Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

How Americans feel about religion’s influence in government and public life.

Has the federal government used official authority, public funds, or privileged access to sponsor a Christian-nationalist religious ceremony as part of a national civic celebration?

Trump and senior officials are joining the Rededicate 250 prayer event, which promotes Christian nationalism and rewrites American history around a conservative Christian narrative. Mike Johnson insists that this Christian-nationalist/MAGA religious spectacle “transcends politics” but it is not the role of government to unite America in faith.

MAGA are not restoring religion to public life. They are replacing religion with power worship in religious costume. Don Colossus never wanted to be a king seeking devotional fans. He wanted to be an emperor over submissive sheep who genuflect before power, especially power associated with cruelty, domination, vanity, and wealth. That is not Christianity in any recognizable Gospel sense. It is court religion where Liars for Jesus bow before the emperor because proximity to power feels like holiness to them.

Reform UK wants to bring back prayer as it too is apparently a “Christian Nation”.

World of Woo: Don’t inject your mind with Social Media epistemic toxins.

Environment: How sunburn inspired a new way to store energy.

Is Peak Human coming sooner than we thought?

Nudge theory was all about taking responsibility, but it allowed big business to look the other way. See also Book Club below.

Pluto isn’t a planet for the same reason whales aren’t fish.

New study investigates why people disagree about what’s true.

What physics gets wrong about the idea of “fundamental”.

The New Normal for Antisemitism is where the left assigns Jews excessive guilt and the right assigns Jews excessive power. However, there is no point in arguing endlessly with bigots and idiots, because they are impervious to logic, argues Bret Stephens.

Sunday Book Club: It’s on You.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos: The Valley Forgery. Can Christians please stop doing this? Hell for Children with AronRa. Neil deGrasse Tyson on UFOs, Government Files, and the Physics of Alien Claims.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week!!

I generally try to leave personal commentary out of the main page and just publish the linked headlines. But I am in no mood for any religious bigots or theist bullshit this week. 🙂

[Strega]

Thank you Reg!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Nudge theory was all about taking responsibility, but it allowed big business to look the other way. See also Book Club below.

First, a couple of definitions:

A Shareholder is someone who invests money or capital in a corporate venture and have a say in the running of the venture. The best shareholders who do well for themselves study their investments and have both stock certificates and profit receipts to show for it.

A Stakeholder is just some nobody who wants a say in things without having an investment or without even knowing shit about the venture. See also Busybody, Concerned Citizen, Felicia, Gladys Kravitz, Karen, Influencer, Inquisitor, Mrs Grundy, Punch-Bowl Pisser, SJW, Straight-Edger, and other epithets.

With all that said, somethings don’t need nudging and shareholding is the reason.

Take smoking. Owners of Bakeries, Gourmet Coffee Houses, and Restaurants, don’t want tobacco smoke tainting the smell and taste of their products. They either partition smokers away from everyone or don’t allow smoking at all.

Owners of Apartments, Conominiums, and Lodging don’t want the smell and stain of tobacco in the walls of their properties. Removing such requires expensive stain-removing chemicals like KILZ (which lives up to it’s name in enclosed spaces faster than tobacco smoke) and the smell in carpets requires replacing the carpet. Again no indoor smoking is the rule for such places.

Owners of Textile, Medical, Chemical, and Fuel businesses all prohibit smoking because they don’t want their money-making ventures going up in flames.

Then, of course, there are some things that shouldn’t be nudged, encouraged, coerced, or even given a second thought, like “the current thing” of subjectively defined “Ultra-Processed Foods,” which looks, feels, and smells like a Red Herring to scare people off their appetite and distract from real health problems and their causes.

Oh, and The Conversation needs to be changed to The Yammering if this is standard offerings.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 6 days ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addenda

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What physics gets wrong about the idea of “fundamental”.

Yes, I think a model should be “thorough” as well as “fundamental”.  Some fundamental elements are not just individisible particles – they’re also structural factors, for example, that form the fabric of reality.  So, the fundamental constants of the universe are elements of the model.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Yes Simon but I would treat “fundamental” and “thorough” differently. A model can be thorough by including many relevant factors, but that doesn’t make all those factors fundamental.

What I’m pushing back on is the physics habit of treating “fundamental” as meaning “smallest,” “indivisible,” or “basic ingredient.” I agree that something can be fundamental because it is structurally necessary, not because it is particle-like.

For example, I don’t understand consciousness as fundamental. I understand it as emergent.

That is actually part of my larger point: physics may have too narrow an idea of what counts as fundamental. It often looks for the smallest or most basic “thing,” whereas I think fundamentality may have more to do with the conditions, relations, constraints, and processes from which things emerge.

I’m also actively considering the idea that “Nothing does not exist”. In other words, the universe did not “come from Nothing,” because absolute Nothing is not a physical state. Nor is it empty space, a vacuum, a quantum field, or a potential. Those are already something. Nothing is only a theistic talking point.

So my current view is: everything that exists is emergent and evolves. What we call “fundamental” may not be a final substance or object, but the underlying generative structure that allows emergence and evolution to occur. The universe may not need to “come from Nothing” if “Nothing” is not an actual possible condition, but only an abstract negation.OK, it is just my theory which belongs to me :-)….Like my Block Universe ideas where “the future already exists except we have no memory of it yet”…..:-)

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[jakelafort]

Reg,

That all makes sense to me. Your bronto is pronto and unique. Unlike Block universe in which i am not ruling it out but i am far from convinced.

That article finally gave me a working conept about which i was puzzled. Reductionist which i always observe is being used to criticize or undermine an idea or argument and i always thought it was silly cuz it is like saying you are being too logical. In the context of the article in Sunday School makes sense.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Here is what the future of MAHA could mean for healthcare, although we have also experienced it too many times in the past. Fast forward to 49:45 and watch to 54:20:

Mystery Science Theater 3000 never got real deep into riffing on religion, but when they did, they really hit home! Joel and the Bots could barely take the scene!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I think “mushrooms…and…blue cheese vodka”…have much to answer for 🙂

[Strega]

Make me an omelette of those, Reg and I’ll come visit you!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Mushrooms and blue cheese vodka are part of the MAHA formulary, especially if the blue cheese is unpasteurized. Licking the Giant Gila Monster would also be a prescribed MAHA regimen. All of these make for vivid hallucinations.

“That was nice, but it didn’t help my legs!”

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[jakelafort]

Looky here. A tribute to the Lezbrews.

And they got something for globalize the intifada from the river to the pea.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-896703

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

All that, ‘cept The Trump Phone doesn’t exist:

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