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Holiday Classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Accused of Being 'Seriously Problematic'

Twitter video

How braindead do you have to be to make that video? Braindead enough to work at Huffington Post's clickbait division. Wait, is there a division?

What we really need is Christianity to be completely crushed and to only allow the two truuuu pagan Xmas specials to be played on TV: The Year Without a Santa Claus and The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. 🎄💪🎅👍

Spiritual successor to Gaaark's journal.

America’s New Religions

For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself. I think of non-PC gaffes as the equivalent of old swear words. Like the puritans who were agape when someone said “goddamn,” the new faithful are scandalized when someone says something “problematic.” Another commonality of the zealot then and now: humorlessness.

And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. “Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.

The same cultish dynamic can be seen on the right. There, many profess nominal Christianity and yet demonstrate every day that they have left it far behind. Some exist in a world without meaning altogether, and that fate is never pretty. I saw this most vividly when examining the opioid epidemic. People who have lost religion and are coasting along on materialism find they have few interior resources to keep going when crisis hits. They have no place of refuge, no spiritual safe space from which to gain perspective, no God to turn to. Many have responded to the collapse of meaning in dark times by simply and logically numbing themselves to death, extinguishing existential pain through ever-stronger painkillers that ultimately kill the pain of life itself.

Yes, many Evangelicals are among the holiest and most quietly devoted people out there. Some have bravely resisted the cult. But their leaders have turned Christianity into a political and social identity, not a lived faith, and much of their flock — a staggering 81 percent voted for Trump — has signed on. They have tribalized a religion explicitly built by Jesus as anti-tribal. They have turned to idols — including their blasphemous belief in America as God’s chosen country. They have embraced wealth and nationalism as core goods, two ideas utterly anathema to Christ. They are indifferent to the destruction of the creation they say they believe God made. And because their faith is unmoored but their religious impulse is strong, they seek a replacement for religion. This is why they could suddenly rally to a cult called Trump. He may be the least Christian person in America, but his persona met the religious need their own faiths had ceased to provide. The terrible truth of the last three years is that the fresh appeal of a leader-cult has overwhelmed the fading truths of Christianity.

This is why they are so hard to reach or to persuade and why nothing that Trump does or could do changes their minds. You cannot argue logically with a religion — which is why you cannot really argue with social-justice activists either. And what’s interesting is how support for Trump is greater among those who do not regularly attend church than among those who do.

Meet the RIP Bullet: The Deadliest Ammo on Planet Earth?

Found when searching for "planet nine".

General

This is a post / TFS text pre-processor designed specifically for use with soylent.org

It is Python CGI that must be installed upon a webserver, and is then used via the web page it generates.

Capabilities:

• Generates <abbr> tag pairs with terminology expansions for caps / numbers / caps+numbers sequences
• 677 term expansions (as of Dec 7, 2018)
• Built-in macro language
• Can list available macros (on by default)
• Can list all expandable terms (off by default)
• Multiple random/selected signature generator
• Flags unknown terminology that may be expandable on the web page
• Handles pre-existing <abbr> tag pairs when you want to add one-off uses
• Handles HTML and won't try to expand within HTML tags
• Handles unicode posting
• Includes test code to verify file containing expansions
• Incorporates self-test when run from command line
• Includes command line tool to check to see if acronym already present in expansion list

The project can be found here on Github.

--
Entropy is a bitch.

Chihuahuas aren't really dogs, of course. Dogs are pretty smart in general, and chihuahuas are just plain stupid.

Anyway, after reading that chihuahuas are good for people with asthma, I decided to get one for the wife, many years ago. The creatures aren't very durable, and the wife wore that one out. But, the presence of the chihuahua really does seem to help with her asthma. The always present inhaler has pretty much disappeared from her life. There's one laying around, but she almost never needs it, and when she does need it, she has to search for it.

But, back the the stupid creatures - I usually address the chihuahuas as "Stupid". "You want out, Stupid?" A normal dog will spring into springy mode immediately, bouncing up and down in front of the door, waiting for you to catch up to him. The chihuahua, instead, looks at you blankly, mulling the concept of "outside" for awhile. Sometime later, sometimes even on the same day, the creature decides, "Yes, outside!" then starts jumping up and down.

So, the wife heard me telling her pet, one more time, that he was dumb as a rock. "Why do you say he's stupid?" "Because he's dumber than a rock, of course." "Well, you're going to give the dog a complex!" "He already has a complexion - kinda black with a red tint, which is why you named him Cocoa." "Well, stop calling him stupid!"

Hmmmm. I snatched the animal up, walked through the door, attached his tie-out lead, and put him down. Then, I walked around the yard picking up several rocks. I didn't even pick and choose for smart looking rocks, I did my best to just pick them at random. I carried the rocks inside, and arranged them on the floor. The wife is looking at me weird, but she often does that, I paid her no mind. After awhile, I brought the animal back inside, and carried him to where the rocks sat in a semicircle. The wife followed me into the living room, and watched while I administered an intelligence test to the animal and the minerals.

Sample question found on Youtube for intelligence tests for rocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH2P3qQYUFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw1BmB5ALHo

The chihuahua scored behind six rocks, and ahead of four other rocks, "proving" that a chihuahua is truly "dumb as a box of rocks".

Be warned - testing the IQ's of rocks can be time consuming, and tedious. You must be prepared to wait for the rocks, and you must be able to "interpret" the rock's answers. Which is only fair, because you also have to "interpret" the chihuahua's answers. If you've ever been employed as an historical site "interpreter", you'll be well prepared for this endeavor.

I wish there were a real dog that were purported to be "good for asthma". Why not a border collie? Or, and Irish setter? *sigh*

Festive Satanic statue added to Illinois statehouse

A satanic group has added its own statue to a series of displays in the government building of the US state of Illinois to mark the festive season.

Placed between a Christmas tree and a menorah, the four-foot sculpture depicts a snake coiled around an outstretched arm holding an apple.

It's the first display sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the Temple of Satan.

The state government said the temple had the same right as other religious groups to have a display.

"Under the Constitution, the First Amendment, people have a right to express their feelings, their thoughts," Dave Druker, spokesman for the Illinois secretary of state, told the State Journal-Register. "This recognises that."

The move has been criticised on social media by Illinois Family Action, an anti-abortion pressure group.

Thank you Satan, very cool.

See also: Netflix and Satanic Temple settle £38m lawsuit over Sabrina remake

Politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein settles suit, averting victim testimony

A last-minute settlement has been reached in Florida in a long-running lawsuit involving a politically connected financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.

The deal came Tuesday just before jury selection was to begin, and for now, it means none of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein will be able to testify.

Article text replaced:

A last-minute settlement was reached Tuesday in a long-running Florida lawsuit involving a politically connected financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls, clearing the way for the victims’ lawyers to try to unravel a once-secret agreement that prevented federal criminal prosecution of the financier.

[...] Epstein could have faced a possible life sentence if federal prosecutors had pursued a draft 57-page indictment that was never filed. Now, Scarola and Edwards say that possibility still exists, and the victims — some of whom were only 13 or 14 when they were molested — may yet get their day in federal court amid a national #metoo movement that seeks to hold sexual harassers and abusers to account.

[...] The settlement reached Tuesday involved a lawsuit Epstein filed against Edwards almost a decade ago. Edwards filed a counterclaim, contending that Epstein sued him maliciously, trying to harm Edwards’ reputation and derail his work with Epstein’s own abuse victims.

Jeffrey Epstein apology deprives accusers of day in court

Until his disgrace, Epstein rubbed shoulders with the likes of former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew.

The money manager - the subject of a bombshell Miami Herald investigation last week - was accused of trafficking some 40 teenage girls.

Epstein eventually agreed a plea deal widely seen as extraordinarily lenient. His accusers never got the chance to testify.

The prosecutor criticised for letting Epstein off the hook was Alexander Acosta, who is now labour secretary in the Trump administration.

Lawmakers call for investigation into Labor Secretary Acosta for sex offender plea deal

The lawmakers, which include 10 representatives from Florida, are asking the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General to investigate the "circumstances" surrounding the nonprosecution agreement Acosta entered into with Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy Florida investor who was convicted on two counts of prostitution in 2007.

A new Miami Herald investigation provides details into the deal Acosta and Epstein struck after Epstein was accused of sexually abusing dozens of young girls, many of whom were minors. Epstein was facing a life sentence in federal prison but only served 13 months in county jail as a result of the plea deal with Acosta.

Navy Admiral Scott Stearney Is Found Dead in Bahrain Home

The admiral overseeing American naval operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia was found dead in Bahrain on Saturday, the Navy said.

[...] Admiral Stearney, 58, took charge in May of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, as well as a broader naval coalition there that includes more than 20,000 United States and allied maritime forces.

[...] The American-led naval forces play an important role in safeguarding such vital regional waterways as the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. In recent years, the naval forces have confronted threats including marauding pirates, harassing Iranian revolutionary guard attack boats, weapons smugglers, and Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen firing missiles at commercial ships.

Senior U.S. admiral found dead in Bahrain, no foul play suspected

Top Navy admiral was found dead in 'apparent suicide'

Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, the Navy’s top officer overseeing forces in the Middle East, died Saturday in what defense officials now call an “apparent suicide," CBS News reports.

IMHO, links on SN should specifically accept target="_blank" so that when a reader clicks on a link, they don't have to be taken away from SN, but instead get a new tab (or window, if that's how they've set their browser up.)

At it stands now, adding that to a link results in it being stripped out.

The default behavior of a link in HTML is to change the current page context. In some cases, that's what you want. Perhaps even (slightly) in the majority of cases. But in the case of a conversation, leaving is not generally what you want.

In fact, I wouldn't be in the least opposed to the default behavior of placing a link on SN always adding target="_blank"

NASA Will Announce Its 1st Commercial Partners for the Return to the Moon Thursday

The selected companies will be revealed Thursday (Nov. 29) during a news conference held at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will lead the news conference. The event will begin at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT); you can watch it live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly at the agency's website.

I'll do a sub on it later. Check out the live news conference if you can.

‘Cowboy Bebop’ Live-Action Series Lands at Netflix

The series, which hails from Tomorrow Studios, has been in the works since last year. Netflix has ordered 10 episodes.

Shinichiro Watanabe, director of the original anime, will serve as a consultant on the project. Christopher Yost, who previously penned “Thor: The Dark World” and “Thor: Ragnarok”, will write the first episode and executive produce. Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio will serve as executive producers. Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc.– the studio behind the original series–will also executive produce along with Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios, Tetsu Fujimura, and Matthew Weinberg. The series is a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, with Netflix handling physical production.

The track record for adaptations of anime is not great. Another classic about to be sullied by Netflix?

On a side note, Variety.com has three separate posts about Finland offering incentives to film and TV productions. I guess Variety was offered an incentive, too.

Nubia's latest gaming phone comes with up to 10GB of RAM

Nubia Red Magic Mars announced: Snapdragon 845, 10GB RAM, and shoulder triggers

Not sure if I want to do another submission about a 10 GB of RAM "gaming smartphone". Although it could be amusing.