You are correct, the minotaur and the golden fleece are different stories, I mixed them up. It was Theseus who brought down the minotaur, not Jason. Oops.
Only replying because this piqued my historical interest:
Aztecs had routine ritual wars where they'd go to war with client states or rival states in order to kidnap people for the purpose of their religious sacrifices. They'd capture such people alive so they could engage in routine murderous rituals in order to keep the sun coming up another day. It's one of the reasons the Spanish had such an easy time conquering the continent, because everyone was like "Oh, your Christian God doesn't ask for human sacrifices? I'm in."
Another good example would be the Assyrian Empire, which was famously brutal, based on their religious ideology which essentially made their king the instrument of the God of War and only doing their religious duty if they were brutally massacring outsiders -- not just defeating them, but being truly brutal such as forcing their enemies to grind the bones of their dead women and children and bragging about it on their carvings. In the end, the rest of Mesopotamia put their grudges aside for the sole purpose of wiping the Assyrians off the map. Some of the Assyrian actions would be considered genocide by the current definitions of such things, including mass killings. The destruction of Elam was absolutely brutal, and they relished their eradication of a people and their gods. While this is from the region from which Abrahamic religion would be codified, at this time they worshipped patron deities of particular cities and while the beginnings of that genealogy of faiths was starting to exist, it wasn't related to the Assyrians who were still engaged in the pre-axial age polytheistic fear-based religions.
One hypothesized reason for the total erase of the Minoan civilization during the bronze age collapse despite their advanced culture and large range of influence was that they practiced human sacrifices and the various tribes which were expected to provide human sacrifices as tribute. Under this hypothesis, when the various factors caused the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the people who fled from there refused to keep learning to read and write because those were tools for atrocity and so the only relic of the civilization was an ancient story of the golden fleece.
Two other examples would be ancient Egyptians who were already ancient at the time of the Assyrians, and the ancient Chinese (particularly the Shang dynasty), both of whom would bury entire retunes with their dead in the religious hopes that in the next life the powerful would have their servants.
As I understand it, ancient Hindu kings would also engage in ritualized warfare which would kill people.
Different religions had different purposes. Ancient religions were for dealing with the randomness and fear of a world ancient humanity had no tools to understand, and one of the ways of dealing with stress like that is trying to bargain with the primal powers of the world, sometimes by throwing a piece of meat to the tiger in the form of a human sacrifice.
Later religions tried something new, because the Axial age had a requirement that humans deal with routinely interacting with people beyond dunbar's number, but abrahamic religions would of course still have those fear-based attributes because a historical Abraham would have lived during that age of fear-based religions.
One final note about religions is that a religion without teeth dies, so some aspect of violence or sacrifice must remain. I like to use the example of Christianity in North Africa -- it was a soft and fluffy religion, and was wiped out by the spread of the Islamic caliphate as it spread from the Arabian Peninsula. Western Europe survived in part because it wasn't just soft and fluffy, it also had the strength of Nordic and Germanic warrior cultures and old pagan religions that are a bit spiky. Hindu religion had an incredibly powerful culture, but at its most decadent around the 9th century, India was conquered by the Muslims very successfully despite being outnumbered 100 to 1.
Aztecs had routine ritual wars where they'd go to war with client states or rival states in order to kidnap people for the purpose of their religious sacrifices. They'd capture such people alive so they could engage in routine murderous rituals in order to keep the sun coming up another day. It's one of the reasons the Spanish had such an easy time conquering the continent, because everyone was like "Oh, your Christian God doesn't ask for human sacrifices? I'm in."
Another good example would be the Assyrian Empire, which was famously brutal, based on their religious ideology which essentially made their king the instrument of the God of War and only doing their religious duty if they were brutally massacring outsiders -- not just defeating them, but being truly brutal such as forcing their enemies to grind the bones of their dead women and children and bragging about it on their carvings. In the end, the rest of Mesopotamia put their grudges aside for the sole purpose of wiping the Assyrians off the map. Some of the Assyrian actions would be considered genocide by the current definitions of such things, including mass killings. The destruction of Elam was absolutely brutal, and they relished their eradication of a people and their gods. While this is from the region from which Abrahamic religion would be codified, at this time they worshipped patron deities of particular cities and while the beginnings of that genealogy of faiths was starting to exist, it wasn't related to the Assyrians who were still engaged in the pre-axial age polytheistic fear-based religions.
One hypothesized reason for the total erase of the Minoan civilization during the bronze age collapse despite their advanced culture and large range of influence was that they practiced human sacrifices and the various tribes which were expected to provide human sacrifices as tribute. Under this hypothesis, when the various factors caused the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the people who fled from there refused to keep learning to read and write because those were tools for atrocity and so the only relic of the civilization was an ancient story of the golden fleece.
Two other examples would be ancient Egyptians who were already ancient at the time of the Assyrians, and the ancient Chinese (particularly the Shang dynasty), both of whom would bury entire retunes with their dead in the religious hopes that in the next life the powerful would have their servants.
As I understand it, ancient Hindu kings would also engage in ritualized warfare which would kill people.
Different religions had different purposes. Ancient religions were for dealing with the randomness and fear of a world ancient humanity had no tools to understand, and one of the ways of dealing with stress like that is trying to bargain with the primal powers of the world, sometimes by throwing a piece of meat to the tiger in the form of a human sacrifice.
Later religions tried something new, because the Axial age had a requirement that humans deal with routinely interacting with people beyond dunbar's number, but abrahamic religions would of course still have those fear-based attributes because a historical Abraham would have lived during that age of fear-based religions.
One final note about religions is that a religion without teeth dies, so some aspect of violence or sacrifice must remain. I like to use the example of Christianity in North Africa -- it was a soft and fluffy religion, and was wiped out by the spread of the Islamic caliphate as it spread from the Arabian Peninsula. Western Europe survived in part because it wasn't just soft and fluffy, it also had the strength of Nordic and Germanic warrior cultures and old pagan religions that are a bit spiky. Hindu religion had an incredibly powerful culture, but at its most decadent around the 9th century, India was conquered by the Muslims very successfully despite being outnumbered 100 to 1.
I only saw a short video, but those rockets seemed to massively change direction quickly. Probably hard to shoot down something moving so erratically.
"Sir, this is a vacuum cleaner store."
"How did I find a series of vacuum cleaner stores this day in age?"
"How did I find a series of vacuum cleaner stores this day in age?"
Most brutal platform for federation I saw was php -- Friendica took forever to federate when I used it, but even kbin was pretty slow. (Though community based federated systems like kbin use way more everything than simple mastodon style federation)
I guess it isn't like they can put a tiny camera everywhere and try to see the molecules on tick teeth.
I recently wrote in one of the essays for one of my next books that space is not the final frontier -- there are new frontiers everywhere, we just need to understand they're there and underexplored.
I recently wrote in one of the essays for one of my next books that space is not the final frontier -- there are new frontiers everywhere, we just need to understand they're there and underexplored.
Alpha-gal syndrome sounds like something a manosphere youtuber would come up with. "These areas have lots of women who get alpha-gal syndrome, they get educated, they get jobs, they buy houses! Who are these people!"
The reality of it being an allergy to a specific sugar molecule found in mammal meat after it is injected into the bloodstream by ticks is something way more interesting (and tragic for people who get it). The world is infinitely more complex than we might imagine it is, isn't it?
The reality of it being an allergy to a specific sugar molecule found in mammal meat after it is injected into the bloodstream by ticks is something way more interesting (and tragic for people who get it). The world is infinitely more complex than we might imagine it is, isn't it?
New York City, 2 years before the first federal income tax, and 60 years before the first permanent state and federal income taxes.
The one thing that's a little bit different between the two is I would expect a web company like Mozilla could locally have whatever servers they need, which fundamentally changes the calculus. Paying for hosting separately on something as dynamic as the fediverse would get a lot more expensive.
Yeah, because everything has to fit with their brand image.
It's not easy letting go.
It's not easy letting go.
Around 2015 I had an Alienware laptop, and if I'm being totally honest, it wasn't worth the premium. As you said, if you can get a latitude with the specs, it's just a much better device, probably because they don't want to deal with all the issues of enterprise devices constantly being returned u der warranty en masse.
I know Mozilla needs to cut cut cut since the Google gravy train is going away imminently, but I'm surprised their mastodon instance is even on the radar.
I guess I just think of something like that as basically free, especially since mine is basically free.
I guess they can't run it that way though, since they're not an open web organization but an activist organization. That being the case, they need top down dictatorial control and that costs big money.
I guess I just think of something like that as basically free, especially since mine is basically free.
I guess they can't run it that way though, since they're not an open web organization but an activist organization. That being the case, they need top down dictatorial control and that costs big money.
Interestingly, a lot of the boomer/millennial kids shows like sesame Street basically have no influence anymore. They're showing up on YouTube channels to scavenge some scraps of relevance.
Logically debunking activist claptrap
If leftist activists are correct and black people can never be racist because racism is prejudice plus power, and white people are always prejudiced then:
1. Racism = Prejudice + Power
2. White people always hold power in all circumstances
3. Black people never hold power in any circumstance
4. White people are inherently prejudiced
So if this is true, then...
1. White people always have power anywhere they exist
2. Therefore in terms of having power, white people are always superior to black people.
3. Meaning, by the premises of critical theory as practiced by activists, honest white people are logically mandated to be prejudiced (at least in this one respect) within the bounds of activist CRT logic, becuase they always have power in all situations, and thus are always superior in this regard.
But why is racism wrong?
1. Racism is typically considered wrong because it is unfair -- if someone is capable of something but is kept from their potential by being prejudged as incapable due to race, then that's unfair.
But...
1. If racism is wrong because it is unfair, and critical theory logically proves that it isn't unfair, then racism isn't wrong.
2. It might look at first like the racism is instrumental to power due to our own biases, but that can't be the case because our axioms hold that white people always hold power, meaning that even in a scenario where there's one white and millions of blacks, the white holds power, suggesting that the white's mere whiteness gives them inherent power.
I don't believe in critical race theory, so I don't believe in any of the foundational statements above other than racism being wrong because it is unfair. I think of racism as any idea that one race is inherently superior to another, an older definition that doesn't self-refute like CRT racism does.
I do need to make sure I'm clear that I'm only talking about the activist version of CRT. Academic CRT may make mistakes, but not basic mistakes like this.
This also shows how postmodern-modernism is self-defeating. All you need to do in order to fix this is to accept that some black people have power and some white people don't and all the logic falls apart, but then you can't make the statement that black people can't be racist because racism is prejudice plus power which as I've shown is inherently white supremacist in its logic.
In fact, someone like Thomas Sowell (He's a world renowned economist) is inherently superior in all ways to Cletus the Goat Fucker (He fucks goats), and most people would admit that.
1. Racism = Prejudice + Power
2. White people always hold power in all circumstances
3. Black people never hold power in any circumstance
4. White people are inherently prejudiced
So if this is true, then...
1. White people always have power anywhere they exist
2. Therefore in terms of having power, white people are always superior to black people.
3. Meaning, by the premises of critical theory as practiced by activists, honest white people are logically mandated to be prejudiced (at least in this one respect) within the bounds of activist CRT logic, becuase they always have power in all situations, and thus are always superior in this regard.
But why is racism wrong?
1. Racism is typically considered wrong because it is unfair -- if someone is capable of something but is kept from their potential by being prejudged as incapable due to race, then that's unfair.
But...
1. If racism is wrong because it is unfair, and critical theory logically proves that it isn't unfair, then racism isn't wrong.
2. It might look at first like the racism is instrumental to power due to our own biases, but that can't be the case because our axioms hold that white people always hold power, meaning that even in a scenario where there's one white and millions of blacks, the white holds power, suggesting that the white's mere whiteness gives them inherent power.
I don't believe in critical race theory, so I don't believe in any of the foundational statements above other than racism being wrong because it is unfair. I think of racism as any idea that one race is inherently superior to another, an older definition that doesn't self-refute like CRT racism does.
I do need to make sure I'm clear that I'm only talking about the activist version of CRT. Academic CRT may make mistakes, but not basic mistakes like this.
This also shows how postmodern-modernism is self-defeating. All you need to do in order to fix this is to accept that some black people have power and some white people don't and all the logic falls apart, but then you can't make the statement that black people can't be racist because racism is prejudice plus power which as I've shown is inherently white supremacist in its logic.
In fact, someone like Thomas Sowell (He's a world renowned economist) is inherently superior in all ways to Cletus the Goat Fucker (He fucks goats), and most people would admit that.