Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Blasphemy Laws cases prosecute imaginary crimes against imaginary gods.

New polling: Reform is winning over Britain’s Christian support.

Lex Leo declares the first miracle of his papacy. A doctor prayed to a dead man to ask the Creator of the Universe to help him with his own vanity.

The YouTube channel seeks to help survivors of religious trauma share their stories and find community.

Still believe in God(s)? 250 arguments why you shouldn’t (download pdf).

World of Woo: Sunscreen misinformation and its real‑world damage.

Environment: What’s the place of ‘new genomic techniques’ in organic agriculture?

Google users are less likely to click on links from an AI summary result.

The building blocks of life may be far more common in space than we thought.

Did our Universe really arise from nothing?

Long Reads:

And it came to pass that Tulsi Gabbard did her dharma.

The Jesus Army. The rise and fall of a cult.

Record-breaking divers are pushing human limits and reshaping scientists’ view of our species

Removing unnecessary agencies relics could improve public health and the federal budget outlook.

Conspiracies and the illusion of a Smoking Gun.

America’s kids have never been safer so why don’t people act like it?

Sunday Book Club: A Beginner’s Guide to Dying.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos:  The real reason every religion thinks it’s right.  Praying for Armageddon: Evangelicals, the US and the Middle East.  (From Al Jazerrra which can be biased).

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week!!

“If your belief needs protection from questions, then it wasn’t knowledge to begin with.”

Me…

[Strega]

Thanks Reg 🙂

[jakelafort]

Recently i wandered lonley as a cloud by the boat launch awaiting a day of luxuriating in squamous surroundings under a beating sun. Get it done. Apply that high factor sunscreen liberally. Start near the ants. Work way to face. Open eyes and shields of youth known as eyelashes and eyebrows fail me. Into the right eyeball. “oh fuck me that stings like a mutha!”

We need sunscreen against those insidious algorithms. Algorithms and their control over our beliefs are only capitalizing on human nature and amplifying one of our least desirable remnants of biology. We’ll have to select against our inheritance if we are to survive. Or what is more likely direct our biology to be more discerning.

Norms, mores, beliefs. Norms, mores, beliefs. Norms, mores, beliefs. NMB No more bullshit? Do the majority realize that NMB are adopted seamlessly and without resistance? No. They ascribe choice to the good and bad people. Innate differences.

Those White racists who hung Blacks from trees were bad people. Participants in inquisitions and autos da fe wicked! Buddhist monks contemplating the universe peacefully have chosen a benign path. White settler zionist apartheid genociders bad! Today people in America are weak. The greatest generation dealt with the great depression and then fought valiantly in second world war rescuing us from Japanese and Germans. You think these powder puff Karens could do that? (I read how that sentiment was extant in Israel and the older Israelis who fought one existential war after another found out they were wrong.)

The great intellectual Jefferson knew that Whites were inherently smarter than Blacks. I met South Sea island girls who were travelling to USA with missionaries. They had to be taught to cover their breasts. They would not be caught dead in public showing any of their upper legs. The scientists who belittled Jane Goodall for daring to present evidence that chimps are similar in many ways to us knew she was being anthropomorphic. Even if they were not religious they had unwittingly adopted the religious notion of special creation.

As a fledgling lawyer i was consulted by a guy who was disappointed in his former lawyer. His accident case was a ‘no pay’ and his former lawyer was not willing to file suit. Wahoo, i got the case. Letter of representation. Talk to adjuster. Yup, it is a no pay. So i had to file suit. Had never done that. Drafted a complaint. Read the statute for Connecticut service of process. Had the defendant served. One week later i receive a motion to dismiss for improper service of process. Short calender. Jacked courtroom. Rip your nuts off attorney not cordial. “We are going to have to argue this one Attorney Rosenberg.” She was cocksure she had me by the short hairs suspended from a crane like a gay person about to be executed in an Islamic nation. How did she know? Cuz i was not following custom. All lawyers in Connecticut followed same custom. But the statute gives two valid ways to accomplish service of process. I unwittingly selected the other way. Judge was about to dismiss my case. I kinda snapped at the imminent injustice and fortunately the judge reflected and indicated the case would remain in abeyance as her clerks did some research for her. A month later a written decision upheld the service of process. Settled the case immediately after the decision.

We are much more like fungible goods than we realize.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

Environment: What’s the place of ‘new genomic techniques’ in organic agriculture?

Another redundant term thrown into the mix.

All things domesticated for consumption by humans lo these past 11,000 or so years are “Organic” because they are Carbon-based life forms, and they are all “Genetically-Modified Organisms” whether by selective breeding or in a Petri Dish.

And the Petri Dish methods are already the “New Genomic Technique.” Tweaking the existing genes instead of adding new genes is just a different “New Genomic Technique.”

By the way. there’s nothing inherently wrong with adding new genes from a different species to another. If you added crayfish genes to corn and tomatoes, you could have Instant Gumbo! Just add hot water and enjoy! 🌽🍅🦞🍲😋

Is it any wonder that Great Britain Brexited the EU, to get out from under the Brain Sprouts in Brussels, Belgium who can’t wrap their heads around these great possibilities!

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum of "Brussels" to complete the punchline

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

Google users are less likely to click on links from an AI summary result.

They’re probably scared of confronting an Elmo Hitler leading a Legion of African and Asiatic Waffen SS.

I asked DuckAI how many people have died from the food dyes that RFKJR and the MAHAs like to rail against. It mentioned conditions correlated with food dyes, but no numbers. If there were any deaths from food dyes specifically, wouldn’t they be on record somewhere accessible to AI? And even then, might the AI be referring to claims made by ambulance-chaser lawyers and not medical researchers?

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Added question

[Simon Paynton]

I find that AI is good at summarising textual information, and keeping meanings largely intact, based (apparently) on the philosophical idea that the meaning of a word lies in how it is used.

I had it summarise my book in Adobe pdf reader, and it didn’t tell me anything new, just made a good hierarchical summary.  Maybe if someone started asking it questions about the ideas in the book, it could give more interesting answers that people haven’t heard before.

[PopeBeanie]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

All things domesticated for consumption by humans lo these past 11,000 or so years are “Organic” because they are Carbon-based life forms, and they are all “Genetically-Modified Organisms” whether by selective breeding or in a Petri Dish.

I think this is a more interesting topic than it first seems. At least one group of self uninformed scientific method skeptics maintain that “gain of function” research on micro-biologic pathogens should be outlawed, no questions asked. They don’t care about the fact that Mother Nature does this kind of work, practically (for example) every twenty minutes or so for all of the world’s bacteria. Same process occurs for other pathogenic microbes like viruses, small fungi, archaea, and parasites, et al.

So yeah, human interventions/usurpations alongside natural evolution can have a range of outcomes, negative or positive, and often unexpected when not fully informed. But I wouldn’t call those terms redundant as much as “often mischaracterized” due to lack of depth of scientific understandings, with unfortunate doses of skepticism resulting from ignorance.

I add to my rant that the purpose of gain of function research is to get ahead of Mother Nature’s production of pathological epidemics and pandemics. She “leaks” new pathogens all the time, even unintentionally.

Negative side-effects of GMOs, as you allude to, are more often beneficial than horrible. As for standard definitions of terms like GMO and NGT, if they don’t include research and modification of (say) mosquitoes to stop the spread of (say) malaria, et al, they should, right? I’m all for that kind of Sapiens usurping of Mother Nature’s methods, as long as there’s sufficient research on possible negative consequences; Environmental Impact Reports, if you will, necessarily conducted by parties least interested in making profit by way of legally patented methods.

“Organic” has different definitions, too, depending on context. (I will brag here, having taken an O-Chem course only a few years ago. In this case, Nitrogen and Oxygen are also a necessary molecules.)

[PopeBeanie]

jakelafort wrote:

Recently i wandered lonley as a cloud by the boat launch awaiting a day of luxuriating in squamous surroundings under a beating sun.

Awesome prose, as usual. I was impressed enough to ask AI, and see if it seems smart enough to know if it was written by AI. IMO, it passed my test, although I don’t think the reasoning it gave was flawless.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Here is a recent story about humans ‘helping’ Mother Nature with genetically modified mosquitoes.

[TheEncogitationer]

popeBeanie,

All very good points underscoring why “All Natural=All Good” is a Fallacy.

The EU and our own home-grown MAGA anti-science freaks need to learn from Sri Lanka how costly and deadly that Fallacy is too:

The Crisis in Sri Lanka Rekindles Debate Over Organic Farming
https://time.com/6196570/sri-lanka-crisis-organic-farming/

Sri Lanka’s Organic Experiment Went Very, Very Wrong
https://modernfarmer.com/2022/03/sri-lanka-organic-experiment/

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake,

Instead of sunscreen, perhaps less time in the Sun would be best. What are you on about, or all about, or just on? Pick your prepositional phrase.

[jakelafort]

Thanks Beanie.

I’ve never filched or used AI to express my thoughts. I do however throw in literary references from time to time.

First line is Wordsworth. It’s a poem i’ve committed to memory.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

Generally it is mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun. I typically avoid it. Too much of it makes me feel sick. Once in a blue i go out there on a hot summer day. Something stupid like golf or being on a boat.

It is exactly the opposite feeling about sunshine on a cold winter’s day when there is true felicity in apricity. One of my best memories is snowshoing up a mountain off trail after a snow storm. Trudging through deep snow and up, up a steep incline over terrain that is barely passable during summer. The sun shining and illuminating the icicles on the boughs of the evergreens struggling against the accumulated weight of snow and ice and above a china blue sky.

I could rehash my message. To what end? River flows and nobody knows they’re in it.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

@jakelafort – I am a coward too when it comes to the midday sun. Anything over the mid 20’s and I am indoors.  Was I chopping chilies? No, just applying sun-cream. Now I can’t read for the next 30 minutes. Silly Billy. SF 50 good, SF 496 bad. If the logocracy takes hold in the mid 2020’s, I am sure you will be on the front line of the resistance, penning words worth reading.

[Author]

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