clearly begins with myths parodying Babylonian and other Near Eastern myths. The author of Genesis takes a Babylonian myth about a flood, and then says, "there's only one God, and He made humans out of love, so how would this myth play out if the true God was involved instead of these false gods." The writing style is mythic. I don't think there was ever an intention to deceive, their original audience knew the original myths that were being parodied. That's what made the parody so powerful.
Early Christian converts from Greco-Roman paganism took Genesis as allegorical from the start. They knew given the state of natural science at the time, that the world was created in one instant and the four elements were Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, but Genesis only refers to Water and Earth. So obviously Genesis left some important things out from a natural science perspective, but the moral and anagogical truths are still infallible.
The second half of Genesis moves to Folklore. Did George Washington really chop down a cherry tree? I don't think so. Would I include that anecdote if I was writing down oral traditions for George Washington's biography? Probably. Because it portrays something important about his character with a conciseness that only a story can draw out. Did Abraham really pretend his wife was his sister twice? I don't know. The authors of Genesis thought that it conveyed something important about his character and his relationship with God though.
Meanwhile, the four Gospels are very clearly portraying themselves as Eye Witness accounts or collections of Eye Witness accounts of the strangest thing to have ever happened on Earth. Theistic and atheistic scholars recognize that the genre is Ancient Biography. Noted skeptic Bart Erhman calls them Greco-Roman biographies. The writers of the Gospels really do want their audience to believe the events described genuinely took place.
Genesis is literally supposed to be how the world came about, and people interpreted it this way and believed it for hundreds of years until the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism came about.
Origen:
I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
Augustine:
"at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram).
Edit:
Also St. Augustine:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.[17]
With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.[18]
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
I think you did a good job. One note:
So far as I'm aware, the Church does not teach that you must believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be saved.
The concept you're referring to here is Invincible Ignorance. And here's an official Church document explaining:
(Lumen Gentium 16) "those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation” (847).
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4d ago
Anyone here concerned about bird flu passing to cattle? Anyone avoiding dairy, beef, or chicken?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
If it's an impenetrable fortress type thing, why keep these people in a city at all? There's lot's of land in America that is undeveloped.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
but it works ok as long as its blocked off
A beggar/bum has a strong incentive to be as close as possible to the largest number of people with disposable income in their pockets (and places with free services, like public parks w/ restrooms, libraries, and charities.) This is in tension with most people's desire to be able to use the public goods their tax dollars pay for in the way they were intended, and their desire to be left alone while walking from place to place.
I became accustomed to a public library not being accessible. In the Seattle area, they were generally over-crowded and unpleasant to visit. I only accessed my library from the Libby app.
After moving to Indiana it took me six months to gather courage to bring my kids to the library and it turns out that when a library is used for its intended purpose it's really nice! They had toys for the preschool-aged kids (for them to be distracted with while their parent selects books.) When patrons only spend a couple hours there more people can visit without it getting crowded. It was how I remembered libraries when I was a child (except for all the Pride stuff, but that's impossible to run away from I guess.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
7d ago
I think the difference is before there is addiction, someone might be able to have 3 servings of alcohol a week (or whatever the recommended amount is), without much temptation to binge. But after someone has had an addiction to alcohol and recovered, they cannot have any serving of alcohol without a strong temptation to binge. There are alcoholics who are able to avoid alcohol entirely, but not many who are able to go from alcoholic to having a healthy moderate relationship to alcohol.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
Are we looking at the same Hooper study? It's funny how we can both look at it and zoom on different things:
We found little or no effect of reducing saturated fat on all‐cause mortality (RR 0.96; 95% CI 0.90 to 1.03; 11 trials, 55,858 participants) or cardiovascular mortality (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.80 to 1.12, 10 trials, 53,421 participants), both with GRADE moderate‐quality evidence.
...
There was little or no effect of reducing saturated fats on non‐fatal myocardial infarction (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.07) or CHD mortality (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.82 to 1.16, both low‐quality evidence), but effects on total (fatal or non‐fatal) myocardial infarction, stroke and CHD events (fatal or non‐fatal) were all unclear as the evidence was of very low quality. There was little or no effect on cancer mortality, cancer diagnoses, diabetes diagnosis, HDL cholesterol, serum triglycerides or blood pressure, and small reductions in weight, serum total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and BMI. There was no evidence of harmful effects of reducing saturated fat intakes.
I looked through a few of the studies they reviewed but most don't really demonstrate a low PUFA/high Sat Fat diet anywhere.
The Black Study reduced fat entirely (not substituting PUFA for Sat fat) and found that keeping fat under 20% of calories helped reduce skin cancer.
The DART Study advised men to increase ratio of PUFA to SFA, but: "The advice on fat was not associated with any difference in mortality." Men who were advised to eat fatty fish did better, but I'm open to the idea that it's the O3:O6 ratio that matters, meaning increasing O3 might be beneficial to people (especially in the context of a high O6 diet).
Then we get to the Houtsmuller study, which look like it's going to actually address the PUFA thesis. Two groups of people fed a controlled diet, one diet has 4x as much Linoleic acid as the other. Sounds good. He doesn't give a lot of details about what is in each diets how he assessed the Linoleic acid quantity in the study. But let's take him for his word. There are a couple details that stand out to me:
First is, "The linolcic acid content of diet II was 4 times that of diet I, being 20.4 gr/1000 kcal for group II and 5.3 gr/1000 Kcal for group I."
According to the PUFA hypothesis, it's more like a cliff than a gradient. Humans naturally eat around 4-5 gr a day of PUFA without seed-oil or mono-gastric animal sources. This study has the Sat Fat group get twice that.
The other detail is they mention one of the sources of Sat Fat, "except for 4 patients of group I who preferred butter over saturated margarines." The Sat Fat group's intervention included getting fed partially-hydrogenated margarine. Which means lots of transfats. The negative effect this study found can possibly be explained by the amount of transfats in the Sat Fat arm of the study.
I'll admit I didn't check every study, but the ones I checked aren't really applicable to anything I'm concerned about. The only one I saw that clearly substituted Linoleic Acid for actual Sat Fat was the Sydney Study, which showed that substituting Margarine for Butter actually increased risk of Cardiovascular disease.
That said, the Sydney study Margarine probably had transfats. I'm not going to state that the Sydney study proves Sat Fat is the best, but it does support my primary point, which is that nutritional studies on fats are Terrible, do not account for common confounders, and a meta-analysis of a bunch of terrible studies does not make for good data.
which again is fine for people without aspirations to build muscle (which doesn't apply to OP).
I'm talking about OP's wife. OP seems to want his wife to become slimmer, not a body builder. I'm indicating that to lose weight might require cutting protein down to the bare minimum (around 50g), something that is left out of a lot of advice. Losing lean mass when losing weight can actually be quite good, as you don't want a lot of extra skin hanging around.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
The difficulty with meta-studies on saturated fat vs unsaturated fat is that studies use lard or chicken fat as their example of saturated fat, when in reality those two fats are highly unsaturated. This leads to farces like "Learning and Memory Impairment in Rats Fed a High Saturated Fat Diet" They analyze the fatty acid composition of their lard and it is only 30% saturated. Despite this, the study uses lard as their Saturated fat intervention.
Specific to Hooper et al. (2020) that your linked article uses for it's argument, I am looking at their studies and am having trouble finding which showed a benefit from substituting polyunsaturated fat with saturated fats. At the most, I see some that show benefits from reducing fat entirely, which I would agree with. Reducing all fat will reduce the amount of total linoleic acid and a High Carb, low fat diet would be good from my understanding. (Low fat means < 15% calories from fat, most low fat studies have 30% of calories from fat, which is practically the normal amount of fat intake in a SAD, but that's another story.)
Hooper's results don't seem really indicative of anything. Your link extols the results of this figure, but outside the couple tails where they got the Saturated fat intake really low, there doesn't seem to be a clear correlation between increasing Sat Fat and disease. Under 9% of Sat fat only has data on a few risk events, which makes me think that there are only a handful of studies with that amount of sat fat. I'm trying to figure out if this data point reflects the studies that went with High carb, low fat.
However, the figure in question still shows that when dietary saturated fat reaches >12% of calories, markers improve! Risk of Stroke goes way down. CVD goes down.
Weight isn't studied in the Meta-analysis at all.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14d ago
I'm going to give you advice from a woman's perspective and from the perspective who's been paying attention to the latest in nutrition.
Diet will have more affect on weight gain than exercise, especially as you both age. To stop gaining weight, decrease mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fat. Dairy, coconut, palm kernal oil, and tallow are good fats. Everything else is on thin ground.
To lose weight, cut protein down to around 50g/day. This is a temporary measure, but it will rev up the metabolism quite nicely.
One thing to check before all else - is your wife pregnant? Have you really ruled it out? Are you sure? Ok then, read on!
How to get your wife to join in: Tell her you are interested in contributing to Science! (TM) You are getting really interested in SMTM's Potato studies, and you would like to help provide more data on what the effect would be on someone in the healthy weight range. This would involve eating only butter and potatoes for a month straight, but most people who try it like it.
Just one problem - There's no way you'd be able to do this if you have someone eating normal meals in the house. The fridge space of preparing two meals, the mental effort to avoid eating other food, it's too much. Would she be able to try it with you? It doesn't have to be for the whole time, just long enough to get in the groove. Would she like to weigh herself with you every day so she can be a trial participant as well?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14d ago
For context, my parents started at a high baseline of paranoia and desire to control my cultural inputs. My mom forbade me from reading Harry Potter books. At first the kids shared a computer that was in a public area, eventually I received my own computer in my room so that my siblings and I could play online games together.
I discovered fan fiction when I finished reading Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code. I was very upset at the ending and I wanted to know if another book would be forthcoming. I found a forum discussing the books which had a link to fanfiction.net. Before I knew it, I found fan fiction for all my favorite books and shows.
I was a very timid reader. I recognized that I was under the age of 13 and wasn't supposed to be in most places on the Internet. I was very good at avoiding any stories tagged Romance. I only read stories rated K/K+ (equivalent of G/PG). I was the model child on the internet, studiously avoiding things that were beyond my comfort level for cursing, violence, and sex.
But there was something naughty about fan fiction itself. I knew about copyright in general terms. Most fan stories had a line up top saying "I'm not making money off this, don't sue me!" I wasn't 100% sure this was more legal than pirating a book. So I kept it hidden.
Eventually, my parents finally figured out I wasn't spending 2 hours a day playing solitaire on the family computer and was instead going to the same website every day. Because I kept it hidden, it was automatically suspicious.
My dad went to fanfiction.net and looked up a book series he was familiar with (Discworld.) He changed the filters to Rated M and Romance. It took about five minutes before I was forbidden from returning to the site.
I got better at hiding it and to this day I don't think they ever learned that reading fan fiction was one of my main hobbies as a teenager. I read library books fast enough that it was reasonable to assume that is what I was doing in my room.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15d ago
I've written some fanfiction, but I think I'd rather make friendships in the physical world. It's better for my kids, better for networking, better to have someone who can lend a hand in real life from time to time.
If someone in the community I lurked on reached out to me and said, "Hey, I saw your post on TheMotte and recognized that you were talking about us, would you like to join an online game together?" I would accept in a heartbeat. But I don't necessarily want to create a new online attachment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15d ago
When I was a teenager I found a community of fanfic writers who I adored. They had their own shared canon and one of them was a Powerhouse of writing. Spitting out chapters longer than some books, filled with classical and pop-culture references, philosophical musings, good-vs-evil clashes, tense heroism, etc.
I would check their bio pages every day. Eventually they got a forum and I lurked there too. I watched them talk amongst each other and I wanted so badly to be their friend. A couple of problems:
They were clearly adults, and I very much was not. My parents forbade me from reading fanfiction. Obviously I ignored this directive, but I wasn't able to make an account because my parents also managed my email address.
But it would not be an exaggeration to state that this group of fanfic writers had a strong impact on my outlook today. These fanfics formed me the same way the Aeneid formed generations before me.
And more than that, I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be their friend so badly. They were the coolest people ever.
By the time I was an adult and could sign up for an account, they had slowed down publishing. I re-read the corpus of work, commented on chapters, joined the forum, but I was an interloper, an outsider. I never could explain to them just how much they meant to me. I tried not to be weird, but I think I was probably very weird from their perspective.
Around the time I created an account, fewer chapters were published. Eventually it was all gone. No more posts on the forum, no more chapters published. They all knew each other outside the forum. Maybe they moved to discord.
Ten years later, I still have dreams where I find them, they welcome my presence, and we become online BFFs.
My husband thinks it's not weird that I had a fandom interest that defined my adolescence, but the damaging part was that I thought I could be one of them. The biggest Star Trek fan never harbored delusions that they would one day be friends with Gene Roddenberry, but through the magic of the Internet and semi-public spaces I had a sense of intimacy with these people who had no idea I existed. To some extent the Internet is mostly lurkers and I am certainly not the only kid who lurked on their forum.
I think people call this a Parasocial relationship, and it is one of the dangers of the Internet that was never explained to me as a kid. I knew not to share my real name or address. I knew not to talk with strangers. I didn't know not to lurk and pine for a friendship I would never form.
I think I came out of it mostly unscathed except for the occasional twinge of sadness or embarrassment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
The spirit of it would. It might need to be written something like, "Cannot exceed 50x the total compensation for the lowest paid employee or contractor, or person who does work at a jobsite owned by the business." It would be difficult to get the spirit of the law into reality, but this thread is for Absolute Ruler territory, so I could just threaten to execute anyone I felt was going against the spirit of the law and see if that decreases chicanery.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
True. It would be very hard to get the spirit of that law conveyed into iron clad words, even if I had unlimited power.
I wish I could see a counterfactual world where every company was organized into a co-op like the Mondragon Corp and see what the downsides are, before gaining unlimited political power and imposing that on people.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
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Total compensation for the highest paying job at a company cannot be higher than 50x the total compensation for the lowest paying job at a company.
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Mandatory conscription for two years after high school, no exceptions for college. The default is Army Corp of Engineers, who will be tasked with maintaining and expanding infrastructure across the US. The only exception is for married and pregnant women. Unmarried and pregnant women can defer until their youngest child is 2, married women who become pregnant get to skip entirely.
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All new HOAs and ROAs are now required to maintain a clubhouse on HOA property. This clubhouse should be able to safely hold 25% of residents and contain some sort of kids' play equipment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
17d ago
Have you ever read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" by Anne Fadiman? It is a pretty tragic book that should be read by any medical professional. Whenever someone doesn't take their meds or has a bad experience with a doctor I think about this book.
Spoilers, a little Hmong girl with epilepsy is treated by American doctors who run into issues such as 1) her family doesn't know how to read instructions in any language, 2) her family doesn't understand time the same way, and 3) her family isn't really certain that epilepsy is a bad thing and think the doctors are possibly harming her by trying to take her seizures away.
Sometimes there isn't much a doctor can do.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
I have noticed that Bitcoin goes up in times of uncertainty, and then goes down when things get calmer. But the first rule of Bitcoin is not to buy it when it's back in the news, and it's been reaching highs. So probably don't buy Bitcoin now.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
It's the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that the customer service company set up with the brand.
I don't know what company you're emailing, whether it is large or small, but it is likely they outsource some of their support to a multi-client service desk that can handle tier 0 or tier 1 requests. The company is paying for a 3-4 day SLA, and if the service desk goes over that length of time there are penalties. Because the multi-client service desk has a multitude of clients, each with a different cadence for emails, the service desk will prioritize emails according to SLA, ensuring all emails are answered with the least financial penalty to the service desk.
I don't have any experience with 3-4 day SLAs (that seems excessive to me) but I have seen emails sit in a queue all day, getting answered by the night guys at 10 PM, because the SLA was 24 hours and other companies had <2 hour SLAs.
Sandman, if you haven't already. The other graphic novel I would recommend is Batgirl (2000—2006). It stands on its own and is quite beautiful.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
27d ago
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
The saints are very disgusted with their faults, more so than the average sinner. But that verse also does not exclude the possibility of a saint having sinned in the past, but over time has shed the habit of sin. After all, the next verse is "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
Yep, make some sort of paid "Minimalist Phone UI plus timed app/website blocker" if you can program.
If you have the start-up capital, make a clubhouse. I think the trick to making a third space is to make it so that you don't have to pay every time you visit. Something with a monthly or even annual fee. Keep costs down by encouraging patrons to clean up after every event. Maintain a few vending machines, offer free clean water.
Have bookshelfs with a "take a book, leave a book behind" kind of policy. Board games, cards, a kitchen playset for young kids. Have scheduled learning/crafting events, but encourage people to come in even if there's nothing going on. Maybe have sex-segregated areas if you can manage.
Gyms aren't really pleasant places to linger. Coffee Shops and Bars become expensive if you visit every day and they aren't suitable for a whole family.
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