What's interesting is how this contradicts Deuteronomy. In that, if a man has "a semenal emission", he is unclean, and must depart the camp until nightfall, at which point he must wash himself, his clothes, and his bedding with water, at which point he can re-enter. Deuteronomy basically says you have to leave any time you contact any kind of bodily fluid., with the only exception being the blood of a "clean" (kosher) animal that you know how it died. Roadkill: gotta stay outside until nightfall, and then clean up.

"Income tax on their properties whether they're rented or not" is just a long way of saying "land value taxation".

Because I played Dragon Quest and Zelda, I developed an unfortunate predilection for walking into strangers houses and smashing pots and vases and stuff. Took years of therapy to break that habit. :(

I still can't even look at a barrel.

This seems like a no-brainer to me... though it probably isn't. Obviously you have a constitutional right to sleep, wherever you can make space for yourself. If these cities and downs don't want people sleeping outside, they need to provide indoor space for people who haven't actually committed crimes. We treat our criminals better than we treat our homeless.

"Evidence against Biden". Just a bunch of lines. :p

You might consider avoiding the situation entirely, at least while they're still too young to understand how to accommodate people. Was there some particular reason your outing needed to be in a space where supervision needed to be constantly immediate? Consider the park, a playground, somewhere w little rough and tumble is expected where you can withdraw into your mind a bit as necessary, where the only source of light is the sun, and sounds don't echo off walls and stuff. A nice open space where you can sit, and they can run.

I have a theory that what I'm going to call "standard issue humans" are kind of like the Borg. They have a part of their brain that is devoted to and specialized in sending and receiving social signals. Furthermore, their brain does not distinguish between "local resources" and "network resources". For many of their ways of thinking, they are utterly dependent on their network resources, and don't really realize why their thinking is "incomplete" when they are alone. They just feel the anxiety of resources not answering system calls.

For us, either we lack this node, or we have it but it's just unreliable, like a wifi router with a busted antenna. Either way, we have been forced to mature in a fashion that does not rely on network resources. When we do need to communicate with the outside, we have to rely on software emulation and creative use of other hardware. Either way, it is a slow and alien way to move information, and so we absolutely do distinguish between local and network resources.

This affects friendship. "Normal" friendship is like Data's (Star Trek: TNG) idea of friendship. They become accustomed to regular communication with another node, to the point where that node becomes indistinguishable from local resources. Many parts make system calls to this node. When this node becomes unavailable for an extended period of time, the absence is nearly as traumatic as the absence of a limb. This being the common experience, failure to "keep in touch" can be seen as an act of supreme carelessness, if not aggression. It is also potential evidence that you are not as integrated into their system as they are into yours.

But for us, just establishing communications protocols is an awkward and painful process, so we rarely do it. Even when we do, we grow accustomed to long absences, due simply to the extremely slow bandwidth and irregularity of contact inherent in how our external communications work. We do integrate people, we just don't do it as often. But when we do, it is normal for us for contact to be sporadic and unreliable, simply due to poor signal. So "network resources" are flagged as such, and such a resource "going dark" for extended periods of time is normal. Resumption after long periods of time is also normal.

At first I was like, "Man, the Onion has gone downhill. These stories are supposed to sound both ridiculous and credible, not just ridiculous." Then I remembered that George Santos is a drag queen.

No, see, it won't, because of a vast left-wing conspiracy to persecute Donald Trump while letting Joe Biden (and Hillary Clinton) get away with everything. They used evil Satan magic to somehow make a conspiracy of millions work.

I think we're "supposed" to destroy ourselves for the sake of advancement for a few reasons:

1. To preserve the myth of Western egalitarianism. Supposedly, we have a classless society. Anyone can make it if they just put in the effort. Mind you, this isn't true: plenty try and fail, and even those who succeed sacrifice their life to advance from one class to another. But we're supposed to believe that the only reason we don't have certain things is because we don't want it bad enough, and/or lack the discipline to succeed. The goal: get people to always look inward for the source of their suffering, and fail to recognize the very real economic parasitism that prospers at our expense.

2. A manifestation of that old but persistent notion that to be righteous is to suffer. If you are happy, if you aren't suffering, you must be doing something wrong. Good food tastes bad. Good exercise hurts. Good work is miserable. To be good in spirit is to mortify the flesh. Put on your hair shirt, run five miles, drop and give me twenty, and then complete a twelve hour shift. Sleep is for the weak.

What offends people who take this advice more than anything is someone who hasn't lived this way, and yet is happy when they are not.

All they have to do is, instead of calling it a "law", call it "militia regulation" instead. "Militia" is the entire arms bearing populace; if you own a gun, you are, by definition, part of the Militia. And the 2nd amendment doesn't merely say "everyone has a gun"; it does so in context of maintaining a "well regulated militia". All the right to "keep and bear arms" does is prevent them from requiring we store our arms in a central armory (which was one of the controversies over the matter in England when the right was in development).

I would say we also have a right to own a car. That doesn't prevent them from requiring we maintain the capacity to bear responsibility if we should accidentally exercise that right improperly.

Humor involves the kind of mental agility that the right-wing mind is specifically incapable of... as in, that's what makes them right-wing. Practically the defining characteristic of the right-wing is extreme discomfort with anything that deviates from "normal".

I just hope they eventually cast some fully Britishized actor originally out of Hong Kong... one trained in certain things Hong Kong actors are known for. I want a kung fu Doctor. :p

pinkos

OK Boomer.

It's a shame smart people abandoned the Church. Romans makes it clear that Gentile Christians are not to be held to the Law of Moses, but that rather extensive part of Deuteronomy that deals with bodily fluids and rashes and stuff makes it equally clear that, even if we're not meant to follow those exact rules, basic sanitation and disease control is part of the unwritten Law of God. Coupled with the idea that all authority comes from God (not just their particular authority, as this was written at a time when Rome was still ruled by pagans with pretentions of personal godhood), a compelling argument could have been made that staying home, masking up, and getting the vaccine is what Jesus wants you to do.

But there is nobody left who is either able or willing to make that argument.

"Your client's defense is supposed to happen in this courtroom, not on the internet," Chutkan told Trump's lawyers.

The Internet is exactly where Trump wants his defense to take place. Contamination of the jury pool is just one of the tactics he will use to try to stretch this trial beyond 2024. He's running for President like a Roman Consul, desperately trying to be in office due to a belief that so long as he's in office, he'll be immune to the legal consequences of his actions.

No, show her your Bionicle collection.

Title makes it sound like cities are in a sort of revolt against the legalization of marijuana, like what we saw in the California Central Valley. But the content shows they're just deciding where in public people are and aren't allowed to smoke, similar to drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco.

Americans need to stop referring to liberals as leftists.

That's because their chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear.

Although, and I haven't watched the video, usually when people are singing the praises of the Inquisition, they are usually explicitly not talking about the Spanish Inquisition. Instead, they are talking about the Papal Inquisition, which was a separate institution.

The idea is that, prior to the Papal Inquisition (the professionalization of inquisition), "Heresy" was a charge that was often levied by secular authorities against political enemies, with the "heresy" being a vague charge that could mean anything. The Papacy took that out of their hands, requiring that charges of heresy be investigated and tried by church officials supported by Rome.

Of course, there were definitely problems that the apologists don't talk about. The accused weren't told exactly what they were accused of, nor were they allowed to face their accuser. They are often imprisoned for months with no idea why, expected just to confess to whatever it is they did (which resulted in quite a few unrelated confessions). Torture was often used to extract confessions, and though confessions extracted through torture were not allowed to be used as evidence, they had no problem accepting formal confessions given the following day (based on information gained through torture).

That said, if, not knowing who was accusing, you managed to name your accuser as someone who had beef with you, that was often enough to exonerate you. And if you did confess to heresy, all you had to do was say "I won't do it again", and you were off the hook... the first time. If they had to come back, you were turned over to secular authorities for punishment... and the secular punishment for heresy was burning (on the Continent; in England it was often hanging).

That said, back to the Spanish inquisition, which was a real piece of work, itself. It was under the control of the King, not the Church, and so was just as political as the ad-hoc institutions of the past. And though Jews were officially not under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition (since the Inquisitions mandate was to investigate heresy, and heresy is deviation within a particular religion, not being a totally different religion), Spain had required all their jews to convert or leave, and so Conversos were often targeted for investigation.