Posts made by eobox91103

@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.

@cash0uttt said in Which external hard drive to get?:

@raphjd damn I’m a light weight... I got a 2 TB the

Well, 2 TB will hold about 400 regular DVD's, or about 60 Blu-Ray discs, so it's not like you're short on storage. Disk technology keeps making things bigger, and since the average consumer thinks that bigger is better, that's what goes on the market. <Insert gratuitous "size" joke of your choice here.>

Another phenomenon, though, is that when large storage sized become commonly available, people producing content get less motivated to use the good compression and efficiency options that exist, and file sizes can bloat unnecessarily. A 1080p video will usually be twice the size of a 720p video of the same content, and one would hard-pressed to see the difference if both videos were made with the same care. 2 TB should be just fine for you...and if at some point you need more space, a larger drive won't be expensive.

And whatever the size, make sure you back things up. As has been noted above, all hard drives die at some point.

@raphjd said in Are you close to your nieces and nephews?:

@semurg30

Most of my family lives in the US and I live in the UK, so I don't get the chance to physically see them.

We do chat online though.
I'm also geographically separated from my brother, who has two boys and a girl. I have the resources to travel, but I'm not as welcome to visit as I'd like to be, as my brother is rather homophobic. His (current) wife, though, is very welcoming.

My niece is now at university, and like many young people she is quite accepting of LGBT people. In fact, the last time I visited her, she make a point of introducing me to an "eligible" gay man. Needless to say, she's a favourite of mine.

@bi4smooth said in Which external hard drive to get?:

What percentage of automobile tires fail?

• 100% (which is why you seek to replace them BEFORE they fail!)

What percentage of hard drives fail?

• 100% (which is why you backup your data - before they fail!)

At least tires sometimes give warnings that they're going to fail, such as a slow leak or tread wearing down. Hard drives might give a warning of impending death by making odd noises, but usually just die.

@bi4smooth said in Which external hard drive to get?:

@zellwes2

Rule 1: All hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!
Rule 2: 100% of hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!
Rule 3: ALL hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!

The only way to protect your data locally is by using something called RAID (it's a computer acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). While there are DAS (Direct-Attached-Storage) RAID devices, unless it's USB 3, I would go with a NAS (Network-Attached-Storage) device. The issue is SPEED. (You can also backup your data [porn collection?] in the cloud, but that's a monthly cost...)

These three rules are all true. If there's a file that you want to keep, it can't be on just one drive.

There are, though, some less expensive ways to protect your data than the very thorough approach using RAID. For each category of files I want to keep (porn, photos, my work, old archives) I have two external hard drives, which are dirt cheap these days (2TB from WD is about $60). I then manually back up to them and synch them. This is clumsier than using RAID, but I'm not adding more than a dozen files in a given week of any kind (unless I've just returned from holiday and have several hundred photos...but that's a block "select and move" that goes quickly). So I have a large stack of these small WD drives, all fed from an externally powered USB 3 hub. Bear in mind that that hub attaches to a single USB 3 port on my computer, so read/write operations involving multiple external drives simultaneously will be slower than what might be expected, but these are backup, not prime sources.

This is more labour-intensive than the RAID approach, but cheaper, and I don't mind it. If I'm writing a research paper for work, I'll manually copy it to the backup drives every half-hour or so in case I have a system or disk crash on my computer. RAID could do that automatically, so like most things in life, there's a trade between convenience and cost. But do remember the three rules of hard drives:

1. All hard drives will, at some point, fail.
2. Every hard drive is going to fail.
3. When (not if) a hard drive fails, it's not always possible to get your data back even if you spend a fortune for data recovery.

@bi4smooth I very much like your chronological staging of these events. If one takes my view that one lies if and only if one "knows" that what is being said is false (which is not the only way of defining lying), then indeed it would seem that Mr Trump would not have been lying on November 3 or 10, as there was still some (shrinking) ambiguity about the actual election result. By late November, it would be difficult for a rational person to not believe that Mr Biden had won, so assertions by Mr Trump of victory at that point are close to being lies.

But applying the analysis here needs to assume that Mr Trump is being rational. It's possible that he actually believes, even today, that we won the election, even though state and federal government processes have declared and finalised otherwise. If he does actually believe the (irrational and untrue) proposition that he won the election, then by my narrow definition of lying, it wouldn't be a lie for him to say "I won the election." But if he were to say, "I know that I won the election," then that would be a lie, because to "know" that he won means he has justification for believing that--and clearly there is none. Perhaps I'm stretching the analytical framework beyond where it works. It's not easy to apply rational categories to someone as "unique" as Mr Trump.