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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion

    Why? If it was a popular myth, why assume he wouldn’t try to confirm/deny it

    According to Bart Ehrman, Josephus’ passage about Jesus was altered by a Christian scribe, including the reference to Jesus as the Messiah

    So? I’m not presenting evidence for him being a Messiah. I am saying there is some independent evidence of him existing.

    B. The second line in Tacitus that mentions Christ and his death was never noticed until after the mid-fourth century. So this second line is fake.

    I agree that is bizarre, but not proof of it being fake. Though should be taken with a grain of salt.

    This is why Bart Ehrman specifically dismisses Tacitus and Josephus. As do most other biblical scholars.

    Who is Bart Ehrman and why relay his beliefs rather than speak for yourself?







  • From Wikipedia on Vincent Van Gogh: Van Gogh’s work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. After his death, Van Gogh’s art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius

    I don’t really understand how this follows from what I said.

    For every $1 spent on the moonshots, we got $14. Feel free to look for other investments, but big science really has proven itself.

    Do you have a source for that? (And what that claim actually means), afterall, plenty of “essential” inventions in the modern day(including the base of modern rocketry) came from weapons development- does that make war a good investment? (Of course its not 1-to-1 because war is destructive, but my point is putting a lot of effort and smart people into almost anything will lead to a lot of innovation)


  • The service they provide (from a perspective external to obligatory capitalism) is less about making them, but providing a framework by which people engaged in artistic expression and development get paid and permitted to survive.

    If it is art that other people value then that framework already existed(and there are many others who created similar tools for it) so I don’t see it as particularly valuable.

    Contrast the space program, which is why memory foam (the material) is in the public domain, as is a fuckton of electronics and computer technologies.

    There is a compelling argument that tens of billions of dollars being used productively to research anything would have at least some useful results. Memory foam, cordless drills, etc could have been developed much more cheaply than the Apollo program, GPS is extremely valuable, but Apollo wasn’t a necessary precursor to geostationary orbit.