E-TukTuk!

With all due respect, this is not reflective of the protestant revival movement in the US in the 1800s. The second awakening was absolutely a bunch of rival interpretations of the word claiming they were right b/c (insert reason here).

I probably should have been more specific in my original reply but when we’re taking about US “Catholics aren’t Christians” that’s 100 percent the origin of the trope. I can’t speak to the Irish version but I’d challenge anyone about it in the US. That’s why we needed an Ecumenism movement in the first place after all.

There’s plenty of great commentary here about why Christianity is divided up into different sects, but I think you’re primarily interested in the narcissism of small differences. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

Basically, if you’ve read about Dr. Suess’ Starbellied Sneeches, you get the idea. Human brains are exceptional pattern recognition machines, and when a society is so homogenously Christian then those small differences become the cleavages along which identities form. That leads to things like Catholic / Christian divisions and the formation of the best joke in The Guardian history:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion

The “if my grandma had wheels, she would have been a bicycle” fallacy.

https://youtu.be/A-RfHC91Ewc

Whata you say make-a no sense! False equivalence

We all talking about the rapist Matt Gaetz? The Matt Gaetz that notoriously trafficked minors across state lines to have drug-fueled sex with children Matt Gaetz? That child rapist Matt Gaetz?

You’ve received several responses but the meaningful “come to Jesus” story actually relates to Saul (Paul, who is responsible for much of Christianity) on the road to Damascus.

Paul was persecuting primitive Christians and while he was traveling to Damascus to arrest them, he was temporarily blinded by divine intervention that led to his conversion and stopped him from continuing to persecute people. The dramatic intervention disabused him of the errant beliefs that caused him to injure people, in other words.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle

That’s what the comparison is talking about. It’s a metaphor that relates to needing a dramatic and often violent wakeup call to snap someone out of doing something wrong. From a Christian perspective you can see how Paul being shaken up enough to change his name, religion, profession, etc was a real “come to Jesus” moment.

That’s the key context I think you’re asking about. It’s not really about converting to Christianity. It’s more about having a BIG wakeup call that you’re on the wrong path (literally in Paul’s case) and you need to change your ways because you’re hurting people (or you’ll stay blinded if you’re Paul I guess).

Hope that helps!

Another post mentioned just giving cash anonymously and I think that’s easily the best option. You would almost certainly have access to their mailbox if it’s a suburban stand alone type? If not, an unmarked envelope under the door, with cash, would preserve plausible distance from making the neighbor feel like they have to decline out of etiquette.

Don’t think about it more, they clearly need the help if they mentioned it, and if you can help without feeling the impact just do so without strings or direct attribution. They’ll suspect it, and can if they approach you in genuine thanks if they want, then you’re able to be gracious about accepting, or simply act surprised and happy that such a nice thing happened if not.

I’ve had people clearly embarrassed at the grocery checkout take a 50$ bill I claimed fell out of their pocket before several times. Preserves their dignity even if it’s just a pretext for helping. Puts the ball in their court at least. “Hey man, I don’t know what to say but it’s not mine. Pay it forward for someone who needs help if it’s not yours” is the worst that’s ever gone for me before. Nobody likes being a charity case.

The best thing is adding the metadata of a book by ISBN. That or simply search it on worldcat.org and adding by the browser extension.

Phenomenal citations manager.

Academics focused, but Zotero indexing a large cloud storage drive.

Let’s things organized by subject, tag, author, title, or whatever else I want. Also keeps my notes all in one place. Huge huge proponent and it’s open source!

I used to love Reply All before Alec Goldman’s shenanigans (awful behavior) came to light. So it was a real bright spot for me to find that PJ’s pod has almost everything I loved about Reply All. He’s willing to pursue things past the point any reasonable person with a job would and I love it. If you want a deep dive about whatever rabbit hole that takes his interest for the episode, it’s a great place imo.

Search Engine http://www.pjvogt.com

RSS address: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/search-engine

Thanks for the detailed break down! One thing I really do miss about old Twitter is how easily I could get a huge variety of great news sources at the same place.

There were always problems with the site, but nothing has come close to that level of centralized convenience (that I’ve found so far at least). It may just be the new normal since that same centralization makes any site vulnerable to the same fate twitter has met with. But man I sure underestimated how much worse twitter could get…

I’d love to give bluesky a shot for a bit, but their invite policy has me disappointed having waited for nearly a year now without any sign of opening up for regular users like me. Mastodon is good, tildes better (but tiny) so far, but I still miss having all the journalists who cared about journalism practices in one place…

Sigh…

Signed up months ago but still hoping to check it out. Not to pile on as another invite pest, but man twitter sure has become unusable lately!