Nearest convenience store is 200m Chain supermarket is 200m Bus stop is 150m Library is 50m Park is 500m Train station is 800m

NYC makes everything easy

I honestly think that difference in opinion speaks highly of Banks as an author - the books speak to us differently and he wrote diverse enough stories that they capture each person separately.

Per capita with total as tiebreaker:

Brazil 94kg

Germany 78kg - 17% less than Brazil

China 76kg - 2.6% less than Germany

UK 76kg - 2.6% less than Germany

USA 73kg - 3.9% less than UK/China

France 61kg - 16% less than USA

India 55kg - 10% less than France

Russia 33kg - 40% less than India

Big disagree on the best - Use of Weapons, Surface Detail and Consider Phlebas are the favorites of my partner and me.

Not that the 3 listed are bad just that I like my 3 more :)

3.4bn is their gross - we have no idea what their operating costs are since they refuse to share them.

Some estimates say they’re burning 8 billion a year.

To call my statements unnuanced is patently false. Unnuanced is your assertion that getting rid of religion is genocidal.

You consistently conflate religion and culture and act as though a group that lets their religion die has somehow had a genocide committed against them.

The death of a religion is not the death of the culture and genocide has no role my desire for the extinction of the dark and superstitious past that we are in the process of leaving.

There is not a single thing that a religion does to help people that is irreplaceable with non-parasitic communal structures.

What religion does beyond helping people is leech off of superstition and ignorance to control and coerce its adherents into its modes.

If a religion is free of superstition it ceases to be a religion: requiring no faith.

Cultural practices are beautiful and deserve preservation - religions are shackles that keep those marginalized people we care about enslaved to the past.

Religion as a concept is evil.

These are arguments from a position of pure concept and theory, the realm that religion deals in.

Pragmatic reality means that we’re never getting rid of religion because people will continue to perpetuate the abuses of the past into the future.

That doesn’t make them bad people; they sincerely think they’re doing good.

Nonetheless: their belief does not make what they’re doing good.

My youth spent canvasing in favor of the bigotry of Prop 8 in California is not absolved because as a fundamentalist I believed it was the best thing for “the gays”.

I’m sorry it makes you uncomfortable but the truth is that religion and the religious cause endless suffering on this world and they deserve to be called out.

The latest releases ChatGPT 4o costs $600/hr per instance to run based on the discussion I could find about it.

If OpenAI is running 1k of those models to service the demand (they’re certainly running more since queries can take 30+ seconds) then that’s 200M/yr just keeping the lights on.

You’re religious so you’re being defensive and fighting for reasons to keep your beliefs. You don’t want to believe that you participate in a larger organization that harms humanity. That means you’re a good person.

The religion you participate in still harms people. It doesn’t matter what religion it is.

Good people trying to do good things participate in evil organizations that perpetrate harm.

Religious people are part of the religion but not the whole.

As demonstrated by my previous comment: it is the religion that is the problem, not people finding camaraderie or community therein. I’m glad the previous commenter finds solace but it is important to call out that mechanism is exploited by the religion itself to propagate.

You cannot fully separate a religion and the religious. Without the religious a religion has died.

It would be best if all religions died: the religious that keep them alive are good people who have been misled.

All religions, no exceptions. To kick things off with the lowest of low hanging fruit: your religion practices male genital mutilation.

But the abuse, manipulations and control go all the way through from patriarchal hierarchies to an “exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation;”

Which is to say cult brainwashing techniques used by any religion from Judaism to Mormonism to Hinduism. From the Branch Davidians to the Sumerian high priesthood: humans have never ceased using the 0-days of the human mind to exploit and manipulate their fellow man.

Does that mean religions can only do evil? Of course not. I’m glad you get a sense of connection and peace from it.

But that connection and peace serves to perpetuate the primeval toxic hierarchy. You’ll raise your kids on it. Make sure they believe it from a young age. After all - “Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) You gotta get em young or they’ll never believe when they’re old.

If “your own research” never makes you change your opinions then you’re not doing research, you’re looking for confirmation.

You’re always wrong about something. Figure out what it is.

Misread another comment on the 40 part - my bad.

Good luck yourself - Everyone’s journey is different. My ADHD was crippling for decades and it worked out. I hope yours does too - but if it doesn’t ever quite work out I hope you give yourself the grace and the space to be imperfect.

Every single word in the original post clarifies more than plain English. It is more specific and has better nuance than a plain translation.

That doesn’t make it a useful explanation because the audience of the statement is not the in-group using the jargon.

One part of my daily job is translating “technical” into “manager”. The translation always loses fidelity to the original. Jargon exists because it’s useful, not because there’s a deliberate attempt to keep others out. Some will then use it as a shibboleth but that does not mean it’s original purpose was such.

For what it’s worth: that’s true of all translations. I’ve done real time translation from Italian into English and it’s always missing the nuance of the original. I’ve read the divine comedy in English and Italian and the English is always missing the context and nuance.

Language is an abstract representation of concepts and never maps faithfully.

I was definitely in a similar position but at a younger age. So I’m not sure how applicable my experience is to you at 40+

For me what helped most was 3fold:

1. Bupropion. I can’t state how much this antidepressant/ADHD combo medicine helped me chill out, function, and relax about social situations.

2. A major cognitive shift from “I must make friends” to “I’m totally happy alone, friends just make things better”

3. Learning to always assume the best. People aren’t out to get me, nor do they hate me. They’re generally busy, almost certainly have a small clique of friends they like to spend time with, and I’m not in that group. And that’s totally fine.

It took from age 23 until 26 for me to get that all straight in my head. I spent almost a year of that pulling back from all social responsibilities and taking time to be alone and heal.

Reading through your comments here reminds me of myself before that process and I’ll give you the same advice that a dear friend gave me - you need to go talk to a psychiatrist. Your mental state is unhealthy.

You don’t heal a broken leg by walking on it. You shouldn’t try to heal a broken mind by force of will. Medication is a modern wonder, and I’d seek it out every time in your position.

That’s just all religions thought. They all are abusive and manipulative.

Some might have a different stance on women but none are worthy of existence.

Love hooded crows

Interact with them just the same as before. they’re still friendly people, they’re just friendly people who didn’t come to an optional social event.

How many optional social events do you say no to? Personally I will decline dozens of invites to do things every year for various reasons including: nah I don’t feel like it.

It’s not that I don’t like the people doing the inviting: it’s that I have a limited social battery, limited free time and a lot of things I want to do.

And in the meantime: become even closer with the 5 who showed.

I am not! I hadn’t heard of it until just now. Very neat project.

No I’m just someone with a particular interest in corvids who feels represented by a god of Thought that is a bird