I know it's an aside, but this post raised this question for me: So, is Data still alive 900 years into the future? Can we get a Brent Spiner cameo on Starfleet Academy and FINALLY see Data and the Doctor interact on screen? I feel like they'd have lots to talk about in regards to the struggle for the acceptance of non-biological life forms
I've noticed a sharp increase in just GARBAGE re-toots (which wind up on the trending page) in the past year or so as more people migrate to Mastodon. Just the worst of Twitter offal finding new life. The trending page is where I get a bit disheartened. When I want to be reminded of what Mastodon is really like, I just click on the Federated tab and see all the random posts from normal people (and bots, so many bots) around the world. Way less snark and self-importance there.
It's also one of the reasons I was disheartened that .social removed access to the Federated and Local tabs (I got them back by making a complaint--I'll eventually migrate to a smaller instance). I get that it's crazy hard to moderate those. But taking that away made Mastodon feel smaller and more like "every other social media." I don't want that. I came to Mastodon because it's different.
And as a result made an absolute mess out of what Christians actually believe about death and the afterlife (and you, John Milton, don't think I've forgotten about you)
This is such a fun conversation. I'm a priest in the Episcopal Church and our denomination has been talking about this for many years now. One of my colleagues made a great counter to the whole "male and female" thing by noting that God also created light and dark and day and night and there's a whole range of things that exist between those two dichotomies.
Also, there's numerous trans readings regarding Jesus within the Bible itself! For instance, Saint Paul notes that Jesus "is the Wisdom of God." Paul is drawing from the wisdom tradition, which depicts God's wisdom as a woman. Further, Saint John's gospel clearly draws from the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon (from the Apocrypha) for his preface, held by many Christians to be the most explicit biblical statement on Jesus' divinity. Later, saints like Julian of Norwich and Anselm of Canterbury would write of Jesus being our Mother. So there's a rich tradition which recognizes Jesus, a He/Him male, embodying long established and celebrated feminine aspects of God (it's for this reason that I don't usually go for swapping the gender of the Father or referring to the Holy Spirit as "She" because I feel like it winds up masking the more clear, and challenging, divine feminine things about Jesus found in the Bible itself). There's definite trans/gender-queer things going on in these texts!
Wound up teaching at a private school for a few years. My class? Ethics. Word got to the aforementioned professor that I was doing this and I was told that he just raised his eyebrows and chuckled.
What I think bothered him, and why he gave me poor grades, was that I was attempting to articulate my own thoughts (which, to me is what graduate level coursework is about) whereas he was expecting me to demonstrate that I understood what he was teaching before I did my own work (which, again to me, is more reflective of undergraduate level coursework). I had the best grades of my life while in grad school and I did that same level of "extra" in all my other classes simply because I loved learning the material. That ethics class was the only low spot. Oh well.
Let me tell you about the time I failed a class for doing extra work. It was a graduate level ethics class, the only F I have on my transcript (and, of course, EVERYONE who sees my transcipts wants to know why I failed ethics in grad school):
The class was Christian Ethics (I was in a theological program) and I had already begun doing my own reading in postmodern theology, which overlapped a lot with Christian ethics. So, when I wrote papers, I drew upon the work I had been reading (which was extra from what was on the syllabus), articulating different approaches to ethical issues based on that work--like I assumed one did in a graduate level course. Every paper I got back was graded terribly. Guys in my class who barely read stuff were acing the class. I couldn't understand. So when I got my failing grade, I considered a few options, deciding on taking a directed study with the professor of the class in the hopes that I could better understand what went wrong.
It was halfway through that directed study that I realized the dude just wanted me to regurgitate the syllabus back at him. He wanted me to basically parrot back his own stuff. Once I figured that out, I did much better. But my wife thinks it's hilarious that I got an F in grad school for doing too much work.
Was sitting in a capstone senior class at my liberal arts university. Happened to be taking it with a bunch of business majors. Some dipshit derails the entire class by saying "why do we need to learn any of this stuff, like history? I just want to make money."
"Haven't you ever heard the phrase about history repeating itself?"
"Well, if it's going to repeat itself, then I'll just learn about it when it happens again."
There was a literal business school like five miles down the road. And this guy chose to enroll in a liberal arts university and stay for four years. I get that the industrialization of higher education gave us that bullshit "go to college in order to get a higher paying job" and so this dude clearly just bought into that. But... again, no one was forcing him to go to a liberal arts school.
Yeah we still no power on East Side of O'ahu. Wind was crazy at 4:00 am. Get jalousies in my bedroom that never really close and so I was woke up by rain spraying into the room, covering the ceiling and soaking everything. Tried to get a shower curtain nailed up but couldn't get the buggah to stay still. So now all clothes and towels is damp. Big tree fell down in a little park area next to my house, barely missed a house. Plenty fences down.
I grew up in Florida and hurricanes/tropical storm is typical late summer experience. Houses are built for it (but not for the hot, still air after). But it's way different here. The mountains create gusts so much stronger. It was wild. It felt more like a Cat 2 in Florida than "just" a tropical storm.
On one of the local stations here they noted that when the storm reforms as a hurricane, it will cross the international date line and then become known as a typhoon. So I'm guessing it's a Western/Eastern hemisphere thing now?
I love that Willie, a very rich man, still plays THIS guitar and only this guitar. Like, you go to concerts and there's a guitar tech grabbing different instruments off stage, swapping them out. But ol' Willie just up there with bus up Trigger looking like she's about to collapse into splinters. But she produces such a unique sound that no other guitar can match.
Sad I had to scroll down this far to find this.
"Ugh, ninjas" is a perennial line among my friends.
I know it's an aside, but this post raised this question for me: So, is Data still alive 900 years into the future? Can we get a Brent Spiner cameo on Starfleet Academy and FINALLY see Data and the Doctor interact on screen? I feel like they'd have lots to talk about in regards to the struggle for the acceptance of non-biological life forms
I've noticed a sharp increase in just GARBAGE re-toots (which wind up on the trending page) in the past year or so as more people migrate to Mastodon. Just the worst of Twitter offal finding new life. The trending page is where I get a bit disheartened. When I want to be reminded of what Mastodon is really like, I just click on the Federated tab and see all the random posts from normal people (and bots, so many bots) around the world. Way less snark and self-importance there.
It's also one of the reasons I was disheartened that .social removed access to the Federated and Local tabs (I got them back by making a complaint--I'll eventually migrate to a smaller instance). I get that it's crazy hard to moderate those. But taking that away made Mastodon feel smaller and more like "every other social media." I don't want that. I came to Mastodon because it's different.
There's a guy who long maintained that the Garden of Eden is found near the Florida panhandle and there's a park to commemorate this.
And as a result made an absolute mess out of what Christians actually believe about death and the afterlife (and you, John Milton, don't think I've forgotten about you)
This is such a fun conversation. I'm a priest in the Episcopal Church and our denomination has been talking about this for many years now. One of my colleagues made a great counter to the whole "male and female" thing by noting that God also created light and dark and day and night and there's a whole range of things that exist between those two dichotomies.
Also, there's numerous trans readings regarding Jesus within the Bible itself! For instance, Saint Paul notes that Jesus "is the Wisdom of God." Paul is drawing from the wisdom tradition, which depicts God's wisdom as a woman. Further, Saint John's gospel clearly draws from the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon (from the Apocrypha) for his preface, held by many Christians to be the most explicit biblical statement on Jesus' divinity. Later, saints like Julian of Norwich and Anselm of Canterbury would write of Jesus being our Mother. So there's a rich tradition which recognizes Jesus, a He/Him male, embodying long established and celebrated feminine aspects of God (it's for this reason that I don't usually go for swapping the gender of the Father or referring to the Holy Spirit as "She" because I feel like it winds up masking the more clear, and challenging, divine feminine things about Jesus found in the Bible itself). There's definite trans/gender-queer things going on in these texts!
Okay, who let a Ferengi become the CEO of Delta?
Will the dog be in the back?
Yeah, the dog will be in the back.
Wound up teaching at a private school for a few years. My class? Ethics. Word got to the aforementioned professor that I was doing this and I was told that he just raised his eyebrows and chuckled.
What I think bothered him, and why he gave me poor grades, was that I was attempting to articulate my own thoughts (which, to me is what graduate level coursework is about) whereas he was expecting me to demonstrate that I understood what he was teaching before I did my own work (which, again to me, is more reflective of undergraduate level coursework). I had the best grades of my life while in grad school and I did that same level of "extra" in all my other classes simply because I loved learning the material. That ethics class was the only low spot. Oh well.
And are there two? And if so, are we talking Osprey or Chinook when they do the helicopter?
Notice. Not a SINGLE Deep Space 9 episode on there.
Let me tell you about the time I failed a class for doing extra work. It was a graduate level ethics class, the only F I have on my transcript (and, of course, EVERYONE who sees my transcipts wants to know why I failed ethics in grad school):
The class was Christian Ethics (I was in a theological program) and I had already begun doing my own reading in postmodern theology, which overlapped a lot with Christian ethics. So, when I wrote papers, I drew upon the work I had been reading (which was extra from what was on the syllabus), articulating different approaches to ethical issues based on that work--like I assumed one did in a graduate level course. Every paper I got back was graded terribly. Guys in my class who barely read stuff were acing the class. I couldn't understand. So when I got my failing grade, I considered a few options, deciding on taking a directed study with the professor of the class in the hopes that I could better understand what went wrong.
It was halfway through that directed study that I realized the dude just wanted me to regurgitate the syllabus back at him. He wanted me to basically parrot back his own stuff. Once I figured that out, I did much better. But my wife thinks it's hilarious that I got an F in grad school for doing too much work.
Was sitting in a capstone senior class at my liberal arts university. Happened to be taking it with a bunch of business majors. Some dipshit derails the entire class by saying "why do we need to learn any of this stuff, like history? I just want to make money."
"Haven't you ever heard the phrase about history repeating itself?"
"Well, if it's going to repeat itself, then I'll just learn about it when it happens again."
There was a literal business school like five miles down the road. And this guy chose to enroll in a liberal arts university and stay for four years. I get that the industrialization of higher education gave us that bullshit "go to college in order to get a higher paying job" and so this dude clearly just bought into that. But... again, no one was forcing him to go to a liberal arts school.
And let's not forget shit! Without shit we'd not have that ancient Sumerian grain! Shit. It's what plants crave!
Three thumbs up!
Yeah we still no power on East Side of O'ahu. Wind was crazy at 4:00 am. Get jalousies in my bedroom that never really close and so I was woke up by rain spraying into the room, covering the ceiling and soaking everything. Tried to get a shower curtain nailed up but couldn't get the buggah to stay still. So now all clothes and towels is damp. Big tree fell down in a little park area next to my house, barely missed a house. Plenty fences down.
I grew up in Florida and hurricanes/tropical storm is typical late summer experience. Houses are built for it (but not for the hot, still air after). But it's way different here. The mountains create gusts so much stronger. It was wild. It felt more like a Cat 2 in Florida than "just" a tropical storm.
On one of the local stations here they noted that when the storm reforms as a hurricane, it will cross the international date line and then become known as a typhoon. So I'm guessing it's a Western/Eastern hemisphere thing now?
It's kind of wild when you learn that words for blue are relatively new in human language.
Trump: "To be fair, her name is Leave It..."
The obsession I have with Trigger...
I love that Willie, a very rich man, still plays THIS guitar and only this guitar. Like, you go to concerts and there's a guitar tech grabbing different instruments off stage, swapping them out. But ol' Willie just up there with bus up Trigger looking like she's about to collapse into splinters. But she produces such a unique sound that no other guitar can match.