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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Good Samaritan

    Lesbian

    Barbarian

    Plenty of words we now use today started out referring to people in a specific time and place.

    Further, what’s the use of remembering the horrors of the Nazis if we don’t recognize the early warning signs of those same horrors today? The “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” was around for over a decade before they started the holocaust. It seems like too little too late to wait until the genocide begins to start drawing parallels.




  • I think you’re exactly right.

    A few years ago, we saw a huge amount of mobilization for George Floyd. People fighting cops and winning.

    After that, we saw a submarine full of billionaires implode & people cheered.

    Recently, a health insurance CEO was shot to death in the street, and people rallied around the shooter as a hero.

    Trump has been a uniquely effective vehicle for the ownership class to launch bullshit distractions at a population of Americans who are showing signs of class consciousness. Keep 40 or 50% of people mad at trans people and immigrants and DEI, and the rest busy trying to minimize the damage being done. Motherfucker said Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in a presidential debate, and people somehow still take him seriously.

    But he’s not long for this world. Dennis Prager has all the charisma of a bad case of trench foot. Rupert Murdoch is ancient, we’re already down a Koch brother, everything Elon Musk touches turns to shit, and I’m crossing my fingers that all the HGH gives Peter Thiel a heart attack.

    The ownership class has got to make hay while the sun shines. Things are primed to turn around on them quickly.


  • Republicans will ram through whatever shit they can whether it’s legal or not, and Democrats will trip over their own dicks and let the parliamentarian block them even when they have a majority.

    I increasingly feel like voting for people is a bad system. I don’t want to pick someone to make all the decisions for me: just let me vote directly on the issue dammit. Tired of representatives lying to get elected or doing heel turns or chickening out.




  • Fun facts!

    85% of people arrested with fentanyl at the border as U.S. citizens.

    The vast majority of people arrested here for trafficking children are U.S. citizens (and children are over 3x more likely to be trafficked by an acquaintance or relative than they are a random kidnapper).

    “Illegal aliens” commit less crime than natural born U.S. citizens.

    Violent immigrants, perverted trans people, and incompetent DEI hires are all moral panics. You hear so much about them because the Republican party has nothing to offer that will make your life safer or easier.






  • Sure! And to be clear, my goal is definitely not to just challenge your faith. The most devout Christian I know IRL is also one of my closest friends.

    The reason I feel compelled to jump on biblical slavery apologetics is the impact I worry it can have on people’s views and actions in the present day. Slavery still exists, and I fear that arguments defending the slavery that existed under Mosaic law are eerily applicable to modern day trafficking in persons. That it wasn’t as bad as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, that it was just indentured servitude, or implicitly that slavery is less reprehensible than murder or theft or lying.

    All this being said, I do think the tone of my initial comment and first reply to you was unduly harsh. It comes across more as making fun of Christians than anything else, and that’s not cool. I apologize for that, and I’ll edit those two linking to this comment to reflect that.


  • Thanks for the comment. If I may quibble:

    and at the time they had many slaves[…]

    If memory serves, the Mosaic laws are said to be delivered to the Jews 90 days into their wandering in the desert after crossing the Red Sea. Which means that the people who received these rules about slavery were all recently freed former slaves. Unless they immediately started re-enslaving each other while wandering the desert with manna raining from heaven and water springing up from the rocks, I would think that none of them owned slaves.

    […]something that they wouldn’t be willing to change. Instead of this, God commands how to treat these slaves.

    That line of reasoning has never sat right with me.

    God doesn’t want people to kill. He knows people will do it anyway. He doesn’t say “Make it quick and painless when you kill someone.” He says “Thou shalt not kill.”

    God doesn’t want people to steal. He knows people will do it anyway. He doesn’t say “Only steal from people who are well off and can afford to lose some possessions.” He says “Thou shalt not steal.”

    I cannot imagine the guy who tells people to cut some skin off the end of their penis has any problem with making big asks of people.

    EDIT: Upon further reflection, I regret the way thus comment targets believers more than it does the problem in question. See: https://lemmy.world/comment/12608950


  • Meanwhile, a few chapters later in the same book:

    44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

    TBH I can’t blame Christians for being confused about what love looks like if this is what they believe God says.

    EDIT: Upon further reflection, I regret the way thus comment targets believers more than it does the problem in question. See: https://lemmy.world/comment/12608950


  • They’re a part of the rapidly expanding world of so-called less lethal weapons, named such as they are because they are ostensibly less likely to send you to the ancestors when used against you. These weapons come in many different varieties, ranging from “smaller” 9 mm rounds designed to be fired at a person’s legs or torso, to the much bigger, pop-can-sized 40 mm rounds that are designed to be “skip fired” by ricocheting off pavement or other hard surfaces towards their target (police historically do not do this, and simply fire at the target).

    I do not for one second buy that they were “designed” to be bounced off the ground. It’s an idiotic concept from the get-go: it’s hard enough to aim a conventional firearm. Expecting any kind of accuracy from a ricochet fired by an untrained and easily frightened moron is a fever dream. Fucking no one expected rubber bullets to be bounced into people’s legs; it was always an excuse for pigs to shoot into crowds. The casualties are a feature, not a bug.