Lettuce eat lettuce

Always eat your greens!

  • 9 Posts
  • 452 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • There is no “original Bible.” Different sects of Christianity have different canons that they consider “scripture.”

    Most Protestants adhere to 66 books divided into the “old” & “new” testaments. Roman catholics include several more books commonly called the “apocrypha” or “deuterocanonical” books.

    Various traditions in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox sects such as the Syriac Orthodox church or the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church include even more books and depending on the specific tradition, don’t even have a closed canon of official scripture. They don’t really think of scripture in terms of being officially canonized, it’s more of a spectrum from “more authoritative” to “less authoritative.”

    There was no defined canon for any of the early Christians for several centuries. Early Christians circulated many different epistles, religious poems, stories, legends, sermons, and parables, often just by oral tradition.

    Some, like the gospel of Mark, are considered fairly historical by many scholars, others are more fantastical or don’t have as solid historical attestation.

    There is active debate amongst scholars about authorship of the now canonized Biblical corpus and the level of historicity.

    Take the Bible for what it is; an impressive and important historical work, really a small library of ancient literature. It’s not a magical text though, it was written by people in very specific sociological and historical contexts and should be studied and examined with those in mind.

    If you find it enlightening and inspiring to your life and it helps you be a better person to others, that’s great. And if you attach special spiritual or religious meaning to it, that’s your call. But that doesn’t change the nature of what the Bible is and where it came from.


  • It’s not about being “obvious.” It’s about understanding the most basic concepts involved with using a piece of equipment that is central to their job and has been that way for decades.

    I wouldn’t want ride in a car with somebody that couldn’t remember what the difference between red, yellow, and green traffic lights are, or couldn’t remember how to activate their turn signals or windshield wipers. And I certainly wouldn’t want them operating a vehicle as a core part of their everyday job.

    Now I’ll grant that in general, a car is far more dangerous than a computer. But the principle still holds, these are not tough concepts to understand, takes literally 5 minutes to explain at most. Plus, they haven’t changed in at least 30 years, so it’s not some new fangled techno-babble.






  • As much as I can get it, and more every year.

    All my computers run Linux exclusively. Gaming desktop, personal laptop, Steam Deck, work laptop, and all my servers in my home lab.

    Hypervisor is XCP-ng, VMs are a mix of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and some random other Linux distros for testing and experimenting.

    My NAS is a TrueNAS Core box.

    I’m in the process of switching my router to PFSense.

    Phone is a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS.

    Email, VPN, and cloud storage is Proton.

    Password manager is Bit Warden.

    Office docs are all Libre Office & Only Office.

    The only non-FOSS software I use constantly is Discord and Steam, and of course, most of the games I play. On my phone I have majority FOSS apps for everyday stuff, but some things are still proprietary.










  • Not really a “hack” but I don’t know why most people get into phone contracts.

    Since college, I have always just bought unlocked phones with cash and then used the carrier’s prepaid plans and set it to auto pay.

    I pay so much less than most people I know, I get all the same service, and my phone isn’t tied to a contract or carrier, so I can cancel my plan whenever I want and switch to another carrier by just buying their SIM card for ~$20.

    My current phone is an unlocked Pixel 6a that I got on sale new for $300. I have unlimited talk, text, and data for $45 a month. And if I get sick of my current carrier or they bump my cost, I can just switch to anybody else for just the cost of a $20 SIM card.

    I have so many friends and family members that complain about their phone bills being super high and their service sucking, but they can’t cancel their contracts without paying off their huge balances plus the interest and usually cancelation fees. Plus, because their phone is tied to the contract/carrier, they can’t even keep transfer the phone to the new carrier and have to get sucked into a “phone trade-in” deal and the cycle continues.

    And for the folks saying that most people can’t afford to save up and buy a phone outright, there are a lot of places that offer payment plans for the phone, or you can buy it on credit and pay it off that way, which would likely be less interest over time. Or you could buy unlocked used/refurbished phones for 25-50% off their normal price.

    Maybe it makes sense if you get a stipend from your company, or you bundle it with a bunch of other packages like cable TV or internet, but for just a cell phone, I just don’t get locking yourself into a crazy contract.



  • Tuesdays are the worst for me.

    Monday has become such a meme that it actually can be a decent workday. I know some workplaces bring in snacks on Mondays specifically because of the “It’s a Monday” thing. Plus, if I had a good weekend, I still feel a little bit recharged from it going into the work week.

    Wednesday is hump day, which for me is encouraging to know that once lunch is over, I am halfway through the week.

    Thursdays are sucky, but not too bad because you have Friday to look forward to, and Fridays obviously are right next to the weekend.

    Tuesdays are still in the first half of the week, but they don’t have any of the culture of memes around them to make them fun, even in a “we’re all in this together” kind of way. So for me, they are the worst.