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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • The idea of “the power of prayer” is stupid on the face of it. First, you’re presupposing a omnipotent diety that can and does directly effect the universe, changing the outcomes of events based on it’s desires, whims, plans, whatever. And you think THAT diety is taking requests? When “God answered my prayers”, you think that had you not requested it, it wouldn’t have happened. You think that God answers to your puny human concerns? That shit is arrogant as hell.

    But furthermore, it also flies in the face of two other common beliefs about God, at least in Christianity. “God gave man Free Will” and “It’s All Part of God’s Plan™” (don’t get me started on how those are already two mutually exclusive ideas and hundreds of millions of believers just ignore that cognitive dissonance). Many of the things that one prays for, like “getting that job”, “winning that award”, “ending the war”, etc. directly involve altering the decisions and actions of others, which means that God would be stripping them of free will. Also, the most classic call to prayer is to heal the sick, or preserve one’s life. But surely if God has a plan for everyone’s life, at minimum everyone’s birth and death must also be planned. How can he answer your prayer to save your life if it’s his plan for you to die, yet still have an plan he’s always been following? The irony is that people like to pull the “all part of God’s plan” platitude particularly when someone has died before their time.

    The one that really makes me annoyed, or even angry, is when something terrible happens, people are hurt or killed, and someone who was supposed to or had almost been there says something like “God was watching out for me”. It’s so self-centered and arrogant to attribute your simple dumb luck to God’s will in that situation. Because, not only does it assume you are God’s most special little guy that he’s constantly paying attention to and protecting, but also that God willfully condemned those others who did fall to this terrible fate that he supposedly saved you from. It’s all arrogance. I can’t stand it.



  • Yea, the solicitation for tips when all you did was prepare the food (the bare minimum) while I served myself or just got carryout, that is ridiculous. The only times I have tipped for carryout was during covid because, frankly, just being open was above and beyond service at the time, and I wanted to show extra support to struggling businesses I cared about. Otherwise, tips are the compensation for either the convenience of being served by someone else, the inconvenience to the business of an unusual order (like a huge order, allergy care, etc), or if you are just doing more than I could reasonably expect for regular service (like being open during covid shut downs).








  • In my junior year of high school, my (very strict) English teacher teacher was going over some common mistakes native English speakers make. One such mistake was using hanged vs. hung. She said when you do your laundry and put your wet clothes on the clothesline, they are “hung”. When a death row prisoner is executed at the gallows, he is “hanged”. Not “hung”. “Things cannot be hanged. Men cannot be hung.”

    There was a brief silence and then, yadda, yadda, yadda, two of my classmates got sent to the vice principal.




  • I do it as well. If I’m not actively speaking and the person speaking isn’t presenting something that I need to look at, I usually end up bouncing back and forth between the speaker and my image.

    I don’t want to necessarily apply logic to it because I don’t think it’s a conscious, logic decision I’m making. But if I had to try, I’d say that the reasons are A) I cannot “look them in the eye” as I would in person without looking directly at my camera, which is both weird and means I’m literally looking away from them. That is the paradox of video calling. B) Looking at them, versus looking literally anywhere else on your screen makes no tangible difference to anyone else looking at your video feed. C) I want to make sure I am not looking ridiculous while blasting my image to a dozen people. No double chin, no resting bitch face, no glazed look, no boogers, etc. D) Staring at anyone else would feel weird, invasive, and distracting to me, including the speaker, if they are not actively speaking to me. It feels like I’m eavesdropping when I’m not actively being addressed. E) Gotta take advantage of having eyes on the back of your head. Never turn your back on your enemy. Stay vigilant. The cat will not pounce me and claw my back mid-meeting again.






  • If we’re talking deities, as in supernatural creator beings, the answer would be yes when they want to be made of atoms and no when they don’t want to be. If they have the power of creation and form reality itself, their nature, both physical and spiritual, would be whatever they choose, right?

    If we’re talking non-infinite mind creating a simulated universe that we live in, then it’s more likely that they are made of something, though it may not be atoms or matter as we understand it. They would presumably occupy some sort of physical universe with laws and something like matter to give it physical properties, but there is no reason to assume that the nature of the universe would resemble our own or follow the same laws. Atoms and other forms of matter that we have in our universe may be a construct of our simulation, rather than a constant truth in all universes. And honestly, their universe may not even be physical at all in the sense that we all understand it. The answer is that we don’t know, have no way to know, and may not even have the capacity to understand even if we were given the answer.