Christian tradition, sure, but the Bible doesn’t have much to say about nipples so any specific rule regarding them seems to be more of an inference than a command.

No one is having a comprehensive theological discussion with you jackass. We were talking about a very specific thing. Stop being obnoxious.

I know it’s tough to pay attention for four whole sentences but if you read them again slowly I think you’ll see that I did not use the words Jesus, sin, or metaphor in any form which should make it pretty clear that, no, I’m not saying that at all.

The Bible is a couple thousand chapters long. The creation story is the first two chapters. It’s pretty obviously only attempting to establish that God created the universe in some ambiguous way and move on with the story. That doesn’t stop people from inferring all sorts of things from what is essentially a poem.

That’s pretty clearly just a disclaimer meant to shield them from legal repercussions. They know people aren’t going to do that.

Doing it on purpose for self defense seems less bad to me than indiscriminately because we want to be more comfortable but maybe that’s a meaningless distinction.

That’s why I skip a few steps and wipe my ass with tree bark.

👏 THANK 👏 YOU 👏

Oh no, you have to be inconvenienced on three holidays a year! Night owls have to drag themselves out of bed every day because some dickheads decided that every job has to start at 8 AM.

And you can get it all over with much sooner since you’ll probably die of heart disease at 45.

So they only forced everyone into their ecosystem for seven years and once they cornered their market they gave back the illusion of choice? That’s cool I guess but that’s explicitly the opposite of what I mean when I say freedom of choice, open source, DRM free, etc.

Yeah this guy is on some Apple fanboy shit if he thinks iTunes was drm free. Their shitty design for iTunes and decision to force you to use it despite it making the experience of listening to music much worse is the primary reason an ipod is the only Apple device I’ve ever owned. Freedom of choice and Apple have never mixed. That’s such a weird angle to take when describing them.

I’ve got a pair of these that I like. They do the job as described. They’re not great at anything else but I like them for laying in bed.

I’m not saying it’s not possible that the Sims franchise has gotten worse. I’m just saying that lots of people would have described every Sims game in the same terms OP did. I’m also saying that your tastes and preferences can change over time. It’s possible, but certainly not the only option, that these two things are more true than it is that Sims is getting worse.

Star Trek is a great example of what I’m talking about actually. How many legitimate scientists do you think are out there right now who either had their interest in science first sparked by or at least significantly influenced from watching some version of Star Trek? I would bet it is a lot of them. Not every concept in Star Trek is worth diving into from a scientific perspective but not trying to do that at all would be a huge mistake.

Now, Graham Hancock isn’t writing Star Trek but people listen to what he’s saying for the same basic reasons they watch Star Trek. They are curious about a science based approach to the world. They don’t know he’s exaggerating some things and taking other things out of context. Use the opportunity to teach them.

In other words, don’t call them idiots for watching Star Trek, start a conversation about space travel.

Lots of things people are interested in could reasonably be described as ridiculous by someone educated in the field. Why is it so hard for you to see those topics as a conversation starter rather than basically calling people idiots for wanting to learn about something?

There’s nothing fun about the game, and you see people streaming it, it’s just building. That’s all they are ever doing. Just building crap.

To be fair, that’s always been a reasonable description of games like Sims, Minecraft, and most other simulation style games, depending on personal preference. Maybe the fact that you’re choosing to use it now means you aren’t as interested in that style of game, or even video games in general, as you used to be. Maybe not, but I think it’s worth considering at least.

You’re ignoring the interesting questions he asks in favor of the easy to hand wave away stuff and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. To be clear, I’m not defending the things he says. I’m pointing out that his more outlandish theories gain more traction because the scientific community doesn’t lean into the softballs and use them as an opportunity to both teach people actual science and understand what different groups of people want to learn about.

Ignore the star / soul example and focus in on the possibility of an ancient and semi advanced civilization existing. That’s the part grabbing people’s attention. Talk about what that would change about our understanding of the past and what sort of evidence we would expect to find if it were true. Showcase people working in related fields and what they have found already. Propose other locations we could look for that evidence and discuss other topics we could study while looking for that evidence in those places. Engage the curiosity, don’t dismiss it. Anyone listening to Graham is likely uneducated in science but interested in it so use that as your jumping off point instead of judging those people for not being farther down the path.

I don’t see how getting more people interested in ancient history and geology is a bad thing. Part of the reason Graham has the wiggle room to make the claims that he makes is that the subject is relatively unstudied.

Obviously there is actual science taking place in the field and has been forever but funding for that kind of thing is notoriously difficult to come by compared to many other fields. Getting grants to study the distant past for essentially no reason other than curiosity is not a priority within an economic system that prioritizes profit over all else. The best way to break through that particular obstacle is getting more people to pay attention and ask questions. If we need a benign conspiracy theory about “big geology” hiding the truth from us to make that happen then where’s the harm in that? The vast majority of people prone to conspiratorial thinking are already farther down that rabbit hole than Hancock’s ideas will take them.

Additionally, actual scientists would do well to learn something from Graham about presentation. Despite what you may think of him, the way he talks about the subject resonates with people. People don’t want hear a regurgitation of facts in a research paper. Speculate a bit and get people excited about your future work. You don’t need to go to the extremes that he does but don’t refuse to branch out from what can be conclusively proven today either. Talk about your theories and what you’re hoping to find / learn just as much as you talk about the results of your research.

I think pre post-apocalypse is just the apocalypse. If you read the news these days that sounds like a pretty accurate description of the time we’re living in. We’re all just pretending it hasn’t started yet.