Me: Just because MAGA’s ancestors fought Nazi Germans doesn’t mean MAGA aren’t fascists.

You: By that logic you are a fascist.

OK buddy.

I use the construction “Chekhov’s whatever” all the time to signify “something has been introduced so it will come up again later.” It’s a meme now. It has outgrown the gun.

OK, I’ll fix it for you.

You walk into a restaurant. It’s the only restaurant in town - indeed, your only available source of food at all. It has a menu of one dish only, changing every four years. It’s been hot dogs for the past four years. Not your favorite, but tolerable.

A sign posted on the door says that the menu should be determined by the will of the customers, and broadly describes a process for them to express their preference. In practice, two factions of chefs have emerged. They each consult with their own set of customers about proposed menus, and narrow them down to two final options. For some reason, Team Hamburger wants to put poison in the hamburgers, and their customers agree.

You sit down for a nice hot dog and say to your friend, “Not only do I think pizza tastes better, I think it would stand a better chance of averting a mass hamburger poisoning. We could change our minds about trying for hot dogs again.” Your friend retorts, “We are already committed to hot dogs. Stop talking about pizza. Pizza is impossible. It’s not going to happen. And frankly, that kind of talk makes you sound like you want poisoned hamburgers. You don’t want poisoned hamburgers, do you?”

A week later, pizza happens. Does your friend owe you an apology?

Then you’re right. It wasn’t disingenuous. Merely stupid.

"disingenuous

adjective

not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does"

Was this analogy sincere? Did you know it was flawed when you said it?

I’ve heard (debated) etymology that “man” is gender neutral because in older English, “male” would have been “wereman” and “female” would have been “wifman,” so the “man” morpheme just designated “human” and the prefix designated the gender.

Which does imply that "were"wolves are exclusively male, and a female wolf person really should be called a wifwolf.

“Gee I’m so grateful for all this trauma.”

No.

And if we were talking about whether it were real, or whether people believed it in those specific terms, you’d have a point. But since we’re talking about your assertion that major earth religions are “directly excluded” by that definition of “higher beings,” i still fail to see the exclusion.

No one, I think, is in my tree.

I mean, it must be high or low.

Turns out that one was actually universal.

Run command: “Fiat Lux”

Warning: it will take 7 days to complete operation. Continue?

“This had better be good.”

“Fuck it, I’m tired of waiting, I’ll come back on the 8th day.”

“Oh, this IS good.”

“What are these stupid apes doing? Fine, I’ll educate them myself.”

Instantiate avatar: “Jesus_Nazareth”

Which part is directly excluded?

“What? This group of fascists has absolutely nothing to do with that group of fascists. This group’s ancestors fought that group.”

If we had the technological power, would humans run simulations of universes with Planck length precision? Obviously yes. So extrapolating from our one and only example of intelligent life (us), it seems like intelligent life enjoys stimulating universes. If our reality were the result of that kind of project, and the engineers lived outside the laws of physics, I would call them higher beings. And they could be as hands-off or as interventionist as they pleased.

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

https://youtu.be/OOCdIY_HKM4?feature=shared

You remind me of God in this classic:

A holocaust survivor dies of old age and goes to heaven. When he gets there, he meets God and tells him a holocaust joke.

God says, “That’s not funny.”

And the man says, “I guess you had to be there.”

Aw, come on.

“Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.”

“Where’s the best place to hide after committing murder? Behind a badge.”

“Did you know today is the anniversary of the Jonestown massacre? I’d tell you a joke about it, but the punch line is too long.”

Yeah, robots looking at photos of kids that their parents voluntarily posted on the internet is no laughing matter. Way more serious than, say, violent crime. And nobody makes jokes about that, do they?

While I personally wouldn’t want AI inserting trains into photos of my kids without my consent, many kids like trains, and they could add some whimsy to an otherwise uninteresting picture.

This, but unironically.