After a fairly severe drought this year, we got a ton of rain a few weeks ago, and slightly intermittently since. The mosquitoes are unreal right now. There will be 3-4 that get in the car while the kids are taking their sweet time getting in our out. I find one or two bobbing around my 2nd floor office. It's really annoying.
Leaving your yard full of small pools of stagnant water is now a thing Fox is urging its viewers to do.
Eight weeks till surgery. There are seven procedures in the mix, of which Anthem Blue Cross has approved five and denied two based on some arbitrarily internal list they maintain. So it's better than worst case, but they still want to withhold a sum of money equivalent to many many ebikes.
Since they don't know that they're messing with a girl with a PhD and VPN access to medical journals, I've been stealing work hours to compose a long and amply referenced appeal letter. My hope is to signal that I'm enough of a pain in the ass that they will just pay me to go away.
If all the Fox viewers died of malaria or yellow fever, wouldn't it be a net gain?
Could we use the nets that we gain to protect the rest of us?
Just teach the mosquitos about private property.
Maybe the messaging around covid was all wrong. Instead of "public health measures are necessary for the protection human life" the message should have been "public health in the United States created largely to further imperialism in Latin America and was developed by white men who enjoyed doing unethical medical experiments on non-white people".
I feel like you all are all following current events while I'm grading abstract algebra proofs. What are we talking about.
Mosquitos made me think of Yellow Fever/malaria abatement.
yay lk! good luck with both appeal and surgery.
could ile pop in and tell us how you are, or could someone who is otherwise in contact with ile pop in for an update?
The buried lede in 3 is that lourdes just bought an ebike (to be delivered in the unknowable future, I think?), but is now angling for a second one for me and/or Elke. This "sum of money equivalent to..." is a quite specific calculation.
You can steal them pretty easily from what I've heard.
You can steal them pretty easily from what I've heard.
I just need your hourly rates. No billing for time on the can. I particularly like red.
My professional bowel movement charges are upon a fixed scale, I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.
One thing I learned canvasing is that people use their front porches as hall closets. I think that's why so many people get bikes stolen from their porches here. People leave stuff on their porch and when nothing goes missing over several years they think "I live on a crime-free street" and not "even drug addicts know you can't pawn used boots."
11: Yes, hoping Ile is managing ok and that Bay Area folks can be a support.
So Hawaii's middle school is putting on this play:
A group of strangers meet in a dirty subway station. They have arrived with limited personal belongings, their watches have stopped and they all claim to be in different cities. Soon they learn there is no way out of the station, and the unfortunate truth is told to them: they are all dead. Since subway stations have two sides, they reason the train leaving from one platform must be bound for heaven, while the train leaving from the other platform must be bound for hell. But which platform are they on? They reflect upon their lives, recalling and confessing past deeds of which they are not proud, hoping to figure out which platform is which. The arrival of someone from the other platform only complicates matters, and the answer remains unclear. As the subway train finally approaches, they must decide whether to stay and ponder their actions further, or to have faith and climb aboard to their final destination.
From what Hawaii tells me, the ending is less ambiguous than that implies. One girl gets on a train and finds out it's going to heaven, and realizes that hell is waiting for years on the platform. You have to have faith and get on, in order to go to heaven.
Is this overtly Christian enough for me to be annoyed? I am annoyed by it, but there's obviously plausible deniability about the Xtian or Notness of it.
I sincerely believe the drama teacher did not think he was picking a Christian play, and just literally perhaps thinks that the inherent heavenly payoff of making a leap of faith is a universally bland way to look at life.
Not the end-end, but when Dumbledore explained everything to Harry.
Anyway, pretty weird for a middle school play.
I just cooked with a Carolina Reaper hot pepper my son had grown. A stir fry, chicken with cashews and peppers. It was a hoot. I ate about 2/3 of a serving, but I don't think I'll eat the last third. I had moved the cooking operation to the garage, which was a good move. My wife broke out into uncontrolled coughing without even entering the garage (she was bringing a box fan to move air). 9/10. Would recommend.
I may be overly selective in my theological underpinnings, but I don't think that play is particularly Christian.
Well, lots of American Protestantism is a mystery to me.
You probably have more exposure to Pentecostal-type stuff than I do. Maybe just email the teacher with "The fuck?".
I have a devious plan to do nothing except complain here now and then.
That works too. Thinking about it, it probably is Christian, but also heretical.
32: I just assume those are the ones that turn Hallmark movies into religious lessons.
You're probably right. I'm not around Texas people.
We don't even know about Lawyer Dans that think like a criminal, down here.
That's because it only pays to advertise in states where you are admitted to the bar.
Baptists were really not common around me when I was growing up. But one did me a big favor. We worked together at McDonald's and he left for a better job and then when he left the better job, he gave the boss my name as a likely candidate. $1.50 more per hour and no dealing with the public.
That play sounds pretty Calvinist to me. There isn't generally enough time to get to the other platform once you see the train coming. But then, there aren't a lot of subways (small s) in central Texas, so who knows what's going on?
There's a similar scene in The Matrix Revolutions but I'm that case I think the subway station is a metaphor for the Windows recycling bin.
Am I not Texas enough for Heebiville?
It's like "The Road" without the laughs.
I don't think that play is particularly Christian.
I dunno, man. It's been 20+ years since my formal religious studies class but as I understand it, Judaism doesn't subscribe to the concept of hell. I don't think Islam or Hinduism have a Christian-esque heaven/hell vision of an afterlife either.
But then, there aren't a lot of subways (small s) in central Texas, so who knows what's going on?
The play isn't set in central Texas.
I think Heaven/Hell qualifies as general Americana at this point. But having to take a leap of faith in order to get to heaven is meaningfully Christian, I think.
The part I saw as not Christian was that either choice was right.
It's like that hurried Christian theologian said, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
I'm prickly about leap-of-faith stuff, because that's the precise angle that people have proselytized to me over, and I humored it unnecessarily in my younger days. That I might be Christian if I only gave it a chance, because it requires that leap of faith, and I can't know how glad I'll be if I only make it, blah blah blah. (Eventually we broke up.)
Strong agree with 49.
I somewhat disagree with 40, way too much agency for the characters for it to be specifically Calvinist. It's got generic Christian elements, but within that framework seems to care more about having an interesting story than about a close agreement with theology. Reminds me vaguely of CS Lewis, who has a lot of over Christian stuff, but also didn't mind throwing in a little heresy if it improved the story.
At any rate I'll bet whoever wrote it read a lot of CS Lewis as a kid.
Specifically I'm thinking of The Great Divorce. There it's a bus stop and not a train station though.
Hell is not sitting in a subway station thinking about one's life. It's like this, man: https://davidjuhl.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/night-gallery-story-hells-bells-reviewed-here/
20: I need to understand the logistics of this train station to understand the theology. If the station itself is Hell, does that mean that every train leads to Heaven? No matter how Evil you were in your life, you get to go to Heaven if you are able to make the leap of faith? And it's less of a leap of faith than while you were alive, since it's evident that there is some kind of life after death.
I agree with the distinction drawn in 49.
The Good Place went on about heaven and hell for four seasons, but kept it the Americana version throughout - diving into what good or bad really means, but no whisper of God, nor of faith in the religious sense. Maybe in the philosophical sense.
40: In subways built more recently than the 19th century it is not uncommon to find stations with island platforms, permitting passengers to change trains without crossing the tracks.
58 One is reminded of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Great Straightupward Path.
58: Feels like it's not too concerned about theology. It's simultaneously hell and a place to contemplate heaven and hell and how to get to heaven. Maybe it was originally purgatory before it went through a few rounds of telephone.
The play isn't set in central Texas.
I meant in terms of the teacher's decisionmaking.
I somewhat disagree with 40, way too much agency for the characters for it to be specifically Calvinist.
Yeah, thinking it over more I think this is right. It's definitely got a faith-not-works Protestant vibe but not really a predestination one.
But I think others are correct that it's not very theological even if it's sort of generically Christian in assumptions.
46. As I understand it, Islam teaches that there is a hell, but it's not permanent. You do your time and then you get out. Not sure what happens then, whether you end up in paradise or not.
Anyway, manifestly a First Amendment violation, who's representing?
66: Hm, sounds a lot like this play. It would be hilarious if it were actually influenced by Muslim theology.
We went and stood and watched zombie QEII pass in her hearse on the way to Windsor.* I think everyone we spoke to there was there for a bit of a jolly and to say they'd seen it, rather than because of any strong royalist sentiment. Although I was surprised to find four friends all went and queued _overnight_ (14 hours, ffs!) to file past the coffin in Westminster.
* the Golden Mile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Mile_(Brentford) ) is only about a 20 minute walk away, so it wasn't a big hassle.
52- it worked for Indiana Jones
59- it was definitely an Americana version because it basically said Heaven kind of sucks due to bureaucracy
(This thread is really testing the limits of my cultural knowledge)
58- If you take Jesus as your personal savior he'll take care of things by pushing you onto the tracks.
70.2: Well, it had a good scene about bureaucracy (liberal-style), but those people fucked off and the underlying problem with heaven was revealed to be be the Problem of Immortality.
I really think that in American Christian pop culture the thread in 66 doesn't have to do with Islam, but instead is coming from George MacDonald through Lewis.
It's been 20+ years since my formal religious studies class but as I understand it, Judaism doesn't subscribe to the concept of hell.
Judaism doesn't have a defined consensus teaching about what happens after death the way Christianity does, but there are a variety of concepts floating around the tradition including versions of heaven and/or hell. Some of these came about through probably Christian influence during the Middle Ages and others come from earlier in the tradition and influenced Christianity itself. The particular version in this play is very not-Jewish though.
Islam has a Hell which I don't think is conceived too differently from the Christian one. Authorities differ as to whether it's temporary or permanent or temporary for Muslims and permanent for everyone else or what.
Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies tend to include a whole lot of different hells, along with paradise-type realms, which are not eternal destinations but places where you can be reborn to spend a lifetime, same as here.
The school play seems to me like Christianity rewired for universal salvation, which is heresy unless you're Unitarian but not an uncommon heresy at all.
I feel like modern American Christianity is so unmoored from its theological underpinnings that I can't tell whether the story is supposed to be Christian or not, but in heebie's place I would be suspicious and annoyed. Anyway the lesson is so stupid. Why is taking a leap of faith, in and of itself, a good thing? Why would you want to encourage kids to take risks, or to fear getting left behind as the worst possible outcome? Kids are already prone to dumb risk-taking behavior, and if anything, are excessively susceptible to peer pressure!
I'm grumpy because I just spent the last hour and a half in a chat with a Google Fi support person, who didn't fix my problem and also made me destroy my phone case so that I could access my SIM card. I knew that removing the SIM card and putting it back in would not resolve the problem, but he wouldn't help me until I proved something to him by doing it. Joke's on me because in the end he didn't help me anyway.
Sometimes I really miss Adam Kotsko's old blog, specifically the Hatreds and Confessions. I like the Check-Ins feature here because I feel like it serves basically the same purpose.
There's also some threads that are further from my Evangelical background, for example the Unitarian Universalist church has universalist in the name and could be another source of those kinds of ideas. But since they're obviously heretics (Unitarian's right in the name!) I don't know much about them.
Also, I'm going to be in Pittsburgh next week. Is anyone around who would like to get a drink on the 28th or 29th? I will be mostly near CMU, but I think I'll have a car, so I could go to another part of town if preferable.
I'm not sure about the dates but I'm very rarely anywhere far from CMU.
Unitarian Universalist church has universalist in the name and could be another source of those kinds of ideas.
Mid 19th century Universalists sure, but modern UUism mostly doesn't even bother with the heaven/hell thing.
Anyway the lesson is so stupid. Why is taking a leap of faith, in and of itself, a good thing?
This.
It stops the Nazis from getting the Grail.
80: IF NAKED DIALECTICAL DELIBERATION SHOWS THAT THERE IS NO APPROXIMATION, THAT WANTING TO QUANTIFY ONESELF INTO FAITH ALONG THIS PATH IS A MISUNDERSTANDING, A DELUSION, THAT WANTING TO CONCERN ONESELF WITH SUCH DELIBERATIONS IS A TEMPTATION FOR THE BELIEVER, A TEMPTATION THAT HE, KEEPING HIMSELF IN THE PASSION OF FAITH, MUST RESIST WITH ALL HIS STRENGTH, LEST IT END WITH HIS SUCCEEDING IN CHANGING FAITH INTO SOMETHING ELSE, INTO ANOTHER KIND OF CERTAINTY, IN SUBSTITUTING PROBABILITIES AND GUARANTEES, WHICH WERE REJECTED WHEN HE, HIMSELF BEGINNING, MADE THE QUALITATIVE TRANSITION OF THE LEAP FROM UNBELIEVER TO BELIEVER - IF THIS IS SO, THEN EVERYONE WHO, NOT ENTIRELY UNFAMILIAR WITH LEARNED SCIENTIFICITY AND NOT BEREFT OF WILLINGNESS TO LEARN, HAS UNDERSTOOD IT THIS WAY MUST ALSO HAVE FELT HIS HARD-PRESSED POSITION WHEN HE IN ADMIRATION LEARNED TO THINK MEANLY OF HIS OWN INSIGNIFICANCE IN THE FACE OF THOSE DISTINGUISHED BY LEARNING AND ACUMEN AND DESERVED RENOWN, SO THAT, SEEKING THE FAULT IN HIMSELF, HE TIME AND AGAIN RETURNED TO THEM, AND WHEN IN DESPONDENCY HE HAD TO ADMIT THAT HE HIMSELF WAS IN THE RIGHT. .... WHEN SOMEONE IS TO LEAP HE MUST CERTAINLY DO IT ALONE AND ALSO BE ALONE IN PROPERLY UNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY. ... THE LEAP IS THE DECISION.
82: Soren! I had a feeling you would show up. How have you been? Would you like me to send you instructions about how to fix your caps lock again?
Vaguely on point, apparently Queen Elizabeth was an Anglican when she was in England and a Presbyterian when she was in Scotland, including when she died. So, a real American.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-queen-elizabeth-was-a-presbyterian-when-she-died
No kidding:
There was nothing unusual about her liturgical preferences, which were traditionally those of the Royal Family. 'They're all Low Church', Dr Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury who crowned her, once told James Pope-Hennessy. 'It's because they come from abroad.'
It's probably just as well we won the revolution then. It would be really awkward for her to have had to take up snake handling when she visited her home in the American colonies.
I was going to say this sounds like Protestant Existentialism, but Soren beat me to it. In certain strains of Protestantism there is the idea that Hell is distance from God, which fits in theologically with the play.
84: she' was the head of the established church, and in Scotland, which does have Anglicans, the established church is Presbyterian.
IIUC, she's not the head of the church in Scotland (it doesn't have a head), but she is by law a member of it. Wikipedia says it's recognized as the "national church" but is not an "established church", whatever that means. (They're independent of state control, sure; but do they get state money?)
Presumably with the monarch its head, it can't be against CoE rules for them to play their other monarchical role even in another church. I am curious if it is officially against Kirk rules to simultaneously be an adherent elsewhere.
Everyone has to realm walk a step behind Charles now, so I bet he's excited to crop dust the world.
Best line from BBC's description of the service in Westminster Abbey:
"Ex-prime ministers were clustered together, nodding awkwardly like Doctor Whos from rival eras."
Surely. My autocorrect is becoming over aggressive.
Still, you have to do you plurals correctly.
Please, it's "Thes Doctor"
Thank you, 95. The character is "The Doctor". The programme title is "Doctor Who" - as in, "what is the name of this mysterious Doctor?"
Honestly surprised that the BBC doesn't have an extensive style guide on this point. What is even the point of having a monarchy if the BBC can't even get protocol like this right?
The Guardian has a style guide with entries for both Doctor Who and Dalek but no pluralization guidance.
From the middle school guidance counselor:
Good Afternoon, Start With Hello teaches students how to reach out to and include those who may be socially isolated as well as to create a culture of inclusion and connectedness within their school or youth organization.Excessive feelings of isolation can be associated with violent and suicidal behavior. In fact, one study reports that chronic loneliness increases the risk of an early death by 14%. Furthermore, young people who are isolated can become victims of bullying, violence and/or depression. As a result many further pull away from society, struggle with learning and social development and/or choose to hurt themselves or others.Start with Hello raises awareness and educates students and the community to bring attention to the growing epidemic of social isolation.We are asking students to wear Green tomorrow to say Hello to everyone they encounter. We are also offering the student an opportunity to fill out a Pledge Certificate stating that they will do their best to acknowledge others so that they are not alone.
The first three paragraphs are so very important. The last paragraph is so very dumb and unhelpful for this age group.
It's a gift how school administrators can take a good idea and make it cringeworthy.
99 reminded me that someone in my neighborhood has a yard sign that says "Hello" with a picture of Lionel Richie.
Technically, setting up a robo-call system to ask them about their car's warranty is acknowledging others.
Just read a tweet: "I'm tired of people saying 'this is my go-to meal when I'm tired' and then start chopping an onion" and it reminded me (lovingly) of everyone here.
Everything smells so good when you start sauteing an onion.
They say Vidalia onions are so sweet that you can eat them raw like apples, but I tried it once and that's a huge overstatement.
106: My grandfather used to do that, but he *really* loved onions.
Yeah, I don't really like onions in general.
What if one of them wore a green shirt tomorrow and said hello to you?
My brilliant and highly educated son called me this afternoon and asked how bad an idea was it to buy a couch off Craigslist and plan to hand carry it home 2 km with the help of one friend. I opined that it was quite a bad idea, and suggested a furniture dolly and more friends. I did not talk him into the dolly, but he did rustle up an additional friend.
He just called from where they are exhaustedly sitting on the couch in front of the provincial legislature, with 1 km left to go. His friends have told him he is not only buying dinner, but also apps.
You can buy an app that will carry a couch?
I'm always delighted by how "we met on Craigslist" has changed as our "how we met" story. It's so shocking to people nowadays.
Couch made it to his place, with the help of a random citizen of Toronto who noticed they looked overwhelmed and grabbed a side of the couch for a few blocks. Canada FTW!
117: I went for a walk and missed my chance to make that joke.
Don't Canadians call it a Chesterfield?
98: I actually got into an argument with our chief subeditor about whether Darth, as in Vader, was a name or a title. Our house style was to omit all titles and use full name on first mention and surname only thereafter.
You can't call him "Skywalker" without a spoiler alert.
Well, that's another good point. If we were writing about Clarence Threepwood, the Earl of Emsworth, we would not call him "Lord Emsworth" or "his lordship" - we would simply call him "Clarence Threepwood". OTOH it could be argued that "Vader" is actually a name that he has adopted; it's not the name he was born with, but it's his name now.
Then you should follow whatever you do for those in a similar situation, like Lord Buckethead.
Maybe not. On second thought, that seems to be a character derived from Mr. Vader.
I'm sure nerds have gone into this in far more detail, but it's interesting that while the other Darths added in the prequels etc. strongly implied it was a title, it only appears thrice in the first movie's dialog, all Kenobi speaking. The first is referencing him as "A young Jedi named Darth Vader," the second two are both vocative finals ("Only a master of evil, Darth" and "You can't win, Darth"). All the Imperials call him "Lord Vader" or "Vader" for short.
Headcanon: it was a title, but an arcane Sith one not generally understood, so the Imperials translated it, while Kenobi treated "Darth" as his given name at every opportunity as a private joke or, in person, to needle him.
Like how he kept calling Voldemort "Tom".
89: it doesn't have the status of a state church, but (and this is incredible) its particular independent status is guaranteed by legislation as part of the Union, and the oath of office the new sovereign takes during the accession council is about nearly nothing else *but* the status of the Kirk:
https://blog.benl.co.uk/2020/03/demises-of-crown-and-parliament.html
133: So effectively the accession oath is the actual written constitution? Since it governs the sovereign from whom the rest of government emanates.
Something like that, although the king is already king at the moment the previous one hits the floor, so in some sense the whole thing is otiose (I think that's what otiose means?)
True, I guess in theory if the king renounced the oath they'd still be king.
more to the point, if for some reason the council didn't happen.
Letitia James is on the case!
She's administering the accession oath? Bold choice.
Since this is still the check-in thread, I'll say I put in an offer on a home in a nearby cheaper urban area last night, and the negotiations so far seem to be on some small-dollar issues. So I could soon be a landlord in a fuller way than I am now (renting out my second bedroom).
Very basic home, but with a big backyard that could get an ADU in the next few years, if financing opens up like Biden instructed.
Woo! Next stop, enlightened slumlord!
If once a man indulges himself in unlawful evictions, he very soon he comes to think little of annual rent increases; and from that he comes next to ADU placement, and from that to affordable multifamily development.