American religious anti-intellectualism as we know it really started with the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism in the 1890s-1900s. But it goes in phases: Pentecostalism emerges in the 1900s, fundamentalism and the rejection of modernity and science in the 1930s, anti-liberalism and various “youth” movements in the 1950s, television ministries and mega churches in the 1970s, religious political conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of the non-denominational “bible follower” churches in the 2000s.

But America also experienced several “awakenings” in the 1800s, which gave rise to all sorts of new flavors of spiritualism and Christianity ranging from Mormons to abolitionists. And there’s the rise of the (literal) Salvation Army in the US in the 1880s (but we really have the UK to thank for them).

It’s been incubating here for a long, long time.

Thanks! I registered a domain with cloudflare and that was easy enough. I’ll read up on some alternative providers and see how this all shakes out.

Would I need to do anything with the custom domain beyond registering it for this to work with an email provider?

Because this sounds like a great migration plan: set up a custom domain, add it to protonmail, update emails, export data, and then switch providers.

I’m just a bit clueless on the whole setting up a custom domain part.

My bet is also on they wildly underestimated what employable means (or overestimated the value of their skills and experience).

I’m also laughing over here at “long terms gains” of Trump’s policies. Unless this person is one of the billionaire class, there are no long term gains. The people who will benefit from whatever Trump and co. are up to wouldn’t be “out of a job,” they’d just transition to a new role either at the same company or another or be immune from the whole thing altogether.

I think strategically used tariffs (i.e. used in trade negotiations for specific sectors or items, not unilateral tariffs) can convince a country to export items at a price that benefits one country more than the other, usually in tandem with an agreement to reciprocate. Basically, countries agree to trade at certain rates or exclusively sell. Tariffs are the “bad cop” of trade negotiations.

The tariff isn’t what lowers the price, it’s the threat of the tariff that lowers the price or keeps it stable.

Imagine Canada exports maple widgets at $10 a piece to reflect the true cost of manufacture. The US says that is too high, our people can’t afford that price once it’s on the shelves, so how about you export them for $8? To sweeten the deal, we’ll export freedom widgets to you at reduced cost.

Canada responds saying $8 for maple widgets is too low, $10 is firm and we’ll deal with the current cost of freedom widgets. The US threatens a targeted tariff on maple widgets at 25% which doesn’t affect the price of maple widgets in Canada or their sale price to importers in the US, but importers in the US have to pay $2.50 in tax on top of the purchase cost for maple widgets which drives up the cost for US consumers.

This results in the price of the item increasing in the US $4.50 over the price determined to be “affordable” which will result in reduced imports and reduced purchases of maple widgets by consumers. Canada now has to find somewhere else to sell their maple widgets since the US isn’t buying at the same rate which drives down the value of maple widgets in Canada.

And if the US was feeling particularly vengeful at being denied their cheap steady supply of maple widgets, they could convince other countries to not buy Canadian widgets at all or impose a blanket ban on all Canadian goods (see: how the US obliterated the economy of Cuba because of “communism” which was really just Cuba not wanting to be the US’s sugar plantation anymore).

Canada will evaluate this and determine that selling maple widgets is essential to their economy and less profit for their maple widget industry is an agreeable trade compared to the US not buying at all.

but surely him rising again is more important than his death?

Depends on how fixated a faith is on the “sacrifice of the Lamb.” There’s one interpretation that Jesus’ suffering and death is what appeased God and fulfilled the prophecy and ended the law of Moses. If you’re the kind of person that buys into God being the sort of deity that wants to kill himself in order to satisfy his own bloodlust, then yeah, I could see Christ’s death being the more important part.

Surely the resurrection should be emphasized as the result, but the death is what God demanded to atone for the sins of the world. The resurrection was just proof that he held up his end of the bargain.

I think that the Christ story suffers from the audience knowing details about the story that the characters don’t to the point that the big miracle at the end falls flat. Everyone just ends up focusing on the mechanics of Christs death rather than its purpose.

I like your perspective and wish Christianity aligned more with your post than whatever it’s doing now.

I’m not Christian, but I have observed that the worship of the cross and Christ’s death is directly tied to the theological idea of salvation, especially with evangelicals. If his death is the single most important part of your faith, then the cross becomes a symbol and reminder that you’re saved and not going to hell. It was primed to become a symbol and eventually an idol.

I also think historically the cross as a symbol for Christianity comes from the Greek letter chi (x) in the spelling of Christ. “X-tians” was a shorthand form way before the “taking Christ out of Christmas” nonsense.

But to the original point of the Klan burning the cross: I’ve read that they argue that cross burning is a medieval European affirmation of faith, something that is doing double duty of arguing that it’s an expression of their faith and connecting them to their “racial” roots.

The New Colossus was released during Trump’s first term and it was really cathartic to play during the shit storm. The game even pissed off the “alt-right.” The New Order and The Old Blood are much better at “endless destruction of Nazis” though.

Might be time to reinstall and play through them again.

Well, true. I wasn’t exactly implying that Trump was reading a history book and learned all about McKinley. More like he said, “we should be strong and take land that we want and undo everything Obama and Biden did and tax our enemies and have gold everything,” and someone replied, “oh, sounds like McKinley.” To which Trump replies, “Obama renamed a great president?”

You’re probably right about it just being petty, but…

President McKinley also annexed territory (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Cuba, etc.), implemented insane tariffs, and pushed to keep the US on the gold standard.

Looks like Jackson isn’t the only president that Trump idolizes.

Sounds plausible. The quote I always use is “LIIIINE!” from the dinner table scene where the camera jumps back and forth between them but they don’t speak for like 5 minutes.

Is this enshittification or the convergence of objects into the same design due to regulation/demand/function/etc. (I’m sure there’s a name for this but I can’t recall it)?

Cell phones are certainly enshittified with planned obsolescence or incompatible text messaging protocols or ‘walled gardens’, but what else should a cell phone be besides a cellular networked pocket computer with a camera?

What features (besides a dedicated headphone jack) is missing from a modern cell phone that your old one had?

Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality comes to mind.

Hyperreality is the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.

However, after thinking up some doom and gloom shit about the future, I reversed course: Why speculate about future kids when most of us grew up with a manipulative media diet? Saturday morning cartoons were wildly manipulative, the emergence of social media damaged a lot of people’s expectation of reality, and the last three election cycles in the US were heavily impacted by the ability of certain populists to generate memes.

AI will speed up the content generation process and introduce some absurd elements like six-fingered watch models, but I don’t think it will be more manipulative than media already is, just weirder and faster.

My ultimately positive forecast: the kids of the future will create their own networked spaces outside of the mainstream internet and just continue on with their lives ignoring what doesn’t interest them and seeking out what does. Regardless, we’ll never understand it anyway.

Mainly because they are members of the class of people that will benefit, directly and indirectly, from a Trump presidency.

Knowing this, they aren’t stupid for voting for the person who will enable the gross accumulation of wealth through the systematic deregulation of industries and privatization of government services. There’s one group of people who will benefit from this: the wealthy (who are disproportionately white and male).

The idiots are people who voted for Trump thinking that his administration will result in a net positive for them socially and economically.

Voting against your interests is dumb; voting inline with your interests is not.

Wow, what a terrible design. My experience with QMK- powered keyboards didn’t let my mind entertain the thought of that being controlled externally from the board. I knew people shit on Razer and other “gamer” products but I always chalked it up to aesthetics and advertising gimmicks.

True, but I’d take a bluish/purplish white over ever having to desolder a through-switch led ever again.

Even a RGB board should have controls for color, brightness, and pattern. Shouldn’t be too difficult to turn it off or adjust the color to something more natural.

That said, none of the keyboards I currently own and use have anything more than an indicator LED.

The movie juxtaposes the ideal against the dysfunctional and highlights pressures of playing a social and familial role through comedy.

The main character is inherently flawed and is trying to give his family an ideal Christmas. He’s caught up in petty neighborly disputes, things go awry, and he’s an asshole. He wants to provide and be a good father and husband but his expectations are set too high and naturally he fails. He is morally weak and is easily distracted by lust or rivalry.

He just wants things to go as planned for once and not to be burdened by unwanted and embarrassing family members. He just wants things to be “normal” and for people to recognize his hard work and dedication.

People in this thread have pointed out that it’s difficult to empathize with the character because of his perceived wealth and the plot point of needing the Christmas bonus to cover money he over spent on a down payment for a pool.

However, for all of his toxic behaviors, his disproportionate reactions, his un-relatable lifestyle, his pettiness, his stress, his inability to let things go, he is familiar; he’s us. He wants to be happy but has no idea how to make that happen for himself. His heart is in the right place but that’s not enough.

There’s catharsis in watching him experience exaggerated depictions of what a lot of people experience around the holidays: you can’t choose your family and the world is typically against you. His final stress-fueled blowup and monologue at the end is a summary of the dumb shit the audience has always wanted to say but never been able to.

At least, that’s what I think the post is about.

And the ‘it’s just a flu!’ people pissed me the fuck off.

I think many people haven’t actually had the flu or have had it after a vaccination or a during mild year.

That shit is awful, and it can and has killed. Hell, 100 years before COVID there was the 1918 Flu Epidemic which killed nearly three times as many people as COVID. So when some chucklefuck prattles on about “it’s just the flu,” my response is always, “that doesn’t make it safer.”

Frazetta art on a book is almost false advertising at this point. But, hear me out, Frazetta-style buff Jesus with a Valkyrie Mary Magdalene riding the seven-headed beast of the apocalypse…. Slap that cover on the Bible and we’ll be making money in no time!