It has taken the better part of 50 years to get from there to here. I wouldn’t say it was easy.

The evangelical bloc was the hardest to convince. They had to get some capitalist representation in the churches to counteract all of that business about “helping the poor” and “blessed be the meek” that Jesus was always going on about.

Once they got Joel Osteen to convince millions of viewers that Jesus wanted them to be rich, that really clinched it for them.

Every case of a random person hiring a “hitman” that I have heard of has, in fact, been someone hiring an undercover cop. And the people soliciting the services went to jail for a good long while.

There’s a big cake mix manufacturing plant near where I grew up, and I knew a lot of people who worked there. They all confirmed that the only difference between the name brand cake mix and the store brand they made was the box they put it into at the end of the process.

That’s because there will alway be new 10-year-olds who are just discovering “new” parts of the Internet. They are growing up with the enshittification, so they don’t know that things were better before they were born.

This.

My husband swears by his Nintendo Pro controller, but he also has historically liked Xbox controllers.

Those options are too large to be comfortable in my hands, so I tend to go for undocked JoyCons and PlayStation controllers because they are better fits for me.

I use a PS4 controller for PC gaming. I definitely wouldn’t buy a specific controller for my PC without actually holding a sample in my hands first.

Though the divorce judge found there was evidence that Hawkins had physically abused the oldest son, the judge said in his ruling that was “one instance that does not involve either of the two children at issue.”

As far as information in the article, it sounds like the two kids in court-ordered Christian therapy are the only two the guy didn’t (allegedly) abuse.

But still, the whole thing is disgusting. These children should be protected from such an abusive garbage human. Their mother is doing the right thing.

I don’t understand how it’s legal for a court to order religion-based therapy that costs $1500 per month. That’s absolutely insane from every possible angle.

I would like to know what source you have for claiming that pedophiles are “born the way they are.”

We understand some of the genetic and intrauterine developmental reasons for homosexuality, being trans, etc. That has scientific backing, and our understanding continues to grow and expand.

Lumping child predators in with consenting adults smacks of the evangelical slippery slope argument against all forms of what they consider to be “sexual deviance.” I’m not buying it.

There are multiple references to this in the Bible. This is the most uplifting one I found.

Psalm 90

10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.

12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

13 Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.

14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Not all protestants do this, BTW.

US politics have moved so far to the right that I’m pretty sure contemporary moderate Democrats are nearly interchangeable with Reagan-era Republicans.

He’s an actor whose biggest role was playing Hercules on a low-budget show on a third-tier network in the 90s. Now, as far as I know, he’s only getting work in shitty evangelical movies.

A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I don’t see “Caper” yet.

“Thanks for stopping by; thanks for breaking my cow lamp,” is still common parlance in our household.

And “The Cheat Is Not Dead” is a classic Strongbad hit.

I wonder what would happen if the world found out that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (or any other celebrity/athlete/role model) was using Chat GPT to respond to fan mail. My gut feeling is that people would find it disingenuous at best – and there would probably be significant outrage.

Where’s the AI that does my dishes and cleans my house so I have more time to write, create, and connect with others? That’s the technology I want – not one that does the meaningful part and leaves the menial stuff up to me.

The convicted felon?

It’s pretty telling that they are trying to portray Marxists, Hermeticists, Luciferians, and Gnostics as united – or possibly even as the same group. Those circles of the Venn diagram might share some overlap, but (in my experience) their goals and principles aren’t very similar.

Taxi accessibility varies wildly depending on where you are.

I lived in a small city (700k-ish people) for a decade and almost never saw a taxi on the streets. One morning, I locked my keys in the house and had to call a cab to take me to work. It took 30 minutes for a taxi to arrive. I lived literally one block away from the city’s taxi depot.

A couple of years later, Uber hit the scene. With their service, I never waited more than 8 minutes for a ride anywhere in the city.

Just the one time, I think.

All true. But because teaching is historically “women’s work,” it is undervalued and underpaid.

Most teachers I know have at least Master’s degrees, yet we’re paid less than B.A.s start at in many fields. I took a 20k/year pay cut when I became a teacher, despite having received a Master’s degree before entering the field.

Until we value teaching as much as we value other types of work, we’re not going to attract large numbers of qualified people, whether they’re men or women.

We also would have accepted Rusty Shackleford.