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FirstCircle

@ FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

Posts
29
Comments
25
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Texas Republicans may regret mandating Bible in classes

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  • Onishi and his co-host, with their "Straight White American Jesus" podcast, have been hitting it out of the park lately. Last week there was an episode about the Job story where their analysis made the God character come off as a real dick, and also showed how the Satan character is misunderstood badly - in the Job story he kind of works for God as part of his administration and they cooperate on certain projects such as the Job one. Also last week was an analysis of the Garden of Eden story and on the concept of Original Sin. It seems that the poor snake is not some kind of embodiment of the Satan character at all, at least according to the Bible.

  • ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings

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  • Creating a modern do-over of Stalinism mixed with Nazism and Christian theocracy.

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  • Oh, I see. It was satire.

    Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. (wikipedia)

    Not to be confused with sarcasm. In writing it's a well-known (I'd thought) technique going back thousands of years. In pre-Idiocracy times, roughly before the widespread use of cell phones and when people read written texts to become informed and for pleasure, satire was common and there were writers who were well-known for specializing in the mode. The quality of the satire was always debatable (as with the quality of any art offering) but it was normally always recognized as satire by people who were able to read it in the first place. In the case of written satire, while it might be accompanied by illustrations to emphasize one point or another, it didn't require images or animations or the equivalent of "emojis" near the text in question in order to signify to the reader that satire was being employed. The text was self-evident as being satirical, or if not, could be understood from the context to be satire (if it was contained in a satirical book for example).

    As for what I wrote, I would have expected that the absurd concepts (government-controlled turbines designed to change the weather both by harnessing the power of winds and by creating new winds by acting as giant fans; describing these "fans" as being able to move people and extremely heavy machinery with great accuracy, again under government control) and borrowed nutter phraseology along with depictions of nutter-like outrage, would have made it apparent that satire was what was on offer. I understand that some may think if to be of poor quality, but I'm surprised that some people cannot recognize the writing as satire at all.

    Pre-Idiocracy this would rarely have been a problem, even when the writing appeared in a low-context medium such as an isolated web page or in a forum or Usenet posting. It may be that the satirical written form is now, in Idiocratic times, extinct except to specialized academics and historians and other educated elites. That would be a shame because it was a powerful (influential) communication tool and is a pleasure to write and to read.

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  • A what?

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  • I don't know where the Wx radars are around here, but you don't have to drive more than an hour to see a hell of a lot of wind turbines sharing space with crops out on the Palouse . Those turbines absorb wind and therefore they change the weather, right? I'd be very surprised if they can't be run in reverse to generate winds - winds designed to blow farmers and their giant pickups and their farm equipment wherever the government wants them to be. Full government control. Fortunately I see that the small-town intelligentsia are starting to fight back against this kind of out-of control wind turbine government overreach.

  • ‘MAGA HATES FoxNews’: Trump Lashes Out at Murdoch Media Empire in Truth Social Tirade

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  • Agreed. Whenever I hear of the latest internal MAGA feud (fElon, now Faux) it always brings to mind the old-school "professional" wrestling world. 100% scripted and acted-out. It gives the deplorables a "team" to identify with and emotionally bind to (pick a side, doesn't really matter which) so they can stomp and fume and indulge in fantasy violence while society and life continue to grind them down into dirt, pockets picked.

  • News @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Nearly 800 infant remains found in septic tank at nun-run Irish unwed mother and baby home

    www.foxla.com /news/babies-dead-septic-tank-ireland-nuns

  • Far-Right ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag Seen at Jan. 6 Riot Flown Above Government Agency in DC

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  • And every UU congregation I've ever seen has pretty explicitly NOT been Xian. Not even in a watered-down way. I've watched their services online, and there's been no Christ-talk, and no sky-daddy talk at all. I think that each UU congregation has wide leeway to do its own thing, and for most, that thing does not include identifying as Xian.

    "Our beliefs are diverse and inclusive. We have no shared creed. Our shared covenant is expressed through the inseparable and deeply interdependent shared values of interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity, and equity – all centered around love. Although Unitarianism and Universalism both have origins as liberal Christian traditions, today we embrace diverse teachings from many different global religions and philosophies." -- https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe

  • All 17 fired vaccine advisors unite to blast RFK Jr.’s “destabilizing decisions”

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  • Just feck these clickbait headlines containing words like "blast" and "slam". Sorry Ars, no clicky until you grow up and write like adults who have something serious to say.

  • Pussy Riot’s founder built a ‘police state’ in an LA art gallery. Then the national guard arrived

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  • “One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”

  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Patty Murray grills VA secretary over planned layoffs, handling of computer system rollout

    www.spokesman.com /stories/2025/may/06/patty-murray-grills-va-secretary-over-planned-layo/
  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Spokane outlaws discriminating against homeless job applicants

    www.spokesman.com /stories/2025/apr/21/spokane-outlaws-discriminating-against-homeless-jo/

  • AMD’s Lisa Su Breaks Silence on US Chips, TSMC Hikes Pricing

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  • The rise in domestic chip orders is a direct result of former President Donald Trump’s ...

    If only.

    tough export tariffs

    I think they mean import tariffs. The tariffs that domestic buyers pay when importing goods from overseas.

  • Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador | Trump officials are talking internally about denaturalizing American citizens — and potentially sending some to El Salvador

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  • “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

    Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

  • Actually Infuriating @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    We Found Widespread Abuse of Disabled Patients at an Illinois Facility. The DOJ Is Investigating.

    www.propublica.org /article/illinois-disabilities-doj-investigation-choate-abuse

  • Donald Trump suggests US could join British Commonwealth

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  • How well would US Xian nationalists (Christofascists) get along with the CoE? Is the latter, like the former, actively attempting to acquire absolute power over social matters in their country? Would the two be of like minds w/respect to doctrine?

  • Judges, Politicians Who Aren't Backing Down from Trump and Talks of Dictatorship

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  • legal residents are abducted from their houses for saying genocide is a bad thing

    And tortured, with impunity, by government agents.

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  • The memo also proposed IRS detail a dedicated group of several dozen senior IRS auditors to launch investigations into companies suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants.

    I guess I better step on the gas and get work done on my house right now, before the (mostly-MAGA-voting) contractors can no longer get any workers. Probably a good time to stockpile food too, before crops are rotting in the fields because of a lack of workers.

    I guess I'd better put a halt to getting old too, before long-term care facilities run out of staff and shut their doors.

    Within minutes of showing up, a twenty-something software engineer dispatched from DOGE began demanding access

    I'm in software and I can guarantee you these punks are absolutely reveling in the feeling that they're the "elite" because Leon likes them and picked them to do all this world-shattering demolition work. He wouldn't have tapped them if they weren't elite, if they weren't 1% hackers, right? Oh and they'll surely be in charge of the design and implementation of the Leon-approved Government 2.0 systems, work that only they, the best of the best, could possibly do! Incel no more!

    The new IT stuff, assuming it's ever implemented, will all collapse. I can't wait for MAGA/Leon to kick them to the curb once he's done using them for wrecking and intimidation and they get to go back to unemployment and incel-hood.

  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine

    chrishedges.substack.com /p/trumps-christian-fascists-and-the
  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms

    www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/mar/09/watchlist-decline-civic-freedoms-civicus
  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    One Word Describes Trump

    archive.ph /5u7vx
  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    In Viral Campaign, Anti-Musk UK Group Urges Public: 'Don't Buy a Swasticar'

    www.commondreams.org /news/tesla-ad

  • Baumgartner calls on Zelenskyy to resign hours after diplomatic meltdown in Oval Office

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    Federal workers start to get a new email demanding their accomplishments

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  • Both Musk and Trump have claimed that some workers are either dead or fictional, and the president has publicly backed Musk’s approach.

    Addressing people who didn’t respond to the first email, Trump said “they are on the bubble,” and he added that he wasn’t “thrilled” about them not responding.

    Malicious Compliance time. Give Trump something that will "thrill" him.

  • Baumgartner calls on Zelenskyy to resign hours after diplomatic meltdown in Oval Office

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  • "Congressman Michael Baumgartner is currently serving his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives where he represents the people of Washington State’s 5th Congressional District." https://baumgartner.house.gov/about

    He's a MAGA bootlicker and is unfit for office. What an embarrassment to our nation he is.

  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Baumgartner calls on Zelenskyy to resign hours after diplomatic meltdown in Oval Office

    www.spokesman.com /stories/2025/feb/28/baumgartner-calls-on-zelenskyy-to-resign-hours-aft/

  • UPDATE on town hall chaos: Woman who was dragged out speaks, police chief condemns security, name of security firm confirmed

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  • Donated. I hope she enjoys the lawsuit settlement $ and has many more years of being a "rabble-rouser" and causing "ruckuses".

  • UPDATE on town hall chaos: Woman who was dragged out speaks, police chief condemns security, name of security firm confirmed

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  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Feds must answer email on what they did last week — or lose jobs, Musk says

    www.seattletimes.com /nation-world/feds-must-answer-email-on-what-they-did-last-week-or-lose-jobs-musk-says/
  • politics @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    A Sad Moment in American History

  • Actually Infuriating @lemmy.world
    FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

    Help the homeless, go to jail: Fremont passes new law

    sfstandard.com /2025/02/12/help-the-homeless-go-to-jail-fremont-passes-new-law/