** Church organ music intensifies…

 "I do renounce him." 

Priest: and all his works?

 "I do renounce them." 

Yeah…

Life’s fulfillment is in many ways measured in the quality of your relationships. Frankly, if you want to make meaningful relationships, you need to be the kind of fellow you or a regular person would want to be around.

You can’t really be a different person and you shouldn’t try. Instead you need to be the best version of yourself you can be. The one who listens well, or does nice things for others without expecting a reward. You have some positive instincts in there somewhere, but if you indulge selfishness, it will drowned out any of the positive aspects immediately.

Don’t do this attention seeking bs. If you want help, get help. The world is full of others seeking connections and you’ll break the hearts of family if you take the way way out. Maybe that’s what you want? Have an impact just by inflicting harm? I hope not, that’s what bad people do.

Get into bird watching or any other hobby. There’s tons of poor, interesting, people with deeply filling lives out there. You’re not uniquely suffering I’m afraid. Just pittying yourself.

No you’re right. It’s like Mitch Hedberg used to say about drinking though… Still does, but he used to too.

They are, but Wells Fargo too.

With all due respect, this is not reflective of the protestant revival movement in the US in the 1800s. The second awakening was absolutely a bunch of rival interpretations of the word claiming they were right b/c (insert reason here).

I probably should have been more specific in my original reply but when we’re taking about US “Catholics aren’t Christians” that’s 100 percent the origin of the trope. I can’t speak to the Irish version but I’d challenge anyone about it in the US. That’s why we needed an Ecumenism movement in the first place after all.

There’s plenty of great commentary here about why Christianity is divided up into different sects, but I think you’re primarily interested in the narcissism of small differences. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

Basically, if you’ve read about Dr. Suess’ Starbellied Sneeches, you get the idea. Human brains are exceptional pattern recognition machines, and when a society is so homogenously Christian then those small differences become the cleavages along which identities form. That leads to things like Catholic / Christian divisions and the formation of the best joke in The Guardian history:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion

The “if my grandma had wheels, she would have been a bicycle” fallacy.

https://youtu.be/A-RfHC91Ewc

Whata you say make-a no sense! False equivalence

Another post mentioned just giving cash anonymously and I think that’s easily the best option. You would almost certainly have access to their mailbox if it’s a suburban stand alone type? If not, an unmarked envelope under the door, with cash, would preserve plausible distance from making the neighbor feel like they have to decline out of etiquette.

Don’t think about it more, they clearly need the help if they mentioned it, and if you can help without feeling the impact just do so without strings or direct attribution. They’ll suspect it, and can if they approach you in genuine thanks if they want, then you’re able to be gracious about accepting, or simply act surprised and happy that such a nice thing happened if not.

I’ve had people clearly embarrassed at the grocery checkout take a 50$ bill I claimed fell out of their pocket before several times. Preserves their dignity even if it’s just a pretext for helping. Puts the ball in their court at least. “Hey man, I don’t know what to say but it’s not mine. Pay it forward for someone who needs help if it’s not yours” is the worst that’s ever gone for me before. Nobody likes being a charity case.

I used to love Reply All before Alec Goldman’s shenanigans (awful behavior) came to light. So it was a real bright spot for me to find that PJ’s pod has almost everything I loved about Reply All. He’s willing to pursue things past the point any reasonable person with a job would and I love it. If you want a deep dive about whatever rabbit hole that takes his interest for the episode, it’s a great place imo.

Search Engine http://www.pjvogt.com

RSS address: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/search-engine

Paramotors. If you haven’t, give it a search. I don’t think it’s been done before outside of this conflict, but maybe in Ukraine as well?

Powered paragliding and bulldozers too, that was correct.

Thanks for the detailed break down! One thing I really do miss about old Twitter is how easily I could get a huge variety of great news sources at the same place.

There were always problems with the site, but nothing has come close to that level of centralized convenience (that I’ve found so far at least). It may just be the new normal since that same centralization makes any site vulnerable to the same fate twitter has met with. But man I sure underestimated how much worse twitter could get…

I’d love to give bluesky a shot for a bit, but their invite policy has me disappointed having waited for nearly a year now without any sign of opening up for regular users like me. Mastodon is good, tildes better (but tiny) so far, but I still miss having all the journalists who cared about journalism practices in one place…

Sigh…

Signed up months ago but still hoping to check it out. Not to pile on as another invite pest, but man twitter sure has become unusable lately!