I was thinking the same thing!!

It’s like at this point Trump is watching the show to take notes and stage direction.

The pause was long enough she was able to say all the things in it mentally.

Lucretius in De Rerum Natura in 50 BCE seemed to have a few that were just a bit ahead of everyone else, owed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

Survival of the fittest (book 5):

"In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.

For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.

Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now."

Trait inheritance from both parents that could skip generations (book 4):

“Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.”

Objects of different weights will fall at the same rate in a vacuum (book 2):

“Whatever falls through water or thin air, the rate Of speed at which it falls must be related to its weight, Because the substance of water and the nature of thin air Do not resist all objects equally, but give way faster To heavier objects, overcome, while on the other hand Empty void cannot at any part or time withstand Any object, but it must continually heed Its nature and give way, so all things fall at equal speed, Even though of differing weights, through the still void.”

Often I see people dismiss the things the Epicureans got right with an appeal to their lack of the scientific method, which has always seemed a bit backwards to me. In hindsight, they nailed so many huge topics that didn’t end up emerging again for millennia that it was surely not mere chance, and the fact that they successfully hit so many nails on the head without the hammer we use today indicates (at least to me) that there’s value to looking closer at their methodology.

It was good, but it did feel like the narrative around the boss could have been tied to the rest of the world a bit better.

The zone leading up to it was one of my favorite in the DLC with the ambience build up, but I expected more after the fight.

Ah, yes Shabriri, I know thee well.

Guided by the three fingers to be Lord of Frenzy.

Just a poor soul looking for some grapes to help see the faded light of the guiding grace.

The DLC is really the right balance for FromSoft.

The zones in the base game are slightly too big.

In the DLC, it’s still open world and extremely flexible in how you explore it, but there’s less wasted space.

It’s very tightly knit and the pacing is better as a result.

It’s like Elden Ring was watching masters of their craft cut their teeth on something new, and then the DLC was them applying everything they learned in that process.

Can’t wait for their next game in that same vein (especially not held back by last gen consoles).

Part of the problem with this approach is that prediction engines are predicted on the idea that there’s more of a thing to predict.

So unless they really, really go out of their way with modeling the records to account for this, they’ll have a system very strongly biased towards predicting more criminal behavior for everyone fed into it.

I hate that the Smithscript weapons can’t be buffed.

Especially for the daggers.

Wanted to pew pew little bolts of lightning buffed daggers doing an additional 200+ damage per hit. 😢

No historical record that the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt even exists. In fact, there’s no record of these Hebrew slaves, period.

As I said in my earlier comment, this narrative was probably appropriated from the forced relocation of the sea peoples into the southern Levant. The Egyptians do have extensive records of conflict with them, who they note in that conflict were without foreskins (as opposed to the partial circumcision more common at the time), and there’s an emerging picture of Aegean cohabitation with the Israelites in the early Iron Age along with Anatolian trade with an area where the Denyen were talking about their founding leader Mopsus.

Here’s the source for the Noah’s Ark as originally a famine narrative: https://scholar.harvard.edu/dershowitz/publications/man-land-unearthing-original-noah

You’re welcome to find the material as you like, but I’m telling you that there’s a lot more value to careful analysis of it within it’s broader context than you (and many others) seem to think. Whether you find that stance condescending or not.

And yet I’ve not seen anyone figure out that the locusts in Revelations was just a poetic taxonomy for the local middle eastern hornet, Vespa Orientalis, down to the golden crown on its face.

People like to interpret those texts in all sorts of fantastical ways as long as it titillates them, but shy away from actually looking plainly at what’s being said.

So by all means don’t take it literally. But also maybe don’t think that a text written by a syphilitic old man in antiquity is talking about the 2024 United States presidential election without a more compelling case.

Actually, the book of Job is nearly verbatim a combination of the opening of the Canaanite A Tale of Aqhat where Anat petitions El to kill the son of Danel as the lead in to a near copy of the dialogue on suffering of the Babylonian Theodicy. With what appears a sloppy edit to make it monotheistic later on, changing Anat from being a different god to simply ‘adversary’ and spawning fanfiction for millennia.

Understanding the context helps a lot in meaningful analysis.

Without the context, yeah, a lot can go over your head and it just seem pointless.

Edit: And Noah’s ark was likely originally a famine story before being turned into an adaptation of the Babylonian flood mythos.

Edit 2: And the eating of the fruit by the first two people was probably adapted from the Phonecian creation myth around the first man and woman with the woman discovering the technology of eating fruit from the trees.

There’s actually a lot of interesting stuff in the text when you learn how to spot it between the lines of the revisionism. Both OT and NT.

The problem is you basically only have two camps.

One, that thinks the text as it exists today represents an unadulterated divine transmission.

And the other, that thinks anything to do with it is worthless nonsense.

So there’s very few people actually looking at it in between those two extremes, with most engaged with the material clustering around the former, or at very least with an anchoring and survivorship bias around the former cluster.

We’re left with audiences for the text that on both sides would be incredulous at the idea that, say, the Exodus narrative was in part an appropriation of the LBA/Early Iron Age sea peoples history when they were forcibly relocated into cohabitation with the Israelites, or say, that Jesus was taking about evolution with the sower parable.

Even though both those things have very compelling cases that can be made given emerging available evidence, the discussion is all about the acceptance or wholesale rejection of canon with little to no discussion of what actually exists in the absence of the BS.

It’s most disappointing for the latter group though. While I kind of get the way the trauma of proselytizing and indoctrination turns minds off to anything connected with the material, it’s very frustrating that what should be the healthy opposition cedes so many claims of authenticity to the faithfully blind.

Out of context it sounds like something.

But add the lines right before and it’s more clearly fever dream gibberish of a dying old man:

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority.

Did Trump come out of the sea? Does he look like a leopard with bear feet and a lion mouth?

People have been misunderstanding and trying to extend parts of that text to contemporary events since it was written.

“If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.”

So another detail to ponder is that canonically, John the Baptist never drank wine, and traditionally, neither did James the Just.

Yet the ritual for taking part in salvation necessitated drinking wine (especially as the doctrine of transubstantiation developed later on)?

So his mentor and brother couldn’t partake?

We see as early as Ignatius discussion of a different Eucharist tradition, where he chastises the schismatic use of “evil herbage.”

It’s not a very straightforward development.

In John there’s no Eucharist ritual, but there’s a scene where Jesus dips bread and feeds it to Judas.

This is explained away as a sign of who will betray Jesus.

In Mark, this again happens, but now it doesn’t mention that it’s bread, and immediately precedes a Eucharist ritual.

In Matthew, which was copying from Mark, it makes it a dipped ‘hand’ instead, further distancing any association with bread.

On a completely unrelated note, anyone ever wonder why in the Eucharist ritual, if the bread is supposed to be the body of ‘Christ,’ which is the Greek word literally meaning ‘anointed,’ the bread isn’t being anointed or dipped in anything before being consumed?

Kind of seems like an oversight.

Hillary raised $90 million in the entire month of July.

Harris raised $89 million in a single day in July.

Ah yes, the mythical white woman who would have raised $250 million in 24 hours instead of just a record breaking $100 million.

I really, really, really want to see campaign ads calling Trump out as a coward and chicken.

Dodge the draft.

Dodge the debate.

Like a typical cowardly bully, running away from any fights he doesn’t know he can win.

Just 30 seconds of “Is Trump a yellow bellied coward? Clip of him backing out of debate. Followed by the rest of the air time of just a chicken running around clucking.”

There’s another reason I think too.

In 2016, it was embarrassing to be for Trump.

But after 2016, it became a purity test.

There’s likely households being called up where the person on the phone is legit scared of saying they aren’t MAGA if the other people in the house hear.

That’s likely far less common for any D households.