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Pongalh
3d ago
Once in a while The Motte ditches culture war and sounds admirably left populist...
Pongalh
3d ago
I have gone months without checking my bank account when I was depressive.
Interesting. Depressive but able to maintain a steady stream of income from a reliable job? I've only been very depressed when unemployed of massively underemployed. I envy the six figures, whew.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Argentina has no dangerous wildlife(to humans) to speak of- argentine pumas are known for not even being willing to defend themselves against human assailants, jaguars have only a marginal presence, and the South American canid species are too small and tame to threaten people. I suppose theres bushmasters and rattlesnakes but guns are less helpful against snakes than macro predators.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Boo hoo- credit scores show good breeding and conventionality. Of course people want to see them. Wouldn’t you?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Looks more like a finger to me. It’s not like I haven’t seen weirder artifacts from panoramas. But AI feels more likely.
Not that I think it matters. Trump doesn’t exactly have a history of insulting Mormons.
Pongalh
3d ago
As a civilian my impression of the military is that it is made up of mostly literal cuckolds, 4’10” fat latinas and idiots that had absolutely zero job prospects outside of what amounts to a government make-work program.
Far preferable to being a gooning NEET who don't even the hustle to take advantage of government make-work. Also they still have to submit themselves to a level of discipline and physical rigor at least initially in a way I want nothing to do with. No one's interfering with my waking up at 10am and doing remote work.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
This is all reasonable and I’m very sympathetic to it. But then again, I don’t feel that someone too stupid to understand compound interest and with a time preference too high to understand saving money and/or not maxxing out every loan facility they have should have the same power over the direction of our shared society as me.
Interesting point, and yeah I have to admit that dumber people often do screw up major societal decisions. The tricky part is deciding who gets to decide.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Why not do low cost ETFs or index funds? You don't need to look at those and you make lots of money.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Weekly attendees at any particular denomination do.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
I know somebody who just got back from safari in South Africa. Apparently suppressors are near-universal there; it’s considered rude not to use one. But accessing guns was extremely lenient.
Argentina is another lax one. Big history of ranching.
I guess I should begin by stating I’m not making an apologetic for young earth creationism — only for Christianity understood as a set of creeds, period.
The larger context of your post was that the Bible is not reliable, the existence of Jesus is flimsy, and historic Christian creeds are not reliable. That kind of language is rarely limited to purely views on Genesis, and taken to an extreme leads easily to the deconstruction of the whole religion. It’s more that general viewpoint, rather than any particular belief, that I find it hard to believe religious women are interested in. But it’s possible you hail from the more mainline/theologically modernist traditions, where those views are common — in which case, boy, should you hear what evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics think of them. If you think what they say about the LDS is bad, you should hear how they describe Episcopalians.
My view, fundamentalist as it is, is that a faith should live or die based on its truth claims, and if historic creeds are false, the faith should crumble into dust and be buried by history. So perhaps we bring a different psychology to the table, which explains are tension with each other’s viewpoints. I’m actually a big admirer of empiricism, and I suspect we agree far more than you may think — but I do think ideas deserve to be taken all the way, and have a great deal of respect, actually, for the classical liberals who said, “death to religion,” and started forcefully disestablishing churches. I respect a strong opinion held strongly.
I see how a reader could read my earlier comment as a direct discussion of age of the earth or heliocentrism debates — but my point is rather that “the Bible is not reliable and religion must bend to empiricism” isn’t exactly a popular point of view in Christian circles, and I have an inherent suspicion — which may well be untrue and unnecessary in this case! — of people who try to join religious communities to try to get with religious women, while avoiding actual commitments to the community and joining in the beliefs that shape and ground it. I dislike milquetoast or opportunistic religion about as much as you dislike fundamentalism — but I am, after all, a child of evangelicals who went atheist and then back to Christianity… taking religious ideas intensely seriously and deconstructing and reconstructing them to the fullest possible extent is rather my thing.
It’s not really relevant, but I do have a friend who’s a flat earther, and believes that NASA was founded to cover up the conspiracy. Boy, is he wrong… but boy, is he fun to talk to!
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I do not value the wretched above all others. I value God.
Unfortunately, as you probably guessed from my AD 1 reference, Christianity values the wretched above all others.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
It is definitely a case where technology (batteries and motors) has outstripped politics, but drones don’t really compete with firearms against undefended targets. Other than aircraft, I guess, which is where we see the leading edge of regulation.
Handguns are useful for personal violence in a way that drones can’t ever be.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
If we arrange the world to "protect" people like that, we make life worse for all the rest of us. A lot worse, because these people are so incapable. Just as a world without fast cars and sharp knives is worse than one with them, so is a world without (or with very limited) credit cards or any of the other things those people can hurt themselves with.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
I do not value the wretched above all others. I value God. I think there are plenty of ways in which we should make life harder for the poor, in fact. Like restricting healthcare and social security and such. That being said, I still don't think that promoting ruinous usury is a good.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yeah I agree the openly defrauding was inaccurate. I'm angry about it. But you are right it's not fraud, though still immoral imo.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Not everyone, but the vast majority it seems.
daguerrean
3d ago
I doubt that beards in specific pose any problem. But I can easily imagine that having strict grooming and fitness standards pay dividends even if the exact contents of those standards are largely arbitrary and unimportant. If I had to make up a BS but plausible sort of justification, I imagine that these things foster a sense of pride, unity, and brotherhood as belonging to a special class, and it is not hard to imagine that such things are actually beneficial to functioning according to a sort of “broken windows” theory of organizational functioning. Like, if you can’t even hold standards around something low-cost and easy to police like hair, what hope do you have of maintaining standards that are much more critical and harder to police (like courage under fire)? Of course I have no proof it actually shakes out this way but as I said it seems plausible and directionally correct. As a civilian my impression of the military is that it is made up of mostly literal cuckolds, 4’10” fat latinas and idiots that had absolutely zero job prospects outside of what amounts to a government make-work program. They would certainly do well to start combatting that perception because I doubt I’m alone
In 2009 or so, a little after Chase purchased my bank WaMu, they fucked up whatever data transfer the acquisition involved. My debit card ended up pegged to a backup savings account (with like $500 in it) rather than my chequing account (with $50,000 in it). This all happened completely silently, and obviously without my consent. I didn't find out until they finally declined a transaction - after charging me $350 in overdraft """protection""" (man, you're right, that is such an evil name) for around $50 in small purchases. Like you, I didn't even know it was on by default, because there was no chance I'd ever need it.
When I went in to, very angrily, get them to reverse this, they a) told me that it was too large an amount for the agent to easily refund, and b) still took the chance to upsell me on other services. Sigh. I think I finally got it through their stupid heads that they were about to lose a customer (and possibly get sued - not sure how practical that is for a mere $350, but I sure hope the system is set up so that banks can't simply steal money without consequences).
I can only imagine how poorly it goes when somebody who's barely scraping by gets screwed over by these people. The modern world is just too complex for humans.
Lewis2
3d ago
Clean-shaven privates just look better. I’m pretty sure that’s all there is to it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Like the Tylenol thing, this smells like a special interest. I’ll guess that there’s some lobby, somewhere, which has been clamoring to remove this exemption. I can’t imagine who would care so much, but that describes a surprising amount of Trump II.
Even if this turns out to be a pet cause of the Daughters of the Confederacy, is it going to change anyone’s mind?
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
3d ago
Everyone gets Flanderized even people who are ostensibly playing themselves.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Debit cards violate the whole "need to trust the merchant" thing. Fraud on your credit card means the bank is out the money. Fraud on your debit card means YOU are out the money until the situation is resolved.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
The reason I see it as pretty central is that basically the Trinity goes back pretty far in the historical record, and was dogmatically declared around the same time the New Testament was canonized. It’s really hard to claim one without the other. If you’re calling the New Testament without reservations The Canon as opposed to other writings, it’s really hard to consistently also say “but they are wrong about these other things.”
Gas masks don’t seal with a beard.
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