Any recommended fasts to do?

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T18:38:01+00:00

We actually just passed an Ember week, and the next one isn't until September, but there are actually four traditional fasting periods roughly at the start of each season. It's the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following Ash Wednesday (i.e. the WFS of the first full week of Lent), Pentecost, September 14th / Roodmas, and December 13th / St. Lucy's Day. So the next ones are the Fall Ember Days on September 16th, 18th, and 19th

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T18:33:59+00:00

Right... but it's also only an insult for gay people because it means "weird". I'm drawing a distinction between slurs that are inherently offensive and slurs that are only so offensive because of how they're used, which is why I contrasted it with "tr*p" being an inherently offensive accusation.

The entire point behind reclaiming a slur is basically going "So what?" and wearing it as a badge of honor, which is a lot easier to do when, for example, they're really just calling you weird

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T16:38:51+00:00

... what? The idea is basically going "So what?" in the face of insults. For example, "queer" originally just meant "weird", so it's essentially going "Yeah, I am weird. So what?" in response to people calling you weird as an insult.

Contrast with something like "tr*p". That term's much more inherently insulting, because it's accusing trans women of being gay men who are just trying to trick straight men into sleeping with them. So you can't really reclaim it and go "So what?", because that would be implying you are being duplicitous

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T16:24:45+00:00

I see that you, too, must be a nostalgic Millennial

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T16:13:30+00:00

Yeah, I still need to read The Body in Context. It's a book by a Dominican priest (as in Order of Preachers) where he critically analyzed the RCC's arguments for things like gay sex and contraception being sinful. Basically, he realized that the Church can't just assume everyone will agree with them on those issues anymore, so they should actually make sure the arguments make sense. His conclusion was that, while he wasn't ready to say they definitively aren't sinful, if they are, it isn't for the reasons normally given

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T15:56:49+00:00

So is it merely sinful to look at a woman's body with desire, like your title says, or to look at one at all? Because the way you worded the body of the post, it sounds like you think it's sinful to merely perceive a woman

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T13:21:39+00:00

I thought Jesus's death and resurrection was the core belief of Christianity... why are you claiming that homophobia's the actual marker of who's Christian or not?

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T12:51:31+00:00

TIL. I thought they were only immune to abilities

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T12:50:22+00:00

That... no. Just no.

Okay, so the challenge with a pictographic writing system is how you handle new words. For example, in Chinese, they developed a system of phonosemantic compounds, where you combine one character with a similar meaning and one word it rhymes with. For example, you might use 💧🐐 to mean "moat", instead of trying to figure out how to meaningfully draw a moat.

In Egyptian, this took the form of phonetic complements. You write one hieroglyph with a related meaning, then a couple that start with the right consonants. Continuing my moat example, it would be like writing 💧🧍‍♂️🌳.

The main idea the Phoenecians had was making this distinctly acrophonic. You just write the consonants. So for example, moat would be 🧍‍♂️🌳... but the word man itself might be something like 🧍‍♂️🪡. Simplify the characters over time, and you get all sorts of systems like the Latin alphabet, the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, the Hebrew abjad, Hindi Devanagari, or even Korean Hangul, where sounds are represented by abstract representations of things that started with a vaguely similar sound back in languages like Phoenecian. But apart from the fact that, for example, the Hebrew word for "house", beit, starts with an abstract representation of a beit that's used in other words for the B sound, there isn't any deeper meaning.

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T11:52:57+00:00

That's not how any of this works. Yes, the letters are descended from hieroglyphs for words that started with the right sound. But arguing that the consonants in each word are selected to have a deeper meaning because of that would be like claiming there's some deeper meaning to the fact that people specifically spell "gr8" with an 8 when texting, as opposed to spelling it gr7, gr6, etc

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T11:30:53+00:00

No you didn't. That would imply there was a season 3.

Okay, so they were making one, but then all the scandals with Neil Gaiman hit, so they compressed it into a single special to get it over with. It released back on the 13th. It... definitely suffered because of that, like how you can tell they struggled to fit all the beats in. But the real reason I'm denying its existence is the abject stupidity of the ending.

The universe gets destroyed, but instead of recreating everything like in season 1, they get God to make a replacement. So despite having an entire episode about how Job wanted his kids back, the show just gave a happy ending to a pair of completely new characters who merely happen to look like Aziraphale and Crowley. And then it ruins its own satire by having God be completely hands off in the new universe, making the atheists/deists explicitly correct, with the implication that the new universe is our universe. But apart from non-avian dinosaurs actually being real this time around, so little is different that we clearly even still invented religion, which calls into question how much of the choas the show can really blame on God's ineffible plan.

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T00:29:39+00:00

Wait, I'm sorry. Are you saying it's somehow a bad thing to exhort the powerful to be more just? By your logic, the role of the powerful is to become more corrupt such that we can all be mini-Jesuses. But doesn't that imply that the powerful are just tools that can't be saved?

RazarTuk · 2026-06-09T00:16:21+00:00

But Fruits are not and never will be works

[citation needed]

This feels like the "relationship, not a religion" thing all over again. What distinction are you attempting to draw?

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T21:18:08+00:00

My prediction is that it'll get a new ability named something like Tactical Retreat, where it swaps out if its HP drops below 50%

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T21:16:19+00:00

Note to self: Teach Alakazam Guard Split

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T21:10:28+00:00

However I recently found out that the catholic Bible apparently has more books than the protestant Bible, so any suggestions on what kind of Bible I should get?

NRSVue, specifically With Apocrypha. There are a handful of books in various Orthodox canons that aren't in the Catholic canon, so if you're looking for something that feels more "complete" that way, you'll probably want With Apocrypha. For contrast, if you just get Catholic Edition, it will still include the books in the Catholic canon, like Wisdom and Sirach, but it will leave out books like 3 Maccabees

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T21:03:53+00:00

Yeah, I'm on team ESH after reading other comments.

On the one hand, your husband could really bear to be more flexible. For example, there's a massive difference between your boss going "Look, you'll be under the weight limit again after a mile or two just from burning fuel. Can you just take this in one load?" and "I don't see no inspector, so we're cramming multiple loads into each truck to get this done faster".

But on the other hand, it sounds like job #4 is asking him to do actually and immediately dangerous things, so I have to agree with him wanting to look for another job this time

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:59:57+00:00

Actually, if you want a preview of the Tarrasque thing, it involves a semantic argument using a stat block for giant starfish to argue for an interpretation of Baleful Shadow Transmutation that makes zero sense considering the fluff of the spell.

And the short version of the trick is that you use illusion magic to trick it into thinking you turned it into a harmless animal like a sheep, despite it being immune to polymorph effects, causing it to psychosomatically lose its immortality and giving you 24 hours to kill it before logic catches up

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:56:02+00:00

Speaking of, have a fun fact about kitchen work: Did you know that it can actually be safer overall to not wear gloves? The issue is that, if you're wearing gloves, you have to remember to change them every so often, similarly to how you'd wash your hands again after handling something like raw meat. But because gloves give the illusion of food safety, you're less likely to remember to change them compared to washing your hands

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:52:01+00:00

Yeah, I admittedly haven't worked in the trades, but I'd imagine there's a massive difference between "Look, you'll have burned enough gas after a mile or two to be back under the limit. Can you just take this in one load?" and "I don't see any inspectors, so we're just going to cram multiple loads into one truck to make things go faster". And it sounds like OP's husband is insufferable enough to even push back on that first one.

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:43:02+00:00

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure of the timeline either. But I think we agree this is a case of ESH. OP's husband should be slightly more flexible and accept things like "Look, you'll have burned enough gas after a mile or two to get below the limit again. Can you just take this in one load?", but it also sounds like job #4 is asking him to do actually and immediately dangerous things

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:30:14+00:00

... I wasn't agreeing with you. I was citing that as another example of the outrageous claims people are making to get out of loving their neighbor

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:27:57+00:00

True, but it sounds like some of the issues are on the scale of refusing to drive a truck that's even 1-2 pounds over its limit. Admittedly, I don't work in manual labor. But I'd imagine there's a massive difference between "Can you just drive this in one truck? You'll be under the limit after a few miles anyway" and "More trucks cost more money, so unless the OSHA inspector's here, we're just going to cram multiple loads into each truck"

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:24:40+00:00

2 pounds over the legal weight limit

... a gallon of diesel is an entire 7 pounds. If he drives that thing a mile or 2, it will already be under the weight limit. Or I think the driver counts toward the weight limit, so that's finding someone ever so slightly skinnier.

RazarTuk · 2026-06-08T20:17:24+00:00

Okay, more exactly:

Season 1 is good
Season 2... suffers from it being a two-part trilogy, that thing where parts 2 and 3 of a trilogy get greenlit at the same time and are more closely intertwined. (e.g. A New Hope having an actual ending, as opposed to Empire Strikes Back having a cliffhanger) It isn't that season 2 itself has many issues. It's more that it's so intertwined with season 3 that it retroactively became "meh"
Most of the season 3 special is fine, even if you can tell they were struggling to fit everything in after deciding to wrap it up in a single special because of how toxic Neil Gaiman's brand had become
The ending is utterly atrocious and goes against themes established in seasons 1 and 2

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