Anyone else bothered by the grammar in the first panel? Or is it just me?

Yeah, they are in different ridings, though they are adjacent.

From what I understand, Republicans, especially in Florida, put out political ads targeted specifically at Cuban immigrants. They play off the inherent hatred of communism in this demographic to convince them to vote against the “radical Marxist Democrats.”

I grew up with the NIV, so it was just natural. It was also the default option when I went to biblegateway.com to copy the text, so I just rolled with it. I know there are some people who would be scandalized that I didn’t use the KJV, but that’s their problem, not mine.

I wouldn’t argue that the modern BIble “disowns” the OT, but some NT authors were doing their best to sweep it under the rug to make their fledgling religion more palatable to the Greeks and Romans. Early Christianity was just a sect (some might say a heresy) of Judaism, so it wasn’t inititally designed to appeal to Gentiles. With that lens, you can even argue that the apostle Paul is a more important figure in Christianity than Jesus - indeed, I’ve seen this argued a few times.

And you know what? These sorts of topics are a lot more interesting to me now that I don’t feel compelled to believe the traditional interpretation of them. I became far more interested in the development of early Christian theology after I became an atheist, probably because while I was still a Christian I was afraid of what I would find out if I challenged my beliefs at all. Not an unfounded fear as it turned out, given the arc of my life.

I have to put my 25 years of religious education and devotion to use somehow now that I no longer go to church. I figure helping non-belivers better understand Christianity is a pretty worthwhile endeavour.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”

2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)

Here’s the verse that was always given to me to support “the Bible is the word of God and 100% infallible.” Not that it’s not circular, but it does exist.

Remember, the Bible has a lot more in it than folk tales and cultural laws. There are a lot passages that are prophecy, poetry, or theology - sometimes all three at once. It’s just that the stories are a lot easier to remember and internalize.

Bit of an obscure one, but Fire Emblem Gaiden.

There is a miniscule (0.014%) chance for the very first enemies in the game to drop an extremely powerful item that normally isn’t available until much later. Getting it early is absolutely wild because one of its effects is doubling stat gains when leveling up, which can quickly snowball your characters into godhood.

My personal pet peeve is when they play an ad before giving you the menu options.

First, wait thirty seconds for them to tell me how great their mobile app is. Then listen to the options, pick one, find out I picked the wrong one, and have to go back up one level. Now I have to listen to the ad again before I can hear the options.

I don’t care how proud you are of your app, I wouldn’t be calling you if I could solve my problem with it.

I ordered a roller blind through a website. I measured the width down to the millimetre based on their instructions and triple-checked checked the measurement before submitting the order. I also selected the option to indicate that the blind was to be mounted outside my window frame (important for later).

My roller arrived two weeks later and was nearly 3cm shorter than what I had ordered. I only discovered this after I had mounted the brackets on my wall, again using their instructions (which explicitly said to use the measurements I provided in the order).

Customer service first said that this was a normal deduction made to all orders. When I asked them why they would make a deduction after asking for exact measurements in the order form, they said that they deduction was to make sure the blind fits inside the window frame.

I then pointed out that I was mounting the blind outside my window frame, as indicated in my order, and didn’t need the deduction. I also pointed out that while their product page did mention a deduction for rollers being mounted inside of a window frame, there was no indication this would apply to rollers being mounted outside of a frame like mine was. I finally pointed out that the installation instructions made no mention of the deduction and explicitly said to use them measurements from the order. They proverbially shrugged and repeated that the deduction was standard on all orders.

When I asked about a replacement, because I literally had them on record admitting to deliberately sending me a product that was different than what I had paid for, they said they wouldn’t send a replacement until I had donated the first roller to charity and sent them a receipt or thank-you letter.

I did some research just to humour them, and I could not find a charity that would take a roller blind in any condition, let alone one with no mounting hardware. And I don’t live in a small town, so it’s not like there just weren’t charities around - there were plenty, but none of them would take a roller blind. When I pointed this out to customer service, I was told to just drop the roller in a donation box and take a picture. I’m not 100% sure of the by-laws, but that sure sounds like they wanted me to record myself illegally dumping their product.

At this point I was fed up, so I left a nasty review on Google and on their product page. They were too craven to actually post my review to their website, but the Google review went up. Within a few hours they reached back and finally offered me an unconditional replacement. I still had to order a roller that was longer than what I actually needed because there was no result l way to stop them from making the deduction.

My replacement blind finally arrived six weeks after putting in the replacement order, nearly triple the wait time of the initial order.

Also, they didn’t do it to me, but other people who left bad reviews often got snidely told, “we have a 4.7 star rating on Google,” as part of the company’s public response, as if lots of people being satisfied with their products somehow negated the complaints of those who weren’t.

Honestly, I think it depends on the context.

When I played AL I put in the minimum effort. Playing with a random group every week means no one is really going to appreciate it.

On the other hand, my current group is my close friends. Not only did we have to up write a fairly comprehensive backstories, but we also create a bunch of NPCs specifically bonded to our characters that the DM weaves into the plot. It’s really fun and engaging.

Yeah I noticed that too. In an early conversation with Wyll he talks about how he slew a minotaur, which seems improbable for a level 1 or 2 character.

Now maybe he’s lying. I haven’t gotten far enough into the game to find out of he’s actually a complete fraud or not. But as of right now it causes a bit of narrative dissonance.

I’m always a bit amused when these sites and apps say things like, “If you turn off ad personalization, the ads you see won’t be as useful to you.”

My dude, I don’t think I’ve ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life. “Personalizing” them won’t change that.

teenage_wasteland_the_who.mp3

Different problem, same vibe.

I proposed to my wife in the middle of our dingy basement apartment with no one else around. We were going out to dinner with our friends that evening to celebrate her PhD thesis defence. I asked her if she was okay with a public proposal. She said no.

So, I grabbed the ring (which she had helped me in part to pick out) from where I had stashed it and handed it to her with no ceremony or fanfare.

It was honestly more fun waiting for our friends to notice that evening.

My work phone is specifically partitioned to separate personal and work activities. I can’t even copy and paste text between the two sides, they are so disconnected from each other. This is done specifically so people can use their work phone for personal business without cross-contamination.

I still refuse to use my work phone for anything but work. I only log into my personal accounts long enough to install/update a few apps from the Play Store that aren’t allowed on the work side but are still useful (MS Teams, WhatsApp).

Part of that is not wanting to enter a 12 character password every time I want to do anything simple . But the other part is that I just don’t want to mix my personal and work lives more than I have to.

“Yeah, Sauron and the orcs are bent on conquering everything and enslaving everyone, but Denethor is mean to one of his sons, so there are no angels here. I can’t in good conscience support the Free Peoples until he apologises and steps down.”

Despite other flaws, the biggest (or maybe second biggest) issue I had with Solo was Lando’s backstory.

See, I grew up reading some very old, very obscure EU books about Lando. In that series Lando was an expert card player but a poor pilot, and a lot is made of how he won the Millennium Falcon in a game of Sabacc but has no idea how to fly it. The movie reversed this, making him a card cheat.

I’m probably they only person in the world who cares.

But maybe new series, if it ever comes out, will be about Lando and his adventures with Vuffi Raa?

Indeed. I had to be a bit selective as I wanted to reduce the grind while not watering down the difficulty.

I settled mostly on mods that increase the speed of things (particularly fights). I also grabbed some inventory expansion/item stacking mods so fewer runs are needed to get the resources for upgrades

In recently reinstalled Darkest Dungeon with the intent of actually finishing a run - I have 120 hours logged in Steam but have never gotten past medium difficulty dungeons.

I’ve grabbed a bunch of mods to reduce the grind and disabled the distracting DLC so I can focus on making it to the end this time.

> In the “Big Book,” the foundational document of these programs, “Chapter 4: We Agnostics” tells atheists and agnostics that they are “doomed to alcoholic death” unless they “seek Him.” The chapter characterizes non-believers as “handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice.”

This really jumped out at me. What a horrible thing to say about someone, especially someone looking for help.