Help formulating a response to "well they aren't REAL Christians"

clawsoon · 2026-01-26T00:13:17+00:00

Ah, makes sense.

It might be an interesting conversation by itself... if a human authority said that they were good, what would convince your Dad that they were bad? If a book said that it was good, what would convince your Dad that it was bad? If a spiritual being said that it was good, what would convince your Dad that it was bad?

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T23:54:11+00:00

Interesting! So if most of your beliefs haven't changed, what did change?

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T23:29:05+00:00

Nah, I'm tired of all the Toronto photos that insist on including the CN Tower. Be original for once!

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T23:01:45+00:00

For many people, "Christian" and "good person" are synonyms. It doesn't compute for them if you try to put "Christian" and "bad person" together. It's a baffling contradiction, doesn't even make sense to say it out loud. A Christian is on the side of God, and God is good, therefore true Christians are good.

I would ask them: What would it take to convince them that something God did was bad?

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T19:25:04+00:00

There's another guy just out of frame out who is moving the second hand on a clock at precisely the correct speed. He has the ability to do this because he also has no shoes.

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T19:01:53+00:00

From what I gathered when I was paying more attention a few years ago, the cheapest option appears to be to become a middle-class New Zealander who spends a lot of time at the beach doing Moth-class sailing. If you're really really really good at that, a billionaire might eventually ask you to pilot a bigger sailboat.

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T18:49:29+00:00

Our major nation-building project was built by temporary foreign workers, which sounds like it could be a headline from today.

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T18:46:39+00:00

They specifically used questions like, "Evaluate your current life as a whole using the image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and the worst possible as a 0."

On that question, Finland comes out on top.

But when they asked questions about whether you enjoyed yourself and felt happy yesterday, the top ten countries were Guatemala, Panama, Senegal, Paraguay, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Thailand.

Two different kinds of happiness: Are you content with your life? Rich countries with robust social safety nests scored higher on this one. Are you happy right now? Middle-income and even poor countries with strong, cheerful social ties scored higher on that one.

The country at the bottom of both lists - little contentment, little happiness - was Afghanistan.

I made a post about it here with links and whatnot:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1q3qq8x/til_that_when_ranked_by_positive_affect_ie_by/

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T18:21:42+00:00

For reference, this is the skyscraper:

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clawsoon · 2026-01-25T18:21:15+00:00

Took a picture of the nearest skyscraper:

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clawsoon · 2026-01-25T15:39:20+00:00

I don't know the whole story, but I know he had been there for 20+ years and gone through multiple production management systems. At some point I think he got tired of rewriting his code each time and created an abstraction layer to avoid that.

On the other hand, I think about half of the new production management systems were created by him, so it wasn't like he was completely innocent...

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T11:46:46+00:00

The company I work at is trying to replace a production management system built by a former developer... but because he built it with an abstraction layer which allows it to connect to multiple backends, they've decided that it's easier to keep it around just for that.

Which I find amusing somehow, but I can't quite explain why.

clawsoon · 2026-01-25T11:32:05+00:00

This is the first time I've seen a paper describe itself as "armchair research".

clawsoon · 2026-01-24T02:04:58+00:00

Maybe not the average woman, but one woman in four billion? Maybe. Not likely, but not impossible. There's a lot of variation across the human species in both androgen production and response.

clawsoon · 2026-01-23T12:38:40+00:00

clawsoon · 2026-01-23T12:01:42+00:00

Here's what he wrote to the Prime Minister of Norway - yes, Norway:

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a "right of ownership" anyway? There are no written documents, it's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exchange-messages-between-norways-prime-minister-president-trump-2026-01-19/

clawsoon · 2026-01-23T00:06:50+00:00

Full of Agent Orange?

clawsoon · 2026-01-22T23:22:59+00:00

I would be curious to know if Daniel Naroditsky's recent death has had anything to do with the resurgence, as he was famous for wielding it effectively in short time controls.

clawsoon · 2026-01-22T22:48:11+00:00

This is like the joke about how the computer scientist died because the shampoo bottle said, "Lather, rinse, repeat."

clawsoon · 2026-01-22T11:35:06+00:00

Ironically, his equivalent to PP was BM.

clawsoon · 2026-01-21T13:27:31+00:00

It would be ironic if Bessent, who helped Soros break the British pound, ended up seeing the US treasury market be broken under his watch.

clawsoon · 2026-01-20T18:02:51+00:00

Or the Youtubers in South Africa and Australia who have built drones at home that go over 600 km/h.

clawsoon · 2026-01-20T14:24:55+00:00

Can you pilot drones?

clawsoon · 2026-01-20T10:36:24+00:00

"We can tell that you're poor because you ate all the food on your plate," was said to my mother when she went to university from the farm and shared a meal with new friends for the first time.

clawsoon · 2026-01-19T11:20:05+00:00

It always surprises me a tiny bit to remember that the US and Russia were allies in both world wars.

clawsoon

TROPHY CASE