It does. My wife realized that she has outgrown her family. She can’t detach herself from her family, and I think that the aggressive way they hold on to each other fixes a lot of issues.

My own mother doesn’t understand and has an excuse for everything. We were already distancing ourselves 10 years before MAGA, so it doesn’t hurt so much. Watching her say that you MUST BE A GOOD CITIZEN AND LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT after four years of watching her trash talk Biden is a trip. I didn’t particularly care to stand between her and whatever she had to say then, but the hypocritical irony is right there.

Damn, that’s bingo.

It’s bits and pieces at a time. She was a single issue voter. We would talk through points with her and she would think about them and agree.

It helped that she is actually super liberal.

I watched my MIL turn around. The family is split on the topic, but the more the problems compound the less sure the MAGA supporters are becoming of their decisions.

It’s madness IMO to use these passages as justification.

Generally I shy away from people posting Bible verses, but I’m this case it’s relevant.

1 Samuel 15:3 New International Version

3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” Read full chapter Footnotes

1 Samuel 15:3 The Hebrew term refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them; also in verses 8, 9, 15, 18, 20 and 21.

Now, a lot of people get upset when your take things in the Bible out of context, so to be clear this story is about how God rejects Saul because Saul didn’t kill the livestock too. Given the economics of the time, this was the treasure of their people.

This theme is repeated several times throughout the old testament. A neighboring people is threatening Israel, so they wipe them out and destroy everything they own. Outside of Israel, is not an unknown tactic, but this goes further and kings are scolded or punished for keeping something back.

This doesn’t mean Jewish and Christian are bad. Modem Christianity and most other people with reason don’t see these as things we should repeat. I personally feel that this falls under the whole live by the sword/die by the sword statement.

Sorry if invoking the Bible pisses some people off. I have been chewing this for a while and kind of needed to write it out to define my own position.

Thanks for the hints. I was deciding if I was going to watch this once I finally catch up on Welcome to Demon School Iruma.

Even from within the US we are watching the dismantling of our soft power while China has been literally building roads in Africa.

I take it with a measure of salt, but I also don’t hear about Chinese troops showing up to depose a ruler, sink fishing boats, or close a major oil shipping route.

Great in Connect as well. It actually was better just scrolling by then my usual need to select and zoom.

Well, I’m glad you made it out of there.

Did your home have awnings? I have heard that just keeping the sun off is most of the work.

The tech has changed significant over the years as well, and that includes both modular, prefab, and mobile homes.

It’s out grandchildren that won’t need two sets of wrenches. Maybe.

My best advice is to be aware of the punch line.

I’m with you, 100%. Each of these big corpos is creating massive ecosystems to entrap users.

It’s advertised as cloud storage and incredibly dependable. It business leaders tell people that the cloud is the best because they use it. What they fail to tell you is that you don’t meyet to them and they will delete you for any reason.

I didn’t have AC until I was almost an adult in the late 90s. It regularly gets to be about body temperature outside, with humidity, in the summer. Heat waves can sometimes be 110f/43c. When I first lived in a home with AC I was freezing and had to wear long sleeves all summer. I have since acclimated, but my wife and kids who have always had AC freak out if it gets to be 80f/27c.

“Dear fellas, I can’t believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they’re everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.” - Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption.

Children are fantastic at injuring themselves. My oldest, now grown, really wanted to touch the candle flame. No amount of removing him from the situation and telling him it was hot stopped him from trying to touch the fire. He learned the hard way. If he had panicked I could see him lightning himself on fire.

Idk. I thought the whole point was to keep people in the Google ecosystem.