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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: July 25th, 2024

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  • Yes, it’s just that eating animals has a distinct history of causing horrible pandemics in humans. See e.g. the 1918 H1N1 pandemic which killed tens of millions and was likely started by hogs or chickens farmed in rural Kansas, swine flu which killed hundreds of thousands and whose name speaks for itself, and COVID-19 which killed millions and is well-understood to have originated in a wet market.

    Besides all the other reasons that it’s terrible, animal agriculture is a hotbed for transmitting zoonotic diseases to humans and combining existing human diseases with animal ones.








  • On the one hand that’s super fair, and I totally understand that. The fact that I’m open to this prospect isn’t me saying that the government shutting down is a good thing unto itself in the same way that being open to chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer isn’t me saying that cytotoxins rule and I love how they make my body feel.

    Another Trump term means a bare minimum of four years where not only is actually important government work not getting done, but its efforts are actively redirected toward harmful ends. (And as we’ve seen from his fascist rhetoric, this likely ends up being much more than four years; even if he does leave office at the end of that term, the US government would spend decades recovering from his fuckery.) The GOP shooting themselves in the foot by making it more likely to get Harris into office and make Congress bluer than it would’ve been would mean that whatever issues the government shutdown would create would be vastly outweighed by the benefits of a functioning government and the avoidance of a second Trump term. It’s not a guarantee, but Harris really needs all the help she can get right now, as this race is still too close for comfort.







  • Christians are routinely taught that god is not just loving (“benevolent”) but all-loving (“omnibenevolent”). Here’s the Pope talking about how “tender” and “astonishing” and “gratuitous” god’s love is. 4:8 of the First Epistle of John in the Bible – part of the de jure and de facto source of truth about god for Christianity – reads: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

    Sure we could reduce that down to “omnibenevolent as long as you love him back”, as e.g. Proverbs 8:17 says “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.” But even then, god heavily abuses those who love him. The Bible tries to justify this bizarre cosmic domestic abuse in the book of Job, but it’s one of the most ridiculous, fucked up stories imaginable where god literally bets with Satan that he can fuck up one of his most devoted follower’s life as much as he wants and he still won’t turn away from him.



  • No, no, you see it’s free will. Which makes total sense, because god can’t possibly foresee what we’re going to do, which is a problem omniscient beings definitely struggle with. Or if he can foresee what we’re going to do and he is omniscient, then he’s not omnibenevolent because he had exact foreknowledge of what was going to happen and let it anyway. After all, why “test” if you already know the precise outcome if not to watch people suffer for fun? If you need people to learn lessons, why can’t you just magically teach them those lessons? And if you’re not capable of this, how are you omnipotent?

    Pick at most two of the three; you can’t have all of them.


  • It’s so fucking comical to me too that they call it “god’s will” when children die of the most horrifying, excruciating diseases imagnable long before they’re capable of understanding what’s happening, but when a pregnant woman makes an informed decision not to die during childbirth over a shrimp living inside her taco, that’s a bridge too far, and the all-mighty creator and ruler of the universe is very disappointed in you for killing one of his children when he was powerless to stop it.

    Sweetie, maybe your fairytale sugar daddy’s will isn’t all that benevolent. 💀



  • The judge sentenced him to 33 1/3 years. In Minnesota, defendants typically serve two-thirds of their sentence in prison and the rest on supervised release.

    Castillo had eight prior felony convictions, including second-degree assault for beating another woman with a hammer in 2014. At the time of the knife attack, Castillo was on intensive supervised release and had a warrant out for his arrest after he failed to show up at a court hearing on charges that he assaulted two correctional officers at the Stillwater state prison in 2020.

    Fingers crossed this worthless piece of shit dies in prison, but it doesn’t seem likely if he’ll only serve about 22 years. I’m usually pretty heavy on rehabilitation, but this one seems too far-gone. Hopefully they can at least get him a ton of psychiatric help and counseling before he’s released on the slim chance he can change.