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You mean the animal sacrifice aspect of Judaism? I agree it's definitely seen as somewhat barbaric by modern Western standards but for a good chunk of history it was pretty normal. Still practiced in parts of Hindu India and some Islamic countries, plus in Santería where that's a thing. You have to remember that part of that is because for a lot of history, animals were a major source of wealth. Judaism deliberately requiring the sacrifice of the "firstborn" or most "unblemished" of their flocks served multiple purposes - one, the fact that it was a bit of a waste was kind of the point, showing your devotion via valuable things; two, at least at some points in Jewish history, the meat would be used as a revenue and food source for the Levites, the priest tribe, who otherwise didn't have their own land; three, there's some doctrinal symbolism, both for Christians and Jews although the symbolism's exact flavor varies. I think that's relatively emblematic of the use of animal sacrifice in religion more broadly: ideas about drama, tribute, and symbolism (blood is a very obvious expression of life). I guess obviously, if you feel as a modern atheist that we are overcoming human nature or something, sure it might be

Or do you mean the moral idea of sin and guilt in general? I feel like that's pretty natural and human. People struggle with guilt in non-religious contexts all the time. Wanting someone or something to take away that guilt follows pretty logically. Even psychologists think a certain degree of guilt is healthy - it's more the shame side of things that can be harmful, or when it's excessive.

Edit: What exactly is the vile part? The animal sacrifice (poor animals, barbaric butchery) or the guilt bit? I guess you could consider wanting other people or things to take away guilt as somewhat maladaptive. But a full absolution via zero personal action/responsibilty is not typically the connected belief, except for maybe some born-again Christians, but I think they tend to be the minority, most still feel like some steps of personal improvement or reconciliation are needed (i.e. repentence).

I mean, somewhat. I learned about it from my first gf who was a wasn't even that unhealthily thin, 5'6", 115 lbs, exercised a lot and actually didn't have visible abs.

Body fat has a hormonal role and low body fat can be actually fairly harmful. Sure it's individual - she'd probably have been okay if she cut her exercise to half.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0230-6

if TL;DR, wikipedia summary

Previously treated as being hormonally inert, in recent years adipose tissue has been recognized as a major endocrine organ,[3] as it produces hormones such as leptin, estrogen, resistin, and cytokines (especially TNFα).[2] In obesity, adipose tissue is implicated in the chronic release of pro-inflammatory markers known as adipokines, which are responsible for the development of metabolic syndrome—a constellation of diseases including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis.[2][4]

Implying that this vastly destructive war that killed 60 million people could or should have been handled differently or, God forbid, avoided is basically heresy.

I do not think that saying "Hitler should not have attacked Poland" is very controversial, so you are likely not talking about what the Nazis could have done differently. In fact, the Western Allies tried to avoid the war by appeasing Hitler, because nobody was keen on repeating WW1. Now, you can argue that the UK and France should just have sat this one out, watching from the sidelines as Hitler takes Western Poland and then invades the USSR. Sure, that would have avoided the Blitz and the invasion of France -- or more accurately postponed them until Hitler was done with the East, but the immensely destructive war on the East front would still have happened. What is your recipe for avoiding that one? The USSR retreats to Siberia and lets Hitler take Moscow?

Nor is it very controversial that Stalin was not a nice person and it would have been better if he had behaved differently.

In the particulars, the behavior of Western allies is also substantially criticized. For example, ACOUP on strategic air power

I must admit I do not generally extend this charity to fellows like Arthur Harris or Curtis LeMay who were fairly explicit that their goal was to simply kill as many civilians as possible in order to end the war.

Or take the Internment of Japanese Americans

In 1983, the commission's report, Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty and concluded that internment had been the product of racism. It recommended that the government pay reparations to the detainees. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which officially apologized and authorized a payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $53,000 in 2024) to each former detainee who was still alive when the act was passed.

Even if the entirety of the four regions is conquered in the coming offensive- and that requires a level of belief that the Ukrainians are about to have a systemic collapse cascade that ignores the last few years of the war to date- it would still be better to accept the Russian demands then, rather than now.

That's what the reported Russian threat was aimed against: "it will be five regions the next time we meet".

I agree that a major Ukrainian collapse is improbable, but it is not impossible. Russian operational competence is low, but most Ukrainian units are half-strength right now at best. If there's a lucky breakthrough, the 93rd might not be there to plug the gap in time. I am not talking about a total collapse, but a major realignment like the 2022 Harjkov counteroffensive.

Yes. That's okay for these particular links since the URLs are not particularly informative. Other links would have to be better obscured.

I mean it's possible they had additional funding mechanisms in mind back in the 60s when the program started that just never materialized. Here's some trickle of cash, get started, if it goes well then later we can expand it and yet 60 years later no one wants to pony up the cash (and regulatory reforms) to make it happen.

Tbh I have wondered before why atheists more militant than me don't harp on about this more. This entire concept relies on an ancient and, by most modern standards, vile concept of morality.

Forget looking at logical contradictions in the bible or the impossibility of miracles described there. The deepest core of christianity requires you to accept that offloading your guilt onto an innocent creature and then punishing that creature instead of you makes any fucking sense whatsoever. And that god accepts this bargain. I think that in any other context most modern christians would consider this an absurdly evil concept.

That's part of the buy-in for effect, isn't it? You don't get much favor from the gods for sacrificing a rat. The more you invest, the more ROI. I think that's how it goes.

Why ask the internet about generalities instead of going to an orientation for the actual and specific schools in your area? Even if the information you get here is absolutely statistically true, it means jack all if your schools buck the trend in some fashion.

Yes, this is racist - about schools, not people. You’re in a position to judge them on the contents of their characters, and instead are asking strangers to judge them by the colors you believe will be on their students. Morality, who cares; but why are you hamstringing yourself?

The DoE build’s American nuclear weapons so they would be the type of people you would ask to get cleanup advice.

The DoE has US authority and expertise for all nuclear matters, to the point that the US Navy nuclear propulsion program is part DoD, part DoE. It makes sense that if there's even rumours of a radiation leak, the US would want/be invited to send some experts to check it out/verify for the propaganda/masses that there's nothing going on. Or hell, it may even have been an unfortunately scheduled unrelated visit.

Estonia has asserted its right to inspect tankers transiting the Baltic under the international laws for maritime protection, which was also backed up by a European Commission decision requiring tankers to provide proof of insurance when transiting European waters. Last month, Estonia briefly held a tanker which it asserted was operating with a false registry and from the reports yesterday the Estonian Navy again attempted to inspect another suspicious tanker.

The crude oil tanker identifying as Jaguar (105,000 dwt) registered in Gabon was inbound for Primorsk, Russia when the Estonian Navy contacted the vessel. The Equasis database reflects the same vessel as the Argent, registered in Guinea-Bissau with unknown managers and a registered owner in Mauritius.

Yes, how dare Estonia... attempt to inspect a tanker, possibly one traveling in its territorial waters? And not even one sailing under the Russian flag. Which, yes, we all know that maritime registries are fig leafs and tax evasion, but it still counts.

"The Insider was able to confirm, using Sentinel navigation charts and data from tracking service MarineTraffic, that Jaguar was indeed located in neutral waters during its encounter with the Estonian patrol boat Kurvits.

However, the video shared by the pro-Russian Telegram channels shows coordinates on the vessel’s navigation display indicating that, at the time of filming, the ship was positioned just south of the neutral waters boundary — within Estonia’s territorial waters."

If anything, the overreaction here was by Russia:

Russian SU-35 fighter entered Estonian airspace overflying the area. The plane was reported to be in Estonian airspace for less than one minute, but the media is saying its transponder was turned off and it was not in radio contact with Estonian air traffic control. It had not filed a flight plan.

I don't see anything wrong with Estonia attempting to enforce the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia, and trusting in its alliance with the West to then back it up when it attempts to enforce them. Any policing effort is backed by the state's authority and not just the physical capabilities of the arresting officer (although it certainly helps to be a bruiser), so if you expand it up a bit to geopolitics, this is no different.

The power line project costs $5.5 million every year for 400 years. Sagrada is so slow because they are using privately raised funds.

Churchill is by far the most beloved British political / cultural figure in history, topping almost every single poll of the greatest British people of all time.

An absolute tragedy. Churchill isn't even a top 3 prime minister of UK.

Well paid labor job without any particular educational qualifications. You can sub in whatever similar job appeals to you personally, but the point is that I don't think there's any white collar professional in America who doesn't occasionally think about getting on the interstate and driving all night until you reach a country town in a state where no one knows you and get a simple labor job and start over.

Not really. Murray’s ideology is the status quo as of the late 2000s / early 2010s. As polling suggests, in the UK among his generation that includes the extremely mainstream and almost universally accepted viewpoint (outside of the radical left and Indians) that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Britons of all time because he ‘won’ the last major war that the country was involved in - and really there is no deeper complexity to that perception.

Murray’s ideology makes him a small-c conservative in some ways (he basically wants Britain as it existed in like 2007 to exist forever and for it to be filled with people who accept the major tenets of liberalism forever) and a classical liberal imperialist in others. The latter (liberal imperialism) isn’t an oxymoron, by the way, it has a long tradition in British politics going back at least 180 years.

It’s hard to hate Murray because, like Harris, he’s actually pretty open about what he believes and he openly acknowledges that this is mainly based on his perception of his own self-interest. He’s a gay man who wants to export liberal western culture, by force, onto the whole world and prevent mass immigration of people who hate him. You can disagree with him, but he is ideologically consistent.

I've never heard of people claiming that the Bible is good literature make similar claims about the Koran or other scriptures. So I'm inclined to think that claims that the Bible is good literature are mostly halo effect (with some addition of 'everyone uses it so you need to read it to know the references').

Still not seeing the mischaracterization. Why would Churchill, the man whose decision making process ultimately nailed the final nail in the coffin of the British empire, be venerated by the likes of Murray? It's because Churchill opposed Hitler.

Ideology, for the likes of Murray, is central. That is why he spent 30 minutes waffling about good and evil on Joe Rogan when the topic of Darryl Cooper came up.

Maybe not a virus, but a vaccine...

It really is that simple: flight speed, payload and range isn't capped at some modest multiple above a falcon but by how much fuel you're prepared to burn and whether you're willing to use serious, atomic rockets.

That there is a hard scaling limit is true but it's not remotely relevant to my point since the difference between a bird and a nuclear rocket is so vast as to make any comparison but the most galaxy-brained 'it's all specks of dust from 50,000,000 light years' ridiculous. This should be immediately apparent!

That there is a scaling limit is secondary to where the limit actually is. There is no reason to think we are anywhere near the scaling limit. In rocketry we are limited by our level of investment and our unwillingness to use advanced propulsion, not by physics.

Your whole framing is ridiculous:

Fission, fusion, antimatter, whatever. Yes, we literally did antimatter. The conclusion? None of them give you all that much more in the face of the tyranny of the rocket equation. Certainly not if we're thinking galactic or cluster scale. More? Yes. But in context, underwhelming.

In context, underwhelming because it isn't galactic scale? And by the way, it clearly is galactic scale in a fairly reasonable timespan. Galactic scale in space, why not give it a couple hundred thousand years? A million years is peanuts in astronomical time, in the movements of galaxies or the evolution of life. You're taking an analogy I selected, not understanding it and then producing mixed contexts while complaining about my single, relevant, assumed context of 'things that matter on Earth to real human beings' as opposed to the 'insanity of exponentials and the universe' which doesn't matter to anyone.

Yeah, I don't think Mechwarrior 1-4 are ever getting released again. For a time Mechwarrior 4: Mercs got a free re-release, but the "free license" for that has been withdrawn, and it's no longer distributed officially. MW3 is actually the only one I haven't replayed to completion in recent memory. Perhaps I should make that my next retro project.

I wonder if they will continue it for hundreds of years and it will end up like Sweden's navel oak Forrest's (planted 20 years before steel became common for shipbuilding now they have a forest of oaks that are usually tall and straight).

Because their domestic audience hates Russia so badly they wish the Nazis had won WWII and it’s not like Russia can do much to them- the wrath of big daddy America is too fearsome.

Status-wise, there's no doubt Spanish has a lower socioeconomic association, so if you're trying to raise your kid to me a major climber, Chinese might be better if that's your primary goal.

At least in my part of the US, there is a niche for small business owners who use Spanish to communicate with (some of) their workers. This may be less status than you are looking for (construction contractors, restaurant franchise owners, ranchers), but it is something.

Analogously, I've at least heard of Chinese-speakers being pulled in to negotiate with "the factory" (mainland or Taiwan) building products.

On the gripping hand, our Brave New World today could easily spell major changes in both of these with changes in immigration and tariffs, so my confidence would be low.

It’s entirely possible that the women are unhappy because gen Z guys(I won’t get into the discussion of what qualifies as a man) are inadequate and that their standards are either very reasonable or only slightly high. Porn and gambling addictions, for example, are much more widespread in this generation than in the previous ones, and male employment is often less stable.

Presumably because of demand. As I figure, the HOA is basically a way of forcibly excluding people who can’t “fit in” with the community or follow the rules. Reading in between the lines, that was what was going on in this case, as in, classic bullying. Probably the people trying to force defendant to fit in were a real mess of busybodies, obviously, as they brought a dumb case to court, but this is the function here.

In a more sympathetic case, imagine a family moved in who left rusting cars on the lawn and other obnoxious but not quite illegal things that nobody of your class or background would do. How do you make them stop? I know a lot of the people here are libertarians, principled or otherwise, but the average Joe ain’t and would rather keep those families out, or else coloring within the lines. Personally I don’t empathize and enjoy my freedom more, but I get that’s a rarity overall.

And apparently HOAs are overall popular. People like em. Or at least, they aren’t the kind of radioactive that would stop people buying these properties, even with the very obvious downsides, and encourage developers to not enforce them. I know revealed preferences is a meme, but it seems to apply here.

Relating this out. I’ve seen a lot of people on this forum arguing pretty directly for a shared US culture. Well, the HOA feels exactly like what’s being asked for here - an association that punishes deviance with process, and upholds normalcy. Japan is a pretty culturally centralized place, and from what I hear from my friends there, pretty much every little village and neighborhood has its own little HOA (micro-local government). They organize things like who goes to sweep out the graveyard, sure, but also make certain nobody gets too far out of line, in that distinctive passive-aggressive but unmistakably Japanese way. And I think of that, and of the fuck-you American spirit, and it makes me laugh a little. Conformists are allowed their little liberties here, but why think they’re remotely popular? An American will only subject himself to banding together once he’s exhausted the alternatives for keeping the undesirables out.

(This is ignoring the little associations that are just about funding shared resources, like an HOA that pays for the community pool. Those have a straightforward reason to be.)