The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party. Which, yes, would be 2009-ish, and a blood-relative to the election of Obama. (E.g., without Obama as president, the racist fears of the Tea Party would have fizzled out in the harsh light of reality.) But I look at all of this on a continuum; the only two conservatives I see in recent memory that have made an apparently sincere attempt to stop the crazy train have been John McCain (…although he took Palin as a running mate…) and Mitt Romney, and they both got crushed by Dems. Well, maybe Liz Cheney too. Maybe. But she was okay with everything except Trump, so I dunno. Anyway, point is - Nixon, Reagan, and Gingritch were all laying the foundations and drawing up the architectural plans that Trump has used, and is using now, to build his version of a fascist state.

That’s definitely going to put a strain on his heart.

Someone needs to hire a lot of porn stars for him, see if they can get him excited enough to have a massive heart attack. Maybe hire a lot of women that look like his daughter?

My grandmother lived with dementia for 20 years before dying at 101.

He wasn’t the president when the crime was committed, ipso facto he didn’t have presidential immunity.

No, it started with Nixon, and his Southern Strategy. Reagan and the Silent Majority–which was fundamentally about racism and the desire to segregate schools, even though abortion was their cause célèbre–made it worse. And Newt Gingritch and the “Contract With America” really threw gasoline on the fire.

First things first.

Second, given that the author has hidden this in a paywall–you have to sign up in order to access the article and presumably any links–I’m going to immediately distrust the motives.

Third, Medium is a glorified blogging site; anyone can say anything on it.

Let me see if I can explain what I mean.

A historical Jesus might have had a small cult following, enough that the Romans couldn’t ignore him. He would have been talking about Jewish liberation from the Roman rulers, and how he was called by god. And then boom, he gets executed. His followers probably believed that he was actually the son of god, sent to liberate them. But now he’s dead. How do they reconcile the belief with the reality? So they retcon everything; he was a spiritual messiah, and he’ll eventually return and free the Jews, once the people are spiritually prepared.

You can see traces of this in the way that the four gospels don’t agree with each other, but they all include bits of prophecies from earlier scripture about the messiah. They were written with the intent of making Jesus appear to fit in to older prophecies about who the messiah would be, since he ended up not being the liberator that they had been expecting.

You can see similar behaviors in cults now. It’s clearly visible with Q; Trump was supposed to be their messiah, but he hasn’t managed to make any of their prophetic beliefs come true. So they’ve invented reasons why Trump’s holy will has been thwarted, and changed their history, rather than accepting that he was a false messiah.

As far as I know, we simply don’t have directly contemporary, first-hand evidence of him. Even the most ‘contemporary’ accounts of him that still exist were written at least 50 years after he would have died, and those are quite cursory. Perhaps primary sources were lost–or intentionally destroyed when they didn’t align with beliefs–or perhaps they never existed. There’s not even much evidence for Pontius Pilate (I think one source mentioning that he was recalled to Rome and executed for incompetence?), and there should be, given that he was a Roman official.

People that study the history of the bible–as in, the historical bible, not the bible as a religious text–tend to believe that a historical Jesus existed, even if they don’t believe that he was divine.

IMO, the most likely explanation is that Jesus was yet another in a long-line of false messiahs, and was summarily executed by Rome for trying to start yet another rebellion. Since cult members tend to be unable to reconcile reality with their beliefs, they could have reframed their beliefs to say that he was a spiritual messiah, rather than a physical messiah.

Create a multi-part archive (…probably about 250 parts…) with a strong password, upload each part to whatever the current equivalent to Megaupload is, and let them download it at their leisure.

With no accounts on either end, should only take about three months for each to be complete.

Alternatively, you could put it on a thumb drive and drive it over if they live fairly close.

FWIW, The Times is a center-right publication that’s somewhat more factually accurate in their reporting than the New York Times is. So it’s kind of a big deal for them to admit that there just isn’t any evidence other than extremely suspicious claims about any widespread, systematic sexual violence.

Likely killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing. They don’t know where hostages are being held, so any bomb could be the one that kills hostages, and they clearly don’t care.

100% false, because as I said I’ve had it happen to me. States can, and do, do this.

You’re not adding more pressure anywhere; you’re cancelling that pressure out.

ANC isn’t protective in any way. If anything it’s probably just as damaging.

That’s just not true.

Your ear largely hears things through changes in air pressure. Projecting the same frequency and amplitude at the opposite phase prevents the change in air pressure in the first place. It’s literally cancelling the sound.

It is, yes. They do a ton of really small updates all the fucking time now, sometimes breaking critical shit, sometimes fixing things. (I don’t remember which version it was that ended support for PANTONE; now you have to pay for a subscription to PANTONE also, and the plug-in is trash and buggy as hell.) Since it wants to be always connected to the internet now, it’s more of a pain in the ass to pirate, although it’s likely still possible.

I have to use it for my job, so my company pays for it. But TBH, if you’re an industry professional, there’s really not any viable options on the market. Half the stuff clients send to me are in proprietary formats.

The bylaws also prohibit going shirtless or in a bikini in areas away from the beach, a ban that was introduced several years ago in Barcelona to little effect as offenders are mainly tourists who fly home without paying the fines.

That’s easy to solve. You confiscate the passport until the fine is paid. Or arrest them and hold them without bond as a flight risk. The last time I got a speeding ticket–about 15 years ago, I think–I was in Ohio, and driving home to Illinois. The cop took my license, and said they’d mail it back once I paid the fine.

Quick edit: I’m not talking about cash bail here; that’s a separate issue. Bond can be refused when a suspect is deemed to be unlikely to show up for court, such as the suspect being a foreign national. This happens regularly, and isn’t particularly controversial. A person that is a citizen and resident of a foreign country is very likely to skip out on criminal penalties, therefore they shouldn’t be permitted to leave without paying their criminal fines.

when people google that they want immediate relief, not fucking oh go for a walk every day,

The problem is that there is no immediate relief that isn’t either a) suicide, or b) won’t make things worse in the long run. Even something like ECT doesn’t work instantly; it takes several treatments. Transcranial magnetic stimulation seems promising, but it’s not a frontline treatment. The generic shit is the stuff that actually works in the long run, things like getting therapy, exercising, going outside more, interacting with people in a positive way, and so on. “Self care”–isolating and doing easy, comfortable things–will make things worse in the long run.

Too much melatonin–about about 5mg for most people–tends to cause nightmares.

So, to recap, you know nothing about my religion other than the name, and make assumptions about what I believe due to your prejudices, but you don’t believe that you have prejudices based on skin color. Is that correct?

Uh huh.

Would you judge a man based on the color of his skin rather than on his character?