Posts made by eobox91103

@manhandler said in The left is eating itself.:

@eobox91103 Well, the result is that vegetation has increased by 14%, and trees by 7%.

I'll ask again: Is there a reference for this? Q-anon tweets don't count.

@eobox91103 I don't see any global warming ... but where is this invisible global warming? I don't see it.

Look at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature. (Warning: The linked webpage contains facts, and presumes that the Earth is spherical and not necessarily at the center of the Universe. This might be distressing to some readers.)

This thread has wandered off to vote-by-mail, masking, and vaccinations (somebody must have sand in his panties), but to tie off the CO2 stuff:

@manhandler said in The left is eating itself.:

@bi4smooth The basic statement by John Kerry that we need to get CO2 to zero...

No; that's not what informed and intelligent people want to do. The goal is to get artificial carbon emissions (from burning fossil fuels) to zero. The plant-animal-atmosphere-ocean carbon cycle was in balance for millions of years before humans started burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, putting billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This has thrown the Earth system way out of balance, and thus has led to climate change. Even if we stopped all artificial emissions of carbon today (which nobody has proposed), the surplus of carbon (as CO2) in the atmosphere and ocean would remain for many decades. It's like the "first rule of holes:" The first step to get out of one is to stop digging it deeper.

@manhandler said in The left is eating itself.:

CO2 is actually beneficial to greenery.

Yes, vegetation absorbs CO2, which it converts (along with water and sunlight) into hydrocarbon plant material, and expels oxygen. Animals (such as humans) take in O2, which they convert (along with water) into their own bodily mass, and expel CO2. This has been in balance for millions of years. But over the last century, so much CO2 has been put into the atmosphere that plants can't absorb it. The excess CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs sunlight, leading to climate change. I know this sounds complicated--do a web search on "carbon cycle" and perhaps you'll find pages that explain it more clearly.

There is more CO2, so there is more vegetation now by 14+%.

Do you have a source for this? Deforestation is rampant all over the globe.

While one might think that increasing CO2 would help plants, one can't say "if some is good, more is better." See https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2011/02/12/how-plants-could-impact-global-warming/ for a discussion.

@wald3mar said in Had an account for a while, new to the forum:

Hehe I wish that would have been so easy to download porn here lol I can't signup on the site because it says they stopped accepting new members until only the God knows when

There's a way to cash in bonus points to generate an "invitation;" I've got a zillion points and I'd be happy to do that. There used to be a way to send "private messages" so I could send you the link, but I don't think that capability exists now. Maybe some other Gentle User can show me how that's done.

But welcome! There's a lot of stuff in the forum from previous posts that you can find from the main menu.

@flozen said in First Trans Lutheran Bishop:

@eobox91103 Occasionally my brain is incapacitated, and at this moment I'm whiffing on the method to engage you via sending on Messages. Could you send a "test" over, as I know it will allow for a reply.

And as a very brief and tangential return to topic, there's a unique Lutheran church in Midtown NYC you must see on you next visit. The church owned the mega-desirable plot of land, and sold it to Citibank for a gleaming tower, with the stipulation it could construct a church in the basement. The architects did a great job with skylights that allow you to peer down or up, as the case might be.

The congregation was not particularly friendly at my one and only service, requested for my mom's visit, lol.

I don't know how one sends messages any more: It used to be (if I recall correctly) that clicking on a person's name would bring up a profile page that had a "send message" button. That doesn't seem to be there any more...or if it's there, it's very well disguised. Perhaps someone reading this knows the secret. It would be unfortunate if gt.ru made a conscious decision to eliminate private messages.

@flozen Thanks for providing that link. While it's difficult to summarise a denomination's teaching in few Twitter-esque boxes, that chart does a fairly good job. It's ironic that the items in the Missouri Synod column line up quite closely with those of the Roman Catholic Church--given that the origins of the Lutheran movement were a reformation/rebellion against Rome. The Church of England's teachings were originally virtually identical to those of Rome (except for the role of the Pope), and now the descendants of the C of E in North America are quite similar to the ELCA. (Henry VIII did not like that "L word.")

I agree that the term "evangelical" has a frightening dimension to it, because it's been co-opted by right-wing groups very intolerant of anyone outside their white middle/upper-middle class bubble. (I call their mega-churches "Jesus factories.") The "E" in ELCA is rooted in the word's original meaning (from the Greek euangelion or "good news," the origin of the English word "gospel."). It's good that they haven't abandoned the word just because it has been corrupted by others.

My pastor friend is quite straight (there really are such people), and happily married. I'm not sure I'd say he was "hot" from a homoerotic perspective, but he's a super nice guy, which is perhaps the ultimate in hotness.

You identified yourself as an atheist; I would call myself a non-theist, meaning that I don't address the question of the existence of a God because, in brief, the question isn't important to me. I see that as slightly different from being agnostic, but that's a dissertation for another time. My family has generations of anchoring in the Anglican tradition, and I'm comfortable with being part of a community of tradition, culture, inclusion, and social action. I remember hearing a priest in the (US) Episcopal church saying that his denomination was founded on the twin pillars of "the gospel and good taste." One out of two isn't bad. (That's probably less precise than another speaker who said that the church was based on scripture, tradition, and reason, forming a three-legged stool. She used the word "stool" over and over again, which became somewhat distracting.) But, as is often the case, I digress.

@flozen My roommate while an undergraduate came from a long line of Lutheran pastors (and he's one now), and I kept track of the ELCA/MS re-arrangement sometime back. It's not unlike more conservative Anglican groups splitting off from their national church, but claiming to be still Anglicans because they've put themselves under the jurisdiction of a homophobic bishop in Nigeria or some such place.

I think the ELCA and the Episcopal Church in the US have a "full intercommunion" agreement, or some such thing. I remember visiting an Episcopal parish in Connecticut several years ago whose (interim) rector/pastor was an ordained Lutheran. I've heard Episcopal writers speak of their church "pitching a big tent" (giggle, giggle) where a diversity of viewpoints is accepted. There are those who insist, though, that (a) they are right, and (b) everyone else needs to agree with them or they're wrong. (This attitude is not confined to religion.) If I were a bible-thumper, I would mention Mark 9:38, but I'm not, so I won't.

@flozen Interesting news; I had missed that. (I'm Anglican Church of Canada/Episcopal Church, depending on which country I'm in.) The Episcopal Church is very inclusive of LGBT people, whether as members or in leadership. ACC has been on a slower timetable, but is still ahead of many other national bodies within the Anglican Communion.

And yes, the forums are a dreadful slog right now...I'm sure the "posts per day" metrics have fallen off drastically. I hope these are birth pangs and not a "new normal." I'm not sure why there was a change; things seemed fine before. But I digress.

@bi4smooth said in Do you pee in the shower at your own home?:

1. Urine is not sterile (that's a common fallacy)

One could even argue that urine is fertile : It has a lot of nitrogen and phosporus, and can be a good garden fertiliser if diluted with water at a 15:1 ratio. Depending on one's diet, urine can also have a good deal of salt, so don't make it the only source of water for the garden.

@chanelkokoro I appreciate your careful response to my post. I think we probably agree on a lot more things than we disagree on, but it's the differences that make for good discussion. It's nice to have that discussion by addressing issues rather than by calling names. There are people on here who need to learn that.

And you're right, I don't live in the US (although I'm there right now). I do spend a lot of time there (here) and thus try to be informed on US issues, but I'd probably dig into them more deeply if I were a full-time resident.

@chanelkokoro said in Party of family values part 1 :

We have to define where life begins. Science has defined it as viability. Because if you define life at the potentiality for life such as at conception that rabbit hole never ends. That means by the time you get that dick up there is a 3rd person in that room. have you ever condemned yourself for all the lives you've killed cumming in your toilet?

but then, why do conservatives claim to be pro life, but anti birth control and anti sex education that would lead to less abortions? how do y'all claim to be pro life and then try to gut and defund the programs that would help sustain that life? make it make sense.

"Viability" is a tricky concept: As medical science improves, smaller and smaller fetuses could be considered viable. But there could also be an argument (which I don't think anybody has made) that a child isn't "viable" until age 8 or 10, given that for some period of many years, s/he is dependent on other humans to provide food, shelter, etc. The young of other species (I'm thinking of turtles and fish, and likely others) are abandoned when hatched, so they are by definition viable at birth. I don't know the way out of this mess.

As for birth control and sex education, the conservatives' view on that baffles me. If conservatives don't want women to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, why don't they seek to prevent those unwanted pregnancies from occurring in the first place? Quite illogical on their part.

@chanelkokoro I will continue to be optimistic that things will get better for Americans in the coming years. I can understand the expediency of dropping the minimum wage from the COVID relief package, in order to get the needs passed. It remains to be seen whether the $15 plan will resurface. I do think it's a bit odd to have minimum wage on a national level, as there's considerable difference in the cost of living in different parts of the US. There's even a large difference in cost of living within individual states. I don't know what the right solution is here.

Healthcare policy seems to be a mess in the US. I think many people want universal health care, but there are different ways of going about it. Mr Sanders was strong on advocating this, but rather on short on details, which left him open to criticism. Ms Warren had a more detailed plan, but I don't think many read it. People want simple solutions to complex problems--which would be nice--but it rarely works that way.

I will remain optimistic. There are 330 million people who deserve better than what they're getting.

@jsl76 said in Freeleech is not freeleech.:

FWIW, I never bother with freeleech because 100 percent of the time, my traffic/ratio acts as if the torrent weren't freeleech.

I haven't tracked this as closely as you have, perhaps because with my new internet provider my ratio is now comfortable. But if what you say is indeed true (and I have no reason to doubt you), it would be a disappointment to many members.

@chanelkokoro As for the jury not being out, I suppose that depends on which crimes we're looking at. It can take a while for campaign promises to be fulfilled, although as you say he could have legalised cannabis on day one. (It's legal in my country, and also in California, where I visit often.)

The best thing going for Mr Biden is that he's not as horrible as Trump, which is of course a low standard. I do hope things improve for the US in the years to come...the country that did moon landings, the Internet, and the Pontiac Aztek (j/k) deserves better.

@chanelkokoro said in Party of family values part 1 :

@eobox91103 omg That's such a great point. I'm a nurse, I'm positive they wipe down the injection site first.

The only problem is that we keep killing innocent people on death row. And I'd rather get rid of the death penalty entirely than risk even 1 innocent person dying because of it.

Yes, that's the problem. Whether needle or noose, there's no "undo" button after the fact.

@chanelkokoro said in Party of family values part 1 :

Here is fox news celebrating that South Carolina brought back the firing squad in may of 2021:

link

That is a very disturbing item, but I thank you for sharing it.

A firing squad does indeed show the barbarism behind capital punishment, although there are people who rather sickly crave that sort of thing. Lethal injection seems so "clean" to people. I imagine they wipe down the injection site before inserting a sterile needle--we wouldn't want to cause an infection.

@chanelkokoro I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, "Americans will always do the right thing--after they've tried everything else." It looks like they thought, in 2016, "let's try this new guy," and that didn't work. Then last year, they thought, "let's try this old guy," and the jury is still mostly out on that one. (Note, though, that more people voted for Mrs Clinton than for Mr Trump in 2016.)

That whole Arizona thing is so bizarre. I saw an interview the other day where one of the "vote counters" who said they thought 40,000 ballots (presumably marked for Mr Biden) were air-dropped in from "the southeast part of the world" (whatever that means), and that they had special technology to look for bamboo fibres in these illicit ballots. I'm sure they will convince themselves that they have found them.

One also notes that those who speak of "election fraud" only mention the presidential election, not any of the other contests, from senator on down to dog-catcher. It seems that all of those must have been in order.

@chanelkokoro Yes, it's the "family values" party that worships a Dear Leader who pays hush money to prostitutes and brags about grabbing women by the pussy.

It's also the "pro-life" party that favours capital punishment.

I, too, find all of this rather odd.

@raphjd I am not quitting the forums, I'm only quitting making responses to you. This post is an exception. I enjoy thoughtful engagement with forum participants.

It is ironic (and that's a polite word) that you are a "forum administrator," when you frequently engage in venomous and childish name-calling. That would not be permitted in most forums, and even goes against the rules of this site. It's amusing (again, another polite word) that you violate the very rules that you have posted.

You're not fooling anybody. People who read your postings have this all figured out. If grownups are having a discussion on here that you don't understand, perhaps you should stand down.

@calatar You're quite right, although I enjoyed the exchange with Bi4Smooth--that's the kind of discussion that shows the potential benefit of a forum like this. It's unfortunate that good discussions get poisoned by a childish brat.