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Well he also told people to give Caesar what Caesar was owed. You can justify virtually any belief by picking different parts out of those books. Dunking on self-described Christians by trying to identify the "true" Christian beliefs and pointing out their deviation from that is utterly pointless. They've been doing this with each other for the better part of two thousand years, and all it amounted to was ever more division and disagreement.


> It is a religion, with many denominations.

The whole of it defies neat categorization. People who self-describe as Christians can't even universally agree which texts are authentic and holy and which are heretical frauds. The only thing they all universally share is the inclination to call themselves Christians (more than a few are eager to contest whether other self-described Christians are in fact Christians.)

One particular example: I was raised to believe that the Book of Mormon is a heretical fraud, and consequently to believe that Mormons are not real Christians (despite claiming to be.)


> People who self-describe as Christians can't even universally agree which texts are authentic and holy and which are heretical frauds. The only thing they all universally share is the inclination to call themselves Christians.

Interesting perspective- when I was much younger, I was taught that a Christian is anybody who believes that Christ is the Savior and that he atoned for the sins of humanity. Is there an "official" definition?


The whole of Revelations is certainly odd, but that doesn't stop a whole lot of people from finding some interpretation of it they can believe in. That some people might interpret it to be a warning against biometrics doesn't strike me as particularly odd, relative to the oddness of other beliefs derived from [or justified using] this book.


https://www.imdb.com/interfaces/

> Subsets of IMDb data are available for access to customers for personal and non-commercial use. You can hold local copies of this data, and it is subject to our terms and conditions. Please refer to the Non-Commercial Licensing and copyright/license and verify compliance.

> The dataset files can be accessed and downloaded from https://datasets.imdbws.com/. The data is refreshed daily.

> Each dataset is contained in a gzipped, tab-separated-values (TSV) formatted file in the UTF-8 character set. The first line in each file contains headers that describe what is in each column. A ‘\N’ is used to denote that a particular field is missing or null for that title/name. The available datasets are as follows: [...]


Good to know—I never would have found this though as I’d expect a web database to work as such (e.g. not require me to download and parse the database in Excel). On the usability front it doesn’t help.

I’d wager the license does not permit republishing the data on the web using better UX paradigms either—though I am too lazy to read through the fine print.


Or the elderly would wander off on their own to die, after they perceived themselves to be a burden.


And need to consider that elderly being able to wander off is still good state today. They could very well survive with relatively affordable assisted living. But in some cases we are keeping people alive who can't even walk anymore.


This video shows an F-4 Phantom being slammed into a concrete wall using a rocket sled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4wDqSnBJ-k

At about 2 minutes in they show the aftermath. The plane is just gone, while the wall is a bit discolored...


Unconvinced.

That concrete block was not ridged. It moved when the plane hit it.

So the strongest aspect of concrete, compression, was tested. But the weakest, flexion, was untested.

What fun though.


To test it as you suggest, you'd have to build the full containment building, which are built as domes. That dome structure should lend itself to exploiting concrete's compressive strength and minimize tensile forces. They are also specifically reinforced to increase their tensile strength, since they are primarily designed to contain explosions from within. I have little doubt that one of those domes could shrug off a Phantom crashing into them.

More generally, in order to be successful a traditional armor piercing projectile needs two traits in particular: it needs to be harder than the target, and the projectile needs to be robust enough to not disintegrate on impact. Airplanes are neither of these; they're built out of soft aluminum and are built light to maximize payload, not to be robust. Consequently I would not expect an airplane striking a reinforced concrete building to ever behave as an armor penetrating projectile would.

The part that I'm a bit skeptical of is the suggestion that shrugging off a Phantom is equivalent to shrugging off a 747, which is more than an order of magnitude heavier. Throwing an airplane at a concrete building is like throwing a wet ball of modeling clay at a glass window. Likely to splat, like that phantom did, but if your ball of clay is big enough it might go through. A large enough plane might even knock the building off its foundation, rather than penetrate the concrete.


> Lots of people were sending white powder to official addresses.

It turned out that anthrax came from a government lab, and was supposedly sent by a single rogue employee... though doubts linger.

There were some hoaxes and bogus scares too though of course. One of my classmates almost got suspended for having foot powder in his gym bag.. thankfully cooler heads prevailed when school officials realized the kid had athletes foot and thought to doubt how a teenage boy could have plausibly procured weaponized anthrax spores in the first place. But yes, the hysteria was palpable.


If a salesforce employee opts to stay in Texas, I wonder if that will be taken as an expression of support for the law and negatively impact their career.

Edit: I didn't expect this comment to be controversial, and I'm not sure why it is. Are the downvotes from people who think it obviously won't/shouldn't, or from people who think it obviously will/should?


It can’t be interpreted as support, because deciding to stay so you can campaign and vote to turn Texas blue is commendable.


I would hope so. On the other hand, if 9 of 10 people on your team opt to leave the state and you're the one who conspicuously doesn't, maybe your choice will be perceived differently. I would hate to find myself in that sort of situation. And elsewhere in this discussion I see mutterings about staying to vote blue being pointless because of republican gerrymandering, so evidently staying-to-vote-blue isn't seen as seen as worthwhile by all.

I don't have any insight into how many Salesforce employees will take up this offer, and I think that proportion will impact how those that stay will be perceived. All I know for sure right now is I'm glad I don't live in Texas, so I don't have to make this decision for myself.


I don’t think so. There are a million reasons someone might not want to move that have nothing to do with politics. Maybe their house is paid off, or their kids have a couple of years left to finish school, or they’re living near a sick parent, or they love the climate, or they just like it there.

This is providing assistance for people who want to leave, but says nothing at all about people who don’t want to.


You can always explain your reasoning. I would encourage anyone who’s not threatened by these laws to stay and really, seriously mess with Texas.


Possession is 9/10th of the law? They already have them, making it easy for them to keep them.


It's a dry climate and aluminum doesn't just rot. It would obviously take some money and work to bring planes out of mothballs, and probably in some cases unrepairable damage would be discovered, but I would expect most of the planes to successfully reactivate if the need was great enough. Those that couldn't be reactivated could be cannibalized for spare parts.

Consider that the Iowa class battleships spent some decades deactivated, sitting in salt water, before being reactivated several times.


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