domain:mattlakeman.org
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5m ago
I think that's true but far less so in a family, and if the family is tight and remains so. That helps a lot. I see a lot of fractured families and disaffected youth, who become rudderless adults (unless they bind themselves to some group or club or other activity). Jobs can fill this role Another thing people often don't get about work culture here.
Given the two attempts at invasion/annexation in 11 year (one of them ongoing) it seems reasonable that the Ukrainians would not want ZZ-niks working in thier country, voting in thier elections, etc.
Remember that we are talking about naturalization here IE whether or not we let a person in, and once in, how much of an obligation is there to let them stay.
ResoluteRaven
30m ago
The cuts to science funding seem likely to do major damage to American R&D, cause a mass exodus of skilled workers to Europe, and give China the opportunity to get even farther ahead of us in key fields such as battery development. As an attack on the woke elements of the Academy they seem both disproportionate and poorly targeted, and as an attempt to burn it all to the ground they are clearly insufficient. I'd like to see someone at least propose a new Bell Labs-type enterprise as a replacement for the scientific infrastructure that they're trying to dismantle, if that's the way we're going.
In other news, Elon promised to start a new political party and to primary a bunch of Republican congresscritters if the bill passed. That should be entertaining to watch if he doesn't chicken out.
OliveTapenade
33m ago
The continuing saga of Aboriginal issues in Australia!
You may recall that in 2023 Australia had a referendum on changing the constitution to attach a permanent Aboriginal advisory body to parliament. That referendum was rejected around 60-40. We discussed it here at the time, and since then I've been keeping an eye on the issue. Since then, many state governments have stated their intention to go ahead with state-level bodies, or even with 'treaty'.
'Treaty', in the context of Aboriginal activism in Australia, is a catch-all term for bilateral agreements between state and federal governments and indigenous communities. Whether or not this is a good idea tends to be heavily disputed, with the left generally lining up behind 'yes', and the right behind 'no'.
Anyway, I bring this up because just last week, in Australia's most progressive state, Victoria, the Yoorrook Report was just published.
This is the report of a body called the Yoorrook Justice Commission, a body set up in this state with public funds whose purpose is to give a report on indigenous issues in the state. They call this 'truth-telling' (and indeed 'Voice, Treaty, Truth' was the slogan of the larger movement for a while), though whether or not the publications they put out are true is, well, part of the whole issue.
Here is the summary of their report.
You can skip most of the first half - the important part is their hundred recommendations, starting from page 28 of the PDF, all beginning with the very demanding phrase 'the Victorian Government must...'
This puts the Victorian government in a somewhat difficult position. They love the symbolism of being progressive on Aboriginal issues, and indeed are currently legislating for a more permanent indigenous advisory body to parliament. However, the actual recommendations of the Yoorrook Report are very expensive, very complex, and in many cases blatantly unreasonable, at least to my eyes. Some examples would include recommendations 4 (a portion of all land, water, and natural-resource-related revenues should be allocated to indigenous peoples), 21 (land transfers), 24 (reverse burden of proof for native land title), 41 (recognise waterways as legal persons and appoint indigenous peoples as their representatives, like that river in New Zealand), 54 (decolonise school libraries by removing offensive books), 66-7 (universities must permanently fund additional Aboriginal support services and 'recompense First Peoples staff for the 'colonial load' they carry'), and 96 (establish a permanent Aboriginal representative body 'with powers at all levels of political and policy decision making'). Needless to say the recommendations taken as a whole are both expensive and politically impossible, especially since even Victoria rejected the Voice 55-45.
Possibly from Yoorrook's perspective the idea is just to open with a maximal demand that they can then negotiate down from; or possibly it's to deliberately make demands that cannot possibly be satisfied so that there will remain a need for activists in this space. From the state government's perspective it's tricky, because they will want to appear responsive and sympathetic, but not want to actually do all this. I predict that they will accept a couple of the cheaper, more fig-leaf recommendations and ignore the rest, maintaining a status quo where we engage in symbolic acts of recognition and guilt but nothing more, and the Aboriginal rights industry, so to speak, continues to perpetuate itself.
If the Victorian Liberals (the state branch of our centre-right party) were more on the ball, I might have expected them to politically profit from this and make a good bid at the next election, but unfortunately the Victorian Liberals are in shambles and have been for some time, and the recent smashing of the federal Liberal party at the last election doesn't make it look good for them either.
TitaniumButterfly
1hr ago
I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Great line. Reminds me of my travels there. Very lonely country.
crushedoranges
1hr ago
I was more objecting to the provocative terminology that libertarians use: that taxation is theft, that bans are imprisonment and murder, that many straightforward and inoffensive things are in fact statist violence to the individual. It is no more convincing to me than the vegan framing of an industrial concentration camp of imprisoned bovine lifeforms is, in fact, a cattle pen. It is a stupid way to argue and no one is actually convinced by that sort of rhetoric.
The sacral force of the law has always held the connotation of life or death consequence: since Roman times it was thus. Not everyone follows laws because of moral duty: justice carries both the scales and the sword! It is so obvious that only libertarians feel smug about stating the obvious. Yes, the state has the power to enforce its directives with force. That is a good thing. If it did not, then it would not have the power to make anyone heed it. And that threshold of necessary violence is decided by the people of the nation, not libertarians!
If you don't have that, you don't really have a society: only a collection of strangers in an economic zone.
Only a libertarian would believe that without a state, men would follow laws. Thousands of years of history have taught us this, that ambitious men who break weak states soon place themselves above it, to rule like tyrants. Similarly as you have encountered hundreds of critiques of libertarianism, I have read just as much apologia for it and have emerged thoroughly unconvinced of its merit and totally dumbfounded by its complete unseriousness.
they just need enough to make the cost of a nuclear exchange so high Israel would never risk it
But this has further implications that you omit.
If Iran has the bomb, they can provide it to a smaller, far more suicidal group of allies (the Palestinians) to lock the Israelis into their current borders unless they negotiate with Iran. Technology transfers, taxes, religious rites/rights, not purchasing American weapons, etc. is what that looks like.
In this way, the Hamasi would serve as the permanent Iranian veto over the [Ashke]nazi. Because they simply don't care if the Israelis nuke them in response- the fact is, the Israelis get hurt far more than the Palestinians, the Palestinians are suicidal, and that is sufficient to accomplish this goal.
Conversely, if Israel believes that Iran will, or already has, or will inevitably soon obtain, a bomb like this... then their only response is to start removing the local kebab as fast as humanly possible. They didn't like the paragliders the first time; imagine how much they're not going to like them when the settlers further encroaching on their territory prompts an air-borne SADMization of the Israeli countryside.
The Iron Dome can stop a lot but the bomber is going to get through. And sure, Hamas could always attack from another country (perhaps one in which they seek refuge after the dust settles), but in that case that other country [and its people] are collateral the Israelis can threaten such that Hamas is kept down- since if Hamas manages to get an attack off then it's the entire host nation's problem, and Israel becomes the one with the nuclear veto.
I mean I think many of the Revolutions are less impressive as they always end up recreating the structures that actually work for human society.
I'm not sure I agree. My view of history is that technology often creates a latent possibility for change within society, and that if a Revolution happens "at the right time" it can radically alter the shape of society. If it happens "at the wrong time" it will either destroy a society completely, or just change who happens to be at the top, but reproduce the successful model that preceded it.
The best examples are the French and American revolutions. I think they happened at the perfect time to create a transition from feudalism to capitalism and from monarchy to constitutional republics. The printing press changed us from a network society to a broadcast society, the post-Renaissance engagement with Classical history was stronger than ever, the Age of Sail was exposing European societies to new resources and new ways of thinking, and the Scientific revolution was in full swing. Things were ready for a shake up.
But human nature doesn’t change and truth doesn’t change and the hard realities of life on earth doesn’t change.
I partly agree with you, and partly disagree.
I think there is something to a Stephen Pinker-esque argument about how much better our society is from those in the past: Less infant mortality, less war deaths, less starvation, etc. All of those things are tangible differences from the past. (I don't discount that a lot of these could be reframed in a more pessimistic light, where the threat of violence is just as strong as it has ever been - it is just the case that we have created a global system where the stakes are so high that all of the big players with survival instincts choose to engage in smaller scale proxy wars to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.)
However, I think many people feel like something has gone deeply wrong with modern society, and I personally think a lot of it stems from what I like to call "unenriched zoo enclosure syndrome." Anatomically modern humans evolved ~2 million years ago for an ancestral environment very different from anything we see in the modern day. I believe that our basic body plan and capabilities have been enough to give us a massive ability to shape our own environment, but that increased control has allowed us to create societies that aren't good matches for our psychology.
I think things like Bowling Alone, the male loneliness epidemic and many other societal problems fundamentally stem from the fact that we've designed a "zoo enclosure" for ourselves that doesn't fulfill our basic psychological and social needs as animals. It's like the birds that die of stress when put in captivity, or the lions that pace unhappily back and forth in a bad enclosure. Our instincts leave us expecting a highly social world of in person social interactions, full of green and certain kinds of stresses and challenges, and we have produced a world where we get none of that. Materially, we're better off than we've ever been, but psychologically I think we need to find new and better ways to deliver on experiences that "enrich" our zoo enclosures and leave us as happy human animals.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
I discussed it with a judge doing more advanced judgey things (abstract legal analysis of a case judgement as if presenting a paper at a conference) and he thought Sonnet 3.6 was a pretty decent law student, so presumably Opus 4 or indeed o3 would be lots better.
eee
2hr ago
I haven't interacted with Darwin in a really long time, like since before the thread was exiled from /r/ssc.
He clearly was not ever arguing in good faith. Like people would be talking about how progressives use X as a Motte and Bailey eh would make bizarre claims of never seeing any real progressives trying to reap the Bailey and then when people ample evidence of progressives exploiting the Bailey he then picks one or two and tries to handwave all of the evidence away by dismissing those. Some standout examples were the time there was some argument about video game journalists and someone quoted someone that reviews video games for Arstechnica and he argued that that is some tiny site no one has heard of and it doesn't count because his byline said he was a "hardware reviewer" instead of a reviewer for games. Or the time he claimed to be really familiar with some controversy and then said that this one guy that had OP-eds in The Guardian and the NYTimes about it was a nobody and "a tutor from South Africa" according to some result on like page 5 of Google results. It was especially egregious because there were multiple tweets from him linked and his bio on twitter had his bonafides in it.
He also would also claim to have personal knowledge (or his spouse does which somehow counts as him knowing too) of literally any subject. The domains were always changing and for it to be true he would have been a true renaissance man with a very storied life instead of someone that spends 12 hours a day arguing on reddit. I'm surprised no one compiled a list of all of the jobs or things he claimed to have experience with, but I wasn't about to spend the time going through his comment history to do it.
Having people with different viewpoints is great, but it isn't enough. If they aren't here to honestly engage in discussion and are just here to troll they are negative value. Darwin demonstrated time and time again that he was not interested in engaging in good faith discussion. The mods bent over backwards and tied themselves in knots to justify his bad behaviour because they desperately wanted more progressive voices. All of the while pretending they would never do that but also writing essays about how it makes sense for the mods to look the other way when a minority voice in a space misbehaves all of the time. It was obnoxious and his behaviour and the defense of it is why I never bothered with the splinter community that kept him.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
2hr ago
Well, yeah; this is 100% an autistic Christian thing.
You make yourself an enemy of the God of America when you lie on the form, because He knows the contents of your heart and what is done in secret.
That is why "lying on the form about the contents of your heart" is accepted by American culture as both valid, and an offense that strips you of any right to participate in it so long as they see fit that the question remains on the form.
Interestingly, it doesn't actually make any moral judgment- it still maintains the presupposition that there are good people who are also [disqualifying class]- but then, if the man be good, he would not lie on the forms because [see above].
Thus lying on the form is, while a completely natural thing to do, a sin -> if you were good, you're certainly an enemy of God [and by extension, the country] now -> OK to revoke and eject on those grounds.
ulyssessword
2hr ago
What is the definition of an "enemy of the United States" though?
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization. If that isn't sufficient to meet the definition, then I'm not sure what is.
Supah_Schmendrick
3hr ago
I don't think it was done to the Nazis qua being a Nazi, it was done because they materially lied about it during naturalization.
These are not materially different things. GK Chesterton actually remarked on this:
When I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports . . . [t]he officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality, it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called "Confessions" which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, "if you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?" . . .
One of the questions on the paper was, "Are you an anarchist?" To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, "What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?" along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an αρχη. Then there was the quesiton, "Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?" Agaisnt this I should write, "I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour, not the beginning." The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, "Are you a polygamist?" The answer to this is "No such luck" or "Not such a fool," according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W.T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question "Shall I slay my brother Boer?" - the answer that ran, "Never interfere in family matters." But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with beautiful gravity, "I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you." Or, "I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity." Or again, "Yes I am a polygamist all right and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries." There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
...
Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask whether I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared to the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.
...
It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the manner of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek Philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among other of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition may have been admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now, in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the expierment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was trace on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
"What I saw in America" 1912, pgs. 3-9
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3hr ago
I mean I think many of the Revolutions are less impressive as they always end up recreating the structures that actually work for human society. It’s the same across cultures and times with various means of control being attempted or various social systems being implemented to try to keep civilization alive and functioning as technology changes around us. But human nature doesn’t change and truth doesn’t change and the hard realities of life on earth doesn’t change. I suspect we’ll probably settle into something that works just as we have every other time
Goodguy
3hr ago
He says "Pornography causes nothing but harm. Crystal meth causes nothing but harm." This is not true, but for the sake of argument let's say that it is actually true. What he does not say is that letting the government have the power to prevent people from watching pornography or doing crystal meth also, in the real world, causes harm. In practice, one cannot allow government to have the power to prevent private individuals from watching porn or consuming recreational drugs without also having downsides, such as: 1) you must then give extra tax money to government agents so that they can enforce these laws, and 2) it will probably encourage the growth of government power in ways that even you yourself might not agree with - once you empower government to snoop and to reach into people's lives to that extent, it is unlikely that government will stop at just banning porn and crystal meth.
Now, we can argue about what causes more harm, pornography/crystal meth or the government preventing people from using those things. My point is more that Smith does not even engage with this argument, even though it is a common and fairly obvious one.
Corvos
3hr ago
Four: Enforcing contracts, right?
the idiots don't realize that they need to allow my social project or society will of course collapse
What if some of the people saying this are right, though? That is, excluding the American frontier, which I think was historically unprecedented and will not be repeated, what if a stable society really does need a social code enforced by the state or an entity with equivalent power? I guess that would then pass your bar?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
White people used to rule the world with an iron fist, we roamed the seas and dominated everything we saw. Then our culture changed over time, and despite our very similar genetics to our ancestors of a few hundred years ago, we have... the problems we have now.
Some white people roamed the seas and conquered, but most stayed home. Part of culture/context/circumstance isn't how talent is developed, it's also what talents are brought to the surface and become visible.
Consider a toy example: Puerto Rican baseball players
Until 1989, Puerto Rico was treated as a Latin American nation by Major League Baseball, teams signed players at 16 for cash (and typically they had under the table agreements with trainers before the players came of age). Young prospects in Latin American countries can start earning money at a young age, often getting support from trainers before turning 16 if they showed promise. This has lead to Caribbean countries producing disproportionate talent relative to their population, because kids are incentivized to focus on baseball from a young age.
By contrast, in the United States, players can't be signed for cash, they can only be drafted after graduating high school (or attending college) at 18. Players in the draft (historically) got less money than international players, and they got it at a later age.
After the change, Puerto Rico produced fewer MLB players, and according to some reports a lot of athletic poor kids switched to soccer, where they could be signed at a younger age.
Let's take this as a toy model. Assume that 100%, or near enough, kids will pursue the dominant sport. Soccer and Baseball are different enough that there's probably almost no crossover between athletes who could do either at a professional level, genetically they're going to be two distinct groups. Assume for our toy model that 2% of Puerto Rican kids have the freakish foot-dexterity and cardio to play Soccer professionally; and a separate 5% of Puerto Rican kids have the tremendous eyesight and hand-eye coordination to play Major League Baseball.
Under one MLB regime, Puerto Rico will produce MLB stars. Under a different regime, it will produce soccer stars. The 2% that are genetically built for soccer will be merely good athletes if they pursue baseball, and the 5% that are genetically suited for baseball will be merely good athletes if they pursue soccer. Puerto Rico's overall athleticism hasn't changed, the genetics haven't changed, but what aspects are highlighted have changed.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4hr ago
I actually wonder if this is true. I have heard of a few scattered abuses of asset forfeiture by police, no idea how common it is, but I could imagine something similar for ICE.
That’s said I think the more compelling reason to be skeptical is that large government agencies don’t like to be bored. Personally I’m not that torn up about it although my personal ethics would prevent me from working for ICE (which is saying something because I wouldn’t mind working for most defense contractors or the CIA), but you could see an argument that ICE being given too many people will lead them to go above and beyond their mandate.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Video game ass logic.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4hr ago
I’m not convinced that anything has changed, that’s my point. The way politics has always worked is based on power, and whatever the window-dressing might be, and if the actual power elites don’t want a thing to happen, it will not happen. If those same elites want something to happen it will absolutely happen. It’s been that way since the first brick was laid at the foundation of the first city. Nobody with power has ever cared about what the public wants, nor do they care about the peasant population of their country. As long as the little people shut up and obey (or at least not interfere too much in the affairs of their betters), the powerful do not care.
The control mechanism of democracy is basically mass gaslighting. First convince everyone that whatever “the public” wants is what the government should do. Then propagandize the population to believe whatever the elites want to have happen. In the meantime you rig the districts such that those who the elites support have an easier time winning. Once this is done, most people will vote as instructed, and most of the rest will go along because they’ve been taught from birth that the results of the election represent the “will of the people” and thus cannot be questioned. So when the government serving the elites does something wrong, stupid, or evil, it’s your fault. The people in charge, running the show were just doing whatever they were told to do by you. So you vote as instructed and wonder why things don’t improve.
I’m fine with any sort of government that mostly works for most people without being too harsh on the average citizen. The form of government isn’t important, customer service is. By which I mean management should provide the vast majority a fairly comfortable lifestyle, they should build and keep up good infrastructure, to live in a stable and secure society, and to not have foreign governments attacking us, our trade routes, and so on.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
5hr ago
Well, the Ukrainians get pretty close to that wrt Russia ("Muscovites onto the gallows" was a popular slogan even before the war). Does that mean that if Trump goes full rapprochement with Putin, pro-Ukrainians would be up for denaturalization?
It's the 5th here but enjoy the 4th.
We usually do barbecue or mashed potatoes or black-eyed peas or something close to my roots, and hang the US flag out. This year the boys were going to be at sports clubs and wifey was going to be late, so I detoured through Osaka and headed in instead of out, and went alone and caught the Mission Impossible film before it leaves theaters.
It's always odd going to a movie alone. For me at least. Sitting through previews I am reminded of the banality of Japanese films. I think some Japanese actors and actresses are actually capable of amazing range, but most Japanese directors are hamfisted hacks.
Cruise had recorded a message for the Japanese audience in preview. He has a massively loyal following here, though obviously he's not as young and current as he used to be (I can relate).I came up watching his movies (he is only a few years older than I) and he's always reminded me of my best friend back home.
Watching the film I was, as usual, floored by his stunt skills. I've enjoyed the whole franchise (except MI:2, which remains for me unwatchable) and felt this ended it well. The plot itself took what had been caricature-like of AI in the immediate prequel and dialed the absurdity up to 11. But I didn't mind turning off my brain for that. It was a welcome relief to not have to ask myself how realistic the plot might be (answer: not) in our current AI-ubiquitous age.
I finished and walked out into the crowds in Shinsaibashi, mostly Chinese or Korean or other Asians, a few European couples or families, maybe some Americans with tattoos and blue hair. No one seemed to take any notice of me whatsoever. I took the elevator down with a dozen Chinese and on 1F wended my way through short shorts and miniskirts out into a warm wave of humid air and trees done up in purple LED lights lining Midosiji boulevard. I walked. Stayed on the surface and street briefly, then descended again into the underground, walked past more Chinese pulling roller bags, past Starbucks where inside the lonely hearts read at individual tables their little paperback books with plain paper slip covers to keep the title anonymous. Walked the walking escalator through to the Yotsubashi line. So many people staring at phones, or holding out their phones to selfie themselves, or live stream--I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Walk more, walk through the subway turnstile that doesn't turn, down another escalator, wait, wait, the slightly overweight American girls in very tight clothing drag their luggage past. Soon I'm on a subway. There's a pretty blonde Japanese girl showing her midriff wearing these striped socks pulled to her knees She taps the pads of her fingers on her phone, long green fingernails on her index and ring ringers. On her bag is a plastic tab with the black and white face of what's probably a boyfriend --he looks like he belongs on a wanted poster. Across from her through the thick of other riders is a beautiful young woman stepped out of a different movie, wearing a very nice dress you'd expect Audrey Hepburn to have approved of. But then we're near Kitashinchi.
An hour later and the surface train has thinned of people and it's just me and an old man who seems quite asleep. I disembark, take the up then down escalator, passing a high school couple who appear to be breaking up--he's looking at her, she's looking straight ahead. They're both very pretty.
The night is still warm and I forego the bus, which will not arrive for another ten minutes anyway, and walk the 20 minutes and 2225 steps home, where my family is finished eating and watching a music show where they all know this music that I've never heard sung by these groups I don't know. I eat some leftovers of steak rice I made the day before--no barbecue or peas, and I had forgotten to hang the flag in the morning -- and it's not nearly as good as I had felt it was when making it.
I'm asleep by 11. And now it's tomorrow. Hope your 4th there in your timeline and other dimension is more festive, but as equally peaceful as mine.
Edit: A fortuneteller predicted a massive earthquake today. So, hope that doesn't happen.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
Christian views on the resurrection of the dead are very similar to the Orthodox Jewish view. This is a key area where the Pharisees’ perspective was shared by Jesus and of course Paul, and so rabbinic Judaism and Christianity pulled from the same source.
Interestingly enough, though the Pharisees were usually the foil for Jesus’ preaching, there’s a key point in all the synoptic gospels where a Saducee constructs a complicated question about the resurrection to try and probe the meaning of it, and Jesus gives an answer that compares the resurrected dead to the angels. Luke adds this interesting anecdote: "Some of the teachers of the law responded, 'Well said, teacher!'" In other words, the argument of Luke is that some of the Pharisees responded, "yeah, stick it to those Saducees who deny the resurrection!"
It's an interesting story that complicates the view common in Christian preaching that the Pharisees were uniquely evil or the great enemies of Jesus, rather than people he was so critical of because they shared certain important values in common, particularly the place of common people in living out the commandments of God and the importance of the "kingdom of priests" beyond simply the Levitical priesthood, as well as, of course, the resurrection of the dead.
Most Christian traditions approve of organ donation, however, seeing it as a meritorious act of charity.
Views on cremation were historically very critical, but the main source of opposition has been twofold: 1) cremation creates a culture where the bodies of the dead are seen as disposable rather than a part of their person that should be laid to rest and 2) cremation destroys the remains that might become relics (which themselves are usually skeletal).
The view of all Christian traditions that venerate relics is that the body of holy people is a vessel of grace, which persists after death. Catholicism and Orthodoxy both historically reject cremation for this reason, but Catholic canon law has changed to allow for cremation so long as point 1 isn't a problem and the remains are reverently interred. As a prudential judgment, I disagree with this, as I think the culture of cremation leads too easily into denial of Christian views of the body and not permitting it draws a firm line in the cemetery that divides the Christian view from non-Christian views.
Contracts can pre-agree to enforcement methods. One of them is to just piggy back off of state enforcement and say that one party now owns stuff.
If a stable society needs some form of social enforcement that would pass my bar in the same way that property rights does. But I'm generally suspicious of such requests. Non government entities like religion have had more success and longevity enforcing such things through social means. After all violence is only one means for achieving social ends. You can try to convince people, pay them, or use negative social consequences. None of those things are what I'd consider "violence".
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