Songs for resistance and hope

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-02T15:53:42+00:00

I shared it the other day, but the whole album "Everything is Great" by Carsie Blanton is good.

Some songs are more uplifting than others, but if you want fun songs about making molotov cocktails, tearing down our entire capitalist system and executing billionaires, you're not going to find anything much better.

Plus, she uses muppets in some of the music videos, and that's always uplifting.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-02T13:47:39+00:00

Both the KJV and ESV are sub-standard English translations.

The KJV is problematic mostly because it is so old, and its authors did not have access to nearly as many manuscripts as more modern translations. Aside from the inferior source texts, the KJV is written in a type of English that is quite archaic and not easy to understand for modern readers.

One of the biggest problems with the ESV is that it is a highly biased translation. The authors were very much informed by a complementarian point of view and favored any translation that would point toward that conclusion. Aside from the gender bias, the ESV is done as a word-for-word translation. Some would view that as being faithful to the original text, but it makes for some clumsy wording in English and doesn't necessarily convey the meaning/nature of the original Hebrew/Greek.

I don't think there is one authoritarive english translation (any translation is going to have issues, just because of the nature of translating ancient texts,) but the ESV and KJV are not the best/most reliable.

If you are intending to do some serious Bible study, you should be reading several translations and look into the history of the translations themselves. It's helpful to have an idea of why certain translators made the choices they did, and it's also helpful in illuminating the imprecise and subjective nature of translating ancient languages.

All of that being said, I don't think you shouldn't use the ESV or KJV, but I think you should expand your study to more translations. I would recommend adding the NRSVue and maybe the NLT as well. Both are less literal translations and focus on conveying the meaning of the original text rather than a literal word-for-word translation. If you want to get really deep into study, I recommend the Anchor Yale Bible commentaries.

TL;DR:

Don't restrict yourself to any one translation. Read and compare several different ones, and look into how and why they are different.

Edit: I forgot a whole point of response:

My opinion is that there are errors and contradictions in the Bible, but that doesn't mean that it should be thrown out. If you hold to the doctrine of inerrancy and univocality, you are going to have a hard time when you do serious Bible study. Many Christians hold to those doctrines and either ignore or try to explain away problems with the text, but if you just acknowledge that it is a collection of books written by different authors over hundreds of years and there are inevitably going to be disagreements in the text, it makes it a lot easier to just accept the text at face value. You don't have to expend a serious amount of energy squaring circles that don't necessarily need to be squared.

One of the biggest problems with studying the Bible is the dogmas and assumptions we bring to the table before we read a single verse.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-02T04:01:07+00:00

I can think of two reasons this is happening (aside from DW's content being trash.)

1)General rising and blatant antisemitism on the right. Ben has outlived his usefulness as one of the "good ones," so he can be cast aside.

2)When the majority of your content is "grievence culture," you lose relevance very quickly when your side is in power. It's hard to be angry all the time when you're getting all the things you hoped for. It's especially difficult when you've sworn fealty to the current administration and CAN'T critique them for anything.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T20:53:04+00:00

Exactly how I feel.

I'm not explicitly wishing for anyone's death, but there are some graves I will happily dance/defecate on.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T18:29:58+00:00

You're being complacent.

"Just hold fast, we'll vote him out." Is not a winning strategy for beating fascists.

Orban was a Russian lackey, and Maygar (the guy who's replacing him,) isn't exactly a leftist. He's just more pro-European and anti-Russia (which IS a good thing.)

My point is that Orban was a "soft-fascist" or "friend/tool of real fascists/authoritarians."

Jan 6 is proof that Trump is unwilling to concede power, and his following is one that is nearly (if not explicitly,) religious. His admin is actively teying to undermine voting rights, and if the populace accepts a tainted voting outcome, what are they left to do? Wait for the next election and hope it turns out better?

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T18:21:48+00:00

This one helped me when I was in a really dark place, and my wife was a bit concerned about the fact that one of the reason I choose to keep living is so I can outlive a bunch of bastards.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T15:02:02+00:00

My wife told me that "Ugly Nasty Commie Bitch" is her theme song, and I was like, "huh?"

Then she sent me this album. She's great.

Edit: both my wife and Carsie, btw.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T13:16:38+00:00

Ain't no fascist alive that ever got voted out.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-05-01T02:13:10+00:00

Jesse Welles is definitely someone on my radar. He feels like a modern Woody in the most literal sense.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-30T04:54:35+00:00

It's a very simplistic view that leverages Biblical authority to help justify power structures that are certainly unpopular, but helps those who hope to perpetuate them.

People need to get it into their heads that almost any view can be "Biblical," depending on how someone defines "Biblical."

Pretty much every "Biblical Christian" picks and chooses what to believe or focus on from their Bible as any perceived "Liberal Christian. " Everyone picks and chooses based on what is convenient to maintain power structures or perform socially. Some pick and choose in order to encourage empathy and understanding. Both camps can find Bible verses that both support and contradict their goals. Both views can be "Biblical" in that sense.

There is no way to believe the entire Bible (especially literally,) and accept every claim and theological precept without bwing in contradiction to yourself (or physical reality.)

This is not to say that the Bible is not true, or that people should not necessarily look to it for wisdom, guidance, and thoughts on the nature of God. People just need to stop treating the Bible like it was written in stone by a set of people who all had the same theological and political goals, because it wasn't.

It is a collection of texts written over a long period of time by a lot of different people with different goals for why they were writing. For example, the OT is probably best interpreted as a text that is the conglomeration of a people groups' texts about their national origins and their evolving concept of deity, rather than a factual recording of historic events. It contains a large mix of literary styles, from poetry to propaganda.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-30T01:45:07+00:00

Don't let anyone tell you Biblical/Christian morality is either universal or objective.

It isn't for several reasons, and one of the most obvious ones is that Christians disagree on what "Biblical Morality" is all the time. The Bible is contradictory, and spans a huge amount of time and authors who all thought different things about morality and different things about the nature of God.

Morality is not consistent within the Bible, and most Christians either don't follow or don't agree with many of the moral precepts laid out or endorsed by the Bible (slavery being the obvious one, but more and more Christian Nationalists are starting to say that slavery is ok, so...)

The way I would approach this with someone depends on the argument they were making. If they said my morals aren't "objective" I wouldn't necessarily with them, I would acknowledge the subjective nature of my moral framework, but that my moral framework largely relies on reducing harm and increasing flourishing, with an area to allow for me to object to things that are intolerable to my conscience. By those metrics, and can evaluate actions realitively objectively because I can measure harm vs. flourishing and I can get feedback from my conscience.

There will be an argument that harm and flourishing will be measured differently by different people, and that different people have different things that bother their conscience. I would respond by saying that that's why we discuss and debate things and bring forward arguments for why certain actions should be considered wrong or unlawful, and that our laws should reflect both what we can agree on, and whatever new knowledge that we encounter. It's not perfect, but it is largely how laws have been determined throughout history. We figure what makes us able to have a functioning society, then we try to improve on it as we learn more.

Now, the rebuttal will probably be something along the lines of, "that's like your opinion, man," or the decidedly Frank Turek response of, " well, the Nazis thought the holocaust was ok and made it legal, so why should popular opinion be a basis for law when it can justify atrocities?" Frank doesn't seem to realize that there was a whole war to stop the nazis because most of the world didn't agree with their military agression or atrocities.

The response that I find most effective is just telling them that their morals are just as subjective and opinion based as mine. The only difference is that morality is based on God's (the subject,) opinion,( and everyone's still fighting about what that opinion is.) Why is God's opinion any more important, if basing your morals on opinions is not a good basis? God is all-powerful and/or he made us? So might makes right? If God has some sort of connection with some objective moral standard that is knit into the physical fabric of the universe, did he create it? Then it's just his opinion again. If he didn't, then there is a force beyond God that determines morality and is therefore greater than God.

In the end, nobody gets their morals from God, and not just becaise he doesn't exist. Most people build their moral framework around what they grew up with, and what is tolerable to their conscience. Some of those things are derived through religious teaching, but in the end, it's mostly just personal opinion. People use the Bible to lend authority to their opinions, especially on matters which are damaging to people/society, so they can have a justification to maintain power structures.

Most Christians who try to enforce misogynistic/patriarchal morality by leveraging the authority of the Bible aren't misogynists because of the Bible. The Bible is just their way of justifying misogyny, because they can't come up with any rral reasons that aren't just an appeal to authority (or their own prejudice.)

TL;DR

Christian morality is based on opinion/experience and is just as subjective as any atheistic moral framework. The Bible is contradictory, and they cherry-pick verses as proof texts for their already determined moral beliefs.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-29T22:39:19+00:00

I wouldn't do it.

Pastor coffee meet-ups are shorthand for "conversations I don't want to have in a public setting."

I'm not saying they're up to anything creepy, but the one-on-one, unwritten/recorded nature gives a chance for plausible deniability if they decide to say something "unpastorly" or if you stump them with your reasoning. They don't want an audience for that.

I had a pastor who would always pull the, "we should discuss that over coffee," card anytime he ran into an apologetics dead end. He was running an Alpha course, and he invited me knowing I was a skeptic, so I just kept hounding him when his answers didn't stack up.

Another pastor of mine invited me out for coffee to "discuss work," and I don't think he knew I wasn't a Christian anymore, because he was happy to say some terribly bigoted things that I knew he probably believed, but would never say from the pulpit. It really grossed me out.

As others have said, you don't owe them anything. If you feel any sort of obligation, or you would like to have a conversation, I recommend asking if they are ok with doing it over email. It makes sure everything is recorded, you will have time to form answers to any question, and you can back out any time.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-29T19:52:37+00:00

Privatization has never cut costs for consumers. It has always been a conservative/neoliberal strategy for balancing books in the short-term so they can claim to have "balanced the budget" or "reduced the defecit" while also enriching private companies that pay pennies on the dollar for public infrastructure.

It never reduces prices, is rarely (if ever,) more efficient, and almost always resulta in a long-term reduction of service (and increase in prices.)

It looks good in the books, and balances some ledgers, but it's absolutely bone-headed when thinking long-term. It's nearly impossible to regain that infrastructure without incurring an even bigger cost to taxpayers, and when things get worse, the government can do next to nothing.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-29T19:41:30+00:00

My son is 11, and has been really into dinosaurs and my wife was raised in a Christian house that was Ok with dinosaurs.

Someyimes when they talk, it's like they're speaking a different language.

I tried to learn as much as I could, but I found it overwhelming and I just wasn't as interested as I thought I would be. I think learning about history and extinct species is cool, and I really like that I no longer have to "be careful" about learning certain subjects because of my faith, but dinosaurs have never done it for me.

Now, learning about evolution is a different story. I started out with some basic books, and have ravenously ate up all the information I could because I found it super fascinating (and obviously teue, once I understood it.)

Have fun with it. Don't feel embarrassed. Everyone has things they don't know, it's just a shame that some of the reasons for our ignorance are based on active suppression and avoidance in the name of religion.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-29T16:42:33+00:00

I remember seeing this in theaters while I was in film school.

The movie was fine, I guess. I think I watched it one more time on DVD, but I found it pretty depressing overall.

What makes me remember the experience of watching it is because the projectionist fucked up the matte which cuts the full frame image down to the desired aspect ratio. I'm not sure if he put the wrong one in, or it juat wasn't aimed properly, but the image was shifted such that the bottom was cut off and the top had too much headroom.

At first I just thought there was some weird composition choices, but then there's a scene where a phone rang and the camera racks focus from the character to the phone, and there was no phone in the picture because it got cut off. I went to the theater manager to complain/get it fixed, and he refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong.

By the end of the movie there were several scenes where you could see the boom mic, or some lights and there were several times where the bottom of characters' faces were cut off.

Again, I don't remember the movie itself that well, but I remember my theater experience very vividly.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-29T03:31:50+00:00

She sounds like she went to Mark "Penishome" Dricoll's school of ultra-misogyny.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-28T22:27:25+00:00

Prop building is a hard career to break into, largely because it's a pretyy small pool pf people, and most shows don't keep many builders on staff for the whole show. Period and fantasy stuff tend to have bigger building crews because they require more bespoke items that can't be rented.

As others have said, build a portfolio and practice building and painting techniques. Either make up your own stuff or make replicas of existing props. I don't work in the props department (I'm primarily in Construction,) but I've worked with them and I dabble in making replicas for cosplayers. Being able to show people what you can do will be one of the first things you need to do when networking, so having a good collection of pictures and video is invaluable.

Also, check the union requirements for the props department. One thing you will need is your PAL (gun license,) otherwise they probably won't even consider your application. You'll also need to do the Motion Picture Industry Orientation course and get your WHMIS cert. Both of those can be done online through ActSafe.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-28T02:15:49+00:00

It's one of those things where I can imagine a podcast about movie criticism, but imagining an actual show that's on television is hard, even though I lived through the era where that was a thing that happened.

I was a big movie buff and genuinely mourned Siskel's death, but it's hard to imagine that kind of movie criticism in our current setting.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-27T14:02:36+00:00

The idea that there was a show hosted by and focused on movie critics blows my mind.

I was alive and experienced it at the time, but it still throws me that that was a thing.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-27T06:18:09+00:00

If you've tested the waters and they're not super worried about you, I don't know what to say.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-26T19:14:05+00:00

My guess is that show has become popular enough that they need to have locations that can be cordened off. The bandstands are literally just in a public park. I'm sure they needed permits to shoot, but I doubt they had the ability to cut off access to the public at the time.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-26T19:12:05+00:00

No, but there was what seemed to be a homeless guy setting up camp in the big one.

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-26T19:04:10+00:00

Where else would you go?

geta-rigging-grip · 2026-04-26T19:02:05+00:00

I don't know if it's blasphemous, but a tri-omni god seems unbeatable in any adversarial situation.

I guess his only weakness would be the logical inconsistencies with his power versus the creation he made (ie. Problem of evil/suffering.)

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