As a note, communism involves some ideas that are impossible or nearly so.

Imagine a society in which every person has exactly the same sociopolitical power as every other person; representatives and officials do not have additional power; that’s a property of a truly communist society. We don’t believe that can be done IRL.

Imagine a society in which everyone’s needs are met for an extreme body of needs (say as defined by the UN Universal Declaration of Human RIghts). The only transients that exist either are in a short line to be issued a dwelling, or don’t want one. Everyone is fed. Everyone has their own stuff. This isn’t impossible, but is difficult as heck to reach.

Communism is a goal that a society tries to reach similar to a zero homicide rate We don’t expect to get there, but we do want our society to ever get closer, as we discover new means to approach that limit.

We reach for the ideal of a communist society. We never expect to actually get there.

Now I’m imagining a Total Recal / Demolition Man universe where a snappily-dressed hologram cashier takes your order while smiling and making eye contact with the wrong point in space. The occasional glitch or static for bonus points.

You may not be able to actually talk to her; she may just respond to your touch-screen selections.

Coming soon!

It’s source: Jesus and his disciples as compiled decades later with some efforts at editing and revision. (e.g. Proverbs is allegedly sourced from Paul even though the scholarly consensus is that it’s counterfeit, and written after Paul by a ghostwriter.)

The bible is not univocal, not inerrant and not divinely inspired, so, as scholar Dan McClellan notes, every Christian has to negotiate with the text to arrive at doctrinal mores and values they agree with.

Ultimately, the bible can be used to justify anything, and it is!

Considering the most obvious biblical take on slavery and on women, the bible isn’t that great a source for personal and social values to begin with.

I’d research an internet node that could be raised with a couple of bake sales and deployed anywhere with the objective of providing free high-speed wifi to the populated world.

After a roll-out to get every point on the globe covered (that has people near it), we’d work on an upgrade campaign to make sure it is redundant and robust and never shuts down no matter how angry the local dictators are.

The people have advantage when crowdsourcing repairs and reroutes around censorship and responding to DDOS so this should usher in a wave of democratic (lower case) movements across the world. Movements towards public services and benefits will likely follow, according to CIA analysts who study such things.

I believe that’s a hall of superior courts, but I may be thinking of a similar brutalist building.

It makes more sense in response to our (allegedly) meritocratic overlords who insist:

• I don’t take personal responsibility
• I have a preponderant sense of entitlement
• I do not respect my betters
• I do not bootstrap myself
• I do not carry my own administrative burden

I’d happy to retroactively cease existing so that I am not judged.

Roller skates!

If you tell the truth, I won’t get more angry.

Mostly because I’m at peak rage already.

Isn’t this the Hawkeye pose in comics?

(Hawkeye pose = the butt+boobs twist commonly used on covers that looks ridiculous when Hawkeye is drawn in the same pose, and he is, unofficially, at least).

Not a mock-up. This really happened.

An awful lot of people identify as Christians while ignoring the calls for charity and compassion and being wary of hoarding wealth.

Enough folk to say that greed and cruelty are in fact Christian values for some Christians.

And you’re not going to be able to convince any of them they’re not really all that Christian.

But could a McDonald’s site manager afford to dress like this? Or be allowed to?

That was amazing! Thank you for the link!

CARGO SKIRTS!

Is CE the backward USB or the HDMI? The former would be a cause for far more annoyance, especially when I’m plugging something in by feel.

In the US, internet piracy is not a crime, but a civil infraction. And yes, our media overlords have been trying to make it a crime for decades.

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Copyright maximalists pretty consistently are glad to pirate stuff that isn’t theirs when it is suddenly expedient to do so.

As with when the studios and labels push for legal anti-piracy measures, I call shenanigans.

This is not our first rodeo: when a ten-year-old girl downloads the latest release in her favorite literary series because she’s too poor, and we no longer support our libraries to have current selections, no-one is going to want to prosecute the little girl who wants to read.

Well, maybe some billionaires might, but the media would have a field day with it.

Got a Roomba for my previous place and it eventually sabotaged itself by scratching the cover of the alignment beam for docking until the unit could no longer align itself with the station. It was an obvious bug in the system, but iRobot wouldn’t provide any customer service without extensive repair costs.

That was the end of my adventures into home robotics.

This pic always confused me. The outlet should have had two running throughout the day for redundant cleaning duty just to show off the technology. It shows a lack of confidence in the product.