I swear I come away from the first 3 paragraphs of any amcient author like this.

My wife is british and this year is somehow the first time we realized the hack that is celebrating London New years while in the USA and then going to bed early, but still partied out and satisfied.

I feel like I should want to join a religious community but I'm not sure why. I think perhaps it's because I just likely regularly meetings with people who identify as "family" to me.

Pythagoras shunning fava beans, accompanying the advice, "Do Not Eat Beans!" from Speculum principis (Mirror of Princes) [fol. 25 recto], French, 1512/1514 (National Gallery of Art)

I've been on a classics kick and my wife got me The Count of Monte Cristo for Christmas. It is way bigger than I expected!

yellow page journalism is alive and well on YouTube.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat is probably my favorite book of 2025

Wait traffic went up on this site the last 7 days?? What happened???

Gulliver's Travels was like reading a creative writing exercise from a preachy high schooler. Still - like a preachy high schooler - it had its points at times. The imaginative world building was the best bit.

Ignore this thread. I've drunk to much wine. (Drunk me doesn't want me to delete this thread because I want to come back to it later.)

If something is "likely" then it is the most probabilistic outcome assuming the universe was started again from that immediately prior point in time and that things weren't fullly determined after that point.

Oof. The last 3 months have not been good. How do we fix this?

Finding the meaning of life while off this platform. Sorry, I would share it with you but apprently it isn't possible to share over the web.

Re-read my pandeism manifesto and it made me happy again. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I'd love to join a bible study again but most believers in most bible studies aren't curious enough. It does not feel like time used well.

Nature is so brutal that I really hope that God had no ability to do it another way. Not that I would refuse to praise God if God did deliberately design it this way, but it would be praise of obligation, logically deduced and not felt.

He ignored it and sent me articles from some Christian newsletter about some Catholic quarterback lol

Ok I sent it but I told him I love him at the bottom so I hope it softens the blow

This website loves guilt-by-association. Especially in regards to people who are widely known. Good thing I associate with basically no one.

Update to my elevator pitch for not being a Christian in 2025. About to lock my summary document for the year and start the 2026 version.

If only my parents were worse, more hateful people that would benefit by having their faith rocked.

Not my dad asking me to watch a sermon he went to about doubt, and me writing up a 4 page response I'll likely never send.

Is there something you've always wanted to ask @petemandik.bsky.social and me? (No sarcasm, please!) If so, then now's your chance. We're holding a live Q&A tomorrow at 1pm ET / 6pm GMT. You can post your questions in advance in the chat at the link below www.youtube.com/live/149ZxHC...

I have created a decombination ray based on panpsychist principles. It shatters your enemy's macroconsciousness into its component microconsciousnesses. Of course, this doesn't have any effect on their behaviour, but you have the comfort of knowing that they are no longer really enjoying the fight.

Does the vatican not feel any tension betwen consistently referring to the church in feminine terms and simultaneously only allowing males to represent her authoritatively?

TIL that the Roman Catholic church denied the sacraments to those who asked to be cremated prior to 1963.

"be not afraid" just sounds so much cooler than "don't be afraid"

I have this strong intuition that this life is the only proper opportunity we have to love each other. So we must seize the opportunity. And do so urgently.

Christmas trees are not pagan #maklelan3032 youtu.be/uW5vGf17yaU

The power consumption of the human brain continually amazes me.

Making sure to maintain my level of typos yo avoid AI accusations.

I don't expect philosophers to be pragmatic because pragmatic people are less likely to pay for a degree in philosophy.

I'm not smart enough to be an expert but when I rely on the experts then I realize that they disagree, and if I just play a "majority opinion game" then that seems to change over time. A perennial problem.

My extremely lofty goal is for the website at my domain to host tools which help people learn epistemology, and assess whether or not Christianity is true. Just putting this out there to embarrass myself with the lack of develooment in 1 years time.

If there are some ends that are morally more valuable than other ends, then consequentialism is true, or at least part of the truth.

Imagine if the road to hell actually was paved with good intentions, and people trying to do good ended up tormented for eternity.

Don't you just hate when you are just watching basketball videos and then someone in the comments reminds you that you have to think the right things at the moment of death or God will throw you into a lake of fire for eternity?

you will only be confident in your beliefs if you are confident in your trust

Ok, caved and got a custom domain. Am I cool now?

new anonymous survey on relationships/age! Pls fill it out! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

new meme just dropped

Why did the self replicating chemical structures ever need to be aware of anything?

Just heard the story of a patient who has to hide the reality of his chronic illness from his coworkers because he has a disease that costs $500k/year to treat and is single handedly responsible for the increased premiums at his small company.

Good stuff here.

Okay, new argument for consequentialism clearly being correct. 1. If the morality of our neighbor matters, and if we can affect our neighbor's morality, then consequentialism is the correct moral theory. 2. Our neighbor's morality matters 3. We can affect our neighbors morality C. [...]

Looking at all the accounts I used to talk to on X getting lots of engagement and interaction, and longing for that but also knowing logically that interraction online is ultimately not in my best interest for productivity and stress levels so I'm better off here.

"Probability of salvation" is a very real thing if salvation is not pre-determined before birth. By any criteria we can possibly conceive related to beliefs or actions, there are higher probabilities of them occurring on a frequentist basis if pre-determinism isn't true.

Hell is the traditional position of the church. If Hell exists, then saving souls is more important than anything earthly problem. We should be willing to collapse society if it would save a single additional soul. Good post by @benthamsbulldog.bsky.social benthams.substack.com/p/christiani...

I think it's about time I look at some source material in this matter

The problem with a generic chronological following tab is that I'm mostly only interested in like 10% of the stuff from accounts I follow and I can only bear scrolling back like 2 hours because some of them post a lot.