Hey, that takes a lot of strength, and I greatly admire and respect you for it. You’ve got a good heart and I can tell you didn’t mean any harm by it. Thank you for considering my words with the best intentions. (I’m REALLY sorry if I came off harsh earlier!)

You are very cool. :)

I struggle with that right there with you, and I pray we both find the strength to be His light in dark places when it matters the most.

I wish you and yours a blessed Christmas/Holiday Season and New Year.

Stay safe out there! :)

I wanted to say something about this because it dont think this has ever happened? Can you give me an example?

Sure! I’ll be transparent with you, I could probably stand to memorize my history a little bit more, BUT…this is going a little bit far back.

There’s actually a REALLY GOOD pair of podcast episodes by “Behind the Bastards” called “How the Rich Ate Christianity.”

Part 1: https://youtu.be/gyHd6wEC4IE

Part 2: https://youtu.be/LL8s7N0TU-c

It does a very good job of detailing how churches back in the day just didn’t have the sorry reputation they have today among the general public.

The rich-n-powerful of the time actually considered Christians to be pesky bleeding-heart socialists that hurt their plans for maximum wealth extraction. Churches were busy feeding their communities and protesting landlords and stuff, rather than worshiping work.

So the fatcats got together and worked to supplant churches of MANY denominations by sneaking in pro-capitalism doctrine in exchange for financial support, for instance. It’s where we started hearing this absolutely bananas idea that God shows His love and approval by making one wealthy. (?!?!?!?)

As well as “preaching” about individualism instead of community and looking out for ones’ neighbors.

Along with lots of other weird nonsense like I heard in my non-denom circles growing up, like :

“Oh, the ‘eye of a needle’ was actually some kind of weird gate in the city walls that camels had to awkwardly pass through, so uh, it’s not impossible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and be wealthy, just uh, difficult! Yeah! You have to be worthy of handling the wealth! But you can be rich, yes!”

(Zero anthropologic / archeological / literary / theological / historical support for this notion.)

So that’s what I meant about good churches doing God’s work getting “replaced” with profit-friendly religiously-flavored feelgood self-help seminar campuses.

I hope that helps explain where I was pulling that from! :)

This is a very valuable take and much needed perspective here. I appreciate you sharing it!

Also can’t help but lol at your experience with the wild girl who definitely used Skinner Box conditioning to make sure you always opened her emails! 😂

I miss a lot of the spirit of the hijinks and lulz internet, but I definitely don’t miss all the disgusting shock content that came with deeper web exploration. I visited the famous /b/ exactly once and decided my soul didn’t need that shit.

There’s a lot of gore stuff that I think was photoshopped, but also damn someone spent time making that?! I didn’t care to analyze it, I just wished there was such a thing as brain bleach.

There was also sites that would punish hotlinking by replacing images with the infamous “goatse” (no.), which was really great when trying to send my girlfriend a funny picture I found and she got to it too late. LOL that was fun to explain why she was seeing what she was seeing.

People warned me of misnamed videos on Kazaa and stuff turning out to be abuse material or execution footage but thankfully I mostly avoided that.

I remember clicking a phony download link and getting eyeball-blasted with CSAM ads seared into my brain once. (Actually I think I sent the link to the FBI on this one.)

Yeah, I miss the expressive freedom of “at your own risk” Internet, simply because you weren’t as much constantly being tailed by marketing bots and algorithms, but I don’t miss the mental trauma that came with clicking the wrong link.

You’re right though, in a weird way a bit of prior desensitizing can almost help us keep it together if we find ourselves in a really, really bad place. But I wish for a world where nobody has to do that…

This is all also why, even though I find the Dark Web super intriguing…I don’t need that shit. Lol

Coffee break from a bunch of paint masking at the local church when he had this funny insight and used the selfie cam without flipping the image. :D

> Post a meme. 
> It's not even an actual image. 
> PicardFacepalm.jpeg
> Fuuuuuuuuuuuu...
> But is it still a meme? 
> Philosoraptor.bmp
> Don't let your memes be dreams. 

I used to think this too, and it’s going around because it’s excellent and plausible outrage bait.

…But as of now, that is not how it works. They are simply a collection point for the nonprofit / charity / whatever, and cannot use customers’ donations to offset their own taxes.

I agree though, folks should just donate straight to good causes, but these “round up” campaigns actually generate a lot of money for charity organizations, and villainizing them is counter productive.

A few articles about this:

https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/10/fact-check-false-claim-checkout-charities-offset-corporate-taxes/7622379002/

All that said: Yes, scumbag corpos should be strongarmed to pay their damn taxes, and those taxes should go to the public good instead of warships and corruption!

That’s lovely there’s still churches like that, which actually do measurable things to protect their communities, and give to one another freely without pretense.

These are the kind of groups that capitalists systematically dismantled and replaced with profiteering megachurches.

If you wanted to game the system…

This part makes me kinda sad though. I know Lemmy doesn’t have a huge reach but it can’t help but taste a little sour that everything you said sounded awesome until it ends with a “jus between you an me pal” nudge-nudge about how to take advantage of freely given generosity and communal resources. That’s called being a scumbag.

Like the people who got kicked out from my local foodbank line because they were trying to get free ingredients for their restaurant.

Such behavior sabotages the struggling remnants of genuine humanity left in this world.

Feels like 8 viruses were standard with any Limewire / Kazaa install! Lol

That wasn’t SOAD?

Nope! It’s hilarious how many people came across it through file sharing though. That’s so cool to have this weird culture connection haha.

https://kotaku.com/no-system-of-a-down-did-not-make-a-zelda-song-but-thi-5885558

Oh that’s really cool! I’m gonna search for that! Maybe my library has it, or I can bug them to get it. :)

EDIT: Is it the BBC one you’re talking about?

That’s awesome! Thanks SO much for pointing me to that! I too wonder what the 2GB size is. It looks like they have two different sets of packages, one being a “source archive” that’s just a raw CD dump.

I can see it, since the game was on like, 4 or 5 CDs back then, and involved a lot of heavily compressed video!

I have a fun feeling that maybe I can run this really well in Bottles, it ScummVM alone doesn’t do the trick. :D

Here’s a link I found to the soundtrack in “CD Quality”, with a download link, if you’re interested.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSFnTrLHtkp8Yj7bSdaN_jQUy7iOXscq

That 90’s crystal-synth is the most gorgeous thing…it reminded me very much of the soundtrack to Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time. :D

Maybe this’ll strengthen the worldwide film industry.

Maybe I should finally see if Who Killed Captain Alex lives up to the hype. 🤔

I mean, the Vegas Strip has always been disgusting…but the fact that (more than?) half of it is owned by Amazon now is absolutely insane to me. . .

Netflix crap never comes to DVD.

I dunno if it’s a thing exclusive to libraries or not, but at my public library I’ve seen some Netflix movies, and things like Stranger Things and Castlevania come through.

Not sure if those discs hit traditional media shelves or not.

“add me on stoat!”

“Yeah bro I’m so stoakt!” Huh, that’s almost a better name LOL.

First Riot chat, now Revolt.

Funny how rebelliously flavored chat alternatives that challenge the centralized status quo keep getting put down!

So much this, although I really regret not just finishing college whilst all this crap was still in its infancy. Student exploitation is absolutely nuts these days.

“Turnitin”, the “Lockdown Browser” and its fellow RAT rootkit malware ilk, one time use serial codes to do the “homework” in $300 textbooks.

It’s absolute insanity. Especially nowadays when schools and wider society forgot what education was about, and run with the idea that it’s all to earn a lottery ticket to potentially landing a job that might one day pay off that exploitation.

Aww yeah, this is Tumbleweed life. :D

This is the secret to where Roy Kent gets his power!

I still need to read the book! My main familiarity with RAMA is the 199(5?) PC game that was mind bogglingly obtuse with math puzzles but the world was SO fascinating! I need to figure out how to play it again with my grown up brain…

The soundtrack was INCREDIBLE…

he was legit jotting down PH material on a notebook.

Somewhere a professor is getting an APA citation that’s like

Lustful, Lucy. (2023, April 15). Sexy Coed Horny Cheerleader Stepsis with Big Titties Can’t Get Enough!. PHub. (www dot phub dot com)