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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. Since the justification for this is steeped in religion, I can’t help but think of it in those terms. I know context and all, but today I keep coming back to Matthew 23: Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. In my view, the pro-life movement has it backwards; the prevalence of abortion is a symptom of our societal sickness. If abortion is murder, then the pro-life movement is complicit in that murder, since they gleefully participate in and spread the societal sickness. No matter how harsh or strong the anti-abortion law, the pro-life movement will never absolve their moral responsibility until they are willing to upend our society and pay the costs of the burdens they create. If you think you’re advocating for the unborn but you want vulnerable young women and girls to bear the cost and burden of your advocacy, whose interests are you actually pursuing?
  2. I’ve been thinking about Biden’s speech yesterday and the human cost of the war. We are rightfully mourning and honoring the 13 who died in the terrorist attack, but more veterans than that will die today due to suicide; same with tomorrow and the next day. If we want to be pro-military, how about real concrete steps to deal with this ongoing suffering and death? It’s cool if you can do 22 push-ups to honor them, but that doesn’t really ease anyone’s suffering. It takes real action. I’d like to see real action to redirect resources to those who have borne the brunt of this war. That seems like the minimum a country should offer — not just flag waving and empty hero worship.
  3. I agree that his speech came off well. It’s the most pro service-member speech that I’ve heard by a president in a long time. Usually they just use military folks, blow some pretend patriotic smoke, and ultimately dehumanize the people bearing the brunt of the cost of our wars. Acknowledging that cost means something to me. Fox News’ website is losing its mind over Afghanistan, which tells me that the speech went ok at least.
  4. I fail to see the problem here.
  5. Shouldn’t shaving like a man be just growing a beard? I started shaving again once masks became a thing. I don’t see much value in some mythical closer shave, since the smoothness grows out by lunchtime. I just want something I can sleepily run across my face in the shower in under a minute, not get in-grown hairs, and be reasonably comfortable and presentable. The generic blades and generic shaving cream last long enough and don’t cost so much that it really seems to matter. Cutting down on the couple of bucks I spend every 6 weeks or so doesn’t seem like much of a gain to me. But if you want to slather oil on your delicate face and draw on your cuts with aluminum sticks because the manliness blog told you it would connect you with your primal masculine roots or something, that’s cool if it makes you happy. I’m all for self-actualization through engaging with our traditions.
  6. Thanks. I just tried that. Hopefully it helps. I was on Web01.
  7. Anyone else having the issue of threads being really slow to load? It’s hit and miss and there’s no real pattern to when or which threads, but it bogs down to being unusable. Then two minutes later everything is fine; then unusable, etc. It’s just started in the last week or so. Using an iPhone with Firefox.
  8. It seems like a pharmacy might have an inventory that commands a good price per volume and mass, although selling it may be riskier than selling some wet Playstations on Craigslist.
  9. Look who just got the gig running Taliban fundraising. Put some Benny Hill music over that and it would sell.
  10. The trivializing of death by evangelicals drives me nuts. The faith is built on a sacrificial death of a person who preached on laying down life for others. If death means nothing, then the foundations of the faith mean nothing. The self-sacrificial core beliefs in the teaching of Jesus and his sacrificial death mean nothing if there was no cost to that death. It’s one thing to take grieving comfort in “oh death, where is your sting;” it’s another thing to turn indifference to suffering and death — even happily spreading it — into an article of faith. Identity as a Christian has superseded identifying with the suffering of Christ. There’s a problem of education and a terrible culture here, but it’s also a spiritual sickness in the evangelical church.
  11. Back when the local one wasn't just drive though only, it was a good place to take a small kid -- decent enough food, good service, and a reasonably clean and air-conditioned playground.
  12. Last week I received an email that one of my students tested positive and would be in isolation. Usually they isolate for 10 days, but their isolation was only for 4 days. The reasoning was that the student had been experiencing symptoms for a week and a half so isolation could end early. My attendance policy is don’t come if you feel sick; just email me telling me you’re sick. I don’t want a doctor’s note or anything, just an email and no disease vector sitting in front of me. This isn’t even a hard class. It can be hard to get students to come to class, but give them COVID and they’re Mr. and Miss perfect attendance.
  13. Since the Clinton comparison was brought up, it wasn’t simply an affair. The President becoming involved with one of his interns is on some level coercive and not consensual. It’s not as egregious as the Trump stuff, but it wasn’t just stepping outside of his marriage.
  14. There’s a bit of grumbling whenever a thread gets moved to the cloak room, but as someone who would never otherwise click on a Cole Beasley thread or any Bills thread at all, I appreciate the mods for putting up the lunatic bat signal. I would have put it in help, lulz, or maybe even gambling, but politics works too.
  15. 1. You won’t find many sources more credible than Reuters. They can be wrong, but their reporting is likely pretty accurate. 2. Maybe a little pedantic, but “worst casualty of the US military in over a decade” and “deadliest day for American troops there in a decade” don’t really mean the same thing. Either statement could be worse depending. Reuters called it the deadliest day and limited it by geography (“there”). Casualty is a broader term beyond just death and of course that would also include anything from Iraq or elsewhere. Yes, it’s pedantic and it doesn’t change the overarching point of the statement that this terrible thing happened on his watch, but they’re still different things.
  16. When my family joined team COVID breakthrough last month, it was unnerving. The same part of my lizard brain that told me I’d grow an extra arm when I got my shots in March told me that we’d all waste away on ventilators in July. The rational part of my brain told me that thanks to the vaccine, it would be mild and would pass shortly. It did. We all felt run down for a few days and then we quickly got better. Take this seriously and protect yourself and others, but breakthroughs will happen. Try not to listen to your lizard brain if/when they do.
  17. That Reddit thread. Buy airtime on any and every media and just have some frank talk like that. That’s sobering stuff. I don’t know how healthcare workers can face that day after day with no end in sight.
  18. If we weren’t so completely culturally broken, this would be a moment of great national pride. It doesn’t have to negate the justified criticisms of leadership, but these past two weeks have been heroic. Reuters says 100,100 evacuated since August 14.
  19. There’s a passage in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, a great book about an aging and marginal baseball player hanging on in the big leagues. In the passage, he talks about having to act really mad after every loss even though it was just an act. He liked winning, but he didn’t see the point in throwing a tantrum after a loss. I feel the same way every time a president gives the tough talk to the bad guys. It feels so pointless to me, but I guess it’s part of the job to act angry. If you need to blow up some bad guys, then blow them up. I don’t see the need for the act. I guess some people take solace in tough talk, but it seems dumb to me. If a president initiates military action, putting American troops in danger, simply out of some righteous sense of vengeance, he’s a maniac. If there’s a valid strategic reason for it, that’s a sobering decision that carries the weight of life and death. If you have a strategic justification for killing the bad guys and the risks are acceptable, cool, but that’s not a choice made in anger. Put more directly, no service members should be put at risk just because some fat redneck in College Station wants to act tough and angry. Some things are worth dying for, but not a demented identity and hurt national pride.
  20. To the extent that retaliation serves actual purposes and protects our people, it’s good and sort of patriotic, but retaliating because we’re angry isn’t patriotism. Making American service members pay the price of our anger is the opposite of patriotism. I don’t care if the bad guys get the last lick as long as it’s the last lick.
  21. There are times when killing your enemies is justified, but any ideology that unilaterally seeks to simply wipe out the bad guys includes self-annihilation if it’s to be consistent. If we start destroying all the “bad guys” then we’re the bad guys. I don’t like the minimizing of today’s suffering. It sucks and we can discuss it without pretending otherwise because it might be our guy taking the heat. And the pretend patriotic rage is the worst. Vengeance only leads to more American tragedy. Making loud noises and talking tough doesn’t make you a patriot. Legitimate grieving anger is fine for the short term, but sending someone else’s children to die for your anger isn’t patriotism.
  22. I think it’s officially an adjective. According to the Lego company it’s Lego bricks, but the Lego nerds seem to use it as a plural noun. I’m a descriptivist at heart, so I go with the people over the official version. Of course my depth of knowledge on this subject rivals my depth of knowledge on Afghanistan and infectious diseases.
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