nickiwest

@nickiwest@lemmy.world
0 Post – 40 Comments
Joined 11 months ago

I theorize that the fragile straights aren't actually straight. Which I assume is what the developer is poking fun at with the quotation marks.

Our social default is still to assume that most people are straight. It doesn't make sense for a straight person to have a driving need to prove that they are straight ... unless they think someone would have a good reason to put them into a "non-straight" category.

I recently saw a shirt for sale online that says, "I'm sorry for everything I said when I was evangelical," and that really just about sums it up.

I don't understand how it's legal for a court to order religion-based therapy that costs $1500 per month. That's absolutely insane from every possible angle.

I am old enough to remember that. My, how times have changed.

Also, remember the time that Howard Dean tried to stir up some excitement among his campaign supporters and was knocked as "not being presidential"?

This is truly the Darkest Timeline™.

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That's most of the programs car dealers buy.. lowest bidder marketing company with no context and little practical experience gets told "we need X" and voila, here's X.

I worked in marketing for a decade, and when my company started trying to court car dealerships, the quality expectation for that segment of our work was basically non-existent. We went from a high-end boutique experience with 99% accuracy and on-time delivery to mass-produced garbage marketing with literally bare-minimum quality control. 1/10, would not recommend.

I wonder what would happen if the world found out that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (or any other celebrity/athlete/role model) was using Chat GPT to respond to fan mail. My gut feeling is that people would find it disingenuous at best -- and there would probably be significant outrage.

Where's the AI that does my dishes and cleans my house so I have more time to write, create, and connect with others? That's the technology I want -- not one that does the meaningful part and leaves the menial stuff up to me.

The convicted felon?

It's pretty telling that they are trying to portray Marxists, Hermeticists, Luciferians, and Gnostics as united -- or possibly even as the same group. Those circles of the Venn diagram might share some overlap, but (in my experience) their goals and principles aren't very similar.

I'm pretty sure that white supremacist ideals for maintaining a white majority in the US has more than a little bit to do with this. It's gross.

Every case of a random person hiring a "hitman" that I have heard of has, in fact, been someone hiring an undercover cop. And the people soliciting the services went to jail for a good long while.

For real. Every time I'm scrolling through a news article and I see a rectangle with an X in the upper-right corner, my initial reaction is, "Oops. Ad. Scroll past." I'm quite certain I've missed some embedded tweets that way.

I agree.

Also, more embryos may be created than needed. So after a couple conceives, if those embryos are considered to be people, what can the fertility clinic reasonably do with them that won't be considered murder?

Yes. Yes it does.

From Media Bias/Fact Check:

Bias Rating: RIGHT

Factual Reporting: MIXED

Country: United Kingdom

MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE

Media Type: Newspaper

Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic

MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY

I grew up in the Assemblies of God denomination. When I graduated from high school, I left home to go to college, expanded my horizons, and ultimately ended up deconstructing my religious beliefs. I have considered myself to be an atheist for more than 20 years, but I still have strong ethical beliefs that basically parallel the Christian teachings of empathy for the marginalized and the disadvantaged.

For the past 8 years, I've watched my "decent Christian" family slide further and further into Trumpism. They are unrecognizable as the people who taught me the value of Christlike behavior.

Most days, I feel like I'm a better Christian than they are. I've wondered for a long time how the same people who instilled those values in me have been led so far astray.

I recognize in hindsight that they were motivated by fear of God rather than love for their fellow humans. Fox News and Trump have preyed on that fear and gradually expanded it until it has turned to hatred of anyone who doesn't look or vote like them.

That's because many of them are old enough to remember a time when you were supposed to be quiet about your racism because you knew the rest of society would shame you for it.

Unfortunately, America has never reached the point where a majority of people felt shame about their transphobia, so in their minds it's okay to be more open about that.

It has taken the better part of 50 years to get from there to here. I wouldn't say it was easy.

The evangelical bloc was the hardest to convince. They had to get some capitalist representation in the churches to counteract all of that business about "helping the poor" and "blessed be the meek" that Jesus was always going on about.

Once they got Joel Osteen to convince millions of viewers that Jesus wanted them to be rich, that really clinched it for them.

Though the divorce judge found there was evidence that Hawkins had physically abused the oldest son, the judge said in his ruling that was “one instance that does not involve either of the two children at issue.”

As far as information in the article, it sounds like the two kids in court-ordered Christian therapy are the only two the guy didn't (allegedly) abuse.

But still, the whole thing is disgusting. These children should be protected from such an abusive garbage human. Their mother is doing the right thing.

This is something I wish that more people understood. In almost any other democracy in the world, Bernie Sanders is only slightly left of center. On a global scale, US Democrats are a center-right party and US Republicans are a far-right party. There are no successful left-wing politicians in the United States.

A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I don't see "Caper" yet.

"Thanks for stopping by; thanks for breaking my cow lamp," is still common parlance in our household.

And "The Cheat Is Not Dead" is a classic Strongbad hit.

But for every one of them, how many of their peers are still in it? I'm the only one from my generation who got out of my terrible religious upbringing.

Not all protestants do this, BTW.

To be honest, I don't trust The Telegraph any more than I trust The Onion. At least The Onion is straightforward about what they are.

If Dobbs continues to be the law of the land for any real length of time, we can also expect crime rates to rise in 18 to 20 years, just as they fell in the same time frame after Roe. But I'm sure the GOP is already planning to spin that as the Democrats' fault, too.

Baggallini bags are virtually indestructible in my experience. I have a tote and a purse that I've used daily for 5 years, and they both look exactly like they did the day I bought them.

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In some countries, cellular companies still charge for sending text messages to people who have a different provider. WhatsApp is an easy way to connect with all of the people you know without paying extra fees.

And there's a whole customer interface that lets you order directly from small businesses, which is super convenient if you live in a country that still has a lot of "mom and pop" stores instead of giant superstore chains.

This.

My husband swears by his Nintendo Pro controller, but he also has historically liked Xbox controllers.

Those options are too large to be comfortable in my hands, so I tend to go for undocked JoyCons and PlayStation controllers because they are better fits for me.

I use a PS4 controller for PC gaming. I definitely wouldn't buy a specific controller for my PC without actually holding a sample in my hands first.

There are multiple references to this in the Bible. This is the most uplifting one I found.

Psalm 90

10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.

12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

13 Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.

14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Or when Howard Dean "ruined" his political career by whooping at a rally because it "wasn't presidential."

Our expectations are so low right now that putting together two cogent sentences could literally mean that you win the election.

They do. There are a few elite non-religious private schools in Louisville.

But they are far outnumbered by parochial schools.

Defiling corpses, fomenting communist insurrection, burning witches ... That game has everything!

There's a big cake mix manufacturing plant near where I grew up, and I knew a lot of people who worked there. They all confirmed that the only difference between the name brand cake mix and the store brand they made was the box they put it into at the end of the process.

I also live in a country where I was not born, and it is full of kind people. I am very visibly different from most of the population, so people usually assume I'm a tourist. They always seem pleasantly surprised to learn that I live here.

I've been here almost three years, and I haven't mastered the language yet, but people are usually really kind about my limited vocabulary.

We also would have accepted Rusty Shackleford.

That's because there will alway be new 10-year-olds who are just discovering "new" parts of the Internet. They are growing up with the enshittification, so they don't know that things were better before they were born.

Same. We can always sacrifice them for a faith boost if they keep asking questions.

Hubs and I didn't love the movie, but we totally adore the series.

I don't see any recommendations for The Lost Boys yet. It's super '80s in the "both Coreys" way. It's dated, but still a lot of fun.

Prince of Darkness is a guilty pleasure for me. I love religious horror, so it's my favorite John Carpenter movie. There are some fairly violent bits, but it's not overly gory like a slasher flick. If you're okay with The Thing, this one should be fine.

The Endless is also religious horror, but it's more psychological. There's not much violence, but it's very tense.

Little Monsters (the 2019 one) is a heartwarming comedy about a teacher who has to protect her class from a zombie apocalypse during a field trip. It's got a moderate amount of zombie-movie gore, but it's treated in a humorous way. If you're okay with Shaun of the Dead, it should be fine.

Are we definitely skipping the 2028 election, then?

Oh, man. What a day that was. I was in first grade, still too young to understand that there were people in that thing and that those people died.

When we watched it blow up like fireworks, I don't think we realized that wasn't what it was supposed to do. Our poor teacher had to process it pretty quickly so she could explain it to us.

I would like to know what source you have for claiming that pedophiles are "born the way they are."

We understand some of the genetic and intrauterine developmental reasons for homosexuality, being trans, etc. That has scientific backing, and our understanding continues to grow and expand.

Lumping child predators in with consenting adults smacks of the evangelical slippery slope argument against all forms of what they consider to be "sexual deviance." I'm not buying it.