If you can do it to them, you can do it to any of us. – Rabbi William Gershon
A Whore in Church
Matthew 21:31 seems pretty straightforward to me:
Professionally, I now openly represent myself as a Christian dominatrix who uses Christian rituals to heal the connection between sexuality and spirit. My clients often come to me because I work specifically with the deconditioning of the religious wound that has caused harmful beliefs around their sexuality…Out of the shadow of shame, they are no longer “wicked” or “evil”― they are holy…Jesus…spen[t] time with and perform[ed] miracles for prostitutes…Jesus never cast anyone out, and he never denied anyone the miracles, signs and wonders that flowed through him; he wanted everyone to have a personal relationship with God, free from the constraints of organized religion. So even though many Christians would view me as “sinful” and even undeserving of a relationship with God,
I reject that view, because I know Jesus loves me and wants the best for my life…
Creepy Coppers
[An Illinois cop named Eli Barthel] has been arrested for child pornography offenses…after [he was caught in an] FBI [trap]…
Welcome to the Future (#1265)
New forms of intrusive surveillance are always justified as “safety”:
…[moral imbeciles] have come up with…an electronic tattoo, stuck to the forehead …[to spy on the moods of] pilots, healthcare workers and other professions where managing mental workload is crucial to preventing catastrophes…[by giving bosses] “some warning and alert so that they can [be relieved]…of [duty],” said Dr Nanshu Lu, an author of the research…[ignor]ing the [obvious fact that data from such a] device [would be compiled in]…workers[‘ files and used to judge their performance]…Lu and colleagues describe how using questionnaires to investigate mental workload is problematic, not least as people are poor at objectively judging [whether they should be demoted or fired]…the “e-tattoo” is a lightweight, flexible, wireless device [constantly]…attached to the forehead [during work hours to]…detect…brain activity…and…eye movements…[allowing human beings to be monitored by] a machine-learning algorithm [as though they were machines themselves]…
Click on the subtitle to see the “demoralizing, humiliating, and toxic” abuses already possible with existing employee-monitoring technology.
Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1391)
This would be hilarious if it were their own money these idiots were throwing away:
The [US] Senate is considering a fentanyl exposure bill that would fund “containment devices”…TruBLOC LLC, a company that manufactures the type of…devices in question, sells 1.5-ounce canisters as a set of 12 for $359.40, or as a set of 48 for $1,437.60…TruBLOC [claims]…“Inhalation is the main route of exposure”…[which] would [not be entirely wrong] if the term were being used to refer to sniffing or snorting fentanyl, but in this context the term is describing passive inhalation — i.e. breathing air while standing somewhere in the vicinity of fentanyl…a…video [lies that]…“Small amounts of opioids can kill an officer”….then shows the gloved hands of a…paid actor awkwardly peeling the orange residue off the seat in a manner that strongly recalls attempting to peel off sour candy that’s melted. The hands remain gloved, despite the fact that the threat that did not exist to begin with has been contained…
Virtual Imperialism (#1472)
As I’ve explained under this tag before, Beijing’s campaign to silence Chinese people outside China has become far more aggressive. Rolling Stone published an excerpt from Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized, a new book detailing Chinese surveillance, harassment, intimidation, and sometimes abduction or assassination of activists who flee China. The excerpt tells the story of Serikzhan Bilash, an ethnic Kazakh human rights activist who was pursued by Chinese agents from Xinjiang to Almaty and Astana in Kazakhstan, then to Istanbul, and eventually to Washington DC and New York, always trying to terrorize him into shutting up and dismantling his organization, Atazhurt. If you don’t know about the extent of China’s terrorism of expatriates and its willingness to violate other countries’ sovereignty, you really should read it in its entirety.
Neither Addiction Nor Epidemic (#1524)
Much more of this, please:
An isolated tribe in the Amazon…[has sued] The New York Times over [yellow journalism] in the newspaper [claim]ing their people’s recent access to the internet…[has led to] members of the tribe…develop[ing] pornography addictions [even though there is no such thing]. The Marubo tribe…filed the defamation lawsuit…seeking $180 million in damages…[over the paper’s] “portray[al of] the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, [and pretending]…that their youth had [developed narcissistic personality disorder as a result]”…After the piece was published, other outlets, including TMZ and Yahoo!, published their own versions of the [accusations], which in many cases…exaggerate the [already-dishonest] claims [even further]. That prompted The Times to run a[n attempt at a semi-retraction en]titled “No, A Remote Amazon Tribe Did Not Get Addicted to Porn”…But it wasn’t enough. The Marubo [correctly point out] that the original statements were “inflammatory” and conveyed that the tribe “had descended into moral and social decline as a direct result of internet access”…
Business Opportunity (#1527)
This sort of NIMBY bullshit is exactly why there are so many homeless people in the first place:
…the town of Toms River, New Jersey is planning to use eminent domain to condemn a church, raze it, and build a park and pickleball courts on the spot. The planned condemnation [is obviously] motivated by a desire to prevent the church from opening a small homeless shelter on part of its…11 acres of land…the church, which was founded in 1865…[rents space to] an affordable housing nonprofit…[which] asked to create a small homeless shelter [but] the mayor [insists pickleball is more important than housing the needy because local NIMBYs said so]…the town’s interfaith council [are] united in their opposition to the [scam]…and…there is substantial public opposition…[so] the condemnation…will likely be challenged in court under the state and federal constitutions…
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In fact, big technological leaps always aggravate mental illness. After Sputnik went up in 1957, there was a dramatic increase in agoraphobia; some of the sufferers were afraid of things falling out of the sky, a panic we saw again when Skylab fell in 1979. But others spiraled into a strange delusion that if gravity could be “defied” by seemingly hanging an object in the sky, what was to stop people from falling up into space? This may sound silly to the modern ear; we are used to satellites now, so they no longer engender existential dread. But it’s human nature to panic when technology a person cannot understand does something that seems impossible. LLM chatbots seem to have “intelligence” even though they don’t; that confuses and frightens people, and plugs into the same part of the psyche that fantasy tales of talking artifacts (magic mirrors, singing swords, etc) spring from. What makes this worse than Sputnik hysteria is that this time, “experts” are reinforcing delusions rather than debunking them. Expressed more simply: chatbots in computers can appear to the ignorant like djinn in bottles, and instead of correcting this irrational belief with scientific fact, tech company marketers are telling people, “YES, this really is a djinni who can grant wishes!” Of course people are being driven mad.
