wait… TARS was an in camera model? what?!

Oh it won’t end

Practically speaking since war is unthinkable is would result in as much economic isolation as Europe can bear. It would be the end of NATO. Almost immediately there’s be European voices saying ‘What’s the real harm?’ and other appeasers. I think the political lash back would only last 5-10 years as parties opposed would find the only tool at hand - economic punishment - to be unsustainable. It would legitimise nationalistic sentiments in Europe even further. Britain would, naturally, talk of betrayal but not be able to make any resistance of any substance.

♫ … Now don’t be sad, 'cause two out of three ain’t bad… ♫

I’ve heard various explanations, I don’t know how accurate the following is. I’d be interested to learn more:

• the very earliest colony settlements had to bargain hard and with precision in order to survive. It began a contractual culture that eventually extended into litigation

• due to high immigration from many differing backgrounds, disputes had to be settled in litigation rather than relying on social understanding

• the religious culture was largely inherited from the Puritans who had a legalistic and inflexible reading of the new testament. (This unwillingness to compromise is why they were persecuted in Europe and fled to the new world)

• the American identity is ‘invented’ (in the sense that’s it’s an abrupt mixing of many old world cultures) and so national identity was initially based on cerebral activities (the Constitution, Bill of Rights) rather than evolved from a very long history of social bonds found in old world ‘nations’. This required a cerebral precision to be at the heart of identity which easily extended to legal rights and relations

As I say, take with a pinch of salt. But this is the gist of what I’ve heard from people who know more than me.

Reads like someone took an English Lit major, switched to Philosophy, failed both, and is currently at a STEM major college party talking wank…

If anything like this was ever done it’s more likely it would be independent drones flying ahead of the plane at its 10 and 2 o’clock

How much bigger would Jupiter have to be before fusion started?

Exercise in someone not particularly fit is also likely to trigger a stress response and their appetite will overcompensate. Exercise is good - everyone should be doing it - but for fat loss is pointless unless eating is well under control.

The human body is absurdly efficient. Fat weight is tackled by reducing calorie intake (using whatever tactic works for you). Exercise only makes a small difference by comparison.

Edit: for example, you could jog for almost an hour to burn approx 460 calories. Or you could just not eat 1 cinnamon swirl krispy kreme. Ate two at the family BBQ? You just gave your body enough fuel to light jog for 2 hours. A large vanilla milkshake has enough fuel to keep you jogging for an hour and a half. Stop overeating first or gym weightloss is useless.

It’s predictive text on speed. The LLMs currently in vogue hardly qualify as A.I. tbh…

My history might be dusty but I don’t think Hitler ever said he intended to become a dictator before people voted for him. His subsequent deception once in power is what you might refer to as the coup.

Trump on the other hand…

It is a coup if people vote for it?

I’m neither. Things could be worse in the UK, could be better. It’s bad, but “ok”.

Looks like they have two: “Awake” and “Watchtower”: https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/

In London in recent years I’ve only seen Awake. Maybe Watchtower is American or only in Kingdom halls?

they clarified that it was 11 tribes and one “lost tribe”

As far as I’m aware there are 10 lost tribes. Only Judah and Benjamin were not regarded as lost. They might have a different view on that of course…

They agreed that it’s the gospel and many people weren’t good enough Christians

They don’t see the “vast multitude” (who are believers besides the 144,000) as having a bad deal in any way. They get to live on the restored earth which is basically Eden paradise. That’s why all their magazines / tracts have pictures of an idyllic life in a park / nature type setting

Fairly recent (in the scheme of things) non standard Christian group

• they don’t believe in the trinity: God is god, Jesus was crafted by god - used to be an angel, the holy spirit is more like an impersonal force

• they don’t believe in everlasting hell, they believe the soul of unbelievers is annihilated

• believe Armageddon is imminent and have repeatedly tried predicting it and failed

• they originated from a bible study group in the 1800s and some things they are into are actually a literal reading of the new testament rather than a more pop culture or traditional view of Christianity. for example:

• they believe the future of believers is on a restored earth, not heaven (based on Revelation). (This is why all their tracts have pictures of ‘the good family life’ in a park or nature type setting. That’s the earth restored to be like Eden)

• they believe 144000 special believers are elevated to rule in heaven (Revelation again)

• they believe a letter written by the apostle in Acts telling believers to “abstain from blood” is still in force (to be fair there isn’t anything saying it isn’t) which they take to mean refusing all blood including blood transfusions

• they don’t believe in Christmas, Easter or birthday celebrations because they’re not in the bible. Christmas trees are pagan etc

• they practice ‘shunning’ family and church members who won’t repent of sin which sees some parents totally rejecting their children, people acting like people don’t exist if they see them on the street. (Again to be fair, this is what the new testament tells Christians to do). For this they (rightly) get flak for being cultish and overly controlling

• they believe it’s every believers duty to give people opportunity to repent hence going door to door (I think they’ve stopped doing this now) or standing on the street offering their standard magazine “Awake”

• their central organisation is called the Watchtower, again a biblical reference to keeping watch for the end of the world

• various reports of child abuse scandals typical in any organisation where you can’t question or scrutinised authority

Israel cares more about their people than Hamas does theirs. Discuss.

Invoking determinism is fine, just be aware it rarely solves the problem you think it does.

Saying ‘some bad thing happened - the universe made it happen, it’s not my fault’ - what are you really wanting to achieve with that? If it was beyond your ability to do otherwise, then you probably want to process this some other way (mindfulness / therapy / talking it out with someone) until your emotions align with the facts. Because you don’t have a “responsibility” problem you have a “thinking it was my responsibility when it wasn’t” problem. And appealing to determinism isn’t going to change your habit of doing that.

On the other hand, if you actually could have made a difference / prevented it but knowingly didn’t (or were sufficiently careless that your culpability is real) then appealing to fate might be a short term plaster but it’s a bad long term fix.

And this is because rather than dealing with a feeling of guilt or dealing with how you make choices you are masking these things by making yourself out to be a passive object that life happens to. Again, as a short term cope that can be fine, but do you see how making a habit of that just undermines your ability to believe you can grow and be better?

At its extreme appealing to determinism can remove your perception of everyone’s responsibility. “Everything’s inevitable”… “We’re all just biological machines”… “I couldn’t help it”… And while, from a certain point of view, physics can lend evidence to determinism. It doesn’t actually affect how life works because even if we are all biological machines, we still need to ascribe what we call ‘responsibility’ to the biological machine through which something undesirable came. People will still want to avoid people who hurt them. The law will still have to segregate the wrongdoer. Even if everything is now “deterministic”. (The Amazon warehouse sorting robots will isolate a misbehaving robot even if that robot has not one jot of control over its programming - if you see what I mean).

So all I’m saying is belief in “fate” has an illusory power. Where it makes us feel less bad about something. But taken to its extreme it makes us not feel responsible for anything, while life carries on as normal and inevitably penalises us for that.

So it’s better for you to expose yourself to the pain of “yes it was my fault” (if indeed it was). But then in that pain not to give way to hopelessness, but rather realise pain (if based on truth) is a fuel by which to change yourself. Get other’s help if necessary. But don’t give up the opportunity to grow. The pain is actually a sign you care, don’t deaden that. It’s the stuff of life.

I think it’s a hair worth splitting because I find it very unlikely that he actually subscribes to the goals that the Germany Nazi party had. And I think he relies on this in order to cultivate the ‘owning the libs’ narrative he keeps with his supporters and acolytes. He’s fascist (and dangerous) and mischaracterising him plays into his hands to be honest…

I don’t think they are nazis, I think they are fascists. And I don’t think they even think of themselves as fascists, I think they just think power sets the rules and that a lot of people on the left’s attempts at ‘fairness’ are dumb, and (they think) ‘well if you want to call that ‘fascism’ then you’re an overreacting bitter delusional leftie’

Or something like that

I suspect he did it to take the piss. And to signal to elements of the right / far right that they should breathe a little more freely

Same way his government department is “doge”. Same way he named Tesla’s products “S.E.X.Y”. Many many things he does are bait.

But do I think musk stands for what the Nazis did? No. And I think he, and his type, enjoy thinking it’s “ridiculous” that anyone thinks that. “Obviously” he doesn’t want to gas the Jews. “Obviously” he doesn’t think all black people should be lynched.

But I do think he thinks it’s ok trans people are made to fear. That sub cultures are made to feel unwelcome. That non-‘wasp’ lives are ruined whenever convenient. That checks and balances in government are as changeable as the furniture.

I think he thinks industry should serve a grand national vision.

I don’t think he gives a shit what that vision is as long as it involves him getting even more stupid wealthy

So this pretty much sums up fascism. He’s a fascist not a nazi…