I’m not sure why they bothered. They certainly didn’t do a very good job, and they didn’t need to do a good job either.

It keeps your tomatoes from ever getting truly ripe, always slightly tough and chewey and bitter.

I’m talking about contradictions that can arise between religion and politics.

If their religion says to be charitable to the poor, but their politics say to starve the poor, they’ll starve the poor. If their religion says to love their neighbor, but their politics tells them to hate their neighbor, they’ll hate their neighbor. When there’s a contradiction between religion and politics, they’ll choose politics and then work backwards from there to justify it religiously.

Abrahamic religion isn’t set in stone, it’s capable of reform and has even done so in other historical contexts. This doesn’t even require secularism, all it requires is that they read their books in a different way for different interpretations.

But secularism isn’t impossible. As the colonizers become less secular and more religious, the historical currents begin to push against religion among the colonized. Perhaps less so among Muslims because they can deflect the contradictions onto sectarianism against the Christian colonizers, but African Christians will have to reconcile the contradiction between their anti-colonialism and worshiping the god of religious colonizers.

Or they’ll convert to Islam. It’s hard to say.

But there are lots of ways this can play out.

The irony of assuming everyone who disagrees with you is a troll and then accusing them of seeing in “black and white” is amusing.

Doctrine and religion are always changing based on historical forces, so if the historical winds are blowing against “lgbt=colonialism” then this will have effects on religion and doctrine. The contradiction will need to be resolved somehow.

I wonder if the West having this new wave of anti-queer reaction will short-circuit this cycle. Hard to claim we are agents of neocolonialism and imperialism when the US is attacking trans people and is on the cusp of rolling back gay marriage rights.

When liberals tell you who they are, believe them.

As someone else who was a white man for decades, ever started a fire from sratch ?

I’ve done it once. Pain in the ass, but the sense of accomplishment you get from starting a fire with nothing but kindling, some sticks, and a boot lace is amazing.

It depends.

When you make a wish you have to roll a check to see if you can identify the genie. If you fail the check then the wish is surprisingly the opposite of what you asked for, but if you successfully identify the monster then the wish is surprisingly accurate without any tricks.

Actually, I’m prejudiced against motorists.

I say it’s always the driver’s fault.

Medical staff continue treating the wounded even though they have basically no supplies left and their jobs have been made nearly impossible, Hamas still continues killing occupation troops, Ansar Allah continues enforcing its Red Sea blockade, there are many forms of resistance still happening even in this late stage of the genocide.

But even the very act of living is resistance in a time of genocide. Even the people who don’t pick up a gauze or a gun are resisting, merely because they haven’t given up the will to live.

The role of the doomer is to declare that, actually, AGI is juuust around the corner. And it’s scary! They’re doing the same hype as the boosters are, just from a different angle. It’s all the same crap, though.

But, yeah, realistically they’re going to put a chatbot in charge of something important and it’s going to fail and the bubble will pop.

Hopefully it’s something small and not the nuclear arsenal, but uh, these cultists really want to put chatbots in charge of the nukes.

Maybe Israel wants to control the narrative and Gaza’s journalists are getting in the way.

Maybe they want revenge on Palestinians for daring to risist. Same reason they bomb hospitals and kitchens and schools. Same reason the mow down crowds of aid seekers. Same reason they target children for daring to be born. Same reason they torture doctors. They’re trying to break the will of the people and punish them for daring to resist, and make themselves feel powerful and godlike even though they still can’t actually win.

Or maybe the cruelty is the point, they’re so poisoned by their own propaganda that they just delight in genocide for its own sake. Winning isn’t the point anymore and it’s just about inflicting suffering and terror and death.

He got 49.9% of the popular vote.

Actually, it’s your fault for not volunteering all your time to Harris or donating all your money to her campaign.

You’re only ashamed now?

Critical support.

Once again, Trump the unifier brings countries together to spite the US.

AI boosters and doomers fundamentally believe the same thing.

They collectively agree that AI will be Great and Awesome, in the old sense of the words. In their minds they are building God and so it can bring about either utopia or dystopia, because it is so Great and Awesome that all hitherto history will cease to matter and the godmachine will recreate the world in its image.