Got that Alaskan Airframe and Powerplant license, I see.

“My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.”

-Malcom Reynolds, CAPT.

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds is much easier to impart onto peasants than the nuances of collectivism.

I would agree if the stories consistently portrayed that. In the Bible and Torah, Job is the most righteous and good and gets fucked because of that. David has a faithful soldier that goes so far as to refuse to go home to his wife while his comrades were still fighting, and David has him killed in a fucked up way (told his general to send him where the fighting was worst and then have everybody pull back from him), all to try to cover up fucking the soldier’s wife. David’s “punishment” was he married the hot widow and the child conceived in the affair was miscarried. And as soon as she miscarried, David shrugged it off and moved on with his life.

Also, the entire Christian religion is based on absolution for whatever evil you do, you just have to be part of the club. If Hitler had “come to Jesus” right before he died, he would be in heaven while an atheist who spent their whole life doing good would be in hell. Deeds are irrelevant for punishment.

And let’s not even get into Greek Mythology, where how good or bad of a human you were was completely irrelevant to what happened to you at the whims of the gods. Same for Norse.

I don’t know how it is for any other religions, as I haven’t studied them, but I don’t think religion was required to establish a moral code and accountability. The Code of Hammurabi didn’t require religion to have a legal code (while recognizing the relief at the top showing the god of justice handing it to Hammurabi, it seems pretty clear that was artistic expression), and it pre-dated the Ten Commandments.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn’t have the fear of god in them.

I just… what kind of argument is this? Do you think the people running the Spanish Inquisition would have tortured harder if they didn’t have the “fear of god” in them? That the Crusades would have been bloodier? What reason do you have to think that the horrible acts done in the name of religion would have been worse if it wasn’t for religion?

I think that it is unfortunate that he got shanked, as he was convicted and appropriately sentenced for the murder he committed. That is as it should be.

Shank the ones that get away with it, not the ones in jail for it.

It’s the horn of a goat that Zeus broke off when he was a… child? God-child? Whatever. It was magical and provided an endless supply of food.

Supernatural’s whole story arc was based on this (and it worked for them). Inevitably, to beat this big bad that the brothers have absolutely no business going toe-to-toe with, they must do something that is bound to catch up with them, but it’s either that or the world is fucked. Then the next thing is even worse, and they have to do something that will bite them even worse in order to stop the world from getting fucked. And it just keeps ramping up, they keep losing more and more of themselves and punching so far above their weight class that they end up… well, no spoilers, in case somebody wants to watch (and I don’t know how to do spoiler tags).

There’s a point when Sam has some injury, like a broken arm or gunshot wound or something, and he’s talking to a nurse or doctor who asks him to rate his pain from 0, which is no pain, to 10, which is the worst pain he could imagine. He gets a thousand-yard stare for a second and says “3.”

I had understood it to mean, like, making an oath (“I swear to God…” or the whole hand-on-a-Bible swearing) and not following through, or making it lightly.

Jesus had a whole thing about it, saying that not only should you not make an oath in God’s name lightly, but that you shouldn’t at all (implying it shouldn’t be necessary, if you’re already an honest person). “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no.”

Which, honestly, makes way more sense than some nonsense about not saying their names.

Yeah, they could have at least had a picture of Vegeta.

American Civil Liberties Union, and I’m not sure what they’re on about.

I appreciate the write-up, thank you! I feel like a lot of this is semantic differences. I’ve always thought of socialism as any public funds used specifically to help citizens (e.g. social security, medicare, unemployment, UBI, etc) and Communism to be the public owning and running the means of production, and distributing goods thereof, and the stateless, classless, moneyless society to be the ideal utopia it aspired to (similar to Star Trek). From your comment, I see that what I call Communism, you call Socialism (which explains a lot of confusion from discussions in the past with self-described Communists I’ve known), and the nameless Star Trek post-scarcity system you would call Communism.

Do you think it is possible to slow-roll the transition peacefully, though? If, for example, instead of the government bailing out industries, they bought out industries on the cheap, slowly growing and monopolizing like Google or Amazon have? Or do you think the rich would simply block that from happening?

So I will admit that I am ignorant of a method of attaining Communism that isn’t at the end of a rifle, and thus authoritarian by nature (and fully accept that, to a degree, Capitalism is also at the end of a gun, but typically less overt, or often directed without instead of within). The only nations I’ve seen flying the red flag have appeared highly authoritarian (and I’m not going to get drawn into a “USSR and PRC aren’t/weren’t authoritarian, and DPRK is actually a utopia!” discussion, so if that’s the direction this is going, let me know and I’ll politely see my way out).

I’ve seen in the lower comments that Socialism would be used as a gateway to Communism, but I am unclear about the transition from “everybody’s basic needs are met via taxation and distribution” to “personal property is abolished” (as I understand Communism to mean, please correct me if I’m wrong). Plenty of European countries have had (for the west), strong seemingly socialist systems, but they don’t seem to be deliberately angling toward Communism, for example.

So I’m curious what this peaceful Capitalist to Communist timeline would look like.

Much better way to organize. It’s how a lot of my files start:

YYYYMMDD-Name-Document-signed

So much easier to keep track.

the man who has openly declared since the 2000s that democracy is a mistake and that he wants to destroy the United States and European countries to establish city-states, each governed by a different corporation (fiefdoms), on our ruins

Wait. Did dude read Snowcrash and think “yeah, that future, that’s my utopia!”?

I’ve heard about deaf people learning with horror that farts make sound.

An old buddy of mine commented once on the amount if minor havoc you could wreak with a handful of chain bike locks. Cheap, wrap around some door handles and lock, walk away. Yeah, somebody can bust out a bolt cutter, but for the amount of challenge to remove it, the low cost per use, and the speed of application, it’s pretty impressive for minor mischief.

Relatively harmless, too, as long as you aren’t doing any additional nefarious shit. Might work for some gated community gates.

The origin and story of Dogman is certainly dark.

BONE!

Oh, man, kind and fast. Hands down. Every time.

I don’t? I don’t think?

I’m honestly pretty light on any emotion except anger. But I don’t care enough to be anxious, and I’m pretty confident I’m not depressed. I’m reasonably unhappy about the state of the world (and my country), but I wouldn’t equate that to depression.

So ultimately, the punishment for not believing is being destroyed? Like, oblivion?

Shit, this sounds like a win. I have no interest in eternal existence, even supposedly “blissful” existence. I feel like anyone who thinks of eternity on more than a surface level would feel nothing but existential dread.