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It's a choice
  • You're not going to split hairs out of this one. Trying to say that these are not Evangelicals because no true Evangelical would do this is pretty much the "No True Scotsman " evasion. When people say, "Evangelicals", this is exactly the group to which they are referring.

    The one or two "True Evangelicals" in the US can consider themselves exempt from this thread.

  • It's a choice
  • There's a bit of "No True Scotsman", going on here I think. You cannot deny what we all see every day, Evangelicals working every day to suppress LGBTQ and women's rights. That's what they do, that's what they are.

    [Edit for typo]

  • GOP sues to block voters in key battleground state from fixing ballot errors: report
  • I think that the idea is that more Dems use mail-in ballots than Reps. Hand in hand with tactics like restricting the number of polling stations in minority neighborhoods, it's just another component of putting their thumb on the scale.

  • Someone needs to train an LLM AI on Trump's speeches. I bet the random gibberish output would be hilarious.
  • Back in the 70's and 80's there were "Travesty Generators". You pushed some text into them and they developed linguistic rules based on probabilities determined by the text. Then you could have them generate brand new text randomly created by applying the linguistic rules developed from the source text.

    Surprisingly, they would generate "brand new" words that weren't in the original text, but were real words. And the output matched stylistically to the input text. So you put in Shakespeare and you got out something that sounded like Shakespeare. You get the idea.

    I built one and tried running some TS Eliot through it, because stuff is, IMHO, close to gibberish to begin with. The results were disappointing. Basically because it couldn't get any more gibberishy that the source.

    I strongly suspect that the same would happen with Trump's gibberish. There used to be a bunch of Travesty Generators online, and you could probably try one out to see.

  • What is your favorite mythological figure (of ancient religions only)?
  • Actually...yes. At least for the "war criminal". I think the point is that you can't hide your inner feelings from the feather. So if you genuinely, in the deepest depths of your heart, have no qualms about bombing civilians then you're fine.

    I think this points out the fundamental relativistic nature of morality and how the feather copes with it. Everyone has some sort of moral compass, and the feather measures how true you were to it. And really, what more can you ask of anyone? Decide, for yourself, what is right and what is wrong and stick to it.

    Putting aside the fact that a toddler probably lacks the intellectual or emotional development to have a truely personal morality, I cannot imagine that someone who "broods" all their life over kicking a kitten when they were three is anything other than the nicest most moral person you'll ever meet. I don't think that have any trouble with Anubis and Thoth.

  • Trump is 'hanging himself' with his own rope as campaign spirals out of control: analyst
  • Agreed, but I don't know the mindset of those people and how to think of them. Do we just take them out of the voter pool? Are they potentially swing?

    My take on 2016 was that the Dems were deeply unenthusiastic about Hillary - and who can blame them - so they didn't show up to vote. On the other hand the Reps were stoked about Trump so they turned up at the polls.

    Swing voters? I don't get it. I cannot see any rational person sitting in the middle comparing Trump and Harris and picking Trump as a better presidential option. Irrational people? My gut tells me they they are probably sitting and the far ends of either camp.

    My guess is that the people closer to the middle aren't actually swing voters, but they are far more likely to have their enthusiasm to vote influenced than the true believers.

    The big question, in my opinion, is how much - or how little - the polls reflect the enthusiasm to go out and vote. My impression is that Dem enthusiasm in high right now, while not so much for the Reps. It's possible that a 50/50 poll may hide the fact that a big chunk of one of the 50% is much less likely to actually vote.

    I'm Canadian, so I see the news but I don't have day to day experience with US voters. Of course, neither do the 90% of Americans that don't live in those swing states.

  • What is your favorite mythological figure (of ancient religions only)?
  • Anubis and Thoth weighing the heart of the dead to see if it is as light as a feather before letting them into the afterlife.

    I love the idea that there's no "do this, do that", or a concrete set of rules or commandments. But the idea that if you can look back on your life, and if your heart isn't weighed down with the burden of all of the things that you did that know we're just wrong...then you can go on to the afterlife.

    It's just no much more of a reasonable, adult approach to morality.

  • Use eSIM plans on any Android phone with this handy adapter - Android Authority
  • The travel eSIMs are a bit different. My Orange plan covers Turkey and the UK, which I specifically wanted, and probably Switzerland as well. For my wife, I needed to get a "world" plan that covered Turkey, otherwise the Europe plan would have covered the UK.

    But that's an important point. The travel plans are NOT the same as regular plans in some ways.

  • Use eSIM plans on any Android phone with this handy adapter - Android Authority
  • I would have a couple years ago. In a flash. We replaced our phones a while back specifically to have eSIMs. It truth, considering the cost of Canadian roaming plans the phones have already paid for themselves.

    Both of our old phones were single SIM, so using a local SIM would mean disconnecting our Canadian numbers which would put us out of touch with people back home. Which means that this card wouldn't have work for us either.

    I was at the point of looking at buying a portable WiFi hot-spot, when I found out about eSIMs. So we went that route.

  • Crochet @lemmy.ca HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    Group Shot

    For some reason, the wife decided to pull out all of the amigurumi critters that she's made since she started doing this at the beginning of the year.

    So, here you go, the group shot:

    !

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    Crochet @lemmy.ca HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    The Wife's Latest Creation

    !

    She said that the pattern was awful and that she had fudge all kinds of stuff to make it work. The hat needed to be completely redesigned.

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    This sub is not ready yet @lemmy.ca HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    Still Not Ready?

    I'm beginning to think that this sub will never be ready. What's the hold-up????

    0
    Crochet @lemmy.ca HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    Amigurumi!

    The wife has started to make these amigurumi creatures. Here's her latest two.

    She uses worsted weight wool (she tells me) which generally results in bigger creatures.

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    1981 Mockingbird Supreme

    I wanted one of these back in 1980 when I was 16. I remember that they were $1,200, but they might as well have been $1,200,000 as far as I was concerned.

    Many years later I had the $$$ to buy one, and this one is a beauty. Koa, with Bill Lawrence pickups.

    Look at all the knobs and switches!!!

    3
    This sub is not ready yet @lemmy.ca HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    When will this sub be ready?
    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)HA
    HamsterRage @lemmy.ca
    Posts 6
    Comments 159