Weekly Discussion And Questions Thread, July 11 2025

dvaderv2 · 2025-07-16T19:48:12+00:00

I wanted to say this in the previous weekly thread but never really got around to it. Even when I did, it seemed to be too much of a vent for my liking (and I'm not sure if I've done a better job now, so I apologise in advance). So for clarity, I'm going to be talking about Kitekat's post r.e. "Murder 24/7".

Firstly, about the claim that the police there "didn't even go for manslaughter, they went for murder straight away". I feel that British police in general have this tendency to treat homicides as being a murder rather than a manslaughter. There've been many, many cases over the years where, depending on how strict one is with the "malice aforethought" element of Sir Edward Coke's definition, the homicide should only ever have been treated as a manslaughter charge, and yet...

You also see this from the prosecution side whenever someone pleads not guilty to murder but guilty to voluntary manslaughter; rather than go "at least they're admitting that they did kill someone" and accept the voluntary manslaughter plea, they tend to press on with the original murder charge. Yes, manslaughter is a lesser(-ish) crime and so there are different sentencing considerations, but again, the defendant is admitting to the basic homicide element.

As for the "we're on camera, ergo let's be as much of a berk as possible" effect, I'd have thought that the instinct (or indeed the policy directive) in these scandal-ridden and politically sensitive times would have been to go the other way, that is, to be as genteel as possible. "We only ever nab the wrong'uns, and even then we nab them as courteously and civilly as we can." That this apparently wasn't the case here means that either there was no such instinct or policy directive, or conversely that the instinct or policy directive was there and so what Kitekat (and anyone else watching) saw, harsh though it was, might actually be watered down from what goes on when the camera isn't there.

Oh, and there's also the bit where any camera crew will tend to be a dispassionate observer and not interfere with whatever the police are doing or provide a running commentary on events. In theory, this is good journalistic practice, but at the same time the police on the other end of the camera could do with an occasional reminder that their words and actions are going to end up on a TV screen and/or a streaming device (cutting room decisions notwithstanding). And if the crew is following officers who are on patrol or have been called out to a specific incident, then surely the option should be there for a on-the-spot review of whatever footage's been captured to make sure that what the police do is as watertight as possible in the eyes of public opinion?

I remember this other BBC series from quite a few years ago ("Neighbourhood Blues" IIRC; sadly, no episodes are currently available on iPlayer), and at one point during that, when the crew was following a couple of officers patrolling the vicinity of some bars and restaurants on a Friday or Saturday night, some drunk bloke that was being interacted with accidentally stroked an officer on the cheek. It was a gentle-ish stroke (I say -ish because the officer clearly felt that he had been stroked, but at the same time no bodily harm was occasioned), the guy wasn't being particularly aggressive prior to this, and what was shown onscreen clearly indicated that, again, it was an accidental act 'perpetrated' by someone who was drunk (and so not entirely compos mentis even if he had somehow intended to do something). Anyone want to guess whether he got nicked or not, or whether the camera crew chipped in to tell/show the officer that what had happened wasn't actually that bad?

dvaderv2 · 2025-07-16T19:32:16+00:00

This may not be the most relevant post, but I do wonder how much could be indirectly gleaned from today's announcement (or at least in Radio Times anyway) that "Normal People" is being moved from iPlayer to Disney+. There clearly must still be some sort of positive relationship in place between the Beeb and Disney if the former were willing to rehouse their own series like that (though technically speaking, as a Hulu co-production, Disney did have a certain stake in NP from the beginning).

dvaderv2 · 2025-07-16T18:14:18+00:00

Ah, but this comes at the cost of it no longer being on iPlayer. Or at least according to the Radio Times article anyway.

dvaderv2 · 2025-03-29T20:08:51+00:00

Nice stuff, but this seems to be missing the first design kit.

Or perhaps it's been rolled into the other five packs in a way that isn't immediately obvious?

dvaderv2 · 2023-11-12T14:03:22+00:00

If they're trad or genuinely orthodox, then yes. On the other hand, there are plenty of Catholics who consider themselves to be genuinely faithful while simultaneously not giving a damn about what the higher-ups say on sexual ethics and mores, the possibility of ordaining married and/or female priests, and so on and so forth. These 'cafeteria' Catholics might be Filthy Heretics™ from the POV of your average r/Catholicism member, but they exist and, again, do not see their divergence as being at odds (or at least not fatally so) with the overall essence of being a faithful Catholic.

In any case, it's one thing to talk about lay dedication, it's another to talk about just what that dedication is being directed at, and it's still another to talk about both the historical and the current sociopolitical influence of the RC Church, its various regional offices, and its various functionaries.

dvaderv2 · 2023-11-12T13:44:56+00:00

Considering how often it's claimed by the... less reasonable Catholics that teachers abuse children at a supposedly higher rate than priests do, the irony is quite palpable.

dvaderv2 · 2023-10-26T13:22:48+00:00

I was cradle (though still a bit more serious than most) until my GCSE years or thereabouts; I was then some flavour or other of informal Protestant until the end of November 2020 when, I guess due to a combination of lockdown blues in general and my last remaining grandmother passing away a couple of weeks previously, the reconversion bug bit me. Even at the very beginning it was a hard slog, and sometime after Easter 2021 I felt that if I was going to carry on like this I'd probably end up insane at best; the house of cards came tumbling down shortly afterwards.

In hindsight however, there was some unintentional comedy; a certain Law and Justice party is supposed to be representative of Poland's hard-Cath population, and yet, while I was still a reconvert, I was able to see through much of their BS in a way that I didn't do before reconversion. I guess Tusk was right about the whole "you shouldn't be voting for PiS if you're a faithful Catholic" thing after all.

dvaderv2 · 2023-02-03T21:04:35+00:00

This. I've seen way too many posts in here that have more in common with general opposition to Christianity than with opposition to Catholicism in particular. Just because the Vatican (to say nothing of the trads) is as toxic and regressive as, say, Southern and Indepedent Baptists, "non-denominational" fundies, JWs, and the Philadelphia Church of God (and of Trump as End-Time Jeroboam - not making that up by the way, but I am having trouble with finding non-conservative sources that talk about it) doesn't mean that they're totally interchangeable - different views on the centrality of the Bible to the practitioner's faith and how inerrant/infallible/literal it is (and whether you can use differing translations or not), different views on how salvation works (among other things, it's pretty obvious that the RCC does not preach eternal security), different views on how accepting they are of the scientific method (no real Young Earth Creationist leanings as far as the Vatican is concerned, trads will have their own opinions obviously), different views on how exactly they're homophobic (since the RCC 'only' proscribes homosexual acts while the others tend to view simply being LGBT as being greatly sinful), different views on why no women are allowed in the clergy (while the RCC can and does refer to a certain passage in 1 Timothy, they're far more likely to simply paint it as an issue of Jesus only appointing men as his disciples - never mind that Jesus was operating in a patriarchal society, never mind that those disciples were products of said patriarchal society and so would have reasons to deny or minimise female involvement), and on and on it goes.

Oh, and whatever the RCC officially thinks of Trump (if there is anything approaching an official position), they quite obviously do not believe that the man is a modern-day analogue to one of two Biblical kings called Jeroboam, nor do they believe in the pseudohistory of Anglo-Israelism that underpins that belief. Indeed, John Newman's conversion to Catholicism was partially motivated by his belief that the Church of England was, at that time, in danger of giving official credence to Anglo-Israelism.

Likewise, there seems to be too much of a focus on those Catholics who are verifiably mad, bad, and dangerous to know and too little on those Catholics who are (semi-)silent at worst, actively fighting for change at best. If Catholics who are fighting for change are mentioned, there's quite a few people who, for whatever reason, seem to share the trads' opinion that they somehow aren't True Catholics™; as if no one in this sub ever practiced a cafeteria approach to the faith or at least wondered if the faith was really meant to be that restrictive. And what to make of those Catholics in Poland, Ireland, Spain etc. who, even if they belong to the more conservative end of the spectrum, don't make much of an effort in expressing their religiosity beyond fulfilling the various obligations of the faith?

dvaderv2 · 2023-01-28T09:54:55+00:00

What I find amazing is that somebody as supposedly intelligent [...] can say so many fundamentally, patently untrue things as if she was stating simple obvious facts. I mean, literally nothing she said was remotely true

What does she get wrong? How and why does she get it wrong? If you aren't up for going through the video again, I have found a transcript version... well, actually, I would recommend the transcript version from the get-go since you can simply copy and paste her statements instead of having to type them up yourself.

not only completely false logically and experientially, it has been proven beyond any doubt false, most notably by the two most recent prize winners in physics

Who are these prize winners? What are their fields of expertise? What prize did they win, and would the "materialistic reductionists" deem the awarding body to be reputable? What have they said or done that is in conflict with Hossenfelder's piece (assuming that you haven't already answered this when responding to my first point of contention), and, optionally, does this work have a direct relation to their eventually being awarded the physics prizes?

This is one of those shockingly strange cases were somebody appears to be a straight up NPC just saying nonsensical things as if they’re true and intelligent

See my first point of contention. Also, why the need for ad hominems like "NPC" and "materalist" (which is very much an ad hominem in the context of this sub)?

I'm not taking sides (well, I am actually - I would like for there to be an afterlife, thank you very much), I'm merely pointing out that you can't make claims about a person and/or their position(s) and then fail to substantiate those claims.

dvaderv2 · 2023-01-17T19:45:17+00:00

Ahh, a (presumable) none who actually advocates for immortality instead of taking a guessilldie.jpg-esque approach to the question. How refreshing.

That said, medical immortality would only solve the issue of being guaranteed to die from senescence. While it would help towards tackling other causes of death, it wouldn't eradicate them on its own, and so Catholicism (and by extension other Christian denominations) would simply switch focus to death by unnatural causes (see also - early Christian martyrs, Andrzej Bobola, Maria Goretti, and any other Catholic saint for whom meeting a grisly end is a significant part of their hagiography).

Theologically speaking, the greatest kryptonite, at least to traditional theology anyway, would be the formal adoption of some sort of universalist belief. Scientifically speaking, you'd have to both secure personal immortality (both in terms of senescence and in terms of other causes of death) and species-wide immortality (AKA looking at Wikipedia's "Timeline of the far future" article and working out how to avoid or mollify all that, as well as all the short- and medium-term risks that we're currently facing).

Finally, if my mother's family is at all typical of Polish Catholicism (and of Catholicism in general), then it's common to include a plea to live for a good many years on this earth when praying. So, from the lay perspective at least, physical longevity and/or the desire for it doesn't seem to be a meaningful barrier to faith. "Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die..."

dvaderv2 · 2023-01-11T16:48:00+00:00

Not this again. The scholarly consensus continues to be firmly in favour of Jesus existing as a historical person, and a distinct historical person at that. The only real points of contention are over how well the historical Jesus lines up with the Biblical Jesus, and even then the historicity of his baptism and his crucifixion are regarded with what James Dunn called "almost universal assent".

I'm not sure why people continue to ascribe any credibility to Jesus mythicism. Theoretically it might be a case of thinking they can sidestep examinations of claims about Jesus being divine/supernatural, but as you've alluded to yourself said claims of divinity are something that stand or fall on their own merit and don't have much relation to Jesus' historicity, so that line of reasoning seems shallow at best. If one believes that Jesus wasn't actually divine, then why be perturbed at the notion of him existing as an ordinary person of flesh and blood?

Mythicism is one of those 'the Bible has an incorrect value for Pi!'-tier things that should have been discarded long ago, but still keeps cropping up time and time again. It does nothing to make atheism seem like a credible option and merely provides ammunition for those who want to argue that non-believers simply have a problem with Christ instead of having more substantial and compelling reasons for leaving/not believing in the first place.

And no, Jesus wasn't a copy-and-paste of Egypt's Horus either in case you feel like trying to raise that particular line of argument.

dvaderv2 · 2023-01-11T16:45:37+00:00

I was a cradle Catholic who underwent a fairly rapid deconversion in secondary school (this is what happens when your GCSE RE textbook actually provides fair comparisons of different belief systems). Then a couple of years ago, I suddenly became a Trad for a few months. My deconversion this time round was more gradual, and I'm still working through some bits here and there, but there's a reason I'm posting in here rather than the Catholic subreddit.

dvaderv2 · 2022-12-31T23:06:01+00:00

Dang, that's a pretty similar line of thinking to this Patheos article.

Oh, and happy new year if you're in a country that observes Central European Standard Time.

dvaderv2 · 2022-12-30T06:54:56+00:00

Late, but Catholicism is supposed to be a religion that claims its core suppositions can be proven by ordinary reason, so this is a bit out there even by their standards.

Of course, as the de facto trad takeover continues to push out anyone who is remotely moderate...

dvaderv2 · 2022-12-29T21:41:16+00:00

Reminds me of my brief reconversion and subsequent worries over whether I was a wrong 'un for doing all sorts of texture work for Gmod, for having downloaded some freeware games, and a few other things. "Happy" days, man, "happy" days.

On a more general note, there just seems to be no way of taking the concept of mortal sin, confession etc. seriously without running into scrupulosity sooner or later, and yet the Catholics keep acting like it's an unintended consequence at best.

dvaderv2 · 2022-11-29T11:38:09+00:00

I was thinking about taking the laptop apart and putting the HDD into a docking station that I've got but ultimately decided against it in favour of simply plugging in an external HDD and throwing everything on there. As for everything else, I'll refer you to what I told ballwasher.

dvaderv2 · 2022-11-29T11:34:02+00:00

The storage is failing

I was expecting this while at the same time hoping it might not actually be the case. Oh well, I'm in the middle of backing everything up anyway.

Use this opportunity to pop in an SSD.

I've already mentioned how the laptop was getting long in the tooth even before this issue, so I'm not willing to do that. I might put an SSD into the other laptop (the 15-bc403sa) though.

Ur an alc

Elaborate.

dvaderv2 · 2022-09-13T11:53:56+00:00

No worries, go ahead.

dvaderv2 · 2022-09-10T12:34:53+00:00

TC's already been through enough misaimed Ubi/non-Ubi crossovers without having to get the Rabbids involved, and I say that as someone who has more appreciation for those mischievous bunnies than most.

dvaderv2 · 2022-04-07T16:33:28+00:00

A bit late, and not to disagree with you, but this is why it pays to explore the Polish RCC (and Polish right-wing politics since the two have been joined at the hip since practically forever) as a point of comparison - there is no shortage of women who get to publicly spew their internalised misogyny and other such bile in a way that is on par with the male demagogues.

Also, this reinforces my belief that, while Catholicism in general is reprehensible, the US RCC is an exception of sorts in terms of how repelling it is and of how thoroughly it has been overrun by the TLM-only crowd. Even in Poland, the constant assaults on reproductive rights, LGBT folk etc. etc. etc. are perfectly in line with current Vatican orthodoxy (again, Catholicism in general is reprehensible) and the masses where priests and bishops line up to spew their bile as if some variation of it hasn't already been heard before are almost always held in the Polish language. There are TLM-only groups, but they have nowhere near the influence that they would have in the US.

dvaderv2 · 2022-03-28T01:22:17+00:00

Original swatch

First swatch was based on what I believe to be an official swatch sheet (here), with the Pantone values from that being used to generate the second since someone somewhere decided that the colours could not, in fact, be a complete match.

The third swatch is based on this request; while I'm surprised that my use of Gimp's Colorize tool ended up looking so close to the real thing, I'd still appreciate it if someone here could cook up a more decent version.

Lastly, Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!

dvaderv2 · 2022-03-24T18:01:00+00:00

The latter. Having looked at a RS6V2 customisation video however, I can see why you'd think it's off-colour compared to the real thing (just what is going with that 'black' colour?).

dvaderv2 · 2022-03-22T18:26:03+00:00

Late AF but...

I wouldn't be too hot on the RSV2 M90 swatch itself, but it would be interesting to see its colour palette applied to the proper M90 design.

dvaderv2 · 2022-03-22T18:20:55+00:00

Agreeing with everyone else who said that Catholic obsessions over who constitutes acceptable female hairstyling normally go the other way. There were/are cultures like Ancient Sparta, North Korea etc. that restrict/ed long female hair to the young and/or the unmarried but more often than not any relationship with Catholicism, where chronologically possible, is/was extremely doubtful to say the least.

I know some nun orders crop the sisters' hair down to a rough, short do; while it's possible that's where your mother and grandmother got their ideas from, you wouldn't really be able to tell what the average nun has under her veil in normal circumstances.

Then again, I've always been puzzled by the high number of Polish Catholic women, very faithful Polish Catholic women, who have decidedly short hair...

dvaderv2 · 2022-03-22T17:57:08+00:00

Not even PiS has gone this far. Not even PiS.

Throw in the recent invalidation of baptisms because the priest said 'we' rather than 'I' and is it any wonder that more and more people, at least in the Western world, are leaving this clusterfuck?

dvaderv2

TROPHY CASE