• 17 Posts
  • 269 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 21st, 2023

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  • No sense imagining a hypothetical Jesus, but if you go by what the bible says, Jesus said “it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom is heaven.” He said sell all of your possessions and then follow me. The bible talks about how people in the church shared what they had in common. If someone had a need someone would sell their property and distribute it to those who needed it.

    Of course they also thought Jesus was going to return soon, within their lifetimes, and bring a perfect world. Not wait over 2,000 years


  • He’s a shit show, but SpaceX is still doing great. They have more launches per year than any other company or country. While they’ve had multiple launches explode recently, that’s their newer larger rocket where they’re still working out kinks.

    If they can’t get that into shape eventually it could be a problem for the company, but their smaller rocket has a great record, reusable, a fraction of the cost of any other launch provider. Right now they’re the only game in town for the U.S. getting to the ISS.

    I’d love to see Musk ousted, and more importantly to see real competition from other private launch providers. But don’t let Musk hate color your view of reality.







  • Very challenging situation. To me seems like the thing to focus on is lack of electoral legitimacy. Maybe I’m using the wrong frame of reference coming from a larger country, but $8 million a year for a country’s leadership expenses doesn’t seem overly expensive. But I do understand being mad to spend any money on people who haven’t been chosen by the country’s citizens.






  • Let’s skip the “I have no basic survival skills” part (also skipping disease) and assume we find a nearby group of humans. If you approach first contact carefully they’d probably let you live with them in exchange for labor, giving you time to learn the language.

    I think I have enough ambient exposure to modern technology that I could contribute at least 3-4 major innovations to my group over a couple decades. The challenge would be conveying and implementing ideas more than remembering them. You’re not going to get back to modern standards of living in your remaining time traveled years no matter how much you remember, but what little you can impart to others would earn your keep.

    I don’t know what all the innovations would be, but germ theory and pasteurization come to mind.




  • Sure you can. I think it’s wrong to murder people for no reason. I say something like “government should avoid baseless murder.” Maybe I’m offending people who have deeply held pro murder beliefs, but I’m right and they’re wrong.

    I’m making a joke here, but to illustrate the principle that just because a country has some tradition or practice doesn’t mean it can’t be criticized. There is such a thing as objective reality.

    And of course we have to recognize that we ourselves can be mistaken about the truth so it’s smart to practice a degree of humility and introspection when it comes to people we disagree with. Even so, I’m pretty comfortable saying that laws which imprison people for criticizing a king are counterproductive and harmful to a society.


  • The reason why free speech is a good idea is because it makes error correction possible. People come at subjects from all different angles, and inevitably someone will misjudge a subject, while a person approaching from another angle has an insight that would be helpful. In other words, people make mistakes, and if it’s illegal to point out a mistake it’s unlikely to be corrected. I don’t follow the Thai monarchy but I’m sure it’s made mistakes, and it should be legal to say so.