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'Morally sick': Ex-Southern Baptist leader condemns Trump and Vance's lies
  • Russell Moore is awesome. Been a huge fan of his for a long time. Got me to actually buy a subscription to ChristianityToday when he became Editor in Chief.

    He got kicked out of the SBC ages ago though. He was the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council, which is the public policy arm of the SBC. The Executive Council ran him out back in 2016 for saying refugees were people and that maybe the SBC should be doing more to combat internal sexual abuse.

    If you haven't read some of his stuff from around that time, I highly recommend it. Some of the stuff that went down is absolutely insane, and I have made mad respect for how he managed it all. Hugely upstanding dude.

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    Trump’s ties to ‘toxic’ far-right activist Laura Loomer are causing a MAGA civil war. But they go way back
  • Oh, I just failed at reading comprehension.

    My first read was something like, Lindsey G says "I love gay people," or something he's equally unlikely to say. MTG says, "That's not something you hear often from LG," to which he responds, "she's right, I don't say that a lot."

    The obviously more accurate read is him saying "she's right," and following that comment up with "huh, not something I often say about her."

    Ambiguity. The Devil's volleyball.

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    Need help remembering the title of a short story.
  • Google doesn't seem to find anything with that title when I Google it?

    The Ash Tree seems to be some early 1900s story, and Daniel Harms doesn't seem to have anything of that title as far as I can tell. :(

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    Need help remembering the title of a short story.
  • No, it was kind of a standalone type web forum. Greyish background, iirc.

    Pretty sure I was linked it from Lemmy, and I don't subscribe to no sleep here.

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  • Okay, I read a story someone linked here a while back and I'm trying to remember the title.

    The story was structured as an old school web forum where people were discussing the meaning behind certain lines of an ancient poem.

    The poem described a malevolent force in the woods associated with a particular kind of tree that would, cyclically, take people from the town.  Maybe oak?  Ash?

    I think that the person taken was turned into wood in after being lured in by a beautiful girl.

    One user on the forum was trying to trace the historical roots of the poem and managed to find the town he believes was the one referenced in the poem.  They had a yearly festival that included cutting down all the trees of that type and burning them.

    In the end, they guy researching is presumably taken by the forest, after some events outlined in the poem begin to happen again and then he stops posting.

    Any guesses?

    Edit: I found it. Managed to piece together enough memories to get there. Title was "Where Oaken Hearts do Gather" https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/where-oaken-hearts-do-gather/

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    Please stop the bus of life, I want to get off
  • No, I think that's actually the beauty of this. The OP meme is a right wing meme. A national civil service is a right wing position.

    I think there's a way to craft this program in a hugely bipartisan way. You get all the "patriotism, one nation, farms and country" stuff the right wants, and all the "infrastructure improvements, social safety nets, free college" stuff the left wants.

    I think there's a real potential to get some solid bipartisanism here.

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    Please stop the bus of life, I want to get off
  • Fair. I get that. I do think it could be something great, but agree it would be better structured as voluntary with heavy incentives for participating.

    That said, to your original point, I doubt the intent was to have mandatory service for recent college graduates. Most systems like this require service immediately after high school. So you wouldn't have a bunch of debt or anything at that point.

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    Flag of the US but Constitutional instead of Territorial
  • I don't know that the torch completely works. I didn't know what it was, read your text, looked back at it, and it still took me 30sec or so to figure it out.

    A more stylized torch might work better?

    Love it overall though! Absolutely gorgeous. :)

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    Please stop the bus of life, I want to get off
  • Would you feel differently if people who choose to serve have student debt forgiveness? Like, if the GI Bill covered participants?

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    Please stop the bus of life, I want to get off
  • I'd be super on board for this. Treat it similarly to the military, where room and board are provided, and they ship you to an underserved part of the country to help.

    Especially if we extended the GI Bill to cover participating. Like, do 4 yrs and you get full tuition covered at any public university.

    I think it would really promote national unity and help to lift people out of poverty. You'd have people from all over the country working together, bridging a lot of our internal divisions. You'd get people out of their bubbles and echo chambers and have them actually seeing the country.

    If we could normalize it, where it's just what people did after highschool, it would give people time to figure their lives out. Remove the pressure of having to choose a career right away. I know so many people who "had to go to college" because that was the next step, but didn't have a clue what they wanted in life, so got useless majors and have dead ended. This would be perfect for people like that.

    Plus infrastructure in the US is a joke. And even as the OP implies, farming is a broken business in the US for a number of reasons. There are never enough people working soup kitchens and food pantries, or cleaning up our national forests to prevent forest fires. If we could mobilize our young people en masse, we could make a huge difference in this country.

    I'm 1000% on board.

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    Marvel [Tyler Hendrix]
  • The issue isn't that you're not well informed.

    The issue is that, when confronted with being wrong about something you're uninformed about, you double down and act like an ass.

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    Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge's decision to block X nationwide
  • To be clear, harassment and defamation are crimes in the US as well. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can harm people with your speech with impunity. It's a prohibition on the government from meddling with political speech, especially that of people who are detractors of the government.

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    Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge's decision to block X nationwide
  • I think the issue is that, while a country is certainly allowed to write it's own laws, the idea that it is deeply fundamentally immoral for the government to prevent someone from saying something (or compel them to say something) is very deeply baked into the American zeitgeist (of which I am a part.)

    So in the same way that a country is perfectly within its sovereign rights to pass a law that women are property or minorities don't have the right to vote, I can still say that it feels wrong of them to do so.

    And I would also decry a country that kicks out a company that chooses to employ women or minorities in violation of such a law, even if that is technically their sovereign right to do so.

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    Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge's decision to block X nationwide
  • Printing Nazi propaganda isn't illegal in the US.

    And I realize this isn't in the US, obviously. But I think that the idea that the government shouldn't be able to ban people from saying things, or compel them to say things, is so baked into the American zeitgeist (of which I am a member), that it feels wrong in a fundamental moral sense when it happens.

    It's the old, "I don't agree with anything that man says, but I'll defend to the death his right to say it," thing.

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    Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge's decision to block X nationwide
  • I can see both sides on this one I think?

    Out of curiosity, would you feel differently about this if it had been a print newsletter or physical book publisher that was printing Nazi propaganda that got shutdown because they refused to stop printing Nazi propaganda?

    If so, what's the substantive difference? If not, are you affirming banning people from publishing books based on ideological grounds?

    Obviously banning books is bad, but obviously Nazis are bad, and that's a hard square to circle.

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    What are some pod casts worth checking out and why?
  • A few I've been big on lately:

    The Meat and Dairy Network Podcast - A British humor surrealist comedy podcast about the inner workings of the meat and dairy industry.

    The Horror Virgin - A guy who hates scary movies has two friends who make him watch them.

    The League of Ultimate Questing - High production actual play DnD podcast. Very funny with some fun hooks.

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