P.S. Pluto is still a planet; I don’t give a flying fuck what NGT says

The problem is that it makes no sense to say that there’s 9 planets.

If Pluto is a planet, then Eris, Makemake etc. are planets. The question is really just one of terminology - do we want to have 8 planets, a dozen or two planets, or many more planets?

When the first asteroid was discovered, we called it a planet until we realized there were a ton of similar objects and made a new term for them. Doing something similar for Pluto doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal.

From the article:

However, this study shows that low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets may not be the healthiest strategy for promoting longevity, as their short-term benefits could potentially be outweighed by long-term risk.

If you read the study, the lowest mortality is around 50% of calories from carbohydrates. There’s a u-shaped curve, although low carb seems more dangerous than high carb.

That seems to suggest something like the Mediterranean diet or a traditional Japanese diet, not very low fat diets.

That really depends on what his particular diagnosis is - are these mini strokes, seizures, or something else?

If he’s having seizures, that doesn’t mean he needs to be in a home.

And going deeper shows that the Mosaic Law (the laws in the old testament, excluding the ten commandments), part of which is in your second block quote, was superceded by the Law Covenant when Jesus died. Again, it was a law directed specifically at Jews of the time.

While rabbis don’t agree on much, the official line of all the denominations is that messianic Jews are Christians, not Jews.

Every “rabbi” that accepts that the Torah was superceded by Jesus is a messianic Jew, basically by definition. That makes them not a rabbi, but a Christian minister in cosplay.

Examples of people doing bad things in the name of the Bible is not evidence of anything against the Bible.

Christianity, and catholicism more specifically, are more than just the Bible itself.

Religious teachings evolve over time based off of new reinterpretations of old passages, teachings from influential leaders, folk traditions that spring up, etc. Those are all part of the religion, too.

For example, most Christians would say that the serpent in the garden of eden is Satan. Yet Genesis doesn’t say anything about that, and the New Testament doesn’t explicitly say it either. Mostly, it’s a folk tradition some people found a couple verses you could squint at to support it.

And particularly in the case of Catholicism, there’s a world of difference between a pope issuing an official bull, and your neighbor being a catholic who happens to be a shitty person. There’s a huge difference between a random person teaching to be nice to your neighbor but shitty to outsiders, and for St Jerome to do that.

Britain uses the same system and has some successful third parties like the Scottish National Party.

Regional third parties tend to dramatically outperform national ones. Because FPTP does best with 2 candidate elections, but those 2 candidates don’t have to be in the same party across every district.

For presidential elections - yeah. You run a third party candidate like Nader, you get Bush. You run Perot, you get Clinton.

Not everyone who considers Deuteronomy to be scripture is Christian. For example, basically any rabbi would disagree with you.

The Deuteronomic code is literally presented as instruction from Moses to Israel as a normative set of rules for israel to follow. Many of the rules in it are included in the traditional lists of the Torah’s 613 commandments.

I don’t know of similar commandments in the new testament, but it’s had its fair share of religious leaders inciting sectarian wars, pogroms, persecution, etc. For example, Pope Paul IV wrote a decree that forced the Jews of Rome into a ghetto in 1555, prevented them from owning property or working most skilled jobs. The Spanish Inquisition primarily targeted Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity under threat of exile.

Ish.

Many religions are more “don’t be a dick to your fellow brothers in faith, but feel free to be a dick to others”. In-group out-group dynamics were historically quite important.

You know - “don’t murder”, but at the same time Deuteronomy says

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.

Also

(19) “You are not to lend at interest to your brother, no matter whether the loan is of money, food or anything else that can earn interest. 21 (20) To an outsider you may lend at interest, but to your brother you are not to lend at interest, so that Adonai your God will prosper you in everything you set out to do in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it.

Right - that would require enough battery and processing power to make it obvious that it’s doing something like that.

Your devices recording you is something that doesn’t happen.

That requires a lot of bandwidth, or a lot of battery and a little bandwidth. There’s no evidence of that happening.

Honestly, the creepier thing is that they don’t have to to get creepily accurate ads.

Geolocation data means they know who you spend time with. They also know their search history. They know your interests. They can look at what people who seem similar to you search for.

Plus, they serve you a lot of ads so they can afford to have a lot of misses.

The DoE was preceded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The organizational structure has changed substantially over the centuries, sometimes being a standalone department and sometimes being an office in a larger department. But that is essentially window dressing.

Ultimately, the DoE goes back to 1867. It’s been around for a while.

Ramaswamy isn’t suggesting shuffling it into another department. He’s suggesting getting rid of those functions entirely. Getting rid of the $80 million it spends on student loans, grants, anti discrimination enforcement and national education statistics, and “putting it in the hands of parents”.

The department of education handles things like student loans, grants, distributing other federal funding, collecting national education statistics, and enforces federal antidiscrimination law.

It doesn’t manage accreditation, curricula, etc.

Economies of agglomeration, similar to Amazon. Having one app to order everything from is very convenient and the average person prefers that.

American eggs have a longer shelf life, but it’s because they’re refrigerated rather than left out at room temp.

Hell, in a car, is other drivers.

Seriously, watch the fight at the end of the Phantom Menace. It’s fun but it’s not good.

There’s a lot of times where Obi Wan and Qui Gon take turns attacking, and visibly waste time to avoid attacking simultaneously. There’s a bunch of times where they’re really obviously attacking Maul’s saber, not Maul. Attacks that are obviously out of distance. That sort of thing. Ray Park is a great, award winning martial artist, but Liam Neeson and MacGregor aren’t, and it really shows.

Compare it to the Maul vs Ahsoka fight at the end of Clone Wars. Being able to motion capture two great martial artists makes a big difference vs having to teach an actor fight choreography. It’s still flashy and has some silliness in it, but it looks much better.

Land value taxes are quite rare in the US.

A property tax and a land value tax are a bit different: a land value tax taxes the unimproved value of a plot, while a property tax taxes the total value, including the assessed value of the buildings on the land.

One effect of property taxes is that a parking lot downtown pays a fraction of what an apartment building next door pays. With a land value tax, they pay the same, which discourages land speculation by encouraging efficient uses of land.

And we’ve certainly never gone as far as Georgism, which suggests a land value tax as the main or only source of government funding, set to be around what an unimproved lot on the same location would lease for.

Transcription is usually something done for deaf people. Like people transcribing memes for the blind.

They put a rover on the moon.

This is much more similar to the Mars rovers than to Apollo. Those were still much more expensive than this was. Although for understandable reasons like cost of living in US vs India and salary differences.

Manned missions are more expensive in part because humans and human life support is really heavy. The Saturn V is still the most powerful rocket ever launched. Those things were expensive.

Thrawn was carried away by giant hyperspace whales in the finale of Rebels.

The map has stylized hyperspace whales on it. It’s presumably an ancient hyperspace whale migration map or something.