So… Bring my HEV suit and crowbar?

I’m reading a book at the moment that gets into this site a bit:

Archaeology also shows that patterns of seasonal variation lie behind the monuments of Göbekli Tepe. Activities around the stone temples correspond with periods of annual superabundance, between midsummer and autumn, when large herds of gazelle descended on to the Harran Plain. At such times, people also gathered at the site to process massive quantities of nuts and wild cereal grasses, making these into festive foods, which presumably fuelled the work of construction. There is some evidence to suggest that each of these great structures had a relatively short lifespan, culminating in an enormous feast, after which its walls were rapidly filled in with leftovers and other refuse: hierarchies raised to the sky, only to be swiftly torn down again. Ongoing research is likely to complicate this picture, but the overall pattern of seasonal congregation for festive labour seems well established.

The Dawn of Everything- a New History of Humanity

I feel like I could get flintknapping down pretty well.

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

Notably, it’s for property crimes against President Musk.

This piggy committed the worst crime possible against the US, then would send citizens to a concentration camp for upsetting his owner.

I hope you like it! KSR’s whole collection is worth a read; he’s my favorite living author.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson is an alternate history about if a plague had wiped out 90% of the European population before the renaissance and how the would could have shaken out instead, focusing primarily on Arabic and Chinese culture.

It follows a small group of people who are reincarnating through the ages, all the way up to modern times. It’s an amazing novel, and very approachable if you’re even vaguely into history.

This exactly.

They don’t see imposing a state of fundamentalist Christian supremacy as tyranny, because their ideology is one of Christian Nationalism (which in the US is inherently white nationalism).

They see the erosion of their relevance as the tyranny they’re supposed to stand up to despite it mostly being driven by cultural changes instead of government mandates. This means that the militias are meant to commit violence against civilians; they know the cops will side with them in a scrum. They’re more afraid of a lesbian with blue hair than a rogue sherrif depriving them of rights.

There has been a concerted push by reactionary media to demonize it.

The same thing happened with issues like the estate tax, lawsuits against corporations, police reform, etc.

Should have called it the Nintendo Top.

My favorite is probably Aurora, in which a generation ship makes a voyage to Tau Ceti to set up a colony.

After that, I really enjoyed Galeleo’s Dream, a time-travel story about the famous polymath and a plot to reshape the history of scientific thought.

And Shaman is also great: it’s about the paleolithic people who painted the chauvet cave and their struggle to thrive in an impossibly harsh time.

And finally I also just finished The Years of Rice and Salt recently, and it’s one that I know I’ll have to re-read sometime. It’s an alternate history about how the world would shake out if the population of Europe was wiped out by a plague in the 1400s and follows a set of characters reincarnating over the centuries.

KSR is probably my favorite living author.

I think the book is supposed to be more “this is what is possible” than an actual roadmap.

His optimism is what I really like about his work; anyone can throw up their hands and give up, but that’s a dereliction of duty. Believing that a better world is possible and worth fighting for is the point, in my opinion.

Same, honestly. I’d kill for a remaster or a proper sequel.

Loved Freelancer! Did you try the Everspace games? They’re the closest to a spiritual successor that I’ve played.

What is your budget?

On The Art of Dice by the Roman emperor Claudius would be both trivial and fascinating, I’m sure.

Oh yeah, Amarillo is a big city for the NI-coC. Abilene, too.

The us-or-them situation is exactly what they’re aiming for: isolated people are easier to control. But yeah, I’m not sure if it’s an intentional strategy or just what happened to work out for their purposes.

Well, I grew up in what is known as the non-institutional church of Christ. There are different branches of the coC, ranging from the relatively liberal to the downright draconian.

What made this particular branch of the coC “non-institutional” is that they are independent of each other congregation, so the leadership of each group is separate from every other.

The way it actually shakes out is that every congregation gets super deep into the weeds about arcane interpretations of an ancient text about which they are unqualified to explain while making overconfident proclamations of certainty. Other congregations disagree with a fairly minor point in this reading, and they will become effectively dead to each other. Ultimately, the different churches (they would hate me calling them that) would form a loose confederation across the region with various groups they could live in uneasy peace with.

Within the congregation itself was a religion that taught that the world is a wicked place from which we should set ourselves apart. Evolution was a lie spread by the devil to make us doubt God’s power. Women were not allowed to speak or wear pants during the church service. We did not use instruments to make music during the service, as that was not mentioned in the Bible. Any disagreement with doctrine could get one removed from good standing, and we left two churches (forced out, really) based on the Elders’ strict views on baptism and musical instruments: my father would not agree that immersion was strictly necessary to save one’s soul, or that it was sinful to exceed the Bible’s authority and use instruments.

It is a bit of a weird duck as a cult, but they’re extremely controlling, patriarchal, and reactionary. They’re in most towns, but people usually think they’re an offshoot of the Baptists (of which certain types also dip into cult status in my opinion). I’d place them between the Baptists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses on a fundamentalist belief scale. I think the BITE model is a useful one (but not perfect) for defining cults:

• Behavioral control
• Information control
• Thought control
• Emotional control

The coC did all of these things: they wanted members to live apart from society where only those in the church were acceptable social peers, to limit exposure with “subversive” ideas and science, to make people so afraid of going to hell that you’ll blindly accept the teachings. You were expected to attend every service: Sunday morning & night and Wednesday night.

In short, they wanted to control people’s lives by love-bombing newcomers and then suffocating them until they fit into their assigned tiny little box.

And yes, we were in the end times. Even though nobody knows when Jesus will return. Wink.

I feel equal parts pity and exasperation that they’re ignoring critical crises like global climate change to focus on superstitious nonsense.

I grew up in a cult, so my whole life.

Find an IRL community that means something to you. You have to feel like you belong somewhere, and people need a support group to help when they’re down. You can’t feel happy if you’re lonely.