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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I’m not sure why, but a lot of people seem to have a really hard time looking up information about stuff from the Bible. I remember probably about a year ago not too long after I first joined Lemmy commenting on a thread from some guy whose sister fell into some fundamentalist Christian flat earther bullshit and he was trying to figure out where she got her info from and said that he couldn’t find anything about “the firmament”

    It’s on like the first page of the Bible. And just googling “firmament” will get you plenty of good sources about the firmament and what it’s supposed to be.


  • I’m not too sure where I first picked up the idea, for some reason I think it may have been one of the videos on the Useful Charts YouTube channel, but in general it all kind of fits together to me, and I of course kind of put my own little bit of spin into it myself. Unfortunately I don’t have exact sources to cite directly to where I first heard this theory put together.

    For starters you can go to the Bible itself with Mathew 27:16-17

    16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

    I misspoke in my earlier comment, and I edited it accordingly, the language would have been Aramaic, which is what most scholars agree is the language Jesus mostly spoke, although it is a pretty closely related language to Hebrew. I speak neither Hebrew nor Aramaic so I kind of just have to take it on faith that some of the people I’ve seen discussing this online have some idea what they’re talking about. You can kind of piece it together from some common bits of Hebrew “bar mitzvah” literally translates to something like “son of the commandments” and I believe in modern Hebrew, the word for father in “av” with “aba” being commonly used in some places/cultures.

    There’s also some that would say it comes from “bar rabban” (may be misspelling that) meaning “son of the teacher” instead of father, which you can compare to “Rabbi”

    This comes from an era when people didn’t really have official last names, depending on who you asked, Jesus could have been known by quite a few different names, Jesus the carpenter, Jesus son of Joseph/mary, the son of God, the teacher, the guy from Nazareth, the religious weirdo, the insurrectionist, of the house of David, etc.

    I believe in modern Hebrew “ben” is more often used as the “son of” prefix. And those sort of patronymic names are pretty common in semitic languages, in Arabic you’ve probably heard a few people with “bin” in their name. It’s basically the same idea as Irish/Scottish names that begin with mc/Mac/O’, or names that end in “son”

    As for Barabbas having been involved in an insurrection, going back to the bible we have Mark 15:7

    A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.

    Israel experienced more than a few different Jewish uprisings/revolts/riots/insurrections/whatever name you wanted to call it. They weren’t exactly happy to be under Roman rule, and there were always a bunch of different political or religious movements trying to do something about it and usually not having much success. It’s not unlikely that Jesus is sort of a composite of several different folks making trouble for the Romans.

    I’m no scholar, my knowledge on this doesn’t really go a whole lot deeper than what I’ve said here, and I can’t say how widespread this particular little conspiracy theory is in academic circles, I won’t say that I’m totally sold on it myself, I’m very open to someone else saying differently, but it’s something to consider, and it looks like a hell of a coincidence to just be a coincidence to me


  • One of the interesting things that sticks out to me personally that lends credence to the idea that the Bible is just kind of a bunch of half-remembered stories all mashed together is Barabbas- the guy that Pontius Pilate supposedly pardoned instead of Jesus.

    In some versions, Barabbas is given the first name “Jesus”

    And “Barabbas” could potentially come from “bar abba” in Hebrew Aramaic (although Hebrew “ben av” or “ben aba” is not far off) meaning “son of the father”

    He was imprisoned and sentenced to execution due to taking part in an insurrection against the Roman empire.

    The two characters- “Jesus, son of the father, and sentenced to death for sedition” and “Jesus, son of God, sentenced to die for claiming to be king of the Jews” sound a hell of a lot like they’re referring to the same dude to me.

    That’s either one of the biggest coincidences in all of history, or someone heard two different versions of the same story and mashed them together.

    Or maybe it’s just sort of a 1st century version of the saying that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter.”


  • Looking down on clouds is a pretty surreal experience

    I once went on a backpacking trip, our itinerary had us camping near the top of a mountain, just a little shy of 12,000ft and we knew there would be no potable water at the top, so we had our hot meal for the day at lunch since freeze dried backpacking food needs water, so we could refill and get through the next day.

    As we’re making our way up the mountain, a thick fog rolls in. By the time we get to camp, we’re all pretty miserable, we’re tired and starting to feel the altitude a little, everything is cold and damp, we have a dinner of jerky and trail mix and such, we set up our tents and go the fuck to sleep.

    The next day we wake up, the fog has gone, and it’s a beautiful day. We make our way to the top of the mountain and look down at the valley below and we see a cloud.

    It then dawned on us that the fog the night before wasn’t just fog, it was a cloud we hiked through and set up camp in.

    The next time a mattress salesman tries to give you the “it’s like sleeping on a cloud” line, fucking run, clouds suck.


  • There’s a few ways you can tackle this with various degrees of rightness.

    First of all, your door looks to be hung upside down. That’s not going to affect the fit of the door but it is going to put your doorknob at an awkward height.

    Your best bet is probably going to be to go get a new, pre-hung door, and replace the entire thing, frame and all. It’s really not that hard, just kind of fiddly getting everything squared up properly. You can probably get it done for less than $200, and a few hours of work with a friend or two.

    Second best bet is going to be to square up the existing frame, get yourself some shims a prybar, and some nails, pull off all the trim, and set it right.

    In my experience, trying to get a new door to fit right in an existing frame is always kind of a pain in the ass. It sounds like more work, but it’s usually worth it to go the pre-hung route.

    There’s lots of guides and YouTube videos on how to do all of that.

    Least right- start modifying the door and/or frame so they fit. Cut, plane, chisel, and/or sand the door and frame down until they fit. Yes, the door is probably hollow, but you should still have probably about an inch or so of solid framing around the perimeter of it to work with. There’s a good chance if you go this route you’re going to find it looks kind of wonky and you’re going to wish you did one of the above options.

    You could always of course pay someone to do it the right way. Shouldn’t be terribly expensive, I’m a cheapskate and will DIY most things, but I have a personal dislike of installing doors, so it’s something I’d be willing to pay for.

    Depending on how you can rearrange furniture, how much wall space you have next to the door, etc. you could also go with barn doors and just bypass the crooked frame entirely. I hat barn doors, I think they just look bad in pretty much all cases, but they’re popular for some reason and pretty straightforward to install.

    Depending on your tastes and how much of an actual barrier you need, may also be able to get away with bifold doors, a curtain, cafe/batwing/saloon doors.


  • His formatting leaves a bit to be desired, but that basically boils down to

    1. Knives with certain features like a double edge, a handguard, butterfly knives and certain other one-handed opening mechanisms (I assume switchblades, maybe assisted openers, possibly gravity and flick knives) are weapons and can be owned but generally not carried

    Otherwise…

    1. Knives (and I assume this applies to other bladed tools as well since he mentioned an axe)with a blade length of less than about 5.5 inches are ok to carry for no particular reason, as long as either the blade doesn’t lock or it needs two hands to open it (from how he wrote it sounds to me like one or the other of those features is ok, but not both)

    2. You can carry a bigger knife if you have a good reason that you need one, like if you’re going campings/hunting, or clearing brush with a machete (and from how he phrased it sounds like you could also carry a one-handed locking knife with a good reason)

    3. You get carded to prove you’re an adult if you want to buy a sword (I assume knives as well)

    Which is pretty straightforward, and actually similar to a lot of laws in the states (looser than some states I believe, and stricter than others)



  • A lot of us don’t think of our knives as weapons, they’re tools.

    It’s rare that I don’t carry a knife, and using it in self defense is the furthest thing from my mind every day when I put it in my pocket. I use it for things like opening packages, cutting string, sharpening pencils, use various other tools on the knife like screwdrivers, pliers, awls, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies like camping, hiking, fishing, and knives are kind of indispensable for those pursuits.

    If I’m ever in a situation where I absolutely need to defend myself, and I don’t really foresee that ever being necessary, I’m probably not even going to think of using my knife in self defense, I don’t think of it as a weapon anymore than I think of my wallet being a weapon, it’s just something that lives in my pocket that I frequently need to use.

    And knives make a shitty weapon, if you’re close enough to stab someone, you’re close enough to get punched in the face, or for your assailant to wrestle it out of your hands and stab you with it. You’d be better swinging around pretty much any larger object within arms reach to create some space. They say about knife fights that the loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance.

    The knives I tend to carry especially aren’t good weapons, most need 2 hands to open, aren’t really designed ergonomically as fighting knives, most are fairly small so I’d have to get really lucky to hit anything vital and would probably just piss them off more and not stop the attack quickly, some of them don’t even have a pointy blade so not good for stabbing (I actually make it a point to choose less threatening looking knives for my EDC needs) some of them don’t lock open so they’d just as like close on my fingers as cause any harm to my assailant, and some of them actually lock in the closed position so definitely not good for a weapon.

    I’m not saying that everyone who carries a knife has the same mindset. Lots of people do carry them as weapons, those people are idiots. And not everyone puts the same thought into the knives they carry and just get something that looks cool whether or not it’s functional for their needs.

    I also don’t carry anything for self defense regularly and don’t own a gun (not opposed to gun ownership in general, but my thoughts on that are part whole 'nother debate,) in general if I feel like I need to be prepared to defend myself if I go somewhere, I just don’t go there. There’s a bit of privilege to that, since I live in a safe area and can make that call, not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere they can feel safe. The only exception is the pepper spray I keep with my dogs leash, since my wife or I often end up walking her alone at night, and that’s more of a precaution against loose dogs, coyotes, etc. than against people.

    There’s a lot to say about Americans’ love of violence and weapons and the sort of mindset we have about self defense, and overall I tend to think that a lot of my country is absolutely insane when it comes to those matters. That said, I also think people who look at the little swiss army type knives, or Leatherman multitools I tend to carry and see a terrifying deadly weapon have their own issues to work out too.



  • There was already some amount of cultural awareness about the Titanic prior to the movie, after all they pretty much started making movies, plays, documentaries, etc. as soon as it happened and kept right on making them

    It also got a pretty good bump in popularity when the wreck was found in the 80s

    Even if the movie weren’t made, there’d probably be a pretty decent chunk of people who would know about it from the scene in Ghostbusters 2 if nothing else.

    It probably wouldn’t be something that pretty much everyone knows about, and certainly not in the kind of detail we do now, but you’d probably still have a pretty good chance of people who’d at least know that it was a big passenger ship that sank.

    It’s hard for me to be impartial about this though, I was in elementary school when the movie came out, prime age to learn how to play “my heart will go on” on the recorder in music class and to see that big brick of 2 VHS tapes for rent in blockbuster. To this day I actually haven’t seen it, but it’s hard for me to imagine a world that people don’t know about the Titanic because the movie was just so omnipresent in my formative years.



  • Technology connections on YouTube did a video on mini fridges a while back. He focused on the peculiarities of one specific model, but one of the things he did to try addressing some of the issues with uneven cooling was add a fan, and he found that it didn’t really help and made things worse in other ways.

    IIRC, the fridge was designed expecting that certain parts would be cooler than others and accounted for that in how the compressor cycled on and off, but with the added airflow those parts stayed warmer than expected so the compressor never shut off.

    This fridge very well might be different, and maybe the fan is helping in your case, but you might want to check that video out so you have some things to look out for in case it’s causing other issues that you may not be thinking about.



  • Like others have said, I’d give scraping it off with a razor blade a try, glass is actually significantly harder than the steel of the razor so it’s difficult or impossible to scratch your glass with the blade. Razors are cheap and readily available (if you don’t already have some kicking around) so you have basically nothing to loose by trying it. Also mentioned we’re magic erasers/melamine sponges, also a pretty solid bet, they basically work like micro sandpaper.

    Failing that, I’m no chemist, but from googling around a bit for siloxane and solvents, I think your best bet for solvents youre likely to find at most hardware stores are mineral spirits, turpentine, and xylene, which should all be readily available in most hardware stores in the paint section with other paint thinners. From what I could find, it kind of looks like you’re going to want a non-polar solvent, not a polar solvent like acetone. They may dissolve it outright, or may at least soften it up enough for you to scrub or scrape it off easier.

    Also what I gleaned from Google, is that siloxanes are basically silicone, so you may also have luck with products to remove silicone caulk, I know goo gone makes a product for that purpose (although it looks like the main ingredients in that stuff are acetone and benzyl alcohol, which are both polar solvents, so I have no idea how that jives with what I was getting from my other Google searches that suggested non-polar solvents, so again, I’m not a chemist and I’m out of my element)

    Any solvents you end up trying, just make sure you’re following proper safety precautions, and be careful about anything else you may spray, drip, splash it on, you might ruin finishes, strip paint, damage plastics, etc.


  • I don’t *think *it’s actually against code (not an electrician,) just kind of lazy and not really the best practice provided that strain relief and everything else is done properly. Electrically it should be pretty much exactly the same as doing it the normal way.

    I encountered it on one light switch in my house when I was replacing it. I really didn’t feel like running out to the hardware store to buy another couple of inches of wire to redo it, so somewhat to my shame I just hooked up the new switch the same way.


  • I don’t know the current state of things, it’s probably more than 10 years since I’ve bothered with rooting and custom rooms and such.

    But back then I remember my phone company tried to make me pay extra for tethering and there were a few tricks using root to get around it. I think there were a few apps out there that would work on the stock room that needed root, and I think it just worked out of the box with a custom ROM.

    IIRC, at that time, my carrier had disabled the tethering options in the phone settings, and to tether you had to use their pre-installed app. My memory may be fuzzy on that though.


  • I have a trip to Montreal coming up in a couple weeks, I don’t put a lot of faith in tomorrow’s forecast, let alone 2 or 3 weeks out, but right now it’s looking like theres a pretty good chance of rain for most of my trip, so I have a feeling I’m gonna be really grateful for RÉSO while I’m there.


  • 40mph is probably a bit extreme, but “20mph, tops” is also pretty low

    E bike laws, terminology, and manufacturers can be kind of a wild patchwork of nonsensical bullshit but a lot of states recognize, with some degree of regulation or restrictions, what have commonly come to be called class 3 e bikes, that can go up to 28mph, and in my shopping around I’ve seen plenty that advertise that speed or even higher.

    There’s a lot of imported e bikes that play fast and loose with the regulations and their quality control, and I’m sure there’s a dedicated bunch of people tinkering with their bikes to make them go faster and remove built-in restrictions, so there’s probably a lot of people zooming around at 30+MPH