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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 13th, 2023

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  • That’s an old school Gnostic interpretation, and that in part lead to the development of Christian antisemitism. (See Reuther, Faith and Fratricide)

    You’re missing out on the hundreds of years of Jewish scholars navigating and interacting with the text. It’s easy to understand the shift as discrete, because Jesus is a clear breaking point, but a lot of that develops from Greek philosophy interacting with Judaism. He was most assuredly influenced by Nazarite thinkers too.

    Keep in mind too that Jesus said he brought not peace, but a sword. Jewish understandings of the messiah at the time were seeking a military type leader to lead them against the Romans - that threat is probably what actually got the man crucified. Read Luke 22:36.

    Seeing these kinds of r/atheism versus Christian conversations is always a shit show. Everyone is wrong.


  • A goal of mine is to ensure that my library is preserved in some fashion after I die, because I do believe it would be valuable. Many of the books I have are out of print, rare, and obscure. I have a fantasy of a library room set aside with my collection - a couple of comfortable chairs in a little nook.

    Especially with the way that AI has polluted information sources online, I think having a collection of the printed word which is guaranteed to be vetted and written by humans would be useful. The religious material I think also could be helpful in preserving history - eg, I have versions of Mormon books which are likely not consistent with current doctrine.


  • andros_rex@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldBooks
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    1 day ago

    My apartment is 60% books. I don’t have enough bookshelves, I have most loaded to the point where they are bending and there are piles of books stacked on top. Stacks and stacks and stacks.

    I think my library is almost an art project at this point. I thrift a lot, check out library discard sales and have a bunch of things I bought when you could get books on Amazon for a penny + shipping. I often pick up 5-10 a week, because at the thrift shop that’s maybe $10 at most. (Goodwill is getting precious, but the really ratty ones are often prime spots.)

    Very little fiction. Mostly textbooks and history and language and arcane computer things and strange religious literature and philosophy and paranormal arcana. Obscure things - I mostly collect things that I wouldn’t normally be able to find in a library.

    My ex hated my books and wanted to work out a deal where I’d have to give up two for every one I took in. Now I am free to live in a pile of stacks. I don’t care if it looks “messy” or “cluttered.” It represents my mind.




  • I had a friend who got into it and would get emotionally upset when I’d make fun of JR Bob Dobbs. Which was depressing, because I felt that was the whole point to Dobbs.

    I’ve been a member of the Church for more than ten years and take it more seriously than I should. (I paid my $30 to Bobb when it was $30. Can’t wait for my flying pleasure saucer, already planned for where I’m turning my lasers.)

    What the fuck.

    Did they not participate in any form of Subgenius activity, consume any form of Subgenius art? Did they not listen to the Hour of Slack?

    Like, listen to the Agent and Mr. Dobbs. Listen to the way we talk about Connie. Listen to the story about the Subgenius who gets lost on their way to to the Devival and ends up getting their corpse gang banged by wolves, dogs and cops. How on earth would you think that you are supposed to be reverent when talking about Bob?














  • That number of articles is still pretty impressive. I’d rather have fewer, high quality articles, than millions of terrible quality AI articles.

    The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can add articles! It also wouldn’t be too difficult to “translate” regular Wikipedia articles to simple ones. You could even use AI tools to help - there are text leveler tools that will help you recognize which words lower level readers would struggle with and can help you make those changes. But this cannot be an automated process.

    I’ve done graduate level course work on modifying text for “EMLs” - “emerging multilingual learners.” (“ELL” is still okay, but lots of folks in the field prefer EML because it is prioritizing the students “assets.”) I’ve made several assignments for students with reading difficulties. When I did experiment a bit with AI tools to help me with this process, I had to do a lot of fine tuning to get an acceptable product.

    Tbh, you just convinced me right now that I should start adding more articles myself.