Random thread of randomness
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I’m learning so much here I don’t even need to go on tiktok.
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I’m a fan of Thomas Ligotti. He’s a niche horror/weird fiction writer in the vein of Poe and Lovecraft, but also something of a horror philosopher most well know for the influence of his non-fiction philosophy book “The Conspiracy Against The Human Race” had on the characterization of Rust Cole’s pessimism in the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE. There are a lot of other “niche” weird fiction writers in the same vein and even more in different niches like the extremely edgy and erotic horror stories and novels of Ketchum, Lee and Landsdale who are probably more famous among other horror writers than horror readers. As a result, I’m often buying hardbacks when they come out since I’m looking for them.
However, I’m surprised to often see books that I bought for less than their cover price are on sale for some insane prices. $1,600 for MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE which is one of the most innovative horror novels in that he uses corporate life as the metaphor for the basic horror at the heart of human nature. I recommend it but get the paperback ($17.97).
I own a lot of books (never really got into e-books) but I’m no bibliophile. I don’t understand it, but more importantly I never really trust these collectors’ markets. Probably a leftover from the “speculator bubble” of comics in the 90’s. To me it’s like the art market or cryptocurrency or any other subjectively or speculatively valued market of assets that are products but do not have any practical productive use or ability. Often in these markets, while there is a thriving “hobbyist” market on the low end of whatever interest is involved from art to comics to genre novels to old videogames to vinyl albums, there also seems to develop a cabal of finance-minded people that actively collude to drive prices up for a certain class of works.
The Art Market is a Scam (And Rich People Run It) – YouTube
Lately, this behavior is something of an obvious scandal as the same “business (scam) model” has expanded to NFTs and Retro Videogame cassettes/cartridges. Personally, I think the internet has facilitated the ability to form and control these high end speculative market scams so well that we’ll see it in everything eventually from action figures to cassettes and usually it ends up with everyone paying more for anything in the market because of the appearance that the price “could” skyrocket in a few years when really, it was all manipulation of the markets.
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However, I’m surprised to often see books that I bought for less than their cover price are on sale for some insane prices. $1,600 for MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE
I can’t remember where i read this but aren’t crazy listings like this down to bots controlling the pricing. Sometimes you get two bots stuck in a feedback loop and the price of seeingly ordinary items skyrockets out of control.
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Randomly…Regarding social media and the Male Gaze:
If a woman gets older and can still project sexuality enough to satisfy the Male Gaze, she is acceptable under the MILF label (see the American Pie movie 😂)
If not:
Paulina Porizkova, a former model and former wife of the late Ric Ocasek of the Cars, is going back and forth with some trolls on Twitter who just want to see her fade away because she has all these wrinkles now.
The same has been said about Madonna who is in her 60s. The trolls want to put these women out to pasture.
The older women are fighting back. Good for them!
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I can’t remember where i read this but aren’t crazy listings like this down to bots controlling the pricing. Sometimes you get two bots stuck in a feedback loop and the price of seeingly ordinary items skyrockets out of control.
That’s interesting, I have heard of bots artificially lowering prices or keeping them low, EXCEPT in the case of cryptocurrency, but I could see how that would also be a problem in the collectible markets.
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The same has been said about Madonna who is in her 60s. The trolls want to put these women out to pasture.
I’m just like her. Old but still in the game.
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https://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358
This article details one such incidence. The fact the book you mentioned is hard to find makes me think this is what happened to it too.
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It is an interesting question if free market ideology can survive algorithmic market influence that manipulates the market even without human intention.
When the printing press was invented and, more importantly, proliferated, it essentially destroyed the social fabric of the feudal world – the Church. The internet and electronic telecommunications is doing much the same to the social fabric of the modern world – capitalism.
Eventually, though, intentional market manipulation of things that matter – retirement accounts, pharmaceuticals, utilities and food, raw materials – will be so digitized and automated that regulators won’t be able handle it. They can’t handle it now. I lived through the California energy crisis when Enron manipulated power prices and people died from that. That was over 20 years ago.
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“Banded together from remote galaxies are thirteen of the most sinister villains of all time.
The Legion Of Doom.
Dedicated to a single objective, the conquest of the universe!Reading the News thread earlier got my brain going.
Every day we watch a real life version of the Legion of Doom.
Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, Kanye West, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.
Who else? -
Zuckerberg of course naturally fits into that grouping.
This reminds a little of an anime manga adaptation Kaijin Kaihatsubu no Kuroitsu-san (Ms Kuroitsu of the Monster Department) about a junior scientist working for one of many secret evil Japanese corporations who is completely dedicated to her work… developing monsters to fight the many henshin (“transforming heroes”) and mahou shoujo (“magical girls”) of the tokusatsu (“special effects”) genre.
It’s primarily a parody or light-hearted satire of the salaried worker and corporate life of Japan (a little different from the United States, but think of the last season of ANGEL where Angel is the CEO of Wolfram & Hart), but at the heart of it is a very sweet protagonist completely dedicated to working for “evil.” They even compliment each other on how evil their monsters are when nothing they actually do is evil. Even their evil overlord is very considerate of his employees wellbeing. Obviously Trump, Rogan and West have a lot of fans and supporters and Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos put a lot of food on the tables of a lot of workers.
The thing is that they do things. They work. They have goals they promote and inspire people to join. In comics and such, the heroes rarely have that. They are really more antagonists for the villains. Superman and the Justice League could rule the world, but they don’t.
Say that Superman popped into a meeting of the U.N. one day and simply said “listen, how you guys run your own nations is your business, but if any of you go to war, I will personally step in and stop it. You say you love peace, so I’m telling you all from this moment forward, war is not allowed.” Or if he started disrupting fossil fuel production and industrial pollution.
Well… he’d immediately be a super-villain. It’s like the basic premise of Millar’s last arc on THE AUTHORITY, his RED SON or the DC INJUSTICE video game storyline.
Everybody wants to change the world, but as soon as someone actually starts to do it, there will be plenty of people to go along with them, but probably even more would be like “no, I didn’t mean that kind of change. Stop it!”
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Boris Johnson
Larry Elder
Tucker Carlson
Candice Owens
Jair Bolsonaro1 user thanked author for this post.
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Boris Johnson
Larry Elder
Tucker Carlson
Ah, the old BLT.
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The book thing is a bit weird. My mother write a book of poetry in 1969 and it went out of print ages ago, she has a dozen or so copies left she got as comps. Now she’s quite highly regarded as an author but poetry never sells in large amounts outside a few big names, those volumes would be counted in the hundreds so we found it a bit odd a copy appeared on Amazon for 750 pounds.
No idea who the seller was or how they got to that massive price. I guess it must be the bot thing.
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A pastor baptized people for decades using one wrong word. Now those are all considered invalid
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/us/pastor-invalid-baptisms-resignation/index.html
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I know tilapia is a type of fish, don’t know the other two.
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Many of the “obscure” words I know came from doing the daily crossword puzzle in my local newspaper. OBI, ALEE, SAONE and, yes, even AGORA.
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I don’t trust QI after Stephen Fry left anyway. The 2019 Survey was probably five people.
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Many of the “obscure” words I know came from doing the daily crossword puzzle in my local newspaper. OBI, ALEE, SAONE and, yes, even AROMA.
Fixed that for you.
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The thing is, if you appear to be well educated and you say something with extreme confidence, people are inclined to believe you know what you’re talking about.
I don’t believe you .
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Many of the “obscure” words I know came from doing the daily crossword puzzle in my local newspaper. OBI, ALEE, SAONE and, yes, even AROMA.
Fixed that for you.
Not surprised to learn that someone from Britain considers AROMA an obscure word.
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When I went to college, the Bachelor of Architecture degree required 169 credits over a 5-year curriculum. That’s basically 17 credits per semester for 10 semesters. And of the 169 credits, only 6 were “elective” credits for courses like Art History or Photography; the rest included two semesters of Design Fundamentals followed by eight semesters of Architectural Design, alongside courses in Physics, Engineering, English Composition, Structural Design, etc etc etc.
In comparison, when my kids attended a liberal arts college 30 years later, they weren’t even expected to declare a major until the end of their sophomore year. At that point, you have two years to complete all the mandatory courses to secure your Bachelor degree; so what the hell was the point of those first two years?
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I don’t trust QI after Stephen Fry left anyway. The 2019 Survey was probably five people.
I find Sandi Toksvig more trustworthy than Stephen Fry, to be honest.
What about Aisling Bea doing an uncanny Sandi Toskvig impression?
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I don’t trust QI after Stephen Fry left anyway. The 2019 Survey was probably five people.
I find Sandi Toksvig more trustworthy than Stephen Fry, to be honest.
What about Aisling Bea doing an uncanny Sandi Toskvig impression?
Aisling Bea is always fantastic.
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The BA these days are a dime a dozen as most going on interviews for office jobs have one.
You don’t stand out unless you went got your BA from an elite school that has the clout and connections.BA majors in themselves are really half of it all. I mean, you can have a BA in psychology
for example, but to professionally do psychology you really have to get a masters. Same with
sociology and other social sciences.As for those liberal arts classes, as I said before the idea is to get the student more “well rounded”.
It may be debatable how beneficial it is to study some 18th century sonnets and literature, but other
subjects like sociology on how the present world is and some history on how the world got to be like this
count for something. If more people really got into critical thinking, there may not be so many right now
who barely have a diploma to their name, but insist on challenging doctors who have studied for 30 years or
climatologists, or the US having this label as voting “stupid” in the elections.I get what that tweet was saying about relevance and practicality given the tuition and years involved. but was that tweet really overdoing it?
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so what the hell was the point of those first two years?
Shagging and drinking.
That’s not fair. I’m sure there were drugs, too.
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Is where you earned your degree really all that big a deal? Surly a well written application/CV makes you stand out (or rather a shit looking one just gets binned).
That’s the tactic I use for my cover letter. I want everyone with a sense of humour want to interview me. Excerpt below.
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In the UK, a bachelor’s degree always has a core focus specifically centered on your area of study and doesn’t include other random elements that have no relevance. And they still take 3 or 4 years to complete.
Most with 4 years are sandwich courses though (for those unfamiliar with the term usually it means the 3rd year is spent in work experience).
I believe my course could have easily fit into 2 years, I’m glad there was a lot of free time to mess about but really if I’d have sat down and done 9.00am until 3.30pm 5 days a week like we did at school I could have done it in half the time.
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Is where you earned your degree really all that big a deal? Surly a well written application/CV makes you stand out (or rather a shit looking one just gets binned).
Going to an elite school like Harvard or Yale is less about the degree and more about the contacts you make. More often than not, the people you meet and their connections tend to lead to higher paying jobs. Granted, it’s highly likely you already come from money and have contacts to the degree essentially becomes a key that unlocks better and higher level jobs. I’ve seen some articles that said the quality of the classes isn’t necessarily better than most colleges and universities. It’s just got a better level of networking opportunities.
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Today marks 17 years since Hunter S Thompson ate led.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
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What Todd said above…
I can’t say I know all the elite and prestigious schools overseas. I know of Oxford, The London School of Economics, and some elite school called Eton.
With these elite schools like the above, the Ivy League in the US, it is like if you make it in and graduate, you can pretty much be set for life from the fact that you went there, and the contacts/connections you made as they will put in a good word for you and that sort of thing.
It is all part of the argument “It is not what you know, but who you know.”
As for getting in, some get in with good grades, others…. Jared Kushner, Tr*mp’s son in law got into Harvard, but it was found out that his father made a $2M contribution to the school a year earlier. Coincidence?
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Let’s see….
It was Nicolas Taggart in the MW days who got me into the show “Banshee”. Taggart steered me or should I say “influenced” me and a few others to watch the show.
It was Tr*mp who accidentally got me into TikTok as I joined to see what he wanted to ban in the US. Then in TikTok, I got back into HipHop with Cardi B, Saweetie, Stallion, and all this pop culture and social commentary, the stealing dance moves story, not to mention all the jiggling dances but I digress.😂 Now… Euphoria.
So, do I owe it all to the Donald? 😂
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Finally:https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/immigrants-tell-us-biggest-culture-001603868.html
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no matter how small you try to make that “unsubscribe” at the bottom of an email, I WILL FIND IT pic.twitter.com/drIdNbmRM2
— j. (@justinbxrnard) February 20, 2022
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5 Wild Things I Learned Analyzing 23,000 Illegal Drugs
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Random religious trivia – – people often cite pestilence, or plague, as the first of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but actually that comes from God’s judgement of Jerusalem in the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel where the great catastrophes inflicted by the deity are pestilence, famine, evil beasts and war.
In the book of Revelations, the four horsemen are Conquest, Famine, War and Death. Conquest is not usually well defined and in early and Medieval theology, Conquest was actually interpreted to mean Christ himself and the word of God – the Gospels – conquering the world. Later, it was seen as the conquest of the Anti-Christ or anti-Christian conquerors. Also, obviously, as it is difficult to distinguish “conquest” from “war” the idea that “conquest” represented some sort of plague overcoming mankind, that interpretations, bolstered by the Ezekiel verse, started to dominate.
However, from the perspective of the writer of Revelations and his readers all living in a time when the Romans conquered and ruled their lands, they would have had a very clear idea of the evils of conquest and with all the other very well described pests and plagues in the rest of the book, there is no reason to think that that is what was meant by it.
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Did Anders write that?
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I wish I had some illegal drugs to… err… analyze. All I have is a small bit of weed saved for The Batman.
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I was reminded of this today. How ‘the moowalk’ debuted on Top Of the Pops and became a phenomenon a year before Michael Jackson did it on the Motown 25th show.
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My new workplace has decided that all communications and announcements will now be done through Microsoft Teams, and to no surprise at all: Fuck all is working as intended and no-one can connect properly to shit.
I’m having a bit of a rage moment here.
How the fuck can Teams be so flawed when programs like Discord is working flawlessly in comparison?
I realise that Teams is a bit more integrated into other apps, but the difference in noob friendliness and how easy it is to login/access basic functions in Discord and Teams is absolutely staggering.
I might add that I have no problems using teams for setting up or participating in meetings or use the chat as intended as a private user, but it’s the group functionality that seems to be beyond the capabilities of the software and management.
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I was reminded of this today. How ‘the moowalk’ debuted on Top Of the Pops and became a phenomenon a year before Michael Jackson did it on the Motown 25th show.
Try this:
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I can but can you and Anders when you need a break just delete the Carrier bookmark or something instead of deleting and creating accounts? The saving grace is both your names start with A which means I don’t have to scroll through several pages. 😉
(You can send a message by clicking on the ‘send a message’ link under that person’s post).
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I can but can you and Anders when you need a break just delete the Carrier bookmark or something instead of deleting and creating accounts? The saving grace is both your names start with A which means I don’t have to scroll through several pages. 😉
(You can send a message by clicking on the ‘send a message’ link under that person’s post).
Thanks dude. It’s just been difficult for a few days and I know when I have the account here I can impulse post which is kind of like a stress reflex…and say things that can get a tough reaction, making it worse…
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I can but can you and Anders when you need a break just delete the Carrier bookmark or something instead of deleting and creating accounts? The saving grace is both your names start with A which means I don’t have to scroll through several pages. 😉
(You can send a message by clicking on the ‘send a message’ link under that person’s post).
Will do!
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I’m sorry if I offended anyone in the politics discussion, I’m just so fucked up by what’s going on.
I watch this youtube video a lot for relaxation:
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I watch this youtube video a lot for relaxation:
A lot of my Instagram feed is dogs, puppies, and other animals being cute or silly. They always bring a smile to my face and make me feel better.
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https://www.instagram.com/reel/CasEpePhGnZ/?utm_medium=copy_link
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“BIKES!”
” I don’t know if you know this, but if police don’t solve a murder in the first 48 hours… they give up on solving that case.”
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My current avatar pic is a Japanese “mon”, or family crest.
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The new Batman movie suggests that Thomas and Martha Wayne were killed in 2001, which means it’s very likely that they died taking their beloved son Bruce to the theater to see Shrek
— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) March 4, 2022
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Random trivial opinion:
The metric system is designed for simpletons. The reason that the “English” system is based on 12 or 16 or that we have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day is that numbers like 12, 16 and 24 are more useful than 10. It requires a different and more complex mathematical mindset. 10 is only divisible evenly by 5 and 2 while 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 & 6 and 16 by 2, 4 & 8. 24 by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 & 12.
A deci-metric system is insulting because it implies you need to do math with your fingers and toes. They were smarter than that in the Middle Ages, fer Pete’s sake!
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Fingers AND toes? What, do you have like 2.5 digits per limb?
Now you’re making fun of my disability?! Shame on you!
Seriously, bring back the Sexagesimal system!
It’s sexier!
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I hear the sixties were/are groovy, baby.
The number sixty has a lot of good properties, so I’m kinda with you. Let’s not let this divide us further.
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Well, there have been wars, plagues, famines and natural disasters at every point in time for all of recorded history, and during all that history there has been some religious sect claiming it proves that this is the end of days.
I think they are wrong this time too.
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You read the Bible Brett?
There’s a passage I have memorized. Sort of fits the occasion.—-
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Well, there have been wars, plagues, famines and natural disasters at every point in time for all of recorded history, and during all that history there has been some religious sect claiming it proves that this is the end of days.
Yeah – that has been pretty much the reason for a lot of the so-called prophecies – and notably modern-day end times theology is based on interpretations of the bible that actually have no basis in the text.
Also, Jesus really wasn’t that prophetic or specifically detailed in his eschatological claims while The Book of Revelations – which is very detailed and bizarrely so – actually quite overtly refers to events the author expects his readers to see in their lifetimes.
What is interesting is that the first 20 years of the 21st century has a lot of comparisons to the first 20 years of the 20th century as well. These events are so common that if you said something like “I see a batwinged plague devastating the world and a tyrant in the East setting the plains of the West aflame” there will likely be some events within your lifetime that will make you seem like a modern Nostradamus.
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I see a batwinged plague devastating the world
I don’t think Robert Pattinsons interpretation of Bruce Wayne is going to start any riots.
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I see a batwinged plague devastating the world
I don’t think Robert Pattinsons interpretation of Bruce Wayne is going to start any riots.
To be fair, the riots happened when Pattinson was first revealed to be playing Batman.
It’s also possible the prophecy is about the upcoming Batgirl thing. Ah, why is the prophecy so vague!
Hey @JohnnyJoseph, spell it out properly next time will ya!
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It’s International Women’s Day today. In recent years, that’s been dominated on Twitter by Richard Herring (inadvertently, if you’re being generous) making it about himself and idiot men by replying to anyone asking when International Men’s Day is.
He’s given up on that, thankfully, and in the vacuum of IWD Twitter discourse has appeared this rather clever bot.
https://twitter.com/paygapapp?s=21
It quote tweets every organisation that does a perfunctory corporate IWD statement with their gender pay gap. And do you know, some of those corporate tweets have magically started disappearing once this has been pointed out. And others are just a quite funny juxtaposition.
https://twitter.com/paygapapp/status/1501324415166033923?s=21
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but basically the millions of the Christian faith interpret all these world events according to their readings and belief interpretation
That’s almost as mad as believing in god.
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That’s almost as mad as believing in god.
Well.. if you’re reading the Left Behind series, you might pick up some strange ideas about the Christian faith.
On the other hand, if you read the Book of Revelations you might also pick up some strange ideas about the Christian faith.
It goes from “love thy neighbor” to “Ahhh! Giant bloodsucking locust lobsters!”
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Random rant –
Whatever doctor or oncology researcher decided that “benign” was an apt name for tumors and growths that were not cancerous or life-threatening obviously never had one or was never married to someone that had them.
“Benign” is the friend that always offers to help you move or change your oil and ends up making it more work than if you did it by yourself. “Benign” is the older hippy lady next door that is overly familiar and has too many cats.
A “benign” tumor though is the neighbor with too many firearms and likes to aim them at anyone walking in front of his house. It’s the old friend from high school that is often in trouble with police and occasionally hides guns, drugs and himself at your place when the heat is on.
There are really just two categories of tumors – malignant tumors that want to kill you and malicious tumors that won’t kill you but will make you and people around you miserable.
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Fascinating:
On one side, I get these letters from groups about some prophecy by Christ and that it is happening right now.
Then some of you are guys are sh*tting all over it, saying there is nothing to it, nothing supernatural etcWho should I go for: These Christian groups or these sh*tters?
The same sh*tters who still insist on getting great gifts at Xmas…
—————————-As for “I believe”… some on MW used to post “I believe I can fly” but now that R Kelly and his songs have been cancelled by the culture…
I believe in live and let live.
I believe that I still would have gotten into TikTok and its woke dialogue regardless of Tr*mp.
😁
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Fascinating: On one side, I get these letters from groups about some prophecy by Christ and that it is happening right now. Then some of you are guys are sh*tting all over it, saying there is nothing to it, nothing supernatural etc Who should I go for: These Christian groups or these sh*tters? The same sh*tters who still insist on getting great gifts at Xmas…
Why should getting Christmas presents be seen to undermine someone who calls out nonsense fringe religious theories?
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As for “I believe”… some on MW used to post “I believe I can fly” but now that R Kelly and his songs have been cancelled by the culture… I believe in live and let live.
Bloody cancel culture, getting upset at such minor transgressions as the repeated sexual abuse of women and children.
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Why should getting Christmas presents be seen to undermine someone who calls out nonsense fringe religious theories?
It’s by the same logic I can’t have an iPhone because I’m allergic to apples.
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Bloody cancel culture, getting upset at such minor transgressions as the repeated sexual abuse of women and children.
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In recent years, that’s been dominated on Twitter by Richard Herring (inadvertently, if you’re being generous) making it about himself and idiot men by replying to anyone asking when International Men’s Day is.
Fuck me. Is there anything a white male ally can do without criticism?
May as well not bother and just shut up.
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Fascinating: On one side, I get these letters from groups about some prophecy by Christ and that it is happening right now. Then some of you are guys are sh*tting all over it, saying there is nothing to it, nothing supernatural etc Who should I go for: These Christian groups or these sh*tters? The same sh*tters who still insist on getting great gifts at Xmas…
Why should getting Christmas presents be seen to undermine someone who calls out nonsense fringe religious theories?
It is called Hypocrisy and contradicting yourself.
How different that from the hypocritical GOP that everyone sh*ts on in the Politics thread?
Anyway… Xmas isn’t an original Xian holiday, so there is that.
You get a pass 😂
Until next time.
