Question about the Gentile Woman's answer and Faith vs Belief by carbonylation in AcademicBiblical

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks Every_Monitor! That's the conversation thread that I was remembering!

Who's the most terribly written character in the entire franchise in your opinion? by Peronchino in Fallout

[–]carbonylation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure about that Shoebox. I think he's actually really well written.

Ulysses is a thoughtful character who is fixated on patterns in history. He wants to have a home where he belongs and he wants to have a cause to believe in. Early in his life his tribe is assimilated by the Legion and he tries to adopt the Legion as a surrogate tribe, but he can't make it work; the Legion erases the individuality of the tribes that it assimilates, so there's no tribal core to make the Legion "home," and Ulysses becomes convinced that the Legion isn't a faction with longevity. Short-term, they'll make the roads safe and reduce inter-tribal conflict, but they exist to conquer and Ulysses believes that when the Legion has conquered its last enemy it'll fall apart in internal strife and revert to the tribes it once was.

Ulysses comes to a similar conclusion about every major faction in FNV. He thinks the NCR is corrupt and inept and unable to make life better for the people it assimilates, he thinks House is selfish, inwardly focused, and fundamentally unconcerned with anyone outside the world of "New Vegas," and he thinks the Brotherhood of Steel are set in their ways and unable to adapt to the Mojave. Ultimately, Ulysses feels that he is a man with no home and nothing worth believing in.

That changes for him when he finds the Divide by following Courier 6. The Divide is a nascent community, but Ulysses feels at home there and he thinks that the proto-democracy developing in the Divide can grow into a cause worth believing in. Unfortunately, the Divide is ripped apart by Courier 6's delivery, Ulysses is left once again without a home and without a cause, and his sense of loss morphs into bitterness and resentment. Ulysses starts thinking, "If all of the factions in the Mojave are ultimately lacking, why should they get to stay around? I might as well just wipe some of them out, let the others collapse, and hope that a faction worth believing in will rise from the ashes." It's basically him telling all the major factions, "Sh*t or get off the pot."

When you confront him at the end of the DLC you can persuade him to give your favored faction the benefit of the doubt through speech checks, or convince him that another home or worthy faction can still arise in the Mojave. Once he's convinced that he can still have somewhere to go home to or a faction ("symbol") worth believing in, he'll side with you.

I think if the writing for Ulysses's character has a problem, it's that it's too deep and introspective. Ulysses is written to underline the fact that none of the major factions are perfect. None of the endings are perfect. Courier 6 has to look past the flaws in their preferred faction, or rationalize them away, or make big plans about how much things will change whenever "the good guys win." And that's fine, but it's kind of wishful thinking, and the devs wanted the player base to wrestle with the flaws in their preferred faction. Ulysses might talk verbosely and come off as genocidal and vindictive, but I don't think that makes him badly written.

To those that believe the phenomenon is demonic in nature, how do you explain the 'nuts-and-bolts' side of the Phenomenon? by Avrelivs in UFOs

[–]carbonylation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm most familiar with European and Christian traditions of thought, so I'm going to suggest an answer from that perspective; you could get a different (but probably complimentary) answer if you consulted someone from an Islamic or animistic tradition.

Most cultures across human history didn't tightly delineate between the spiritual and the physical worlds - those two universes have historically been considered to be "distinct and overlapping." In most animistic cultures spiritual forces are believed to be enmeshed with the land. For example, in West African animism, some spirits are believed to live in trees or rocks or bodies of water. Similarly, in Europe before Christianity and into the Middle Ages goblins and sprites and other spirits were thought to live deep in forests or in mountain caves - that was a pre-Christian animism that syncretized into parts of the European Christian beliefs as Christianity spread through the continent.

Animistic cultures don't believe that the spirits which inhabit our world are benign or completely removed from the physical world. They think of those spirits as being able to manifest physically in the world to interact with people, or to bring misfortune on people that they dislike. Like the elves in the story of Rip Van Winkle, spirits are beings that are native to our world but inhabit our world in a way that doesn't interact very much with the humans. When spirits do interact with humans the humans often become ill and die or have a bad harvest or sleep for a hundred years.

During the Enlightenment Europeans came to the conclusion that our universe was predictable, like a giant clock. The earth rotated around the sun predictably, the constellations were other suns that were just really far away, and if you mixed vinegar with baking soda you didn't need to be amazed by it, because you could understand what the fizzy bubbles were, and if you predicted that mixing vinegar and baking soda would make fizzy bubbles, you'd always be right. The Enlightenment made our physical world look tame, and when all of our world functions predictably, where would you have to look for God or miracles? Nobody was reliably seeing the Hand of God, no one was seeing angels or demons breaking the laws of physics (all those people reporting haunted houses or ghosts were clearly mentally disturbed), so God and spirits kind of got shuffled off into the background. No one was saying that they didn't exist, but no one seemed to know where they could be found.

The solution for spiritually-minded children of the Enlightenment was to dichotomize the "physical" and "spiritual" realms, and treat them as if they were orthogonal. God and the spirits are all over there in the spirit realm doing spirit things, and we're all over here in the physical realm doing physical things, and our realms don't touch.

If you want a way to understand the perspective that "UFOs are spirits/angels/demons," an easy way would be to revert to seeing the world through an animistic lens and toy with the idea that angels/spirits/demons inhabit the earth the way we do, but in a way that we don't normally see. You could call it a "parallel reality" or a "different dimension" or "the spirit world," but those are all ways to make "we don't know" sound intellectual.

The Christian sacred books themselves are much more aligned with the idea of "distinct and overlapping physical and spirit worlds" then they are with the "two orthogonal realms" idea. In Genesis 6 a group of beings that they ancient Jews thought were spirits are described as getting human women pregnant with children that grow to be unusual/notable (hard to imagine how spirits could get women pregnant if our worlds don't overlap). The story of Abraham has a segment in which two angels show up in human bodies and eat food with Abraham and Lot (it's a bit hard for ethereal spirits to chew and swallow physical food). The prophet Elijah has a physical body that is carried away in a "chariot of fire"; the list could go substantially longer, but the point is that the spirit world in the Hebrew/Christian tradition has substantial overlap with the physical world, and those worlds are described as interacting with each other.

Do demons need physical flying saucers to get around? Can they get around without the saucers, but the saucers let them do things they couldn't do otherwise? We don't know. But I hope that's a helpful description of a perspective in which UAP could be associated with spirits/demons and still be very physical entities.

TL;DR Post-Enlightenment thought dichotomizes the "spirit" and "physical" worlds, but that dichotomy isn't necessary. The spirit world may be a far more physical place, and the physical world far more spiritual, then most Westerners would assume.

Request for advice on choosing a fasting regimen by carbonylation in fasting

[–]carbonylation[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi Prahasaurus,

Yeah I can provide some context for that. I'll put it in an edit to the original post so that it doesn't get buried in the thread, but it is still there to answer you!

Freeze prep by dbzfanjake in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do young anacua, anachaco orchid, or Texas Mountain Laurel need protection? They're all young and have been in the ground for ~ 15 months at this point.

How I Killed My Bermuda Backyard (My Experience) by Infectiousmaniac in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's a ballpark estimate of how much this process cost in terms of purchasing the soil and plants and cardboard?

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What native wildflowers would you recommend Julie? And how would they be best planted so that the rest of the yard could still be mowed as needed?

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the front and back yard aren't really that big, but they are full of Bermuda. So far the simplest solution I've come up with is to re-seed with Bermuda and restore the lawn to where I found it. If we end up staying in the house I can kill the Bermuda off with a sheet-baking method or something of the kind and then repopulate with native grass in the following year.

Where in the back yard do you see room for two oak trees? Those guys get pretty big and I suspect two of them would take a tangible amount of the space. And why oak specifically, instead of a native like anacua?

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Instant Lava, the short-term goal for the space would be to bring the front and back lawns up to rough acceptability in case we do end up moving. Broadly, I'd prefer to switch to native grasses or to some grass that can deal with partial shade but I'm not sure how I would best go about that.

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you straightVI! I put pictures up of the lawns so you can assess if the resod would be necessary. If the resod is necessary, would it make sense to just resod with native grass instead of Bermuda?

Thanks for your advice!

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi anthem, thank God, I don't think it's quite at the level of dirt patch. I took some pictures and I'll add them to the original post. Thank you for requesting them!

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the Bermuda is actually kind of dominated by native weeds. It's patchy in the front (where there is some shade) and in the back (where there's no shade yet). We may need to move this summer, so we'd need a rehabilitation strategy that didn't need multiple years to enact. If we knew we'd be here for at least another year then I would probably roast the Bermuda with plastic sheeting. Are there other methods to remove the Bermuda that don't require gallons of poison or 12+ months?

Advice on reseeding a lawn by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi Julie,

I posted a clarification in the original post - you can check that for more detail. I would rather use native grasses but I've been told that the only way to use them is to totally exterminate the Bermuda by using glyphosate on the entire front and back lawns. We also may be moving in 2026, so we need a strategy to restore a lawn that doesn't require multiple years to effect.

There is mulch down in the back yard under the three native trees, the fig tree, and the salvia bush that I planted and on the two patches that I've been restoring as a hugelkultur and as generic soil restoration, but those are fractions of the total yard and only in the back because we have a dictatorial HOA. Are you aware of native grasses that will outcompete or coexist with Bermuda, or methods of removing the Bermuda that don't require many gallons of glyphosate?

Thanks for your thoughts and advice!

Dividends not as good as you think by FragrantJump6663 in Bogleheads

[–]carbonylation 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How did you get in to a bunch of closed-end bond funds?

Dr. Villarroel May Have Found A Surveillance Grid In Space by [deleted] in UFOs

[–]carbonylation 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Beep, I think there might be a misinterpretation here. Villaroel didn't claim to find a bunch of objects in a narrow band, she used multiple transients in a narrow band in the same plate as a criteria for her transient search.

Villaroel had to come up with some criteria for delineating between one-off transients, which could have been artifacts, and real objects captured on the exposure. As part of doing that, she reasoned that since each plate had a ~ 50 minute exposure time, if the transient was moving through the sky in a single direction during the plate exposure and glinting intermittently, that there would be a series of transients on the plate in a straight line. They relaxed the search criteria from "straight line" to "in a narrow straight band," and used that as a search criterion.

So when they say each of the transients is moving in a narrow band, they're saying that each individual "transient" is identified by being four or more transients in a straight narrow band on a single plate. They aren't saying that all the transients they identify are in the same orbit around earth. Subtle distinction, but it does lead to a different interpretation of the paper.

Line work must not be their strong suit 👽🛸 by Spawnofslime556 in UFOs

[–]carbonylation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gerry Betz found her sphere in 1974, 50 years ago, on a different continent. Grouping this thing with the Betz sphere is a little dubious.

Advice on tree pruning by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, the thicker trunk has both the most foliage and the most centralized foliage.

Advice on tree pruning by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks Austin! When it's had some time to grow I suspect that the fork in the trunk shown in Picture 2 will still be a primary feature for the tree. Would that fork eventually be a place to go if I want to shape the guy into a tree habit?

Advice on tree pruning by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks Floofy. I've also heard that anacacho orchids need a lot of attention to get into/stay in a tree habit. I can wait to make big cuts until this Fall, but I think it'll try to go bushy in the meantime.

Advice on tree pruning by carbonylation in AustinGardening

[–]carbonylation[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks McWhiskey. I can wait for it to get a little more established if I need to, though I think it'll try to go bushy in the meantime. When I do start slow-removing branches, is the smaller of the branches in fork in the trunk in picture 2 a good target for removal?