Ookami38

That's fine. Drag can believe it to be a religion. Still not one relevant at all to the views I stated above.

There's a reason I said "ostensibly". Cults co-opt the religious umbrella in order to manipulate. They rely on the same kinds of psychology that religions do, often touch on the same kinds of topics. Trumpism is more a cult of personality than a proper religious cult.

Either way, to equate any kind of spiritually and religion with one of the most obvious examples of someone heading a cult is at BEST disingenuous. I'm not here to talk about cults. Cults suck, they're the opposite of what I described earlier. Intensely external, entirely about control.

Right. All cults are, ostensibly, religions. That doesn't mean that it works in the other way. Not all religions are cults.

That's really more a cult than a religion. As much as "hahah all religions are cults LoL", there is a distinct difference between them.

When boiled down, religions are essentially just a way of coping with the unknowable. The exact specifics of our origin, what happens to the thing we call "ourselves" after death, and usually an idea of how to be a better person. These themes are pretty consistent across everything we'd colloquial agree is a "religion".

The issues only really arise when someone insists that these unknowable, unquantifiable things that they believe in MUST be the only way, and anyone who doesn't believe the same way is somehow a threat. I believe that ones beliefs with regard to these unknowable things are deeply personal. They're arrived at by understanding one's self, and a LOT of introspection. It'd be weird if any two people managed to arrive at an agreement on everything, and that's okay because the beliefs are built on internal factors rather than external.

Organized religion, then, is bullshit, yeah. Anyone pushing answers for questions unanswerable is pushing an agenda. I doubt anything approaching the level of group think that is modern abrahamic religions could ever exist without some kind of power struggle.

General rule of thumb, impressive shots happen ALL THE TIME. A really good shot, even a dozen of them, isn't adequate evidence of cheating. They need to be observed doing something IMPOSSIBLE not just very difficult. Yeah, some people will be able to more subtly cheat, but a cheater just making themselves a bit better doesn't completely ruin the game, and any alternative is running the risk of banning someone for just being too good.

As someone who loves parentbeticals (and ellipses, asides, and similar) holy crap that hurt to read hahah

Having data to back up my claims is always nice.

Yeaaaah that upward mobility isn't a feature of the system, it's a bug, and they're working on patching it constantly.

It's never been easier to be a billionaire. It's never been harder to be a millionaire.

No evidence for my claim, however I think a lot of the not noticing bikes while driving is just an expectations thing. People expect large metal boxes with 4+ wheels barreling down the place. They don't expect something smaller, with fewer wheels, and in some cases completely silent. Because they don't expect it, they don't process it.

What's this mean? Well, for one it means we don't simply "ignore" people on bikes. That's a facet of our limited attention and expectations. It also means this trend can be changed. If we condition people to expect and look out for bikes/motorcycles, people will probably be FAR less likely to not see them.

Point being it's a last resort. I've lost all other options, may as well at least get someone there to ID the body or somesuch.

I get that, and I don't disagree, but my point is that the venn diagram of "shoots up schools" and "shoots up political targets" don't really overlap. Kids don't kill people for political reasons, they kill because they're in pain. Yes, they have a "better" target but that target isn't causing them active daily suffering.