Just like there are very well educated but still bad scientists, very well trained but still bad singers, very high in position but still bad politicians, etc., etc., etc., there are also very vocal but still bad Christians.

The Bible is full of directions and warnings against oppressing those who are weaker. Those Christians who ignore or reinvent these are no different than an incompetent scientist who fakes or mucks up data, etc.

More, the New Testament explicitly warns that bad Christians will exist and that they should be ignored (and will not receive the rewards they think they will).

Some examples:

Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. (Psalm 82:3-4)

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. (Proverbs 14:31)

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. (Proverbs 29:7)

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:6-10)

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. (Leviticus 19:15)

If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. (Leviticus 25:35-36)

If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:2-4)

Theft of others’ creative works (and to an actor their voice is part of their creative work) has been going on via Big Tech for decades now. My first view of it was years ago when Google started stealing books it hadn’t purchased and wasn’t licensed and adding them to public spaces on the internet. I remember the big publishing houses and a lot of authors up in arms, but obviously they weren’t able to truly reverse any of that.

If you are looking for a way to find RSS/Atom feeds on sites you are interested in, but don’t list an RSS/Atom feed:

Here is a Textise version and the original version of a Zapier article talking about how to get an RSS feed manually from (many) sites that don’t list one.

I do this just because I like to and it takes but a few seconds to put through my QuiteRSS (GUI) or NewsReader (terminal based) feed reader apps.

Here’s the basics from the article (the article itself lists more and more in depth).

A shocking number of websites are built using WordPress—over 40% of destinations on the web. This means there’s a good chance that any website you visit is a WordPress site, and all of those sites offer RSS feeds that are easy to find.

To find a WordPress RSS feed, simply add /feed to the end of the URL; e.g., https://justinpot.com/feed. I do this any time I visit a website that I’d like an RSS feed for—it almost always works.

If it doesn’t work, here are a few tricks for finding RSS feeds on other sites.

If a site is hosted on Tumblr, add /rss to the end of the URL. Like this: https://example.tumblr.com/rss

If a site is hosted on Blogger, add feeds/posts/default to the end of the URL. Like this: example.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

If a publication is hosted on Medium, add /feed/ before the publication’s name. So medium.com/example-site becomes medium.com/feed/example-site

YouTube channel pages double as RSS feeds. Simply copy and paste the URL for the channel into your RSS reader. You can also find an OPML file for all of your subscriptions here.

Find an RSS feed for any site by checking the source code…

Also why is there a generic Christian but then also Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox? But then they just Muslim and not it’s different denominations? Why even have different denominations when you have the generic catch all and the Other category?

There are kinds of Christian that don’t fall under Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox by their own measure (which doesn’t care how the Big Three want to categorize them). Perhaps this was why? (Probably not.) Graph should have just lumped them all together as “Christian”.

Back when I was still using Facebook, the only “solution” I found was to only use it on my laptop browser, and to make a browser bookmark for every friend, organization, whatever I wanted to follow. So, my family, a few work friends, some hobby organizations that had events, etc. I never bookmarked more than a few dozen. Then I put all those bookmarks into a folder.

Then when I wanted to check in on everyone, I would right-click “Open All Bookmarks” on that folder, and check everyone out one by one.

It was stupid, but it was the only way I could really see what was going on in everyone’s lives (that they were posting, anyway), without it all being hidden by the FB algo. After several months of this, I finally said the heck with it and just stopped using FB at all. Now I use text, emails, phone calls, RSS feeds, and the like to keep in touch. If one of these methods doesn’t work, then I figure the “friend”/whatever relationship isn’t real anyway.

I would have loved that as a kid. My own fort, and I don’t have to go out in the rain to play in it.

Someone definitely signed you up. For lots of things.

I did that to a friend in college once, but signed her (as if I was her) up for 3 or 4 dozen different religious colleges and organizations, asking them to snail mail her information. Years later she found out it was me and said “I’M STILL GETTING THIS (#&%^@ IN THE MAIL!!!”

You need to upgrade to a better training provider, it seems. (What do you bet their server is linux?)

I’m interested to give it a try when it’s out of beta. Tried it a few other times and had issues. Hopefully the latest Debian update fixes those problems.

The change, which became effective in July and was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, will create consistency in starting hourly pay across individual stores, said spokeswoman Anne Hatfield, which will lead to improve staffing and customer service.

I’d like to know how lowering pay will “improve staffing and customer service”.

You still didn’t demonstrate the wherewithal to differentiate between an old-school forum and something like F*book and the like, and acted as if you were the smart one. And then you attempted to be insulting, sticking out your tongue at the wrong person. Please.

I quit Fbook and all the “social” media a few years back, and haven’t missed it at all. Any “friend” who will only interact with me via Fbook/etc, rather than in-person, text, or even email or phone call isn’t a real friend, or real relationship at all. My life is quieter and my sanity slowly returned.

Spent last weekend visiting family out of state, and it was the first time I’ve watched YouTube with ads in years. I pay to get no ads on YouTube at home, and the ads at family’s home was so irritating. Made me realize that I would either pay YouTube for no ads, OR I would just stop watching YouTube. No compromise on that one.

That being said, I don’t mind a few ads on webpages here and there. I run uBlock Origin and NoScript with only site-needed scripts allowed. Occasionally there’s an ad that manages to not get blocked by either of those, and I don’t go out of my way to also make sure those are blocked. It’s because they aren’t obnoxious. Usually just a box on the side of the page. Not a problem.

This. Though I left Netflix because the only way family was watching it was via Roku device, and in the last 6 months you had a 2 in 3 chance the Netflix app would lock up on it and none of the “fixes” (reinstall, clear cache, etc., etc., etc., … ) did anything to help.

Even worse, not only would the Netflix app lock itself up, it would lock up the entire Roku device so someone had to be dispatched to unplug, wait, replug the power on the Roku device to restart Roku.

We have so much on the Roku that actually works (Hulu, etc) - why pay monthly for such a crappy app? Family complained for about 2 days and then forgot Netflix even exists.

I couldn’t find it on the Bookshop.org site, by title or author. I was able to find it by just putting them in a search engine, but at other sites.

I don’t recall - I uninstalled it so fast I didn’t register the name. I was looking for a productivity app, so it was a planner or something. If I come across it again I will make a separate post for it so we can all grumble and wow.

The legal system is expensive for the same reason the medical system is expensive:

• When you need to be in it, you need to be in it (e.g., you can’t just walk away from possible jail time or having a steering wheel embedded in your body).

• Even if it’s for things you are choosing willingly, both systems have over time set themselves up as the only possible options - either by making it a crime to take care of your issue outside their system, or by making you believe that only going their route is the safe / effective / trustworthy way.

• Both are incredibly, unapologetically, corrupt to their core, with no one really accountable for anything beyond a few “examples” made here and there.

Yep for me, as well. Years ago I enjoyed tinkering and fixing and exploring out problems… but it was my hobby to do so and one I enjoyed very much.

These days, I just want to get my work done and I don’t want to mess around with a lot of configuration and finding drivers and searching out solutions on forum boards. Tried them all, but I just come back over and over to Mint. It just gets it done and out of my way.

Ummm… Actually… it’s one giant spot. The white is a “background” coloring (see presumed-Mom, to the right).

I started having problems with freetube a few months back, as well. I switched to one of several piped instances (whichever one is working at any given time) in my browser.