Having large debt matters for how expensive access to cash is. No matter how “fake” it is, the financial system puts a premium on how long it takes to get their lent money back. The longer it’s stuck, the worse the reputation of getting it back, or simply the higher the demand — the higher the premium.

And as you need cash to make payments for goods and services (as opposed to tax rebates) that has the effect that US tax dollars and investments have lower rate of return as sufficient cash gets more expensive.

Another part is that the debt will be taken out in some form, e.g. foreign currency, making that currency more available for cash transactions (while at the same time making yours’ less available due to being locked into what you needed it for). This shifts trade away from USD, which makes it much harder to influence/control what it’s used for, how much it’s worth, and harder to make people care how much of it there is.

As the world trades in something besides USD and/or avoids investing in the US due to high costs/volatility, the US gets less relevant/influential in global policy, diplomacy, business, investments and even domestic policy.

TACO?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUwTnJ8yFXY

I just learnt the difference, an em-dash is as long as an m and used for other things than the shorter en-dash (as long as an n).

Em-dashes are more common in literature, which a lot of AI is trained on, rather than online speak where it’s annoying and difficult to notice the difference between - and — (and not to be confused with –).

And yet, plenty of memes to be had, shared, created, evolved and enjoyed.

Seems a skill issue?

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Wow, this is an exemplary explanation. Being clear with several levels of cultural knowledge as well as the emotional load behind several meanings and juxtapositions, and still comes across with the humor unscathed.

I dream to one day attain such mastery.

Thank you for the clarification.

I’d say the semantics arguments come from countering religions’ manipulative perversion of language.

Many religions use tricky language to confuse, conflate and abuse. One such example is that Christian apologists have conflated atheist with heretic for the better part of two millennia. Which is of course absurd, as most Christians are atheist towards Hindu gods, and are thus definitionally more atheist than Hindus.

Yet atheist/heretic/apostate remains as a dirty label, and includes judgement of character, and in many parts of the world persecution or lesser worth.

Reclaiming the word serves in part to actually give it usefulness beyond a boogeyman, to allow for discussions on fundamentals of belief, epistemology, and the contrast of belief vs reasons vs knowableness.

It also helps bridge some of the damage religion has done. When religious people get some nuance to the boogeyman term, they typically are more open to seeing the human cost of stereotyping and shunning people because of that label.

Other perverted terms common to religious trauma are gnosticism (ofc), but also love, grief, acceptance, morality and righteousness.

Things that us having to break free from religion all had to relearn the hard way, and typically while hiding from our still religious close ones.

Thank you for your generous answer.

Your perspective on what your religion views as up for question is very interesting, although it gives rise to many follow up questions (how does proclamation work when obviously contradicted by lower clergy? Who gets to question which parts of the dogma? If everything is up for question, what is the commonality of the religion?) I’m afraid we’ll have to leave for another time if we’re to get anywhere on the primary topic.

You cite Collins:

“If someone converts you, they persuade you to change your religious or political beliefs. You can also say that someone converts to a different religion.”

I’ll give you that it’s the weakest of the lot, but I read “converts to a different religion” as having you leave the first to then adhere to another.

As we previously established atheism isn’t a religion I find it hard to see that you could have been converted.

If we look at the usage for beliefs, Collins isn’t very clear if the definition includes “into another belief”, luckily the other three are and include the new belief in their descriptions.

So, I seem to find that the lexical definition for conversion does indeed include another positive end belief, in contrast to what you claimed the dictionary people were about. I was curious if there were subtle differences in world view behind this, but currently I understand this more as a difference in how we understand definitions rather than how we view questioning.

According to the first page of my search the Cambridge, Merriam Webster, Dictionary.com, Collins dictionaries all imply conversion needs also adopting a new belief/opinion/religion.

I feel it’s a commonly propagated lie within certain religions that atheism is a belief, which of course it’s not (it’s the lack of belief, like most people have about fairies, flat Earth or the Mayan end of the world). I don’t know if your mention of this statement is that you agree or not, but if you do - how do you arrive at the position that questioning is being the same as (lexical) conversion?

I get that a large part of Abrahamitic religions in particular is to obey and not question, as well as theism being necessary to be accepted in the religion (and not a heretic); is it that the questioning positions you outside of the religion and thus deconverts? Is that how you arrive at the “change”?

I apologise for the clumsy phrasing, but if we’re reading the same text and coming to different conclusions, I must assume we’re using words differently and would need to backtrack to find our last point of common understanding.

Same for unregulated systems, only without transparency, limits or recourse

That is precisely the point, well spotted.

Choosing silence is choosing the side of the oppressor. Silence only ever supports the status quo.

Your description was clear, our experiences seem to differ.

In case you’re worried we have different frames of reference: The way you’re trying to implicate Islam in denigrating terms is not respectful. In analogous phrasing, the Christian denominations are based around glorifying human sacrifice.

My experience is the opposite, it’s always Christians bringing it up, often by judging others’ actions out loud.

Never had any of the other Abrahamitic denominations try to convert me, although I was approached by a Hare Krishna recruiter once.

Y’all Qaida, or maybe the Yee Hawliban?

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I mean, the expansion of the universe is a wave propagating with a potentially infinite wavelength. Not necessary for it to be any light stretching from the beginning of the universe, but also not impossible afaik.

The wave would probably interact weakly with anything making it very hard to detect. And depending on the initial burst it will probably also have it’s energy too spread out to be of any noticeable amplitude.

Or did it kill all the Martian cats?