Has he thoroughly rejected his former arguments about secondhand smoke? Wasn’t there an entire episode of BS! that claimed that secondhand smoke was essentially harmless, and bans on it were government overreach and hysteria?

I think there’s a clip of him talking about it somewhere that I saw on an episode of Knowing Better, but it was really mealy mouthed. I watched that show obsessively in high school and even then thought that was odd.

By definition a primary source is not “re-written”.

Then you are ruling out most ancient primary sources. I don’t think you understand ancient or medieval concepts of authorship, or document transmission.

What time periods/places are you interested in? I am able to and would be happy to give you a detailed list of primary and secondary sources for a good chunk of concepts.

That’s the big thing - historians tend to focus. Even the university “western history from 1500” or whatever are going to vary a lot by what the professor is interested in and focused on. Behind just focusing on like a whole country or time period, they get super specific and do shit like figure out that whole undocumented kingdoms existed based on numismatic work (coins) or look at things like architectural influences that the crusaders brought back and can be seen in their classes (I had a prof who had a whole feminist interpretation of medieval castle architecture)

Your comment alludes to the history of religion, which is definitely a complicated topic and has its own complexities in historiography (the study of history and techniques). Religion has interactions with so many other spheres, and so you also often have to dive deeply into the culture and history of the specific people who practiced it to understand the why - which is hard, because religious interpretations that are common now tend to get read backwards into the text.

I’d be happy to give you a list of sources for any religion as well. (Do you feel most comfortable with texts for popular audiences, or would you like to explore academic material?)

In general - yes. There is a flood of shitty and lazy “art” that has infected search results and creative spaces. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with it being trained on artists work without their consent - for all the talk about it being equivalent to human inspiration I’m pretty sure there have been examples where it’s started generating attempts at signatures.

It’s terrible in knitting and crochet spaces (I imagine woodworking and sculpture and architecture too) because there are lots of things generated which are physical impossible and just wrong to anyone who enjoys the crafts. It gives false understandings of what those art forms look like.

I think the entire point of art is the human intentionality aspect. Art is humans using materials to do things that don’t serve an immediate practical purpose. There has to be some element of “desire” on the part of the artist.

So it’s not that it is impossible to use AI tools to generate art (there’s stochastic computer generated pieces from the 70s that are lovely iirc) To me though, the way these tools are used is what is important - if you’re using an AI you’re training and adjusting yourself, if you’re spending hours tweaking prompts and perhaps sifting through hundreds of pictures to combine and really participate in “making” something.

The current trend is really just a bunch of content sludge. I don’t see the appeal in either the process of creation or in what can be appreciated from it. The best stuff is mostly memey topical political jokes, where it rests more on the symbols rather than the art itself.

Like, when I make art - my process is adding layers over weeks and weeks. It’s noticing that I don’t like the way this section looks, so I go back over it, come back to it later… it’s a process - I engage with and shape the work. I’m just a guy who glues trash to things and paints them, my art doesn’t really have external value - but it still feels like art in a way that getting Midjourney to make pictures of Gandolf with big honking naturals isn’t.

My idea as a transgender man who struggles with mental illness - if I am safe, than health cis men are also safe.

Maybe it’s not “use people as a buffer” but the start fighting now.

I know I am in danger and there is nothing I can do about it. Many cis men can do things now, that would improve my life and help push up against this rising tide of fascism.

They probably won’t come for you (unless you’re very politically vocal) until after they’re done with immigrants, LGBTQ folks, the mentally ill…

So if you don’t want them to come for you, help make sure they don’t get to wrap up those groups first. Maybe advocate on behalf of some of those folks - your voice has more clout.

“Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.”

And that’s what seals the deal for me. If Clinton gave a shit about Lewinsky, he would have at least tried to protect her somewhat in the fallout. He had fun, she had consequences.

People on the left treated her like shit - I guess it is further evidence that Bill Maher has always been awful. She got played on manipulated on both sides. Her reputation was trashed and she had a hard time finding work after - it destroyed her career and future.

This was a boss that took advantage of his power and authority to get a couple loads out, and then disposed of the person once they became our nation’s designated bearer of the scarlet letter.

I had sex with men who were much older than me when I was in my early twenties. The difference was that they weren’t my boss.

Dan Savage I think had something about “campground rules” too - if you are going to have sexual relations with a legal consenting adult you are significantly older than, it’s on you to use your greater experience to leave that partner better than you found them.

Are you a woman? How the fuck do you meaningfully say no to sex with the President?

Go fuck yourself with that “taking away women’s agency” bullshit. Bosses don’t get to sleep with employees. Teachers don’t get to sleep with students.

Monica got treated like shit for decade. That’s not “hot as hell” unless you’re a creepy misogynist that gets off on women being public humiliated.

Funnily enough, in the 50’s and 60’s - parents were often more concerned with their kiddos “going steady” and preferred them to date around.

Polyamory is definitely dicey without a lot of emotional maturity (tbh I don’t think most adults could handle it), but also teenage dating drama is silly. As long as she’s safe and happy, you should probably just be okay with it.

“purely cosmetic”

Dental abscesses and infections related to tooth decay were among the leading causes of death before premodern times.

Whitewater real estate scandal. Kenneth Starr was investigating him for that and when they couldn’t find anything actionable, they switched to the perjury and sex.

I’m not a fan of a President using their power to have an intern blow them (I don’t think there’s meaningful consent there), but it doesn’t compare to raping multiple women, peeping on teenage girls at Miss Teen America, and making comments about how you’d fuck your daughter if that was an option. The aristocrats!

The elements borrowed from Babylonian mythology show up in the post-exilic period. Like, yeah, there’s Babylonian influence in the Noah story, because they had been held captive in Babylon and met Babylonians. We’re talking like 500s BCE here.

Flood stories are not really that impressive a commonality. Early civilizations were based on rivers. Sometimes rivers flood and that’s a big deal (the Nile floods consistently, which refreshes nutrients and is how Egyptian civilizations managed their longevity.)

Lying about sleeping with an intern - impeachment

Lying about sharing classified information on an insecure group chat - “he’s just a widdle guy 😢”

from 3000 years ago

The only parts that are even possibly that old are random bits of poetry.

Dan McClellan videos on YouTube and TikTok are great and accessible discussions of a lot of academic Bible research.

Okay. So if you can’t link a lecture where he is specifically making the argument that Hesiod’s Theogony is an influence on the authors of the Bible (which ones? which books?) can you clarify or make specific the connections he draws between the Theogony and specific texts of the Bible?

Like, if anything, the argument you’re making here is more that the “collective unconscious” influenced the Bible.

Which sure, Jungians say that the “collective unconscious” influences everything, but that is meaningless here - you’re making the specific claim that Hesiod influenced the writing of some books of the Bible (which? it wasn’t written by one person, and it wasn’t all written at once). You are also making the secondary claim that Watts also made this claim. Please back these claims up, rather than gesturing vaguely at multiple unrelated religious traditions.

Edit: also, check that wiki link for the timeline of the Bible. “As the Old Testament was like 2 thousand years before the new.” is entirely incorrect.

Didn’t Alan Watts usually talk about (his extremely westernized interpretation of) Zen Buddhism? When has Alan Watts made the strange argument that ancient Israelites were somehow aware of Greek mythology and a specific text that wasn’t even written until at least many of the minor prophets books were written?

When has Alan Watts ever really been focused on the development of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and it’s relationship to Greek mythology? Do you have a link to his argument?

Edit: Checked out and skimmed Myth & Ritual in Christianity online to see if what you are saying is in there. I strongly suspect that you are seriously misinterpreting ideas related to Jung and the collective unconscious (as does Zeitgeist), but feel free to clarify.

How???

Like, you can do some really interesting conversations about Neo Platonism and philo-semitism around the time some of the New Testament was being written - Gnosticism undoubtedly comes from Greek philosophy - but many portions of the Hebrew Bible predate Hesiod entirely.

Can you provide any form of argument, or is this some shit you picked up from like Zeitgeist or something.

The Bible as a text has zero issues with slavery. The Old Testament thinks it’s fine to sell your daughter. The New Testament tells slaves to submit to their masters.

Your average Christian has very little knowledge of what the Bible actually contains. Non denominational Protestant Christianity’s focus on the personal relationship with God and their interpretation of ‘Biblical literalism’ means that you just squint at the text and read what you want from it.

I remember listening to some particularly painful exegesis on David killing the Amalekite messenger being some kind of message on not tattling to your boss about things. They don’t read things in context - they read snippets and verses and work in their pop culture understandings about hell, Satan, and salvation into the text.

How is Ancient Greek poetry about the origin of the Greek gods relevant here?