Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Trump brands critics of Christian nationalism as security threats.

What the difference between a religious exemption and a philosophical one?

Trump says there’s no reason to be good except to get into heaven.

Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton is now advising Texas schools.

Religion is declining worldwide in a predictable sequence, study argues.

The Vatican, a great driver of births.

Nonreligious Americans might not be as spiritual as we thought. That’s more like it!

In Chicago, clergy and faith-based protesters say ICE is threatening their religious freedom. Yes, but that should not be your biggest concern.

No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.

The National Secular Society in the UK welcomes wedding law reform.

Pakistan’s obsession with religious purity fuels minority crisis.

Egypt has rekindled its War on Atheism.

World of Woo:  Anti-aging treatments.

Environment: Climate change is transforming ecosystems in the far north of our planet.

Freedom of Speech is too precious to let slip away.

The real, sinister reason academics keep cancelling each other.

Last week was banned books week.

When did we first invent the idea of gods?

Believers still think that a bad argument is good evidence for a god.

When will the ‘Big Crunch’ happen?

Long Reads:

María Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace prize.

How important is the President’s faith to the electorate?

How SCOTUS is dismantling the Separation of Church and State.

Meta is awash in Deepfake scam advertising.

All about the Tylenol-Autism brouhaha.

How China is preparing to dominate the world but we’re worrying about the wrong arms race with them.

Sunday Book Club:  Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos:  Sunday book Club reviewed. The roots of religion. The Bible doesn’t say so. The Separation of Church and Hate. ChatGPT in a robot does exactly what experts warned.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week!

[StregaModerator]

Yay!! Thanks Reg!!!

[jakelafortParticipant]

Thanks for that vid re AI Reg.

Muy interesante.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Re the AI video, it is not possible to jailbreak ChatGPT or any LLM either. The presenter is being disingenuous. At best he has modified the way the “voice” reacts to him, which anyone can do in settings.

Most commercial AI systems like OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), Microsoft (Copilot), Perplexity, etc.  all work the same way: the intelligence lives in the cloud, not on the local device which is just a thin client. It sends your text, image, or audio input to remote servers via API, gets the processed result, and displays it. So the only way to “jailbreak” an LLM is to compromise the cloud infrastructure itself.

However, it is not too difficult to download and install an LLM on a reasonably good modern home pc.  It will even run without an Nvidia GPU, but slower.  These are the only setups where you can actually modify weights, prompts, or behavior freely because its on your pc and you own the environment. So anyone claiming to have “hacked” a commercial model is either lying, using an open-source clone, or misunderstanding what’s actually happening.

The easiest way, if anyone is curious, is to download Ollama (a one click Windows installer) or maybe lmstudio. More if you want it. If you want to go full geek mode, then Ollama on a Ubuntu VM or a Windows 11 workstation with 128 GB RAM + RTX 4090 24 GB.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

[UnseenParticipant]

Bondi managed to get through her hearing without answering any substantive question, the list being detailed by Adam Schiff:

[UnseenParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What the difference between a religious exemption and a philosophical one?

One embodies an irrational belief with no need to support it in any way and the is based on facts and a rational argument in support of the belief. Of course, that would mean that someone qualified to examine those the arguments would be available to examine them, which is impractical.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

One embodies an irrational belief with no need to support it in any way

I think there’s more to it than that.  Religious people usually have a strong “conscience” – whether that means humble self-guidance on one hand, or entitled, authoritarian meddling in the affairs of the rest of us, on the other extreme.  They have strongly held views of how things should be, put it that way.

[StregaModerator]

Simon, with the introduction of ‘a personal relationship with Jesus’ concept, no two Christians have the same set of strongly held views  – your post seems to imply that it’s a set based on the religion, rather than on the individual’s pick-and-choose approach to what God wants 🙂

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

Bondi managed to get through her hearing without answering any substantive question, the list being detailed by Adam Schiff:

These combative non-answers remind me of a taught and practiced, primary tactic of LRH’s (inventor of Scientology), when cult members argue with wogs (non cult members): “The best defense is an offense”.

What’s scary (to me) is these Trump lackeys are “in the zone” of not feeling obligated to respect traditional, constitutional requirements of the other two branches of government. Trumps testing every violation he can get away with, while Stephen Miller seems to be managing him as he descends mentally, showing known signs of dementia. We see at times Trump deferring to others in the Oval Office to answer questions. Not to mention his meandering speeches, going off topic or being self-referential, even while on the world stage.

From The Guardian:

Stephen Miller is the most dangerous man in the Trump administration

Plenary authority, or plenary power, means absolute, unlimited, and unchecked power. The power of a king. The power of Caesar, of Hitler, of Stalin.

[UnseenParticipant]

Strega wrote:

Simon, with the introduction of ‘a personal relationship with Jesus’ concept, no two Christians have the same set of strongly held views – your post seems to imply that it’s a set based on the religion, rather than on the individual’s pick-and-choose approach to what God wants 🙂

The “cafeteria Christian” picks and chooses what to believe. The problem is that there is actual scripture.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I am trying to explain to an Irish-American MAGA supporter that it is not the fault of the Democrats that there is a government shutdown. I explained it along the lines of the following:

“That’s not how it works. The House — which the Republicans control — is where all spending bills start. If the House GOP can’t agree among themselves on a budget or a continuing resolution, the government shuts down. Democrats can’t pass a funding bill without House approval, and they don’t have the votes to do that. So blaming Democrats for a shutdown when Republicans hold the gavel is just factually wrong. It’s not politics, it’s basic civics.”

“Blaming Democrats for a shutdown when Republicans control the House is like blaming the passenger because the driver missed the turn. The Freedom Caucus keeps hijacking their own party, and the rest of the country gets stuck in the ditch.”

Am I wrong?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

The “cafeteria Christian” picks and chooses what to believe. The problem is that there is actual scripture.

The problem is, there’s “something for everyone” in the scripture.  God is both vengeful and merciful.  Now, in real life, that is what is required to enforce proper behaviour.  It’s just that some people love the “vengeful” side to the exclusion of the “merciful”.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Viva la resistance!

Execute those vile collaborators. Do it publicly. Muslim Arabs and lefties will be with you.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-870540#google_vignette

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