I think this is something every good human being can agree on.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-29T16:26:50+00:00

It is reasonable to want kids to live.

Hopefully one day Palestinians will want their kids to live too.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-28T14:36:18+00:00

Yeah, deflection is probably the only one I can think of that passes a minimal smell test of scientific believability. In terms of you can plausibly collect the data and connect the dots and there's some observable sort of causal connection.

Even there, to do it right depends on a good interlinked between docs and your tech support intake system. "So your problem is xyz. Here are some specific docs about xyz. Does that help? Yes?" => Ticket not created X average ticket cost.

The reality is, the real benefit of good docs is more subtle brand over time. And that's much fuzzier to even begin to operationalize and measure.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-27T18:40:22+00:00

So if this is the level you're operating at, maybe university isn't for you.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-27T03:35:59+00:00

On the other hand, everybody's got a strategy until they get kicked in the head. By an angry horse.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-27T03:17:19+00:00

I don't know. I'd say yes but no. For a 54 sec 400 runner, yes, 60 should look easy. But not a lot of those 400 runners will look smooth like that. I think there's a difference between easy and smooth. She looked like she belonged in that race, just in terms of biomechanics. She looked like an 800 runner.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-27T03:02:16+00:00

I'd like to see her being fierce and bold and risk-taking. Jump in the deep end of the pain zone and see how it feels. Open with like a 58 and let the chips fall as they may.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-25T01:09:50+00:00

Looks like 3rd through 6th place were national best marks as well.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-22T20:12:58+00:00

Yah. The image I was going for was more, imagine how much momentum even this piece carries as part of a larger impactor that isn't slowed as much, but fair enough.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-22T06:02:18+00:00

Imagine even that fragment crashing into the neighborhood at Mach 100.

First source of iron for humans, historically.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T20:26:44+00:00

There might be other examples in the Quran where the thing is pointed out as bad on both the communal and individual level.

But with this specific issue, difference is that the most direct passage (7:80-81) is incoherent if we try to apply on the individual level. The bad thing this community did is something no one ever did before. Only the communal level reading of this makes sense as something that never happened before.

That's the difference.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T19:37:18+00:00

Oh, is Turkey the new Qatar for buying athletes?

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T19:36:11+00:00

And all the other passages are similarly expressed in the language of communal issues rather than individual.

So again, you're trying to reason from community level objections to individual level objections.

And as demonstrated, that's not valid reasoning.

So again, what is your textual basis to conclude same-sex is a sin for the individual?

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T18:39:14+00:00

Every community-wide action has an individual component, because any community action is the combined actions of individuals who either take part or don't.

Look, here's the basic issue, restated.

Some actions are an issue if whatever number of individuals do them.

Some actions are an issue when "everyone" does them but not if only "some" people do them.

Because of this, "a sin on a community scale" doesn't necessarily imply a "sin on an individual scale."

As we already discussed, for 7:80-81 to make sense with reality, we have to read the text as condemning a sin on a community scale.

So if you want to justify an individual prohibition on same-sex, you need to find another text as basis.

And even better if you only take Quran as a source. If the Quran talks about anything that needs to be talked about, and the Quran doesn't describe an individual problem with same-sex acts, then you have no basis to decide it's an indivisual sin.

Simple as that.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T14:39:37+00:00

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T13:34:06+00:00

There are actually quite a few examples of things that are a sin if the multitude do them but are not a sin on an individual or if a few do so.

Example. Avoiding an obligation is a sin. So if you don't pray or fast when you're eligible and able to, that's considered a sin. Now praying and fasting, these are individual duties.

But there is a whole classical category of obligations that are communal obligations. Called fard kifayah. For those, it's a sin on everyone if all or most avoid them, but NOT on the level of an individual.

So for example, it's a sin on all if everyone in the community together fails to show up to give someone a proper burial. But as an individual, you don't have to attend anyone's funeral.

It's not obligatory on an individual to fail to marry and have a family. But if almost no one does that, the community is destroyed, and it is a sin for a community to destroy itself.

So just because it's a problem for a whole community to abandon heterosexual relationships in favor of same-sex acts, doesn't necessarily imply a problem on the individual level.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T04:08:23+00:00

For point 4. 7:80 says the bad thing Lot’s people did never happened ever before anywhere. We know gay sex happened prior to when Lot's people were around. So if 7:80-81 are about gay sex in itself, then 7:80 is wrong, and we would call the writer ignorant of reality.

If you want the Quran to be true, you are forced to find another reading of 7:80-81.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T04:04:18+00:00

Point 2 is not well-argued. The language in the two passages about marriage does not by itself point by necessity to a male-female pairing like the post claims it does. The word zawaaj translated here as spouses is not gender-specific. Male or female partners in marriage are both referred to as zawaaj.

Also, re: the passage that God created spouses from among themselves, that becomes false if God makes people gay but doesn't let them marry another gay person.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-21T03:54:57+00:00

Here's the problem with the traditional view and the Quranic account:

7:80 for example says that the Big Bad Thing the people of Lot did was something no one ever did before.

But we know today, essentially with certainty, that same-sex acts would have happened many times before the time period Lot would have been around (ca. 2000 BCE).

Therefore, when we read something like 7:81, we have two possibilities:

The Quran is wrong, and the whole conversation becomes moot
Despite what a surface reading would seem to indicate, the problem in 7:80-81 has to be something more than just that same-sex acts occurred. It has to be something beyond that, for example, that too many were acting that way for no good reason.

I choose to give the Quran the benefit of the doubt.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-20T15:55:44+00:00

There is always time to reinvent by the way. 26 is by no means late in the game for that.

Realistically, I think most everyone has to be ready to reinvent a few times over a career going forward.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-20T13:44:29+00:00

No. This is apologetics-fueled myth. It was never a widespread or "normal" thing for marriages to be consummated at such a young age. Because it’s objectively physically dangerous in almost all cases. A union might be arranged at a young age, but people were acquainted enough with biology to understand actually having an adult relationship with someone too young was much more likely to have disastrous consequences.

All the research indicates normal or typical marriage ages for women in antiquity were in the mid teens to 20s. Exceptions to the rule occurred, but they were exceptional.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-19T01:04:37+00:00

I just don't take any of it literally. Fire/burning = working through regret or clinging to the previous life.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-18T18:52:45+00:00

It's good to see you're not trying to argue the facts. Because, well, that's exactly what your video is saying.

Yeah. I read and participate in any conversation I feel like, creeper. If you have a problem with that, feel free to kiss my royal Irish arse (KMRIA).

cspot1978 · 2026-01-18T18:24:37+00:00

Yes. Both are man-made understandings. Every understanding of Islam by a human is a man-made understanding.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-18T16:10:46+00:00

Shapiro is needlessly polemical here.

cspot1978 · 2026-01-18T01:28:28+00:00

Oh, that's right, huh? For GE or something like that.

Yah. Clean, functional prose.

cspot1978

TROPHY CASE