I’ll help you on your quest for downvotes because this seems fun.

American religious anti-intellectualism as we know it really started with the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism in the 1890s-1900s. But it goes in phases: Pentecostalism emerges in the 1900s, fundamentalism and the rejection of modernity and science in the 1930s, anti-liberalism and various “youth” movements in the 1950s, television ministries and mega churches in the 1970s, religious political conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of the non-denominational “bible follower” churches in the 2000s.

But America also experienced several “awakenings” in the 1800s, which gave rise to all sorts of new flavors of spiritualism and Christianity ranging from Mormons to abolitionists. And there’s the rise of the (literal) Salvation Army in the US in the 1880s (but we really have the UK to thank for them).

It’s been incubating here for a long, long time.

Thanks! I registered a domain with cloudflare and that was easy enough. I’ll read up on some alternative providers and see how this all shakes out.

Would I need to do anything with the custom domain beyond registering it for this to work with an email provider?

Because this sounds like a great migration plan: set up a custom domain, add it to protonmail, update emails, export data, and then switch providers.

I’m just a bit clueless on the whole setting up a custom domain part.

I understand what you were going for with this comment but I think you wildly missed the mark.

I don’t expect presidents to be knowledgeable on all subjects either. I expect leaders to surround themselves with experts as well, but Trump has a long history of disagreeing with and firing his advisors and staff whenever he is wrong. This isn’t because he was in real estate, it’s because he is a narcissist and treats learning as a bruise to the ego.

I expect heads of state to take the time to know why they are visiting a place or attending an event. For all the planning and preparation for the tour and the ridiculous travel time to get to Hawaii from the east coast, you expect me to believe that the President couldn’t be bothered to at least look it up on Wikipedia? Not even considering that the president doesn’t just show up randomly at places.

Didn’t look it up, didn’t ask before hand, didn’t listen to any briefing, didn’t pay attention to where he was going. This isn’t because his background is in real estate, it’s because he is a selfish, inconsiderate, ignorant fool.

And for the record, I’d expect the president of the Union to at least understand the importance of Gettysburg.

I haven’t seen Evil Dead Rise yet, so no opinion. Do you recommend it?

• The Thing (1982)
  • This is one of my (and the rest of the internet’s) favorite 80s sci-fi horror movie, but it’s also a remake of The Thing From Another World (1951) and is based on a novella titled, Who Goes There? (1938).
• The Fly (1986)
  • Who needs Vincent Price when you’ve got Cronenberg, Goldblum, and Davis?
• Suspiria (2018)
  • This was a sleeper hit for me. Great soundtrack and cinematography. It put the creepiness back in Argento.
• The Ring (2002)
  • Not my personal favorite but this movie did more to raise the profile of Japanese and Korean horror than anything.
• Evil Dead 2 (1987)
  • Is it a sequel? A re-imagining? A hallucination? I don’t know, but this is my go-to Evil Dead. The 2013 remake gets an honorable mention for being bloody, dark, and chaotic just like it should be.

My bet is also on they wildly underestimated what employable means (or overestimated the value of their skills and experience).

I’m also laughing over here at “long terms gains” of Trump’s policies. Unless this person is one of the billionaire class, there are no long term gains. The people who will benefit from whatever Trump and co. are up to wouldn’t be “out of a job,” they’d just transition to a new role either at the same company or another or be immune from the whole thing altogether.

I think strategically used tariffs (i.e. used in trade negotiations for specific sectors or items, not unilateral tariffs) can convince a country to export items at a price that benefits one country more than the other, usually in tandem with an agreement to reciprocate. Basically, countries agree to trade at certain rates or exclusively sell. Tariffs are the “bad cop” of trade negotiations.

The tariff isn’t what lowers the price, it’s the threat of the tariff that lowers the price or keeps it stable.

Imagine Canada exports maple widgets at $10 a piece to reflect the true cost of manufacture. The US says that is too high, our people can’t afford that price once it’s on the shelves, so how about you export them for $8? To sweeten the deal, we’ll export freedom widgets to you at reduced cost.

Canada responds saying $8 for maple widgets is too low, $10 is firm and we’ll deal with the current cost of freedom widgets. The US threatens a targeted tariff on maple widgets at 25% which doesn’t affect the price of maple widgets in Canada or their sale price to importers in the US, but importers in the US have to pay $2.50 in tax on top of the purchase cost for maple widgets which drives up the cost for US consumers.

This results in the price of the item increasing in the US $4.50 over the price determined to be “affordable” which will result in reduced imports and reduced purchases of maple widgets by consumers. Canada now has to find somewhere else to sell their maple widgets since the US isn’t buying at the same rate which drives down the value of maple widgets in Canada.

And if the US was feeling particularly vengeful at being denied their cheap steady supply of maple widgets, they could convince other countries to not buy Canadian widgets at all or impose a blanket ban on all Canadian goods (see: how the US obliterated the economy of Cuba because of “communism” which was really just Cuba not wanting to be the US’s sugar plantation anymore).

Canada will evaluate this and determine that selling maple widgets is essential to their economy and less profit for their maple widget industry is an agreeable trade compared to the US not buying at all.

but surely him rising again is more important than his death?

Depends on how fixated a faith is on the “sacrifice of the Lamb.” There’s one interpretation that Jesus’ suffering and death is what appeased God and fulfilled the prophecy and ended the law of Moses. If you’re the kind of person that buys into God being the sort of deity that wants to kill himself in order to satisfy his own bloodlust, then yeah, I could see Christ’s death being the more important part.

Surely the resurrection should be emphasized as the result, but the death is what God demanded to atone for the sins of the world. The resurrection was just proof that he held up his end of the bargain.

I think that the Christ story suffers from the audience knowing details about the story that the characters don’t to the point that the big miracle at the end falls flat. Everyone just ends up focusing on the mechanics of Christs death rather than its purpose.

I like your perspective and wish Christianity aligned more with your post than whatever it’s doing now.

I’m not Christian, but I have observed that the worship of the cross and Christ’s death is directly tied to the theological idea of salvation, especially with evangelicals. If his death is the single most important part of your faith, then the cross becomes a symbol and reminder that you’re saved and not going to hell. It was primed to become a symbol and eventually an idol.

I also think historically the cross as a symbol for Christianity comes from the Greek letter chi (x) in the spelling of Christ. “X-tians” was a shorthand form way before the “taking Christ out of Christmas” nonsense.

But to the original point of the Klan burning the cross: I’ve read that they argue that cross burning is a medieval European affirmation of faith, something that is doing double duty of arguing that it’s an expression of their faith and connecting them to their “racial” roots.

I know this. You know this. The judges know this. The jury knows this.

This does damage by subjecting the teachers to suspensions, trials, legal fees, etc. to the point that they take a plea bargain or resign. It makes the schools hyper-sensitive.

If the courts don’t throw these cases out immediately, then the tactic worked.

The New Colossus was released during Trump’s first term and it was really cathartic to play during the shit storm. The game even pissed off the “alt-right.” The New Order and The Old Blood are much better at “endless destruction of Nazis” though.

Might be time to reinstall and play through them again.

How many people comply without being physically forced is what determines how much power he truly has.

That’s why the reduction of protections for federal employees was so important to implementing this phase. A lot of people have already been fired or reassigned which makes it really difficult for them to “do” anything.

Right on. I was just outlining how they’d probably make it personal against the teachers.

It works like this:

• Teach at a public school
• That school receives funding directly or indirectly from federal programs under the executive branch, including the Department of Education
• DEI support disqualifies institutions from receiving Federal funds
• Supporting DEI and trans rights while receiving Federal funds counts as defrauding the US government
• DOJ takes up the case

While EOs are not laws, they have the potential to do massive amounts of damage because most of the government runs on agencies under control of the Executive. And while universities and public schools are not federal, they receive shit tons of funds through grants, contracts, and subsidies from a wide array of federal agencies (see: academic panic at the NSF and NIH halting grant review and funding as a result of Trump’s recent orders).

Well, true. I wasn’t exactly implying that Trump was reading a history book and learned all about McKinley. More like he said, “we should be strong and take land that we want and undo everything Obama and Biden did and tax our enemies and have gold everything,” and someone replied, “oh, sounds like McKinley.” To which Trump replies, “Obama renamed a great president?”

You’re probably right about it just being petty, but…

President McKinley also annexed territory (Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, Cuba, etc.), implemented insane tariffs, and pushed to keep the US on the gold standard.

Looks like Jackson isn’t the only president that Trump idolizes.

Sounds plausible. The quote I always use is “LIIIINE!” from the dinner table scene where the camera jumps back and forth between them but they don’t speak for like 5 minutes.

Is this enshittification or the convergence of objects into the same design due to regulation/demand/function/etc. (I’m sure there’s a name for this but I can’t recall it)?

Cell phones are certainly enshittified with planned obsolescence or incompatible text messaging protocols or ‘walled gardens’, but what else should a cell phone be besides a cellular networked pocket computer with a camera?

What features (besides a dedicated headphone jack) is missing from a modern cell phone that your old one had?