If you see me somewhere please let me know. I’ve no idea where I went.
I don’t have to read a religious text to know it’s not true, and though you may have been lucky enough to grow up untainted by society, these books have not. The issue with going to sources so entrenched in studying religious text is that they are already tainted by the need to keep the text alive. Should they cast any doubt at all their livelihood will vanish.
No religion has ever offered verifiable proof of any supernatural claim. Once they do I will pay attention.
Apologies for my assumption of your holy book of choice. You realise the Qur’an is the “sequel” to the Bible, which was itself derivative of the Torah, which was based on more ancient myths, etc etc. All of them passed down verbally for generations before written, all of them changed to suit the storytellers’ needs, and all of them FAR from flawless. Historical and scientific inaccuracies aside, none of them are even internally consistent. I have difficulty believing you have applied objective, critical thought to any religious text.
It sounds like you are firmly entrenched in your religion. I’m glad you enjoy reading Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, but it turns out people tend to skew in one of two directions: those without a propensity for analytical thought tend to skew religious - for example, the children in the study you cite - and those who think critically reject religion. There’s even a paper on this.
If your religion brings you happiness and peace, more power to you. However, I would encourage you to rethink your ideas on logic and science illiteracy. Consider that it might actually be very difficult in a world & countless communities built around religion for someone to break away from that social norm, analyse religion objectively, and reject an idea that cannot be proven.
Thank you for introducing me to a new (to me) band! Yeah, life can be kind of a roller coaster, and everyone’s interests ebb and flow (as you’ve discovered with yourself and your bandmates). Sadly we only have so much energy to roll with it, and I’m sorry you’re at a low energy area right now. Those suck, and it is VERY difficult to battle inertia and muscle back into the fray.
Art is kinda cruel in the way that it makes you choose - familiar and possibly uninspiring, or new and possibly a frustrating dead end. The reason I mentioned the M8 was largely due to its pocketability. It’s not much bigger than a large smartphone but it’s a whole production device with instant-on and a sensible design. Work on stuff during lunch, at the park, on the bus, etc. But there is a learning curve, so spending a lot of energy you might not have may get frustrating if it doesn’t click right away.
One thing you might try is suggesting gentle deadlines or challenges for yourself and your bandmates - like write a catchy 10-second jingle by the end of the week. Or parody the chorus of an existing song by the end of your next phone call. A deadline for something silly is easier to meet, and you all would have created something and had a little fun.
There are a lot of amazing people here suggesting different things you can do, and I notice a lot of their ideas are creative activities. I think you can land on any of those and find satisfaction. There’s no high like creation. No matter what, remember that things always change. If you’re at a low point, it can’t last forever, especially if you keep powering through it. You’ll come out ahead.
Holy cats - just bought Night City Redux on Bandcamp. Great stuff!
If you’re burnt out on music making, have you tried other ways of creating? Like if you’re used to a DAW, invest in hardware like a groovebox or a handheld tracker (my current love is the Dirtywave M8) or something. Try modular (but don’t, it’s expensive) or some weird boutique noise machine. Or dive into orchestral instruments and perfecting a classical music performance.
It could be a way to defamiliarise yourself and make music creation new again.
Joseph Smith died in prison, but the Mormons are still going strong. It’s tough to deter a cult.
Hey that’s about when I started! And I also have a LOOOOT of awful stuff, but only now am I starting to occasionally make stuff that I don’t immediately hate.
Currently participating in Weekly Beats, which is something I’d never have considered even a year ago.
Of course, I’ll be learning the entire rest of my life, so…
How much did they make on the sale? I bet it more than covers the fines, which makes it the cost of doing business.
Time to adopt a jaunty wink, finger guns, and a hearty “You got it, sport!” as the default response. What could possibly go wrong?
Honestly something I got for my partner - a silicone microwave popcorn bowl kinda like this one. I stumbled across it at Goodwill, still brand new.
It’s a medium sized, black silicone bowl with a vented cover - fill a recessed space in the bottom with normal popcorn and microwave for a few minutes.
No extra packaging, no grease, easy cleanup, and you can use cheap (or super nice) popcorn as you like. And it collapses down for storage.
Loose jasmine tea in a tea ball, boil water on the stove in a kettle, pour over the tea & steep 3 minutes (more than that and it goes bitter). Remove tea ball, add a small spash of milk & enjoy.
My mum uses tea bags and adds the milk right over the bag as it steeps. For some reason that enrages me, so I turn away when she’s up to that nonsense.
I’m a member of a Discord that is the primary source of discussion and information about a piece of hardware, including technical & usage tips, firmware announcements, etc. It’s a terrible way to track this stuff.
That said, the only other forums that have decent communities around it are Reddit, Facebook, and Elektronauts - none of which are even close to as active, but in which many of us will post important info & tips to get the news out. Over 3 years into the project (which is not open source) it would be ridiculous to try shifting the whole community to a new platform. We’re kinda stuck.
Luckily the community as a whole seems to realise this, so we happily answer noob questions over and over and provide links to the appropriate resources, discussions, and pinned posts without snark or judgement. We’ve all been there. It’s the nature of the beast, it’s not efficient, and it’s not the end of the world.
Finally, with the state of search engines in decline due to monetisation, encroachment of AI bloat, and general enshittification, it’s a matter of time before very little real information will be easily searchable. Insular communities who decide to withdraw and do everything their own, better way will likely become the norm. The internet needs a reset anyway.
Rockbox *is…
It’s still going.
I hate platitudes, but I did hear the saying something like grief is love with nowhere to go. The amount of suffering you feel is proportional to the amount of love you gave your cat, so it sounds like your cat was exceptionally lucky overall.
We lost our cat a few years ago. She was quirky and weird and sick her entire short life. She had lymphoma - the vet never even tested for it because she was too young. The day we were supposed to bring her home from an overnight stay was the day we had to put her down, and it scarred us deeply. My work sent me home, I was so useless. I cried for hours when I realised our other cat had stopped eating from half of the bowl they shared.
It sucks. It always sucks. It feels like it will never get better, and it won’t, but it’ll get dimmer. You’ll be able to remember the good stuff more often without the final moments crashing in. It just takes time.
For now if you have to wallow in despair, do it. You lost a loved one. It’s your right. Remember though, you’re going through all this because your pet didn’t have to. You held up your end of the deal, and your pet got a great life because you took the pain of loss away from them.
Oh good. I was worried I may be running around out there without my knowledge. But agreed - that cover art kicked off a lifelong love of Pratchett’s work, to the point where, when Good Omens came out, I bought it despite half of it being written by some unknown named “Neil” something.
I have a Keychron K10 I got as an Amazon Warehouse deal. It was cheap enough (but not under 50, sorry) and is an enjoyable budget mechanical keyboard. Decent keys and features for the money. Based on that I’d recommend Keychron.
I think you might be me. Did you buy it at Walden?
Our bidet doesn’t have an air dryer, so we did have to upgrade our paper from the cheap 1-ply stuff that turned to pulp on contact with any moisture. That said, we go through way less paper post-bidet.
Atheism is the rejection of an assertion that there is a god or gods. If any theists were able to prove the existence of a god, an atheist would (hopefully) change their mind. Rejecting all gods until their existence can be proven is hardly inconsistent.
I reject as true books that say the X-Men exist. Those are first hand sources, but that does not mean the stories they contain are true, even though they are more morally consistent than most popular religious texts. I have not read the X-Men but that is no reason to assume they are true.
Extraordinary assertions such as a devine being existing require extraordinary proof. No religions have managed to provide more than heresay, anecdotal evidence, and assumption to support their claoms. Religious reasoning is as best motivated, and hardly consistent itself.
My opinion is based on how world religions are used by their followers and those in power. All I see is religion used as a tools to control, intimidate, otherise, and war with any group considered “not us” - no matter the religion. I have read summaries of the Bible, Quaran, and Book of Mormon. There is nothing of note in any of them. Any possible good advice or dictate has long since been rephrased, refined, and adopted by society. The beauty of a thing is in its utility, and the use I see religion put to buy those in power is ugly. I want nothing to do with poisonous dogma, and instead choose to try making life better for those around me by direct action. Not by wishing for a god to do so, or wasting this precious life gambling that their might be something better after it ends.