To be completely fair, family formation generally costs so much that there aren't a lot of families - conventional families at the bottom dependent on social safety nets.

One of the big issues behind this is that many people refuse to form families because they are worried that they do not have enough to provide.

Related:

Russian strikes killed at least four people and wounded more than 30 others across Ukraine overnight, regional officials said on Monday.

Two people died in the Sumy region in the east and one in the Odesa region in the south, Ukraine's state emergency services said in a post on Telegram.

France 24

More:

The St. Paul field office for Homeland Security Investigations recently posted on X the names and arrest photos of men from Laos or Thailand that the agency said were living in the country illegally and had a criminal record. The posts said most are in their 40s and labeled them convicted sex offenders.

...

Some Hmong Minnesotans say they suspect many of the decades-old arrests that led to the deportations were a result of Hmong culture encouraging girls as young as 14 to date and even marry older men, which is against the law in the United States. Their lives in Southeast Asia often lacked education, several Hmong Minnesotans said, and they often did not understand American laws.

They say these men served their time and that deportation amounts to double jeopardy.

Star Tribune via archive

[Long post ahead - I am sorry it is so long but I don't have time to edit it and am just going to hit enter.]

The post focused on the more common problem of suffering among adults as a result of their choices, but I fully acept what you are saying since it needs to be addressed. I am simply stating that the focus of that particular post was not really directly related to our topic, but that was the source of the quote.

So, a two-year old does not need to be forgiven any sins - that is exactly correct, zero issues there.

However, the suffering of an animal is even a lesson to us, and animals also are incapable of sin. The suffering of someone I did not know but who I heard about, or whose picture I saw, or who I even just thought of as a possibility - like the rhetorically useful starving kid in Africa - are actually all realities that impact me and how I live, right.

I appreciate every time I eat a meal without meat in it because I think of the factory farms out there. I think of all the wonderful animals I have met. I think of videos of even birds showing gratittude and friendship with humans, right...

Similarly, the suffering of children I do not know makes my own concept of life more appreciated, and it makes me more committed to living a better life.

So I would sitll insist: every single bit of suffering in the world and every single temptation serves a purpose for our repentance.

Right now, as an alcoholic, I feel even a kinship with people who are meth addicts or gambling addicts that have thrown their lives away... And every time I sit down with some people who are ordering booze, I feel a little bit itchy and a little bit... desirous of alcohol, wanting a drink, wanting things to be different... And I remember those people, as well as two friends who killed themselves eventually while alcoholics, and I think of my friend who was beaten routinely by a drunken step-dad... and I feel that extra motivation to be better.

The reality that we all endure - that is so common it becomes tropes - animates us all, right?

Like you may not have had a grandmother or aunt who was beaten physically by some rotten old patriarch, or a family member or acquaintrance of the family that was exploited s3xually by someone in those darker times... But your own rejection of the patriarchy is powered by the collective recognition that women suffered obscenely for years from it, right?

So, in a very real sense, the fleeting nature of life and the suffering many endure make us better, IMO.

I have thought about this more... Suicide is always terrible, and the fact that so many men seem to go through with it is something that deserves to be studid and focused on.

Of course women's mental health is important, but I do understand that this seems to disproportionately impact men who have the highest... "clearance" rate for suicide, you could say.

Thanks.

Yes, I firmly believe that the innocent children will go to heaven. I also think a substantial amount of non-Christians who die in adulthood will also go to heaven, for they will be judged based on their hearts, and I think that many of these people are very good and very sincere. I live in a non-Christian country, and that is how I feel about my neighbors - many , many of them will be in the Kingdom of God.

But I urge people, nonetheless, towards Christianity, because the only certain way that I can point to for having peace on this earth and peace in the next life is through Christianity... To clarify my point on this.

I recently had a long debate about this that turned bitter with another Christian who was theologically some kind of arch-conservative that tried to convince me the opposite was true, and even though I felt he presented the strongest, most Biblical case you could, as he was a very eloquent and intelligent man, I still did not budge and am completely convinced that his perspective on this is wrong, and that it goes against even how conservative, traditional Christians view this.

I'd gladly elaborate if you like.

But I do want you to know... I am a conservative on most theological issues... and I fully believe the above statement. I am not blowing smoke up anyone's rear to win points.

Reports stated that the man survived and was arrested by Italian police and being held in Calabria.

I found an Italian langauge report identifying him by the initials "H.A." and saying he was being held in the prison of Locri.

I kept searching in Italian - a language I do not speak, and I found this article from a few days ago in 2025 and had it autotranslated:

He has been indicted and in mid-September the trial will begin, before the judges of the Court of Assizes of Locri, for Hawkar Musa Hamad, the 36-year-old Iraqi citizen arrested at the end of June 2024 on charges of voluntary homicide, with the aggravating circumstance of having committed the crime against an underage girl.

The man is one of only 11 survivors, who arrived at the port of Roccella in mid-June 2024, of the tragic shipwreck that occurred about a year ago in the Ionian Sea about 120 miles (over 200 kilometers) away from the Ionian coast of Calabria and in which, following the semi-sinking of a sailboat less than 15 meters long, More than 50 migrants of various nationalities died, including women and children.

Gazzetta Del Sud

Now that we have his name, I started searching to see if I could get more details from an article that isn't paywalled - so far there is just an autotranslated blogged version of the above.

I popped Hawkar Musa Hamad into Facebook, and it retrieved several hits of different men who all share the name 'Hawker Hamad' or 'Hamkar Hamid,' with nearly all of them being connected back to Iraq (some in Arbil, which I know is Kurdish). So, it appears that the name is ethnic Kurdish. Two accounts are private and share nothing, and one or two seem to be active with just actual posts by people not in prison in Italy right now. It may be the case that one of the two private accounts could have belonged to the perpetrator, but who knows.

So, I think I have exhausted the available information without purchasing a subscription to an Italian newspaper.

It's certainly an interesting case.

It is also noteworthy that the perpetrators age was initially identified as 27 in some places, but now is 36.

Simple question: is an eternity of joy worth some years of suffering?

Another simple question: is a year of suffering not also pierced through with joy on occasion? Do we not also grow accustomed to what suffering occurs, and thus have moments of liberation from the pain?

Of course, you have to judge Christianity based on the internal logic of the faith... I feel like you are shortsighted here, simply coming up with this idea in your head that kids suffer and then

<nothing>

I'd also just refer you back to this:

"Every trial and temptation is permitted by God as a cure for some sick person's soul. Indeed, such trials not only confer on us forgiveness of our past and present sins, but also act as a check on sins not yet committed." (in the Philokalia)

Source

It makes sense, IMO, that if we really focus on targeting Americans who donate to random Palestinian charities deemed to assist terrorism that we also make an effort to target Americans who support the illegal settlements that are part of project for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

To be fair - this is entirely normal in cases where LEOs are targeted. I do not think the transgender element factored into it too much.

Just as a note for other people who were curious - Kaboom appears to have been banned from his home instance, and is not seemingly banned from our community on Hilarious Chaos.

We are dealing with the problem of occasionalism - that God is involved in everything. I accept that, of course.

"Every trial and temptation is permitted by God as a cure for some sick person's soul. Indeed, such trials not only confer on us forgiveness of our past and present sins, but also act as a check on sins not yet committed." (in the Philokalia)

Here is a decet write-up.

I first heard of Eugyppius when he was mostly just on Twitter doing a lot of great work talking about COVID-19 stuff. I've found his content to be excellent, and the guy strikes me as not a bigot who is particularly motivated by any angle on immigration, but a true free-spirited thinker.

The substack article is witty, and it also highlights something that is just really wrong about how it is being handled from the ground up:

Stories like this often come in groups, and what set off the present cascade was a particularly grim incident from 22 June in Gelnhausen (Hessen), in which a group of Syrian migrants aged 18 to 28 molested eight or nine underage girls at the local pool. When the girls first complained about what was happening, pool personnel sent them back into the water. After this incident became a nationwide story, the mayor of Gelnhausen, Christian Litzinger (CDU) gave an interview in which he appeared to ascribe the crime to “high temperatures,” which can cause “tempers to flare up.”

This stuff is just preposterous. Like blaming sexual assault on "I was drunk." I am an alcoholic - I have been drunk thousands of times, and while I recollect making a pass at women at bars or in other circumstances, occasionally succeeding and occasionally (freuently?!) being shot down, I have never assaulted anyone (and am living SOBER now)...

The idea that now hot, overheated people will just go out and pull an SA because of the weather is even more absurd.

Hot temperatures have perhaps annoyed me to the point of losing my "cool" (pun intended) more than a couple times, but I've never felt that the heat & humidity has acted as an aphrodisiac. In fact, I distinctly recollect even being sexually unmotivated by heat before.

Hot temperatures is absolutely a demotivational.

What we are dealing with is a social catastrophe - girls are being molested, in groups, at swimming pools, and the actual staff is not taking responsiblity for fear of being called racist, and the local politicians are providing bogus excuses for the scum doing this.

Look, I reject the idea of painting all black/brown people as criminals, but you can never use the fear of fulfilling a stereotype as a reason to go to bat for people who SA kids... KIDS for crying out loud.

So, there is some kind of disconnect here...

You are saying that Christianity actively opposes the virtues of Christianity, right. Would you like to expand on that so I stop confusing your position?

There is more than one way to be wrong, though.

Nanuephat Kittichaibawan, an assistant manager at Wonderland, said his shop used to serve 10 or more customers an hour most afternoons.

Now, even with an in-house doctor to write prescriptions on the spot, “it is just one or two”, he told Al Jazeera.

“It is more complicated than it used to be, and for some people it will be too much,” he added.

...

“The policy must return to its original goal of controlling cannabis for medical use only,” government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said.

Since a new administration took over in 2023, the government has blamed decriminalisation for a wave of problems, including a spike in overdoses among children and adolescents and increased smuggling to countries where cannabis is still illegal.

A survey by the government’s National Institute of Development Administration last year found that three in four Thais strongly or moderately agreed with putting cannabis back on the narcotics list.

Smith Srisont, president of Thailand’s Association of Forensic Physicians, has been urging the government to relist cannabis from the beginning, mostly because of the health risks.

Smith notes that more than one study has found a fivefold to sixfold spike in cannabis-related health problems among children and adolescents since legalisation.

I don’t understand this sentence.

I am just insisting that the authentic Christianity is the one of the teachings, not the one of the people who fail to live up to them.

(I would also contend it is probably not as bas as you are saying. We will get into that in a minute.)

Christianity has proven to be a pioneering and tolerant religion You’re the one who said there are followers of Christianity who are not acting in accord with the Christian virtue of humility.

I think it's acutally the case that Christians tended to be very tolerant of divergent lifestyles in comparison to other religions that wielded political power, like Islam, or even what we see from political Judaism today in Gaza.

Christianity trended toward the secularizing the government, and it also traditionally tolerated all manner of sexual vice. 17th century England and France were pretty wild places, so was late Renaissance Italy, and this is quite different from the excesses of the Confucianists in the Song Dynasty or the Buddhits in the late Tang or late Tong Shilla dynasties in the sense that Buddhism was a very low intensity religion throughout the far East and Mahayana Buddhism tended towards endorsing transparently false and unbuddhist doctirnes when it comes to Buddhist soteriology (or should I say 'Nirvanology? lol)

So, you are saying because some people turn to Buddhism and other faiths instaed of Christianity, it is evidence against Christianity?

You are open, then, to the reverse as well, right..? It would also be evidence if people abandoned other religions for Christianity?

FYI:

• Payments to Lillard are now spread out over five seasons, lasting until 2030, with an average annual payout of 22.5 million.
• Lillard can sign with any time and all that money will be in addition to his Bucks salary.

Really amazing to be that guy right now, lol.

Damian Lillard ‘elated’ after Milwaukee Bucks waived him

Damian Lillard will miss almost all of next season after he suffered a torn Achilles during the 2025 NBA Playoffs. And while there were questions about how the Milwaukee Bucks would move forward considering this situation, the team did something unexpected.

The Bucks have stretched Damian Lillard's $113 million contract over the next five seasons while waiving the former All-Star. The team did this to sign Myles Turner and possibly add another player to their roster as well.

Giannis Antetokounmpo reacted on Tuesday, and now there are reports about Lillard's reaction too.

...

This works out for Lillard as well, who'll be getting paid over $110 million over the next few years while also having complete freedom over where he goes next. It's not surprising that he's happy.

MSN