vain

March 18th, 2020

She’s a monster.

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Discussion (33)¬

  1. DocAtheist says:
    March 18, 2020 at 3:38 pm

    Mo’s outfit gave me the idea for Viral Fashion’s Latest: The Corona Burka!
    Just take an extra large, extra strong garbage bag, put it over your head — no arm holes — and cut a window for the face. Cover the window with clear plastic (actually covered and taped before cutting the bag away and before putting this on). Now, you’re protected! And what of your hands reaching out of the bottom? If disposable gloves aren’t available, use produce baggies or other plastic bags. Hey, it’s better (and safer) than nothing.

  2. Laripu says:
    March 18, 2020 at 4:17 pm

    Do atheist, that protection is only for panicky non-believers.

    One of the versions of god will protect believers, don’t you think? I mean, viruses are what scientists call very very small, and the various gods are infinite, or at least bigger than a Buick, so what chance does a virus have against a big ol’ god?

  3. Laripu says:
    March 18, 2020 at 4:18 pm

    That should have said DocAtheist.

  4. Forteatwo says:
    March 18, 2020 at 5:34 pm

    Frankly, today’s evangelicals rarely talk about sinners burning in hell. I suspect this is because the whole concept that an all-knowing, all-powerful god creating faulty human beings and then torturing them endlessly for their mistakes is an embarrassment.
    On the upside, you have to admit some of the worlds great art was inspired by demonic visions of hell- fire and brimstone. I recall as a child seeing these visions in our illustrated family bible and then running outside with my magnifying glass on a sunny day to burn some ants.

  5. Paul Seed says:
    March 18, 2020 at 6:03 pm

    I have 3 ids, but only one of them has an avatar. Apologies, while I work out which one.

  6. Someone says:
    March 18, 2020 at 6:28 pm

    An idea: if some hyper-religious nutter proclaims to you that you will burn in Hell for all eternity, simply laugh in their face and quote this Pinhead gem: “Burn? Oh, such a limited imagination!”
    In fact, he’s got plenty of one-liners you can use for rebuttal.

  7. Paul Seed says:
    March 18, 2020 at 6:36 pm

    Got it in one! And then my next comment disappeared. The avatar is George Fox, the early Quaker.

    Threats of hellfire sometimes served to make people behave better than they otherwise would. do they were not entirely without point,. however, they also gave the sad something to terrify them, while the mad and bad were inspired to greater deeds of evil.

    Er can do better, and sometimes we do.

  8. Luxi Turna says:
    March 18, 2020 at 6:59 pm

    ‘Nother, winner, Author!

  9. hotrats says:
    March 19, 2020 at 2:16 am

    According to mediaeval theology, God created Hell before he created people. When people talk about God’s plan, it’s worth reminding them that God began the project of humanity by constructing an eternal torture chamber.

  10. Efogoto says:
    March 19, 2020 at 7:04 am

    @hotrats: God only built Hell after he knew that humans would defy him in the future, and that it would be for their own good to suffer for eternity. Once eternity’s done, maybe they’ll be welcome in Heaven … the light at the end of the tunnel.

  11. Jesus F Iscariot says:
    March 19, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    My dad didn’t create Hell for humans. When Satan rebelled he was tossed down into this fiery pit for eternity. We get to go there if we won’t blow a priest or rat out a bishop or something equivalent like missing mass or coveting thy neighbor’s ass.

  12. jb says:
    March 19, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    Oh come on, be fair. There was never any claim that a “process of reasoning” is involved. Believers believe the things they believe not because they have reasoned things out, but because they have been told by people they trust that those things are true. All of us are like this! That trust may be totally misplaced, and the things they have been told to believe utterly horrible, but still, it’s basically the same reason that most of us believe most of the things we believe about the world. Somebody told us that those things are true, and we trusted them enough to believe them. (Of course it helps — a lot! — if you want to believe something. Making people want to believe is a key ingredient in any religion or ideology).

  13. jb says:
    March 19, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    Hey, there wasn’t any edit period after I submitted my previous comment. Has that been eliminated?

  14. Chiefy says:
    March 19, 2020 at 8:59 pm

    Efogoto, that’s what keeps me going; the thought that it will only last for ever.

  15. Author says:
    March 20, 2020 at 9:05 am

    Testing.

  16. Author says:
    March 20, 2020 at 9:08 am

    Testing 123. Yes, JB – it looks like the comment editing plug-in has stopped working. Will look into it.

  17. OtterBe says:
    March 20, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    Just heard that Pakistan is officially NOT closing mosques in response to this pandemic. They are truly >creating< hell for themselves!
    Mind you, my faithhead buddy from work proudly told me Monday that his church held service Sun “because Pastor Bob is a doctor and he told us healthy people will be fine even if they get the ‘Chinese virus’(!)” (!!). After the dust settled from the “I am NOT a racist” / “You’re saying racist things-and you KNOW I won’t keep quiet for that” , I told him I’d be very interested in hearing his pastor’s opinions about the level of care a hospital can provide when 2000 people per week show up rather than 200. I guess when you have been brought up to obey the voice of authority from the pulpit your reasoning faculties whither?

    As I’m finally here in real-time, I’d like to ask if there is a non-alcoholic beverage I could partake of here in the C&B? Coke, maybe? I well recall the furor a few years back concerning whether it was acceptable to consume coffee on-premises….

  18. jb says:
    March 21, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    OtterBe — Being a racist used to be about serious things, like thinking certain people were less than human and shouldn’t be allowed to live near you or get a good education and a good job. But the world has changed! These days being a racist is about trivial things, like using the term “Chinese virus” for a virus that, um, kinda did originate in China. Given that this is now the current understanding of racism, it seems to me that being a racist has become a matter of no real importance.

  19. Laripu says:
    March 21, 2020 at 2:48 pm

    OtterBe, as late as three weeks ago, while Iran was already experiencing high numbers of infections, people were licking the walls of a shrine in Qom in defiance … of … I’m not certain what they were defying. Maybe science and knowledge? Maybe reality? Anyway here’s a link:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-51706021

  20. jb says:
    March 21, 2020 at 3:41 pm

    https://www.xkcd.com/2277/

  21. Jesus F Iscariot says:
    March 22, 2020 at 1:26 pm

    jb: you are right about terminology. Hong Kong Flu, Spanish Flu, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Wuhan virus are simple melodious titles for real diseases to make conversation clearer, not to besmirch the citizens of those locales. Snowflake paranoia!

    Some words are intentional insults. “Jeezoids” is one of my favorites for example. “Snowflake” too.

    Some concepts are irretrievably garbled. We’ll never be able to talk simply about LGBTQ2S+. Anything shorthand is deemed bigotry.

  22. Pete says:
    March 22, 2020 at 2:18 pm

    Please can Jesus or Mo explain to me why people can’t go to church to pray for protection from the coronavirus?

  23. OtterBe says:
    March 22, 2020 at 8:00 pm

    Words matter. The ‘othering’ of those not like ourselves is a well-worn tactic used by groups down through the ages: you apply a label, then apply a caricature to the label and repeat it endlessly. Soon the public doesn’t think of the others as human, but as the caricature. ‘Huns’, ‘Jerry’, ‘Japs’, ‘Gooks’, ‘towel-head’, ‘Habib’, etc. The other group has become sub-human: no one empathizes with a caricature.

    *Apologies : politics ahead*
    Trump has been othering groups since I first became aware of him in the ‘80s, and he now has a much bigger mic. When confronted with his use of ‘Chinese virus’, he doubled-then tripled-down on it. Much as I personally dislike him, he knows how to manipulate people. He is casting ( explicitly! ) himself as a ‘war-time’ president, and he is presenting us with a group to hate&fear just as we are worried about our livelihoods and even our very lives. So I couldn’t let those words pass without taking exception.

    I do apologize for including it in recounting the anecdote above. I shouldn’t have because it distracts from my point about religious believers being encouraged in practices contrary to the good of society as a whole.

    Be well, people

  24. Someone says:
    March 22, 2020 at 11:55 pm

    You know you’re in Australia when people spend the weekend raiding liquor stores to panic-buy booze. In response to the fact that pubs, clubs etc. are on lockdown because idiots think that by gathering en masse to have fun, they won’t catch Corona, and so what if they do.
    I don’t really drink anymore but this mentality pisses me off. I’m just glad I don’t live in a nation that panic-buys guns.

  25. postdoggerel says:
    March 23, 2020 at 2:13 am

    try not to be so satirical
    when addressing the metempirical
    covid-19 virus
    is not so desirous
    in short it’s high time for a miracle.

  26. Len says:
    March 23, 2020 at 9:57 am

    Pete, people certainly can pray for protection from the Corona virus, if they want to. In the real world however, all that praying won’t actually help cure or protect anyone – unless they pray in secret at home (as the Bible tells them to), which could help prevent it spreading. But still no cure. Gathering in a group will likely as not have the opposite effect – people who are carrying the virus (possibly unbeknownst to themselves) will pass it to others. The others may very well die as a result.

  27. jb says:
    March 23, 2020 at 11:12 pm

    OtterBe — Sometimes words matter, sometimes they don’t. When southern slave-owners said that blacks were cursed by God as the descendants of Cain, and were thereby fit only for servitude, or when Hitler explicitly characterized Jews as malicious subhumans plotting the destruction of the German people, those words mattered. When Trump refers to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus,” that’s trivia.

    The accusation of “othering” is a well-worn tactic used by the politically correct Left to demonize their political opponents by obscuring this distinction. It works like this: “Hitler said terrible things about the Jews, and that led to the Holocaust. You just said something that I insist is terrible because it maybe kinda hurt someone’s exquisitely sensitive feelings somewhere, and if we’ve learned anything from 1932 it’s where this sort of dehumanization leads, and that it must be stopped! And we — the Good People — are the one’s to stop it!!!” No offense is too “micro” to avoid triggering this accusation. Indeed, the more micro the offense, the more virtue is displayed by identifying it and calling it out. A good term for what is going on here is “piety contest”. Normal people look on aghast, but the Good People are sufficiently entrenched that they can retain control of the Megaphone and avoid being laughed into obscurity. And then the cycle repeats.

    (No apologies for the politics. I find this far more interesting than idiots licking walls).

  28. two cents' worth says:
    March 24, 2020 at 4:19 pm

    The pubs may be closed in the real world, but we lucky folks can gather here at the Cock & Bull in the virtual world. Barmaid, this round’s on me! (OtterBe, if coffee’s not on offer, you should be able to order Coke or any other mixer.) Here’s to your health, everyone!

  29. M27Holts says:
    March 24, 2020 at 8:23 pm

    Aye…the pubs are shut and I am on 3 months holiday at 80% pay…just cleared out my gym, service the concept 2 tomorrow and hopefully by the end of my isolation I will have the abs I had when I was 20….silver linings and all that.

  30. OtterBe says:
    March 25, 2020 at 12:09 am

    Well, jb, as my classes are purely online now, I reckon I can stand a quick round in the mud with you.
    Politics ahead

    Where to even start…
    First, the backstory. I am the lone self-identified Tree-hugging, Freethinkin’ spawn of Ivory-tower Egghead- academic Hippies working in a blue-collar trade alongside Good Ol’ Boys in Appalachia. As such, I call bull$#¡t when I see it. I correct them when they spread Trump’s Alternative Facts—AND I cite sources. Endlessly.
    The faithhead buddy I was talking with was just pushing my buttons, but I couldn’t let it pass. So…
    Preemptive Godwin. Really? I give a brief thumbnail of othering( without emotion-laden terminology, mind you: only examples ), and you immediately go DEFCON: Hitler?
    > I’ve changed my mind: I don’t want to get muddy. You aptly demonstrated back in ‘16 in an exchange with one of our regulars how dishonest your arguments are. You use much of the same playbook popularized by the 4chan crowd( but your use of language is much better than the norm there….Gawker, maybe? )
    So, I cheerfully forfeit: you are victorious on this-the field of your honour.

  31. M27Holts says:
    March 25, 2020 at 7:43 am

    OB. I see both sides of this dichotomy, on one side you have , freedom of speech and on the other, you have the insideous wedge that slides into extremism, driven by the casual breeze of hidden agendas. It’s difficult to define “hate speech” but I note that in most cases that it is usually applied to prevent the opposition to clearly defined dogma that being religious is usually afforded far more credance than should be allowed by logical standards…

  32. jb says:
    March 25, 2020 at 2:18 pm

    OtterBe — I don’t mind if people disagree with me, or even tell me I am a bigot or a fool. Who knows, maybe they’re right! But accusations of dishonesty — which are far too common in all sectors of the political landscape — are cheap. I can guarantee that whatever it was I said in 2016, I was honestly expressing my true thinking to the best of my ability, as I am doing now. I’ll go further and say that, at least when it comes to low-stakes political arguments in forums like this, however limited and confused their thinking might strike me as being, it usually seems to me that most people are doing the same. Even you.

  33. postdoggerel says:
    March 28, 2020 at 7:56 am

    https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/fqanzn/stay_the_fuck_at_home/

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