Phi for All

I see it as the final quarter of the capitalist dream game. The average person never questions how it can be called an "economy" when it performs so poorly for most and so brilliantly for a few. The extreme capitalists, who we continue to allow to horde cash, are openly grabbing up what they can, and aren't bothering to hide the fact that it's coming from those who can least afford to have it grabbed. And an easy way to grab up what someone else built at no cost to yourself is to seize their assets and deport them. It starts with busboys and farmworkers, and then it will move on to fines that, if not paid, will result in seizure of properties. Eventually, he'll have so much precedent, he can go after anyone who opposes him.

That doesn't sound so baaaaaaad!

I had mistaken one bit for coiled wire, but I see it's holes in plexiglass or glass? And is that a crank handle fixed to the center? Perhaps an ashtray that removes it's own butts?

In addition to what studiot posted, the temperature of the butter can make a difference. Many recipes call for cold butter for extra flakiness.

I tried three times to get this: "Ode a un piccolo pezzo di stucco verde che ho trovato sotto l'ascella una mattina di mezza estate", before realizing it's not Vogon. It's from one of the Azgoths of Kria, the second worst poetry in the galaxy. "Putty" is the tough bit, seems to be an English thing. Italians call it mastic or stucco.

Apparently, the focus doesn't need to be great to make it dangerous.

Please be careful. The legal system in the US wants you to automatically think of these people as criminals, but many are only so because laws were created to trap them, or they weren't well represented during their time in court, or....

What IS that?! Are they trying to get you to return your recent purchase, like you didn't already skip them in your research to buy this one? The bots can't tell if a purchase is a simple replacement, either. Buy a shower curtain liner or a set of LED vehicle headlights or a quart of concrete patch and the bots treat you like you're going into business.

"We were sitting around the table talking about evolutionary pressures when this guy pulled out his podium and started a slide show!"

You can't trust a justice system run like a private industry. We have so many conflicts of interest that it's just open corruption. Money has so much influence where it shouldn't have any. China has four times our population but the US still has more prisoners in prisons than China. The real evidence shows we aren't more criminally minded than other countries, we're just so numb to extremist capitalism that we let our wealthy prey on us.

Just to add for future readers, this is pretty common. Starting out learning science, much of the knowledge is interconnected. The more you understand about one aspect, the easier it is to grasp the next. When you jump ahead of your own knowledge, getting excited about a popular science article on something advanced like black holes, the conclusions you draw seem fairly basic and super coincidental because you're trying to complete a puzzle when pieces are missing. Our ignorance manufactures puzzle pieces to fit, and we have to be careful about that.

This is a peeve of mine too, especially when some of those walls of text derive down to, "In the future, we must look for ways to be more efficient, and be willing to embrace them if they help." I was told to stop that crap in no uncertain terms by my eighth grade composition teacher, and I've done my best since then to write meaningfully. The LLMs are SO much noise surrounding a signal.

Stay with me here, remember what we were talking about? It was this comment: You seemed to object when I mentioned this criticism, but now it's OK? I'm trying to show you why the early church rejected the apocryphal books. Not because they were magic and could tell which writings were divine, but rather that they had an edict from Constantine to develop a doctrine that pulled the church together to quell strife in the empire. Above all, they wanted to stop the idea that Jesus was made like the rest of us. They really needed him to be created directly from their god, not just a man that god chose. And lots of those writings of the time talked about how Jesus was just a carpenter's son who thought his own churches had lost their way.

No. Thomas thought they were misguided in their focus on the narrative of Jesus' life, rather than his divinity. He criticized their focus on sin as opposed to ignorance (definitely a Gnostic trait). Again, this gospel from a disciple wasn't included because the church found it unhelpful. They didn't want the masses studying to banish their ignorance, they wanted them to feel guilty about their imperfections. Duh, as written by the author of the Book of Matthew. You don't think Matt was criticizing Pete by highlighting the whole "Get behind me, Satan!" blowup in his gospel? I think Mark mentions it too, but you know who doesn't mention it in his own book? Peter. Oh, right, the whole "men can decide what is divine" argument. Makes no sense to me. Leaving Thomas out because his ideas didn't suit the church sounds SO much more plausible.

Are you kidding me?! Read the scriptures again. Jesus was a radical who criticized the hierarchies and hypocrisies of the times, flipping over the tables of moneylenders and admonishing those who were self-serving. Your disciples criticized each other in the canonical Gospels as well, such as in Matthew 16:13–23 where we see Matthew criticizing Peter. Have you read your own Bible? It took me three readings when much younger to reach my conclusions. Thomas' account was not useful to the early church. It told no stories, just quotes from Jesus and some some admonishments to the other disciples. It's not a particularly moving piece of scripture, but it seems bizarre to use the excuse that the direct quotes of Jesus weren't inspired by his god or father.

Moderator Note This thread is closed.

Moderator NoteYou keep posting hyperlinks that go nowhere, and you need to stop. It looks like spam and we're an all volunteer staff, so if you keep it up I'm just going to ban you to make my life easier. Can you please be more careful?

The only purpose is taking advantage of the changes in allele frequency within a population over a great deal of time. Why do you need something more? What about Earth's species do you feel is lacking due to this process?

🔹 Summary:Some new members, as well as some established ones, are using AI for a slick look that makes it seem like the poster really did some major work on this idea. 🔹 Why this matters:This behavior opens the door to: lazy interpretations bad signal to noise ratios ignoring reading even your own citations 🔹 What I think of it:I think it's spitting in the eye of rigor, study, and reason. Not a fan.

You obviously think highly enough of these mortal human early church leaders to capitalize their names and give them magical recognition powers, which are, again, very convenient for your stance. And if you'd read more than just the four gospels, you'd know that most scholars think the book of John to be partly a response to the book of Thomas. Thomas didn't talk about himself (or rather the author didn't talk about Thomas), he quoted Jesus directly using logia, sayings that are directly attributable. How could the so-called fathers of the church decide Jesus' own words had no christ in them? Could it be because Thomas criticized Matthew and Peter? But again, it's just humans deciding how they want things to be, not interpreting an all-powerful but unobservable deity's wishes. And you're claiming you understand what your god wants, even though its also inscrutable and can't be comprehended. I think the image you created for this god helps you manipulate your claims so they seem to cover every objection.

If youthful impulse control is to blame, what difference do the charges make? You would pardon the young thief but condemn a young person who got into a fight to a lifetime of mistrust and poverty?

No, nothing you've done till now convinced us. There is a way you can convince us, but you've already revealed that you either used AI to write the OP, or you wrote it yourself without bothering to read the reference material you cited as the basis for your post. So which is it, Luc? We're more than willing to hear good arguments made in good faith, but this seems fake and forced and not really your work in lots of ways.

"Flexible and adaptive responses" gave the AI the green light to stretch Luc's request to fit the agency idea. How can anyone make such claims and then leave it to the AI to force-fit the science? Let's face it, I'm tired (also Lili).

Did your god write that? No. More human words. Unlike you, I don't read a whole lot between the lines. I look for what is observable, and try not to make things up based on how I want them to be. Convenient. Your point of view, am I right? This makes me sad. You take something incredible, that has allowed us to reach the point where at least one species could leave this planet if we needed to, and reduce it to "just because it is there". And instead you prefer wishful thinking where you get to make everything up without a shred of evidence, and pretend your faith in it is stronger than my trust in science. As you can tell, I'm having a moment with Christians today, since I live in the US where their hypocrisy is reaching new bounds. Read that over again and you'll hopefully see where it's wrong. Think hard about how beliefs are created. It's amazing to me how many folks don't mind brandishing their privileged ignorance these days, confident they know what everyone else must think. Try using only what I've written as your guide, it's what I do with your posts.

https://academic.oup.com/book/53529/chapter-abstract/422108335?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false Just the abstract, and I added the bold since it doesn't seem to support your ideas, unless your mysterious agency is evolution itself. I think the AI grabbed on to the keywords "evolution" "shapes" "behavior", then switched them around because you were asking it about agency. It's trying to give you the answers you really want, but maybe not the answers you think you're getting. You're off-topic. Do you have anything meaningful to add in a thread about evolution?