HelixDab2

Vance was polished, smooth, knew his talking points and bullshit claims cold. Walz, not so much. He didn't have good counters to a lot of the shit that Vance was throwing out. The broad consensus is that Vance handily won the debate, much like the broad consensus was that Harris trounced Trump in the debate.

He’s literally obama, but white.

He is not even close to being a white Obama. Obama is a highly skilled orator, extremely skilled debater, and a scholar. Tim Walz connects well with people--perhaps especially well with midwestern people--but he is not a particularly strong orator, is fairly weak in debates, and is definitely not a scholarly type. They may be close on policy, although I would hope that Walz would be farther to the left than Obama was.

Please, do FUCKING NOT.

His debate performance was poor against Vance. We don't need a kindly father-figure running against Republicans, we need an attack dog that knows police cold, who can articulate that tax cuts cost more in tax revenues than we make up in added jobs, economic growth, etc., someone that's going to actively piss-off billionaires and then not kiss their asses once they have power... We need a leftist populist, someone that will get people fired up.

Walz is not that guy.

One lesson that I've seen in politics over and over again is Dems running the same candidate in a rematch, and the rematch always goes worse than the original election.

Hello, fellow exmo.

I probably would have been ordained by now, but I left when the new CoC came out (2000, I think?) that--among other things--forbade members from speaking publicly as members about their own experiences within TST. The summary and capricious expulsion of numerous ministers that were agitating for change within the org confirmed to me that if congregations had autonomy, it was only because Doug and Cevin allowed it.

I was raised Mormon.

The first things that's very important to know about the Mormon church is that they believe that they are led by direct revelation from god, and that god will never allow the 'prophet' of the church to lead the church astray. The 'prophet' is the head of the whole church, and Mormons believe he (and the prophet is always a man, because women are always subordinate to men in the Mormon church) receives revelation for the entire church and world. As you go down the chain of authority, each person is supposed to be receiving revelation for the people that are under them. So it is believed that if your bishop--who is a local congregation leader, not at all like a Catholic bishop--asks you to do something in his capacity as bishop, then that's coming directly from god.

The second thing that's critical to know about the Mormon church is that every member is very strongly encouraged to pray and ask god to confirm the truth of things. Members are told to read their scriptures (esp. the Book of Mormon) and study the words of Mormon 'prophets', and then pray about it. A warm, fuzzy feeling is believed to be the confirmation of the holy spirit that those things are correct; a lack of confirmation means that you need to pray harder, because those things are self evidently () the word of god.

Got it? Good, continuing on.

I didn't particularly want to be a missionary, but it was expected that I would become one, so I did. I did not enjoy being a missionary; I absolutely hated it. The mission president--a man that presided over a specific geographical area and group of missionaries--largely did not believe in mental health, and told me to put on a happy face. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and became suicidal. I remember being told that "the light of the holy spirit has left your eyes", and that the reason that I was suicidal was because I had sinned an allowed Satan into my heart. The solution that was prescribed by religious leaders was to pray more, study my scriptures more, bear my testimony more often, etc., and that I would be fine.

...But I knew that I had not sinned. How could it be that my religious leaders, people that were supposed to have the power from god to receive revelation for me, people that I had been promised would never lead me wrong when they were acting in their religious capacity, would be insisting that I must have sinned? What sin did they think that I had committed? (Spoiler: I'm actually high-functioning autistic, and the lifestyle demanded of missionaries was extremely stressful. That stress was what led to the nervous breakdown.) I was eventually sent to the LDS Social Services, which is a counseling org in the Mormon church; the church as a whole is very skeptical of therapists because they take a science-based approach rather than a religion-centric approach. The therapist decided that I was too preoccupied with sexual matters (which, fucking duh, I was 20, and was cut off from social interactions with people of my preferred gender while I was a missionary), and also counseled repentance, etc., along with some aversion therapy to make me feel even more shame about all things sexual.

Meanwhile, I had a psychiatrist for medication. The psychiatrist had a strictly science-based approach. He said that there wasn't any clear reason why some people would become suicidal and others wouldn't, but some medications might help.

It all eventually got me thinking: I knew that I wasn't sinning, but my church leaders--the people that were supposed to be receiving revelation for me, on my behalf--were insisting that I must be. If I've been praying about the truth claims of the Mormon church, and had believed that the holy spirit has been told me that it's all true, but the people that I believe have the gift of prophecy are completely wrong, what does this mean?

For me, the inescapable conclusion was that feelings were not a reliable indication of 'truth'.

If feelings aren't a way to know truth, then what is? Once you start studying the history of the Mormon church, the whole enterprise starts looking like a very sketchy con, and is certainly not something you would take at face value. Moreover, it turns out that all religions are relying on feelings that the religions say are from god in order to confirm that their religion is the One True Religion. Not only is there nothing that's falsifiable about belief in Mormonism, there's nothing falsifiable in religion in general.

Once you accept that, then the most reasonable answer is to say to say that either the existence of a god is unknowable with what we have right now, or that there is no god at all. I settled on the latter, although extraordinary evidence might be able to convince me.

Sure, I'm completely okay with that too. Although I was thinking of tackling fraud more of an ex post facto audit system, rather than adding in compliance paperwork.

I'm very much not opposed to taxation, including taxing me, if that means that people have stable jobs or get the help they need. And as long as billionaires also get guillotined.

Probably heterosexual, biromantic.

Sure! It creates real jobs, while also discouraging people from fucking over the system. Even if there's zero fraud happening, auditing the system to make sure isn't going to hurt. (Well, it won't hurt as long as they don't remove people that are entitled to the benefits.)

I just finished my NRA Basic Pistol class this weekend so that I can get the NRA Handgun Instructor certification next weekend. Personally, aside from having loved guns (and all other arms and armor) since I was in kindergarten, I've been competing in hit factor and PCSL matches for a few years. My intent is to offer free one-on-one classes to people in underserved communities that wouldn't be comfortable around the kind of people that are normally firearms instructors. (Like, the person I took the class from seemed pretty cool, until he was talking to the RSO, and hooooooooly shit, dude's pretty far right; apparently I can camouflage as being far right just because I know a lot about guns and shoot pretty okay.

Thing is, the right to keep and bear arms is both a universal civil right for Americans and is an individual right. (The last part is pretty clear when you look at the historical context; not only were individuals allowed to own firearms, but able bodied men were obligated to own military-appropriate arms, and be ready to be called up if they were needed.) Yes, it is for self-defense--that's inherited from English common law--but that's not the primary intent.

It's an incredibly privileged take to think that you can remove guns from the people, leave them in the hands of the gov't, and thing that you're gonna be just fine.

In some ways, sure. I'm not religious, and I don't have children. In terms of finances, no.

2FA is great, right up until you're also the victim of a sim swap attack.

OnlyKey seems to be a better choice than Yubikey, from what I can see. The only reason I haven't switched is that I have a few accounts that I share with my partner, and I want to be sure that I can have two different keys work for the same account.

Last I knew, nurses were still in pretty short supply, so there's no good reason not to quit and pick up a job with better pay and working conditions.