yeah well when you’re ready to join us in the 21st century, we’ll be here waiting. until then have fun with your stone age incomprehension of the heavens and self-aggrandizing tales of fabulous rewards after death.

locked it away in the middle of nowhere already

Why would they do that lol

People would be in awe of this creature. It’s speaking the perfect word of god, understandable to all. It cannot be killed and clearly defies all scientific understanding of our modern age. (This thing would pre-date the birth of true science though and more than likely prevent science even coming to be - there would be no need of science or any kind of human progress if we had an indisputable communication channel with god such as this)

I can’t help but chuckle at the puny god that you seem to believe in though. God - if it exists and I genuinely believe that question is unanswerable - would be an entity outside time and space way beyond the tiniest comprehension of any human. It would have absolute power over every aspect of the universe. Protecting a dog from any number of humans with any type of weaponry would be such a trivial task for such a being. If the dog didn’t want to be moved, it wouldn’t move. If it wanted to pass through a wall it would pass though like a red hot ball bearing through butter.

Seems like there’s a lot of ways, no? A talking immortal dog, just off the top of my head. That would be hard to counter, especially after the first 500 years and it’s still there, spouting the word of god in any language you like.

I’m convinced from the evidence that God doesn’t care what we believe. If there even is such a thing, and I don’t think it’s possible to meaningfully answer that, there are many better ways to communicate vital information to people on earth other than choosing someone to relay your messages in a way that is indistinguishable from a mentally ill person who just hears voices in their head.

ah I see. I misunderstood - when you said “I’d rather pick what is actually true”, you meant you’d pick a story you like and call it truth. Yes that’s also an option, why not.

What’s that?

Christians worship Christ, while Catholics worship … er … Cath

I guess there isn’t a point given to you by someone/something else, but you’re free to pick one of your own if you want. Or not. Ultimately we just have our evolved desire to survive and see our loved ones do well.

You think if people who publish their work publicly didn’t research things like this, they would just never be discovered?

At least this way, we all know about the possibility, and further research can be done to see what can mitigate it.

well obviously it won’t, that’s why you need ethical output restrictions

buy illegal things

but that is actually what we’re here for in this thread - we want to buy things that our masters say we cannot.

This is an interesting blog post although I don’t understand the tone - it’s written as if the recent run-in with Apple over encryption was some kind of great victory for common sense and a triumph of the individual over the insidious forces of authoritarianism. But I don’t think it was, unless I missed some news? The government hasn’t learnt its lesson or anything. Is it just wishful thinking on the author’s part?

Sharing knowledge. Lots of people are not primarily motivated by greed.

Yes well done, it’s the “if it pays for them” aspect that the news sites were unhappy about, and that the French government said Google should be doing. But Google doesn’t pay websites for summaries it publishes on its search results, and likewise they didn’t pay the news sites to summarise their articles. So for a while, Google News was unavailable in France.

It is really fascinating how religions begin and spread and evolve. I think the fact that no advanced civilisation has appeared without its own religion is a strong indication that religion is a very powerful element in the development of human society. The fact that no two civilisations that arose fully independently of each other had the same religion is pretty clear evidence that not only does the exact content of the religion not matter, but none of the religions that appeared have any real truth to them.

Study of religion and its history is definitely enlightening when one wants to understand the history of human society. It’s a bit of a shame that so many people today still believe that there’s any truth in their particular religion. But I do think that once everyone is on the same page, that study will be a lot more fruitful due to no longer being hindered by religious followers getting upset or reading too much into some scientific finding or other e.g. Christians who are emboldened by any evidence that there actually was a person at that time who heard voices in his head which he took to be God talking to him. No dear, people who hear voices in their head need medical treatment, do not try to look at their lives for guidance about important issues in your own life.

That depends where you keep it surely

err in Europe we use bricks to build houses. A house made out of wood is not a house, it is a shed.

I spent a thousand dollars replacing the cheap compressor in my fridge

So was it worth it? How long ago did you do it and what are the differences you’ve noticed so far?

Yeah I think you’d definitely want a battery. TBH I just threw that question about grow lamps in there to draw attention to how you can not only run low/medium power solar setups in Germany, but you can also grow a couple of weed plants for your own use.

I think Germany might actually be the only country in Europe where you can do that fully legally? I used to think growing your own weed was fully legal in Spain and Portugal, but now after speaking to some of my family who live in Spain, I think it’s really just a grey area and not technically legal at all.

Anyway, I’m not actually trying to grow my own weed or anything like that, I just think it’s a stupid thing to make illegal. So go Germany, we’re all counting on you!

why would you rather people go by bus than by bike or foot? It seems everything is better about safe bike & pedestrian routes - they are healthy, produce less pollution (both noise and fumes), often quicker, safer and more agreeable for residents, not to mention cheaper to maintain.