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Jaybird in reply to Jaybird on What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade WarThis is a place where smart people belong in figuring this out I've met one or two smart people before. They w…
David TC in reply to Jaybird on What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade WarEh, I’m not a fan of tariffs at all. If the other guy is shooting himself in the foot, why join him? Tariffs s…
Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter on Open Mic for the Week of 4/7/2025JayBird: the dance where someone asks for evidence and then, when it’s provided, they say “that’s not conclusi…
Andrew S. in reply to Jaybird on Saturday Morning Gaming: MetroidvaniasThat sounds about right from what I've seen of Hollow Knight (I think I beat the first boss and got slightly i…
Jaybird in reply to David TC on What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade WarI probably wouldn't consider India a first world country but they're getting there (and good for them). Street…
David TC in reply to Jaybird on What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade WarAnd, let’s face it, if I wanted to argue for tariffs at all, easy mode would be “reciprocal tariffs against fe…
Jaybird in reply to David TC on Open Mic for the Week of 4/7/2025I don't know that he's lying. I'm sure that he believes everything he's saying, just as he believed that there…
David TC in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the Week of 4/7/2025You...think he's lying about the people he directly quoted and usually linked to the quotes of int he article?
ICYMI
How Should Democrats Handle Student Loan Payments
By Eric Medlin90 CommentsOrdinary Times’ Andrew Donaldson on The Young Turks “Indisputable” with Dr. Rashad Richey
By Em Carpenter2 CommentsThursday Throughput: The Boys Are All Right Fertility Edition
By Michael Siegel100 CommentsLinky Friday: ‘Cause Ain’t No Such Things As Halfway Crooks Edition
By Andrew Donaldson34 CommentsThe Politics of Survival: Putting Yourself in a Box
By John McCumber223 CommentsThe Lost Art of Book Learning
By Em Carpenter10 CommentsOn Writing of Wrongs
By Andrew Donaldson40 CommentsGame of Thrones: Little People, Big World
By Kristin Devine60 Comments
Ordinary Twitter

Bean Dad’s great great grandfather.Report
L’affaire déplorable du méprisable papa haricot would be the marquee exemplar of how graceless social media has made us that I would pick; alas not everyone is the same flavor of podcast geek that I am so perhaps this would not be something to which everyone could relate. (But it would dovetail nicely back to the thorny and as-yet-unresolved question of the Questionable Adequacy of Ken Jennings’ Apology.)
However, I think we’ve explored the topic well already recently (re: J.K.-Rowling-IP-derived-media-products-Rowling-didn’t-actually-participate-in and the Alloyed Motives Of MrBeast’s Charity). So I don’t really feel an imperative to write the essay. Sorry, folks.Report
To tie everything together in a nice little bow, there were a number of complaints about Buddy Christ 2023’s commercial during The Super Bowl that used Iscariot’s criticism:
Couldn’t you have used that money to help the poor?
Well, lemme tell ya: That criticism hits different after reading the criticisms of MrBeast.Report
Howso?
From my perspective spending that much money on evangelism is at best a waste, even (especially?) if it gains converts. Every penny of that well-but-very-delusionally-intentioned money would have been better spent on medical research (other good causes etc.).
But from a believer’s perspective, there are souls to be saved, souls in imminent and great peril. Evangelism is how those souls are saved from eternal damnation and hellfire. A few million dollars — temporary, ephemeral, inconsequential, earthly money — is a trivial price to pay in exchange.
And who the f[ish] am I to tell these people how to spend their money in the first place?Report
Eh. There are a lot of people out there with a hole in what they think is their soul and long for a community that they feel they ought to have.
“Hey, come to church” works for some small amount of people and googling something like “loneliness epidemic” will get you a bunch of weird articles that alternate between “young people are lonelier than ever” and a bunch of articles that link to this Cigna survey saying that Gen Z is lonelier than older generations are.
That’s really nuts because the younger generations are the ones that get forced into rooms with a couple dozen other people their own age (within a year, anyway) and that just pretty much stops happening after college.
So if you want to make friends and become part of a community… what do you do?
Well, don’t tell me. I’m part of one. The ones out there that don’t know? Well… here’s a commercial. Show up at church. We can get you started.
Lots of kinds of charity needed out there. Lots of needs being overlooked.
And there are a *LOT* of people out there who see stuff like “people trying to help other people” and get really, really pissed off about it.Report