FirstCircle

Fuck Zuck. And the Phillips Exeter horse he rode in on. This Rich Kid, Harvard College billionaire is not who I care to listen to for "elitism" advice. His orange-ass-kissing is pathetic and disgusting.

The money wants to be with the CEOs and thus have the chance to be spent on private jet rentals and lavish vacations in exotic places with influential people. It wants the chance to be spent on expensive tuition at old-money, name-brand universities and third and fourth homes in the country and on post-apocalypse survival compounds in expensive, English-speaking island nations. If you were a dollar, wouldn't you want this too? Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who'll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up. Money wants to be free, free to live the good life, and to live it with the people who care about it more than anything else under the sun.

You'll need to get a Prior Authorization on that offing to show that it's Ethically Necessary. Fortunately you've come to the right place.

That was good enough for Ahab, and he was able to captain a commercial ship using his! Back in the good old days nobody expected insurance to cover ordinary everyday whale attacks. Those were "acts of God" just like everything else.

I haven't eaten "fast" "food" in basically forever. It's been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day's eats that I could stash as-needed.

These prices blow my mind. I can't believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these "burgers" (or "meals" - just because there's more than one item in the bag doesn't make it a "meal" no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a "quarter pounder" here, I can get at least three big cans of "chunky"-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week's-worth of breakfasts.

Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you're careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you're already homeless of course, that's gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity ("too busy shop and cook!") are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand "treats" of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that's what they "deserve". I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you're never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn't seem to me like it's going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn't have to wait in line.

Right, but I wasn't claiming that he wasn't seeking to spread terror for his cause, assuming that these are the facts. I'm remarking on the fact that the “big” Trump supporter and a highly trained Green Beret wasn't immediately branded a terrorist by the media just like the NO guy was, despite committing an act that was, as far as I can tell, an act of terrorism. Is it only "terrorism" if you're motivated by some kind of religious belief, and specifically, some kind of Islamic group's belief?

Correct, it's a common abbreviation used in the States. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

One thing I'm finding interesting: we've got the NO attack and this Trump/CT attack, happening in close temporal proximity and both hurting/killing innocents, but I'm only seeing the former labelled by the media as a "terrorist" attack. Could it, maybe, possibly, have something to do with the NO attacker potentially having an Islamic background? In contrast, a US military member, and a Trump supporter in particular, could never be awarded the "terrorist" badge by the press, "bomber" is the most he could hope to earn it seems.

Then why were they looking for him in the forests of Washington?

The Freemasons locally all invoke The Great (or Grand) Architect of the Universe as a way to avoid seeming to require that prospective members have any particular religious beliefs. The whole approach to religion seemed very "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and I was told, by Masons, while socializing w/them at the Lodge, that Freemasonry didn't dictate any particular religious beliefs and that they had among them Brothers with very non-mainstream supernatural beliefs.

But ... while you could (I was told) hold pretty much any supernatural/superstitious beliefs you wanted to and still become a Freemason, having no superstitious beliefs at all was a hard disqualifier. No exceptions. This was a bunch of years ago, and I'm pretty sure I asked "why do you care about my supernatural beliefs if you care so little about their exact nature" and I got only "mumble mumble 'reasons' mumble" and something about needing superstitious beliefs to "understand" (or at least accept?) Masonic teachings &etc. Maybe what they're looking for is guys who are pre-screened (via organized religion) to be intellectually and morally pliable more than anything?

Oh yeah, and you still can't be a chick and join, and yeah, they'll jump to tell you about the "auxiliary" groups that DO admit women, but just like having no religion, being a woman is a hard disqualifier for joining a mainline lodge. For reasons.

Meanwhile, amidst all this gatekeeping, the Lodges (some w/beautiful historic buildings) are shutting down left and right, their premises invariably ending up repurposed as for-profit "event centers" that get little utilization or for restaurants and other commercial endeavors ... almost never for the kind of "community" space that people here are describing. The lodge back in my hometown, one that many of my family going back generations (just the men of course) have belonged to, is teetering on the brink of shutting down as the oldsters have died off. It's a shame, but they seem to have chosen "no change, no exceptions" as the hill to die on, so ...

That'll learn ya. I bet you'll never do it again. Not unless Jehovah 1 tells you to in a dream anyway. A substantial donation will get you on the schedule, don't delay.

Congrats to Buffalo, it sounds like things are looking up there.

In my area (WA state) there was a small-ish Xian church (the one-storey building was probably <2000 sq ft and cheaply built - the steeple-ish thing (w/o a bell of course) blew off in a windstorm once)) that shut down a year or two ago and was boarded-up. It's been repurposed as a homeless shelter that specifically serves people with serious medical problems. The change has greatly improved the 'hood.

People here are arguing for the (gate-kept) community that Xian churches once offered in the US. By "gate-kept" I'm referring to the fact that Xian churches were, and are, open to only the "right kind" of people. I'm sympathetic to the need for community, and have even looked around locally for what's on offer from Xian or Xian-aligned/compatible organizations, but haven't found any that promote an ideology that isn't based on superstition and that don't demand that I defer in all things moral/ontological to a human power hierarchy within the church. One whose authority, such as it is, is based on "it's in the Book".

Hard pass on that. I'll find my community through volunteering and possibly, one day, through fraternal orgs, though I've found the ones around here (Masons, Rotary, &etc) are still hardcore on gatekeeping themselves, despite being on the wane just as much as Xian churches are. If you think you'd be most comfortable in a Xian-churchy sort of context, but are politically and socially "liberal", the UCC seems pretty inoffensive, though they still (at least locally here) carry on about "worshipping" invisible deities all the time. The Unitarian Universalists (uua.org) seem the least offensive of any old-timey church that I've encountered and it has a certain appeal to me for its association with New England and with 19th-century intellectuals like Emerson and Thoreau. The local UUs have had a local schism in the past five years, with the historical church taking a politically rightward lurch and another UU church spinning-off it but seemingly being more preoccupied with how their church is controlled (no more all-powerful pastor-types, only collective decision-making allowed) and less with charity and community. Finally we have Unity here (unity.org) which has potential for community, but where weekly service addendees seem to be almost exclusively elderly, so I wonder how much longer it will be a going concern?

I'm hoping that someday we get a Satanic Temple that meets in-person here. I could definitely see myself joining that. The Church of the Subgenius (https://www.subgenius.com/), praise "Bob", would suit me well too, and I already own a copy of the Sacred Text, but they don't meet in person AFAIK.