domain:moultano.wordpress.com
Sunshine
7hr ago
If you observe a person's number of teeth over time, you will find that they start with 0, rise to a certain peak, wobble a bit as baby teeth are lost and replaced, and then stay mostly stable at a certain number for a long time (possibly losing a few to accidents). Then, at the end of their life, they gradually lose teeth their one at a time until they have none.
If you were to look at a snapshot of a community, you would find that some children are gaining teeth quite quickly, the adults have a stable number of teeth, and the elders are gradually losing teeth. In a community that is 50% children (not rare historically) you might take an average and find that the number of teeth in the community is rising rapidly. However, if you were to extrapolate that to assume that the community's children are mutating into shark-like creatures who constantly grow more teeth, you would be making a mistake. In the long run, everyone ends up with exactly 0 teeth.
The mature civilizations of this planet are becoming less religious. It would be a mistake to assume the immature civilizations will continue their current trend lines exactly. It is better to assume they will follow the same course of evolution the more-developed civilizations took. The more-developed civilizations are becoming less religious over time, and unlike with children there are no new undeveloped civilizations rising up. It is reasonable to assume that, if things continue on as they have for another 100 years, secularism will continue to rise.
ABigGuy4U
7hr ago
If the temple is going to be rebuilt, the site would need to be consecrated with the sacrifice of a red heifer. It has to be a heifer that has no other colored hairs at all. That is very rare. Ranchers in Texas are working with ultra-orthodox groups in Israel to breed a line of such cows to have it ready in case the Dome of the Rock suddenly....goes away.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
They're invertebrates ping-ponging around inside this closed space of legal 'rules', penned in by judicial review and the ECHR. They don't realise that they have the power and the duty to write and rewrite the rules as necessary to achieve outcomes. They're too wedded to the 'rule of law' now, they don't realise that it's truly just a social construct.
Quantumfreakonomics
7hr ago
>He doesn't know about the red heifer
shoeonfoot
7hr ago
Sorry to resurrect this thread but I've only now gotten a chance to read this post and all the responses carefully. I'm curious what you make of this thread. I'll copy it below in case you don't want to click the link.
Why the Epstein story matters so deeply to the political right—and why sweeping it under the rug is not just offensive, but a civilizational betrayal:
This isn’t just about Epstein. It’s about what his case reveals: a nexus of unaccountable power, intelligence cover, institutional rot, and elite impunity. The story touches every nerve the American right has been warning about for a century.
Since FDR, the right has feared the unchecked expansion of the administrative state. But the real danger wasn’t just bureaucracy—it was the fusion of that bureaucracy with the intelligence community, financial elites, and transnational interests.
Epstein is the singular window into this world. A man with no clear source of wealth, deep ties to U.S. and foreign intelligence, and access to the most powerful people in the world—running a blackmail operation under institutional protection.
The CIA won’t talk. The FBI walked away. The media refused to dig. And Israel—whose alleged involvement through cutouts like Wexner is whispered about but never investigated—remains off limits. That silence says more than any report ever could.
For decades, the right has asked: Who really governs? Who watches the watchers? Epstein gave us a glimpse. And what we saw was not a “conspiracy theory”—it was conspiratorial governance: intelligence services operating with total impunity.
This isn’t just about criminal sexual behavior—though the abuse of underage girls is itself an unspeakable crime, and one that demands real justice. But the fact that such crimes were instrumentalized for power is what makes this even more sinister.
The use of sexual blackmail to compromise institutions and shield a network of elites is not a subplot—it’s the playbook. This was kompromat as statecraft, and it operated in the open, protected by the very agencies tasked with protecting us.
The reason the Epstein story haunts the right is that it confirms our deepest suspicions: —Our intelligence agencies are political actors. —Our elites are compromised. —Our allies are unaccountable. —And our institutions lie to preserve their power.
Worse still: every time the Epstein story is buried, the very institutions doing the burying destroy their own legitimacy. The cover-up corrodes the foundation they claim to defend—rule of law, transparency, democratic accountability.
This is what Eisenhower warned of—not just a “military-industrial complex,” but the seamless merger of state power, private capital, and foreign intelligence. Epstein is a grotesque fruit of that fusion. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.
The right sees Epstein not as an aberration, but a revelation. A moment when the mask slipped. When the postwar liberal order—underwritten by secrecy, mutual blackmail, and “strategic alliances”—showed its true face.
So no—we won’t move on. Not because we’re obsessed with scandal, but because the Epstein case is the Rosetta Stone for understanding the modern American regime. And the regime knows it.
That’s why it must be buried. That’s why we must never let it be.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7hr ago
I can already see the framework, the jewish tricks are practically manifesting before my eyes:
This is an odd and derogatory thing to drop into the middle of your post. I am not quite sure what you're getting at, or if this was meant as some kind of ironic joke that I missed, but you seem to be playing on the trope of "Jews are responsible for everything related to social degeneracy and porn." You're either failing to speak clearly, or if you really want to pin this, of all things, on the Jews, you need to provide some kind of evidence for the claim that "Jews" are behind this.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7hr ago
... is it more hilarious or disturbing that they are making the furry version available before the male human version?
Quantumfreakonomics
7hr ago
On the Protestant end, the number of things that are “demonic” are growing really fast.
This is in contrast to the Catholic view, in which everything is presumed demonic until exorcised (why do you think they bless things so much?)
shoeonfoot
7hr ago
Buddha statues you can put into your garden
Note that is frowned upon by most genuine Buddhists.
Trump was able to win over a lot more Catholics than he did in 2016 and 2020. In fact, a majority Catholics voted for Clinton and Biden, but then swung like +10 in favor of Trump. I'm not sure what effect this had on Trump winning as many states as he did, but if it was relevant, a Republican will have a harder time winning in 2028 if the Catholic vote swings back to D.
I'm curious to see if organized Christianity adopts a more hardline position on immigration. What I'm increasingly seeing among the Online Right, especially after Epstein, is that the only thing that will salvage the Trump administration is mass deportations, and their attempt to synthesize Christianity with this goal.
TIRM
8hr ago
It's not clear any company running this sort of thing can seriously prevent leaks over a long enough time for it to be relevant.
With sufficient will, they could do just this. This is a choice they actively make one way or another.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
There's real technical ability in lawyering and banking too, but it's always engineering that gets singled out for treating women wrong. Somehow or another (male) engineers are the worst of the worst in terms of oppressing women.
Or... the narrative is completely wrong. Engineering gets singled out because women prefer the bros to the nerds.
Blueberry
8hr ago
Meditation and yoga sessions and cheap decorative Buddha statues you can put into your garden/house without making a strong religious statement.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8hr ago
I’m not sure how sinful it is, but most of the people who talk about it seem a bit off. Like they don’t really seem to care about anything else.
gattsuru
8hr ago
I have two. I'm not a good writer, and a lot of my better writing I'm not really comfortable linking under this name, but I think they say something about what could be useful to good writers.
This is the all-audiences one: reviewing the review of the re-view. Not every recommendation here is good or even correct (Grok either can't or doesn't notice that I mention that the "Matryoshka doll" story is explicitly fictional and couldn't be known to be true in Mahaffey's version, and probably doesn't have access to the original book; it also handwaves errors in fatality numbers in an aircraft crash are actually pretty damning), but it does catch errors I didn't notice after multiple rereads ("opposites side") and that I definitely mirrored Mahaffey's approach far more heavily than I'd intended or even recognized, along with a few good style recommendations.
((Uh, and the recommendations about asides, nested parentheticals, and being a pedantic hater might be correct, but not exactly useful given that they're kinda my intentional tone.))
[cw: nsfw text and themes below, though nothing worse than you could put on YouTube]
My other example is from a bi furry piece, albeit an except stripped of the actual bedroom activities. So that may make it unusable for examination. If not...
This isn't perfect. There's a good portion of it that's either blowing smoke up my skirt ('cheeky'), or only finding corrections that are trivial (duplicated words, comma errors) that I or a beta reader would probably have caught on a re-read, or that are amadan's extremely generic your first how to write advice (slow pacing). Some of the tone emphasis between flirty and platonic is arguable or even just, imo, plain wrong, as is one of the comma errors where it recommends a 'fix' that's already in the original text. Others are pretty clear good advice, such as on rising tension and characterization, but probably an artifact of my limited experience as a writer and .
(and, tbf, that this is a small excerpt).
By contrast, the problems with the wristband themes would be very hard to figure out with a beta reader: they're a moderately common convention in bi furry stuff, such that almost anyone who'd want to beta read would be so familiar with it as to take it as a given, but they're not so common that I should have assumed every reader or even every experienced reader would have gotten it.
But this is a subgenre-of-a-subgenre-of-a-subgenre piece. I could believe that grok has enough (mmf) furry smut in its input to avoid being absolutely one-shot! There's not really enough orientation play involving multiple male characters, furry or otherwise, for me to think the stochaistic parrots complaint applies, here. And this particular version of that subgenre focus is defined in no small part by a logical inconsistency. Even in the long-form, grok could 'recognize' it was being 'confused' that the character's self-identifications didn't match up with their behaviors, even if it came up with the 'wrong' response; that's about as good an evidence that you'd need to clarify what's going on as available from human reviewers.
and this is Grok's two-generation-old model.
Terracotta
8hr ago
I mean, I chose engineering because it's an area where genuine technical ability/ technically excellent work exists, and because it draws personality types (both male and female) who tend to get excited about the material work itself and who want to use their technical ability to do a good job. Also because I have first- and second-hand personal experience of adjacent things happening.
Sales and similar bro-professions seem much more like jobs where persuasion through performing a social role is the whole point, so it's hard to imagine someone complaining about their externally-imposed social role getting in the way of their good work. I know a realtor who works her augmented breasts very effectively as part of her job, and she doesn't seem upset about it at all, any more than the local car salesman who leans into stereotypes with his down-home aw-shucks accent. But maybe I'm being unfair to sales, and actually there is a lot of technical subtlety there as well, who knows?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
8hr ago
Just wanted a tattoo because it felt cool lol. My best friend came up with a design I really liked, and on my deltoids it went. You could also consider it a getting into med school/becoming an adult gift to myself.
Stellula
8hr ago
Personally I see a fusion of Buddhism x Christianity already happening, and expect a sort of Christian orthodoxy mixing in Buddhism mental techniques as the most successful religion of the 21st century.
What things do you think that Buddhism offers that Christianity does not?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
8hr ago
I've got a single tattoo, that's usually covered up.
Was this a "transhumanist bucketlist" sort of thing?
Hieronymus
8hr ago
Prosperity-gospel televangelists exist, but evangelicals broadly regard them as heretics and scammers. For example, Mike Winger has a whole playlist condemning Benny Hinn.
Evangelicals didn’t support Trump in the 2016 primary but did support him in the 2016 general election. Appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe bought him some political loyalty among us, though.
JarJarJedi
8hr ago
I am bipedal, featherless and have broad flat nails. Didn't really like the Death Note either.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
The idea was, as you correctly identify, for a female engineer to be perceived by her colleagues as an engineer first and not "hey, tits!... oh yeah, and I guess it's an engineer too or sth."
The fact that it's always engineers, and not lawyers or salespeople or other such professions filled with actual bros, gives away the fact that no, it isn't this. This is a narrative with no factual backing.
JarJarJedi
8hr ago
Israel is probably willing to spend many more of its own lives in this conflict.
In fact, the projections of losses from Iran and Hezbollah operations were much higher than actually happened. I don't have exact numbers handy but I heard from 3x to 10x more, and it still was deemed acceptable to begin the operations with that level of loss projections. So yes, at least as far as Israel government is concerned, they estimate they could bear 10x more casualties without losing the war. I hope we will never verify that in practice, but at least it was the assumption of people whose job is to make such assumptions and decide whether or not to go to war based on them.
The tennis example strikes me as absurd and lacking in dignity for either Ackman or the tournament, but the presence of a substantial benefit to the tournament does change the calculation a bit for me. The tournament has traded part of its credibility for a large payment. Depending on the tournament's finances, that might have been a worthwhile trade for them, but it's still undoubtedly sordid.
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