SatanicNotMessianic @ SatanicNotMessianic @lemmy.ml

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930

Joined

2 yr. ago

I don’t know. I’ve always thought a sniper could have taken out Voldemort. Far away, camouflaged, and the bullet gets there faster than the sound. It’s a reaction time thing.

Yes. I use the term “hard atheist” because in my experience that’s the term that people who aren’t necessarily familiar with atheism get on the first read. I think I first came across it being used by Dennett or one of those guys, but I can’t remember at this point.

That (iirc) Harvard professor specialized in fascism wrote that we cannot count on institutions for protection. We’ve seen that institutions, including the judiciary, can be taken over and corrupted. Trump has stated multiple times that one of his first acts as president will be to basically clear the decks of the federal government and fire all of the non-Trumpist personnel. His lawyer even argued that the president can break any law, up to and including murder, and impeachment is the only process to hold them accountable. I’m not even sure how that’s supposed to work, since then they could arrest or kill everyone in Congress who would support their impeachment.

Basically, we’re fucked.

Did you leave Kahn and his followers out on purpose? They basically got transported. Maybe it’s an edge case, but I would consider being exiled to a planet and not being allowed to leave as a kind of incarnation.

It’s also not clear that any Ars users visited the about page.

Are weblogs not a thing? They should be able to tell how many times that page was accessed and by whom with a single query.

Okay, I’m a hard atheist (meaning I have a positive belief that no gods exist), but I’m not really using that to make this point.

People who actually believe this kind of thing should be considered candidates for clinical treatment. This is not “I believe that Jesus was god” level stuff. This is complete tinfoil hat levels of crazy. If they didn’t get a free pass because their beliefs are considered a religion, I honestly think we’d have a lot more people in treatment.

I don’t know if the Pat Robertsons of the world actually believe this kind of crap or not, but some people obviously do. There’s a hypothesis you occasionally see floated that the Nigerian prince scam emails are written that badly on purpose because you know if someone falls for them, they’ll fall for anything. I really have to wonder if that’s what’s going on here.

It’s a genre called magical realism.

I never read the books, but this sounds like what they mean.

Every time the FDA or another federal agency does something really asinine, I always wonder if it’s Trump holdovers. Biden should have forced a comprehensive audit of all federal agencies and review who was appointed by Trump and who those appointees hired to whatever level of management is appropriate. Trump deliberately appointed people who were against the roles and responsibilities of the agencies they were running, and so the people they hired likewise should have been reviewed. I know there’s some limits to what the president can do for judges and some other positions, but Trump has literally stated he’s going to burn it all down and fire everyone in the government that’s not a full blown Trumpist.

We won’t recover from that.

Exactly this. I started playing from the blue box back in the late 70s or very early 80s, and I have always been a huge fan of RPGs since. I got into it because I was really into fantasy novels (picked up the addiction from my mom), and those little lead figures of orcs and skeletons with swords were irresistible to me. I even had drinks with Gygax during a con at one point and we talked about the game and his hopes and vision for it all night.

I wasn’t particularly happy when WotC took over the IP. Companies like TSR and White Wolf just brought so much passion to the games they wrote and you never got the sense of there being corporate bullshit. I never met Richard Garriott, but I got the same vibe from the Ultima games.

Anyway, yes, the problem is the corporatization of what’s essentially art (for want of a better word). Yes, of course the content creators want and need to get paid, but I’d much rather have a grey beard hippie looking guy who says “You know what would be really cool?” than some American Psycho looking guy trying to milk another couple of million bucks out of a franchise by including products like Coca Cola in tavern menus.

I really don’t get to play much anymore, but it’s always a little disheartening to watch this kind of thing happen.

“Slay” is the male equivalent of slay. It’s from drag culture - particularly ballroom. I get the joke, but just wanted to point that out.

The reason it’s framed as “child poverty” specifically is because growing up in poverty has very specific and lifelong consequences ranging from lowered IQs to behavior and mental illness issues. It’s really highly correlated, to the point of being deterministic.

I agree that poverty needs to be fixed for everyone, but for children in particular it can have long lasting effects for an entire generation and more because of what it does to brain development.

I have been more excited about this game coming out than any other one in recent memory. The first game, while not being a great technological achievement, captured the vibe of the ttrpg really well and it’s one of only a handful of games that I not only completed but did so multiple times. The haunted hotel to this day remains the scariest game component I’ve played, and I’m a regular player of horror games.

I was so disappointed when they bogged down and went into development hell. I finally wrote them off because I’ve seen that happen enough times that I figured they just would never ship.

I was excited by the news that another company was taking it over, but the game narrative changed so dramatically that it’s really turned me off. I’ll do a wait and see on it once the reviews start coming out, I suppose, but it’s not something I’m excited about anymore.

He looks so much like The Mandarin from Iron Man that it creeps me out.

I worked very, very briefly as CTO for one of the biggest companies in that space. I’m talking like about a month or two. The scam was getting users to register and click through affiliate links which could be monetized to offset the costs of the free iPod.

Shortly after I left, the company was literally sued out of existence for false marketing around their prizes. I was just happy the checks cleared. I ended up making about $30k for a total of a few hours of work, and dodged a massive karmic hit.

No, it’s for all Jews.

In Judaism, there’s no proselytizing - they’re not actively seeking converts. A rabbi is supposed to reject a request for conversion three times before beginning the process. There’s a bit involved - you can find it online - but it involves time and effort and depending on your genitalia a bit of pain (basically just a pinprick even if you’re already good to go, as it were, because a medical circumcision isn’t considered to count as a religious one). Orthodox Jews don’t tend to recognize converts unless they’re also orthodox, but that doesn’t affect the Law of Return.

It’s just a lot of work for a “free” vacation. It’d be easier in the end to just travel over there, unless you’re looking for citizenship.

There are of course many Jewish atheists, but they’re definitely going to push back on that point for a convert.

Honestly, for the level of effort and given OP’s atheism, I’d just save up for a trip to Costa Rica and do jungle zip lines and hang out with sloths. The candles and the hats are nice, but there’s easier ways to tour the Middle East - and I’d include joining the Marines in that.

The pop ups were terrible. The pop unders were somehow worse. Nothing like closing your browser window and then seeing an ad for a porn or gambling site.

On the other hand YOU’RE OUR 10000th VISITOR! CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE IPOD!!

If you’re talking about bio 101-102 and genetics and courses like that, my recommendation would be to check out the community colleges in your state. That’s generally going to be the lowest cost way to go, and should be sufficient for what it sounds like you need. I don’t know how much they’ll have moved online, but I suspect that post-covid there’s going to be more available like that than before. Even if you do need more advanced courses, I’d still say to do the prerequisite courses at a community college just to save on the money part of it.

If your employer is paying for it most of the big universities have online courses and don’t require an admissions process for non-degree seeking students, but you’d have to confirm that they’d count as “college credits.”

Okay - I’m a manager at a FAANG.

Most of the immigration issues we deal with are handled by HE or a company we outsource to - I have some direct involvement in terms of writing out roles and duties, but generally they keep us away from the actual mechanics of things. However, for us, it’s handled at the company level. I know that they’ve tightened up on the perm residency and H1Bs, but I think it’s something your employer should be solving, not you.

Second, things are tough all over these days, but the gaming industry as an industry has always had a terrible reputation for long hours and (comparatively) low pay. The attitude seems to be to get in younger people and burn them out. I’m very sympathetic to your desire to make a move.

The best thing you can do is find someone who can write you a recommendation for an open position at their company, but as you know you’ll have to take your immigration status into account. All of the companies I’m familiar with don’t take immigration status into account when hiring - it’s specifically forbidden by policy - but if you have to grit your teeth and deal with your current position for another six months or whatever, it’s probably better than starting from scratch.

Thats really interesting - thanks!