Being chronically online isn’t a character trait. It’s an addiction.

Nah didn’t see your name on the door.

While I think that’s interesting point, two things:

Destroyed swaths of people is dubious. Cultures, yes, men, yes, but peoples, no (hence the slaves but also why those lands were still administered by high ranking officials).

Essentially, I feel it’s whataboutism. There’s very good reason why it’s said the Philippines was conquered by friars, the Crusades weren’t caused by resources, and the age of Empire and the Atlantic slave trade were both back by the concept of monotheistic “other”.

Just because other ideologies (and theologies) have negative kernels, it does not excuse the vast negative issues the have directly born out of monotheistic religion as an aspect of otherhood and a sense of colonisation or superiority. That does not make them the sole source (the concept of land ownership, for example, is a non-theistic ideology that is used to cause group division and destruction). We could also talk about Manifest Destiny, as a non-religious movement (though it did have large religious support), but it’s not what I am talking about

Monotheism as it has manifested on the world stage has come with colonisation, destruction of old ideas, and entitled due to the other people being sinful heathens. It is a useful tool for the powerful (which is why we see the royal conversions in Europe, leading to internalised oppression of polytheistic beliefs). It is worth questioning.

The irony is I’m not even an atheist. I’ve described a specific ideological problem I have with monotheism as a concept. Why does that upset you so badly? Why would that compel you to say someone doesn’t belong?

You are conflating my criticism of monotheism with a direct criticism of Judaism. I am saying the core value of monotheism (i.e. there is one god and its the one I picked) has created a colonial mindset in all monotheistic religion. You’re saying “I did it again”, but I’m doing it for all. I mean the Arab conquests soon after Muhhamad’s death is the same as well.

Monotheism, as an ideology, has stolen a lot from us in terms of ways of thinking, belief, and added division in its stead. This continues to be true in major geopolitical states including America, Israel, Iran, and many, many more countries.

Not really? There is an in-group (Jews) and an out-group (non-Jews, or Gentiles). The same applies for all monotheistic religions in a way that doesn’t gel with the fabric of polytheism. These concepts, over centuries and through different forms (especially Christianity for the “West”) were used to subjugate people by creating these in-groups and out-groups (to the point that the earliest use of the star of David to highlight the Jewish population I know of was done in England by Simon De Montfort (though I’m not an expert)).

That legacy still exists today and the institutions of wealth and (especially in places like the UK & Iran) governance. It’s a legacy of us vs them and colonialism that needs to be examined.

I’m saying the entire structure of monotheism has created a system of colonial thought and destruction across much of the world. Even the good theists I have met (and I have met many) will think less of or sorry for someone in the out group.

It’s not Judaism, it’s not Islam, it’s not Christianity: it is the colonial ideology embedded in these ideologies that I’m saying are a negative force on the planet.

I was replying directly to the comment above, not so much the context. You are right to point that out.

hatred and contempt

This is a problem. Anything coming from hatred is not coming from a good place.

However, I do have a problem with what monotheism did to the world as a colonising force.

We have depictions of full genocide in the Torah due to a chosen people doctrine (remember, at this time gendercide was nearly the exclusive form of genocide). We had Christians take this after Constantine to take a proselytising mission and turn it into an imperial casus belli. We saw the same with the formation and expansion that lead to the Golden Age of Islam.

While religious tolerance and practices have an increased amount of personal choice now in the “Western” world, that does not mean that the institution that they inherent aren’t any more colonial now then they were then. They are ideas that replaced other ideas, often through a theology of “god strengthens my arm and weakens the heathens, so might makes right”.

It’s not hatred for any set belief, but the “In” and “Out” groups created by “chosen people” dynamics that are inherent within monotheistic religion. They have always been used to perpetuate division among the “foreign”, wealth for an elite, and loyalty from the masses.

[Edited to clarify the last paragraph]

That’s pretty much this labour summed up!

I welcome Conservative Policy but I believe we need to go further! After all, have enough grannies frozen to death?

EDIT: Since reading about this, I’ve changed my mind. Finding better ways to means test a relatively wealthy generation is not a bad idea.

Completely agree, and through no fault of our own. We’ve not been raised to be informed or taught how to become informed. A lot of people struggling through after the propaganda blitz of education and the mind-numbing effects of modern labour & surveillance capitalism.

This, like the tariffs on EVs, shows the US would rather people died than lose even a smidge of influence.

But the Gaza government agencies are run by the political arm of Hamas? I don’t understand how that makes it lib?

I actually tried a daily slack bot instead. The team HATED it with a passion. And the amount of productivity lost on other teams to a backend engineer blocking a systems designer being blocked by a UX flow etc is insanely large. We have never missed a deadline, hit all our revenue targets, and get much. much larger features done in 2/3rds of the time of the next nearest team. Part of that is because we’ve made sure to reinforce the concept that we are a single team instead of a group of server engineers, backened engineers, frontend engineers, system designers, [removed to protect identity] designers, econ specialists, UX designers, UI artists, and QA working in their own bubble.

I mean it really depends on the team. My role is as much translator as anything else. I have:

Infrastructure/Server

Backend

Frontend

Designers (three different kinds)

Performance/Econ specialists

QA

Hearing “Oh I didn’t know that, yeah we need to sync” is a common occurrence and on a team of nearly 20 people we never take more than 15mins. We have shared deadlines, shared goals, and work on shared user stories. Having that moment in the morning to go “okay, am I blocking anyone without realising it?” or “I gotta remember to make sure design knows the spreadsheet won’t have the thing they were expecting today, it’ll be Tuesday instead” is well worth the time.

On top of that, with WFH it’s a really good way to cement the team aspect. I wouldn’t care so much if we were in the office, but all being remote means we lose the “human” behind the screen a lot.

As I said, different teams and different projects need different things, but I’d argue the reason my team is the number one performing in the entire company is, in part, due to this morning time to get that alignment.

Depends on the team. My team do daily standup and it helps. A lot. “What are you working on today and do you need any help to get it done” is a super powerful question to make sure we’re all focusing on the same priorities and sharing the knowledge we have, especially in a team of mixed disciplines.

My favourite bit is when Wikipedia itself is like “the 10,000 claim was made by one dude who basically instantly retracted it and claimed the still unplausibly high number of 2,000”.

Also, the Tank Man photographer talks about the protestors throwing molotov cocktails and beating police officers to death.

And the whole “China pretends it didn’t happen”…they have official death estimates. 300 people. The US have their own estimate. 900 people. But no matter the number, it was much fewer than the protest leaders had hoped for.

To quote one of the protest leaders “What we actually are hoping for is bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the Square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes” - Chai Ling

By the way, that person is alive and well running a firm that fires people for not praying at work.

It is. The meme has four glottel stops, this has three. The meme has the “el” removed, this doesn’t. Weirdly, the meme has the “o” sound removed for for “of” as well.

It’s an entirely fictitious way of pronouncing something, it equates a very, very small subset of the country with “Britain” and is a great example of “fake American British accent” becoming the “norm” to the extent where British voice actors are training to put on voices to sound “more British” (such as Tracer in Overwatch).

The meme might as well say “burdle der wurder” and claim it’s how American’s say it - kinda close, but also really far 🤷

THAT’S how Americans think British people pronounce it? I was looking at the image for ages trying to sound it out.

Please tell me no one seriously thinks this?

“Worst” case I can think of is “Bo’el o’ wa’er” and even that is incredibly limited to like…four boroughs of London.

Or, hear me out, restoring native ecosystem is in itself anti-colonial. This is the weirdest whataboutism I’ve seen in a bit.

Oh sweet summer child, no.