We do create a lot of content - I personally post a lot of politics, etc., and Alice and the gang post lots & lots of comedy related stuff.
I think we also have one of the most active communities for 'Crime' news and relatively active for sports news.
I am perpetually near crying when people talk about how sweet dogs are.
Just some random interview with some guy
We adopted a street dog that had been abandoned...
: My eyes get wet :
She was malnourished and scared of people
: I grow still and silent :
She now has to go on a diet but, y ou know me, still slip her some pizza crust once in a while
: I am nearly weeping with relief :
You will be like,
"This man is exaggerating. He's not that sensitive."
: My eyes grow moist from typing this purely fictional account that sounds like a normal adopted stray dog story :
That's how it is and I don't feel a need to change even though it can be embarrassing.
You bring back memories, man.
But I am serious..! This is how it works..!
This is one of the silliest quotes because we know that the ancient pagans often viewed one another's gods as correspondent - "Thor is their Zeus," etc.
And then you have the problem of henotheism where there is potentially a single god with many avatars and a pantheon of lesser spiritual beings... And you start to realize, "Wait, if the Vasihnavites, Shiavites, etc. are really just saying that there is a an arch deity over everything with many avatars in the form of lesser gods that he wears the masks of, plus lesser deities that can't defy him and act as angels and demons...
"... What is a God, really? Aren't they nearly monotheists..?"
What is a God.
Plus there's the very classic position of the Jews and the Chrsitians - the gods of gentiles are demons.
Christianity does not become a religion that denies other gods, but one that claims other gods are misidentified.
Throw in some liberalism and yuo can even have Christians arguing that the worship directed as Vishnu by devoted Hindus who lead ethical lives and strive to be great manifestations of goodness & virtue for the sake of God's love is not the worship of demons, at all, but rather, an attempt to reach our God through their own traditions that may even be guided in some form by the Holy Spirit...
So, IDK, IDK to what extent anyone is denying other people's gods and its relevance to religion today.
The very earliest stuff obviously doesn't have that, and we rely on church history because it wasn't like even the most interesting thing a Roman governor did that week to kill some random churchmen who created conflict among Jews, nor do we have much preserved about mobs killing these guys other than in the original Christian communal sources.
But really, if you start from the premise that everything Christians ever write about thesmelves is pure propaganda without an iota of truth in it, that creates a non-serious standard with which to evaluate things.
Is it really absurd to think that Protomartyr Stephen was killed by a mob of Jews for preaching a radically different religion to them in a time of great political upheaval? Isn't this exactly what we think of Christians at later times - that they'd just turn on a guy and kill him for being a heretic? Why is it so unbelievable that it once happened to a Christian? Why is it so troublesome that the only people who bothered to write about these martyrs and preserve their memory were the people who were victims in the course of this?
Obviously, you can say that it's propaganda and lies, and maybe some of it was. But we know it's absolutely historic that Christians wre officially persecuted later on. it is also par for the course that they would be less formally persecuted prior to that. it also amkes sense that Christians, like every other group, try to preserve a communal memory.
Almost all of the Christian folklore surrounding Jesus can be directly tied to other myths that were common knowledge to Mediterranean people at the time.
Yeah I got the Mithra chainmail in my AOL account back in 1998 - I know the arguments.
But Christianity presents us with something very wild - it takes the Messianic tradition of Jews which was hitherto interpreted as being about creating an earthly Kingdom that conquers the world and incorporates the gentiles into Israel (or makes the gentiles servants of Israel, who all become noblemen living in a heaven on earth, some interpretations)... and Christ says
"Yeah, but no - the Kingdom is purely spiritual. It's not temporal. The gentiles join us by worshiping God with us and living these truths - look, this Roman occupier has more faith than all Israel, because you guys are just terrible. You bicker over the law, and miss the total point of the law..."
And the Messiah is now about conquering the world through spreading the Gospel of loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself, giving up your possessions and conquering greed, freeing yourself from hypocrisy; living in simplicity and supreme virtue, at peace with those around you, practicing non-violence, and now we don't even need any kind of ceremonial laws at all because we are living the virtues. And that's how the world becomes part of Israel - by adopting the great things abotu our religion - and that's also how you get to heaven, which is only achievable after death when I come again...
This is a very unique interpretation of the Judaism of the time - absolutely revolutionary.
Even if you want to say that all the miracles and 'signs' are a myth, I think that the "Mithra" angle is actually bad beacuse you could just say they came up with those signs and added them so as to be able to claim they are fulfilling the Old Testament, which was infinitely more relevant to the Jews who were the community that gave birth to the religion.
Keep the faith, by all means. But part of believing is accepting that you don’t get to have proof.
Yeah I agree - there is no proof, and if there was proof, it would ruin it, because we'd no longer be doing good and loving God and our neighbor because it is right, but we would be doing it with the expectation of receiving heaven...
We would no longer be living a spiritual life for the good of oruselves and others - in hope & faith - but we would be Capitalists engaging in transactions that we deemed profitable.
I am not saying you have to believe the corpus of text as 100% factual and become a Christian right now, but I am suggesting that people believing the text isn't absurd... Moreover, I would suggest that it tends to prove that Jesus Christ was real...
The text itself asserts
- Times & places where he was; actual historic figures; a trial and a death, all of a single person.
- Claims he drew large crowds, healed people, had some publicly known altercations with local religious authorities.
- Claims that other people died in very public events (Stephen the Martyr in Acts) and that actual meetings were convened to decide what to do about it with the head Jewish rabbi at the time (Gamaliel)
- Records his teachings in ways that sometimes kind of conflict with one another in terms of phrasing, and also records different details about events that could be mutually contradictory...
Which all implies that the synoptic Gospels and Acts were very opened to being fact checked by their contemporaries and future generations by trying to place themselves in history, and that the texts were not designed by a cabal of conspirators who wanted to deceive people and come up with the perfect story because the story they made was hardly written by committee - it has things we'd see as imperfections & errors.
Ever play Telephone with a single word for 5 minutes? Now do that to a epic for 100 years, the end result will certainly be something but it may be nothing like the truth
The Telephone game is designed to show you how private rumors occur.
The four Gospels are all the accounts of eyewitnesses to these events that were then recorded by their own hand or by their assistant's hand, and preserved within the church. Of course, some speculate that they were forged later, but there's a very long, complicated argument that involves the earliness of the spread of the knowledge of the Gospels and how well they were independently preserved in faraway locations from France to Egypt that indicate that they likely were completed shortly after Christ's death.
It's also the case that Christianity was a proselytizing faith, right, so immediately there are operations which send missionaries into the world to spread the news... By all means, deny the miracles and the story, but it seems likely that there was consensus about what had happened before the missionaries departed, which allowed for there to be the preservation of the Gospels and what would later constitute the New Testament.
There's not a good argument to be made that these guys were just spreading nonsense and spitballing it as they go - the story was straight before they were leaving Jerusalem, or else the four Gospels and the subsequent apostolic letters would not have been something they could have ever all agreed upon.
No, and that is to even be expected.
He was a prophet whose movement had around 120 or so core disciples along with his apostles, plus thousands who followed him about and considered him a healer and revolutionary teacher.
There are people who have done similar things that are completely lost to history other than small records that vaguely outline the controversy surrounding them... We shouldn't really expect more in terms of proof...
But what is unique is the fact that we have an extremely well preserved corpus of text surrounding him. We also have some good idea that a lot of his followers were prosecuted and killed, and never recanted in the process, which might incline you to believe in the radical truth that they lived by.
Of course I am biased - I am a Christian - but it really does just seem pointlessly antagonistic to dismiss His Existence at all.
I actually think there's an argument to be made that a lot of top tier athletes are never doing things like their taxes prior to a big match. It's just really anticlimactic to say "My spouse/manager/dad does all my paperwork and handles my finances before a fight" than to say "I isolate myslf from my spouse and don't have any orgasms before a fight."
I also think that they would make the argument that they have plenty of impulse control and focus, it's just a matter of the extent to which one has it.
It's one thing to be a man who does not look at p0rn or masturb8 and only sleeps with his wife and another thing to be a monk.
That is amazing - really good stuff. I will add that to my anecdotes on this topic.
Yeah I believe there's this weird story about how like... Onani/onanism entered the vocabulary through the Old Testament character and then the notoriously private Japanese adopted the foreign word "onani" to refer to masturb8tion and so it just sticks in my head a bit more and comes out when I feel the need to slightly self-censor in consideration of being on the work net (it's not an English speaking IT team but, you know how it goes, don't be the shortest hanging fruit).
I am just a social conservative in the Fediverse offering my two cents.
Sorry to coom on your circle jerk on jerking
Nah man freedom of speech includes hate speech.
If "hate speech" must be banned, why even have a democracy..?
You have to have faith in the ability of people to discern right from wrong, and the very first test of that is whether people are going to be mentally hijacked by some guy saying the N word.
If you believe people can't do that... Why vote? You just support soft totalitarianism.
I think people believe that onani leads to looking at p0rn, which is inherently exploitative to those involved (men and women) and a foul industry. Likewise, it can produce exaggerated sexual fantasies that are unhealthy and can create predatory relationships.
It's hard to imagine jerking without explicit content, and once you have gone from Swimsuit edition to Softcore, it's hard to go back... From softcore to hardcore, it's hard to go back... From niche hardcore to regular, boring hardcore... It's hard to go back...
And it leads to becoming a person who does this frequently... And then, what if you want a family? Do you really want to be taht guy who is looking at crazy stuff and rubbing one out while your infant daughter is sleeping 30 feet away in her room? Do you want to be the guy whose wife is out of action from giving birth and you are like "Oh, OK, I will just look at explicit hardcore content and content myself..."
It's a bad habit.
It also creates crazy expectations of others which may even lead to so desiring some novel experience that you have an affair or "open" your marriage.
But to be entirely fair to the guy's point:
Lots of top athletes have superstitions about abstaining from intercourse prior to events - some are very extreme, with fighters isolating themselves from their spouses and training for months without any release before their MMA fight/boxing match. Some say they do it for, say, just a week ahead of time, etc.
There are a few who have the opposite philosophy and claim to actually do it more in the week leading up to the fight.
It's really a massive point of contention because some people claim it is a mere superstition while others absolutely will not break their routine.
There is also the famous incident where Bobby Fisher says that he performed poorly at a tournament because he had sex after the first night and the experience totally removed him from his focus...
This might be why it impacts fighters and certain people whose lifting styles are really about maximized performance and not a routine... If concentration is interrupted, it can result in very poor output. Like I can see how someone who is very intense about what they are doing and requires total focus would be interrupted by any form of sexual distraction. This is probably very, very relevant to guys who are fighters...
This might also have to do with perspectives on sexuality - people who ascribe a lot of meaning to it versus those who do not...
Lots of stuff to consider, I think.
LOL, bro, is your actual counter to this putting on the fedora and flexing the neckbeard as hard as you can?
Religion is clearly rubbish! How can you argue against that!
If you were actually an atheist of any caliber, you would be familiar with apologetics enough to not be so dismissive in an inadvertently hilarious manner.
Wonderful observation.
It's really our duty to be familiar with both sides and be ready to debate.
Of course, exception guy will be in the thread pointing out extreme edge cases in which we all agree that there is no alternative to the accepted opinion ("R*pe is bad, mmkay?")... But this is besides the point.
Just amazing - the government literally going to bat for the sake of concert goers who demand hotel rooms.
Can't imagine working through drug addiction and getting clean enough to be given a hotel room, and then eagerly trying to find some form of employment to become stable, and then your case worker is like *What do you think about spending a few days in Aberdeen...? WIth the Taylor Swift concert and all... There's a need for this room for someone else..."
Lol what.
... Who do we think is behind the DDoS attack?
Are the Israelis up to something?
The plan for a swimmable Seine casts a spotlight on the people doing better things with Paris' waste, fertilising wheat for baguettes and biscuits.
Some very cool stuff buried in the article:
>Gazing at the turbulent, rain-swollen river, Esculier highlights what he sees as a curious paradox: as a society, we are spending energy on treating our nitrogen-rich wastewater and destroying reactive nitrogen, while also, spending energy on making synthetic nitrogen fertiliser (whose production and use account for around 2% to 5% of greenhouse gas emissions). Treatment facilities capture around 10% of nitrogen from our sewage to be spread on crops, while 50% goes into the air, he says - and the remainder, into the river. Given a greater Paris population of 10 million people, this means "nitrogen from four million people goes into the Seine every day".
>If we used all the urine from greater Paris to fertilise wheat instead, it would be enough to produce more than 25 million baguettes a day," Esculier calculates.
>Over the past decade, Esculier has tried to put some of those findings into practice, trialling ways to collect urine and use it as fertiliser. In its simplest form, he was familiar with this from his own family history: "One of my grandmothers used to tell her children to go and pee on the rhubarb," he says, which gave the plant a boost of natural fertiliser.
>Under a research programme called Ocapi, which Esculier leads, he and his team have organised various pilot projects aimed at collecting urine in cities which is then used by farmers to fertilise their crops. In one project, 20 volunteers collect their own urine and bring it to a drop-off point, where a farmer then collects it, stores it and uses it as fertiliser.
>Esculier hands me a packet of biscuits produced as part of the Ocapi project. As the label proudly states, the Biscodor (or "Golden Biscuits") are made with flour from "wheat cultivated with a fertiliser based on human urine". I put them in my bag, curious to see what my colleagues in London would think of them.
>The idea of separating urine at source is attracting interest on a larger scale.
>Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a planned new neighbourhood in Paris in the grounds of an old hospital, will feature urine-separating toilets as part of a recycling pilot programme by the City of Paris.
>"It's fairly rare in Paris to have a new neighbourhood, given that the city is essentially already built, so we don't have many opportunities to test these kinds of things," says Antoine Guillou, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of waste management, recycling and sanitation. He adds: "The idea is to test the separation of urine, and to see if it can be collected and used as fertiliser."
>The new neighbourhood in Paris' 14th arrondissement will comprise around 600 households, "which is quite a considerable size for an experiment but is small compared to the whole of Paris", Guillou points out.
A woman was escorted off of a Delta flight after she was told her clothing was "too revealing." Now, she's calling for change.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - A woman was escorted off of a Delta flight after she was told her clothing was "too revealing." Now, she's calling for change.
In January, Lisa Archbold was flying out of Salt Lake City to San Francisco when she was told to get off the plane after everyone was boarded and quiet.
She claims she was told by flight staff that she needed to "cover up" due to her clothing.
"She came to my seat and loudly asked to speak to me in private and escorted me off the plane as though I was a criminal," Archbold said. "I felt it was a spectacle aimed at punishing me for not being a woman the way she thought I should be a woman."
Archbold, who identifies as queer, says she was dressed like a little boy in baggy pants and a shirt.
She posted on "X," formerly known as Twitter, a photo of her outfit.
Archbold says Delta told her it's their policy that women need to cover up. She was told if she put on a jacket, she could fly. So, Archbold complied.
Now, she and her attorney are calling on the airline to change their policy.
"Delta's contract of carriage says that Delta may remove a passenger when reasonably necessary for the ‘comfort or safety of passengers.’ For example, when ‘the passengers conduct, attire, hygiene, or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers,'" said Archbold. "Please explain how wearing a t-shirt without a bra causes ‘an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance.’"
Volker Türk tells Jeremy Bowen there is a "plausible" case that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war.
After months of warnings, a recent UN-backed report offered hard statistical evidence that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is turning into a man-made famine.
It has increased the pressure on Israel to fulfil its legal responsibilities to protect Palestinian civilians, and to allow adequate supplies of humanitarian aid to reach the people who need it.
The UN's most senior human rights official, Volker Türk, said in a BBC interview that Israel bore significant blame, and that there was a "plausible" case that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Mr Türk, who is the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that if intent was proven, that would amount to a war crime.
Israel's economy minister, Nir Barkat, a senior politician in Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, dismissed Mr Türk's warnings as "total nonsense - a totally irresponsible thing to say".
The population of the United Kingdom rose between 2011 and 2022 to an estimated 67.6 million, an increase of over four million people.
The population of the United Kingdom rose by nearly seven per cent between 2011 and 2022 to an estimated 67.6 million, an increase of over four million people mostly as a result of the mass migration policies of the supposedly Conservative government.
Population figures released on Tuesday from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the first snapshot of the country’s size since the 2021 Census, found that the population of the UK rose by 6.7 per cent to an estimated 67,596,281 people by mid-2022 from just a little over a decade prior in mid-2011.
England saw the largest increase of the four UK nations, jumping by 7.5 per cent over the time period, or an increase of four million people, the ONS said.
Stephen Henry thought: 'It's got to be perfect. If not, how could you get the prime minister?'
>The scam was propagated through a YouTube video and manipulated with AI and voice cloning technology to appear as if Trudeau was promoting a cryptocurrency exchange and an investment platform aimed at “helping Canadians safeguard their financial future.”
>“I thought, ‘It’s got to be legitimate, it’s got to be perfect. If not, how could you get the prime minister?’ So I thought, ‘It’s got to be official,'” Stephen Henry told CTV.
>Henry initially invested $250, but then continued to invest his savings, believing his investments had grown to over $40,000 in value.
(He initially put in $12,000)
>When Henry tried unsuccessfully to withdraw some of his money, he realized he’d been scammed.
>“Now, I’m ripped off of all my chances of ever making a life. That was all the money I had,” he said.
Featuring one of the craziest tweets ever (Shmuley advertising his daugther's kosher fetish website using Candace's name as a discount code)
Jon Stewart is facing online backlash after saying Donald Trump’s case overvaluing his properties was “not victimless,” and sleuths found his own records.
Amazing stuff here
Trump endorsed the country music-inspired print one day after he compared himself to Jesus in a Truth Social post.
Republican former President Donald Trump just endorsed a country music inspired-print of the Christian bible one day after he compared himself to Jesus online as he attended a pretrial hearing on Monday.
Trump made the announcement on Tuesday around noon on his social media company, now listed on the Nasdaq, Truth Social.
>"And the Attorney General of New York knew that Trump’s property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties. It was all part of a very specific real estate practice known as lying," Stewart quipped on the Monday, March 25, installment of the Daily Show.
>The 77-year-old was found liable for fraud and was subsequently ordered to pay roughly $454 million dollars including interest. However, O'Leary argued against the penalty, claiming Trump was guilty of something "every real estate developer everywhere on Earth" had done.
>"Leave it to Kevin O’Leary to be unaware enough to say the quiet part out loud," the television show host replied after the clip.
>"I am surprised to hear this from Kevin O’Leary," the television show host admitted. "I’m surprised to hear that he’s so chill about overvaluing something that he thinks is victimless because when someone tries to do that to him…"
>"The f------ entitled arrogance!" he exclaimed. "I don’t know if you know this, but most people just can’t commit fraud and expect to face no repercussions, even if everyone’s doing it."
This is actually a totally non-response to the real implication of what has been stated: Trump is facing fraud charges for something that is basically common practice in the real estate world.
Completely unconvincing.
Undercover units of Israel's Border Police regularly kill Palestinian children without any accountability
Ben Gvir saluted the officer who killed the boy. “This is exactly how you should act against terrorists – with determination and precision,” he said.
In a statement, Israeli Border Police claimed violent riots broke out in the camp and that during the unrest, a single shot was fired by an officer towards a suspect “who endangered the forces while firing aerial fireworks in their direction.”
However, the video of the moment Halhouli shot the fireworks gives no indication that Israeli forces were in any danger.
Jill Biden Compares Banning Sexually Explicit Content in Elementary Schools to Nazi Germany During World War II
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are facing a serious shortage of not only weapons but also manpower. The “patriotic zeal” of the first days of the conflict is being replaced by pessimism, and cases of evasion of service are becoming more and more frequent, Politico reported. Ukraine is catastrophically s...
>According to some reports, 650,000 men of draft age have left Ukraine since the start of the special operation. About 1,300 evaders were brought to trial last year, but officials admit that this is only a small fraction of those who avoid the draft.
>At the same time, Kiev continues to delay the adoption of a mobilisation law that would allow it to increase its army by 400,000 men. The authorities fear that the highly unpopular measure could have far-reaching consequences.
This isn't even the worst of it.
Check this out:
>About 3.4 million Ukrainian men of conscription age are hiding from the authorities for fear of being mobilised into the ranks of the Armed forces of Ukraine (AFU). This was reported by MP, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Development Dmytro Natalukha.
A Calgary judge has issued a ruling that clears the way for a 27-year-old woman to receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) despite her father's attempts through the courts to prevent that from happening.
A publication ban protects the identities of the parties and the medical professionals. CBC News will identify the daughter as M.V. and the father as W.V.
While Justice Colin Feasby acknowledged the "profound grief" that W.V. would suffer with the death of his child, he ruled the loss of M.V.'s autonomy was more important.
"M.V.'s dignity and right to self-determination outweighs the important matters raised by W.V. and the harm that he will suffer in losing M.V.," wrote Feasby in his 34-page written decision issued Monday.
"Though I find that W.V. has raised serious issues, I conclude that M.V.'s autonomy and dignity interests outweigh competing considerations."
The judge set an April 15 start for the trial.
A Harvard-led study examining measures of well-being showed younger adults had the lowest scores of any age group.
Footage shows Putin's security forces torturing the terror suspects.
>On Thursday, Al Jazeera published exclusive footage from an Israeli drone that was shot down by the resistance in Gaza, revealing Israeli drones deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians fleeing Khan Yunis.
>The Israeli drones followed the Palestinians, shooting at them, resulting in presumed deaths. The survivors who attempted to escape were pursued and killed.
>The video is from February in Khan Younis. The visuals are graphic.
Also check this for the video on twitter.
Odisha’s tribal community finds itself in a rut in its decades-long fight against private players that seek to mine minerals in the Niyamgiri hill range. For the past 365 days, the people of Sijimali have been protesting to protect their land from corporate giants’ takeover.
Its dense forest cover has piqued the interest of London-based Vedanta Limited which emerged as the leading bidder for the Sijimali Bauxite Block in an auction conducted by the Odisha government on February 15, 2023, according to a press release by Vedanta Limited.
Odisha holds over half of India’s bauxite reserves, 95% of which lie in the state’s southwest districts of Rayagada, Koraput, and Kalahandi. They are home to around 8000 Dongria Kondh tribes — Particularly vulnerable tribal groups, as per official records. The Sijimali area which is located close to Niyamgiri, consists of a tribal group known as ‘Kondh’ (a subsidiary community of the larger ‘Dongria Kondh’ tribe), Praja (another tribal community) and Dalits.
Labanya Nayak of Banteji village of Rayagada district, says, “Sijimali is the only source of our life and livelihoods. We can’t imagine our status without the Sijimali hills. We are against the government’s decision to hand over the hills to Vedant for mining purposes. So we are opposing such an anti-people policy of the government through peaceful movement”.
...
They also pointed out that the report makes no mention of the 200-odd perennial streams that emerge from Sijimali, or the dense forests on the hilltop that are home to a variety of tree species such as sal, tamarind, piya sal, amla, harida, and bahada. The report also fails to include the primary source of revenue for locals: the collection of Siali leaves and honey.
Some of the most important caverns, including Parapar and Baghpar, which are venerated as the abodes of animals and where every year ceremonies are done to invoke animal spirits, are also not included. All those who testified stated unequivocally that the EIA report makes no mention of the local peoples’ cultural heritage, generations-long relationship with nature, or the traditional community forest governance principles that they use to protect the land in Sijimali.
The family of an Edmonton man who suffered a stroke is "very frustrated" with the province after he was taken to a motel instead of a long-term care facility when he was released from hospital.