Meek Cheek
Foot in your mouth? Try tongue in cheek.
Slow and steady wins the duckstack
You have in your hands1 a bona fide Duckstack. This is an impressive thing, once you know The Duckstack’s history. Every Duckstack is mined from enormous caverns in the rocky mountains, filled with keyboard keys that grow on the walls. Over thousands of years, those keys erode, and drip down, forming ducks2 on the ground. Further thousands of years add further ducks, forming the classic “stack” which you know and love. Then we just chop ‘em out with a pickaxe and leave them on strangers doorsteps3. This has proven to be foolproof45.
You hold in your eyes6 millennia of history, cruelly stripped from its natural habitat, at absolutely no profit7, for nothing but the thrill of the game. So next time you read The Duckstack right now, take a moment, and really appreciate the environmental destruction that went into its production.
Sugar Pilled
Sugar pills for the peaters
If you've been online for any amount of time, you've probably taken quite a few pills- which in discourse is used to represent buy in to various narratives. If you're bluepilled, you buy establishment narratives about things, and if you're redpilled, you buy in to a more gritty and realistic counter narrative. If you're blackpilled, you buy into a doom narrative that everything is futile and going downhill, and so on. In the tweet below, Johnathan Bi tries to redpill readers on Christianity, in particular by questioning the conventional wisdom of turning the other cheek. (By painting it as uncool)
Granted many things in life that are cool are cool precisely because someone is living out their carnal desires in a way which we otherwise would not be or at least feel free to. In a society where wrathful revenge on your neighbor is illegal, Achilles as a free man may feel cathartic. Justice is, for most men, out of their hands, being fully delegated to the state. There is a type of Christian who likes this arrangement, who enjoys saying “its out of my hands”, which only some understand to be rank cowardice.
However, when Christ commanded his followers to turn the other cheek, they did not live in such a society, as you can observe from Peter cutting off the guards ear, in the declarations of Boanerges, in Nephi slaying Laban, and others. They were still on the law of Moses and Eye for an Eye was the law of the land, and it appears to have been common to take that into your own hands, to some extent8.
There's a famous anecdote where they found that if you ask someone for a favor, it counterintuitively makes them like you more. So the question I'm here to interrogate is: Was Jesus instituting communism? I don't think so, I think Jesus was God, and I think God understands human psychology9. Generosity isn't communist, it serves an actual regulating function in the giver. Assuming you're not being pharisaical about it. (Those will “have their reward”.)
Turning the other cheek wasn't just a meekness thing- the rest of those verses talk about giving someone your coat on top of your cloak or walking with them twice what they ask of you. You could turn this into a corporate linkedin style lesson about going above and beyond but that’s also incorrect. What this is about is developing charity.
I listened to a fireside once where the speaker talked about how Latter-Day Saints have or should strive for a “more educated conscience”. How, as you really strive to do what is right, then your sensitivity increases, and the amount of things that are right available to you increases (because you will notice to do them more). Conversely, choosing wickedness nearly universally involves an effort to hear your conscience less- whether in the form of changing beliefs, or forming avoidance or neurotic habits, or just drowning the inner voice in loud music10, loud drugs, loud friends, or any of the other seven deadly sins. Developing your conscience requires deliberate effort. This is where the commandments come in.
What God wants, in Latter-Day Saint theology, is to make us like him. And God has perfect charity. Therefore, if we are to become like God, we must train our charity, and not skip charity day at the morality gym. Generosity and forgiveness serve the very important purpose of helping the giver to avoid blackpills. On the same psychology where a favor increases your estimation of the person you gave to, becoming a person who sincerely takes a generous and charitable stance will keep your perspective above the dark clouds, allowing you to allow yourself to keep your options open. I’m not an advocate for infinite charity, or careless charity, or charity as an excuse to avoid how immoral you are to those close to you because you “advocate really strongly for BLM or abortion or anti abortion and you hope your contributions to those causes will cover a multitude of sins11”, but I am an advocate for Christian charity, principled upon a desire to do things right, and also to see others how God sees them12.
There’s further implications for this in lots of relationships, most particularly marriage where doing something sincerely for your spouse clears the air both for them and yourself. Nobody can be perfect, but if you utilize the tool of faking it until you make it, you can learn and practice the forms, until eventually, you will receive water for those vessels to hold. It isn’t necessarily Nietzschean, but for an unmade man to become a self made man, it is his own soul he must learn to govern. Mere indulgence never brought someone capacity. Whether you are a man of temper or a man of passivity, Godhood means overcoming the weakest in you.
Sponsored Message: A Danger Is Lurking
Its what danger does. It… Lurks.
Do you ever feel that tingling up your spine, the feeling you are being watched, or that an entity of raw malice has turned its eye upon you, and that you are now in the spotlight. You know how your hair stands on end as part of the fight or flight impulse? Its to receive sound.
Inside your inner ear, there’s a structure called the cochlea which has lots of little hairs which translate sound waves into brain food. But sometimes when you’re in danger, you need to be even more sensitive, so your entire body becomes a big ear, assuming you haven’t been shaving for cosmetic reasons13. With this heightened sensitivity, you will be able to hear not only danger, but the absence of danger, because in the presence of one who battles evil, you will have nothing to worry about. Yes, there is one who fights villains and protects the innocent. With him around, you will be able to relax, especially if you’ve bought his proprietary fan merchandise.
He is… The Guitar Hero.
History
Toddler Hobbies
Mama Plucking eyebrows. Toddler giving commentary. “Ow! That hurts you! Ow!”
Toddler is becoming somewhat possessive. Mama singing “Rock my baby” and the toddler will run in, “No, that’s MY baby!” So mama changed her song “Rockabye the toddler’s baby” and the toddler nodded to himself, satisfied, and left
Toddler likes to scream “wake up!” and jump on you with his knees right now. One of his hobbies.
Toddler has also taken up pulling a cheese block out of the fridge and just chomping on it, which from my childhood development class is a prominent developmental stage in any child’s life. This is also one of his hobbies.
Mama crept into toddler’s room at night to get a rag. This woke up the toddler, for which she apologized. “Sorry to wake you, I just need a rag for the baby.” And our toddler started lecturing her! From the bed in the most put out tone: “Mama, I need to SWEEP.”
Toddler found a hair on the ground and was frantically waving it, “your hair, your hair!” and we looked at it and we were like, no, this is your hair, see its color and length? And the toddler goes. “Oh!” and makes this big “O” with his lips and sticks the hair back on his head
Ducksnax
Umbrella
DUCKSTACK ANNOUNCEMENT
Say hello to our newest friend
You may have noticed over the last several weeks an “experimental feature” that The Duckstack had deployed in open beta, called “previous Duckstack”. This contained a link to the previous Duckstack. We are pleased to announce that this feature has completed its trial14, and is ready for full featured deployment. A lot of our worries about temporal conflicts and unraveling continuity turned out to be unfounded, and according to our metrics, reader deaths after clicking the “Previous Duckstack” button were well within tolerances.
Going forward, you will see some minimal changes. The “Previous Duckstack” link will still be present, but the “Experimental feature” warning will be removed. Additionally, we now have the option of adding various stickers to the banner, which will hopefully render correctly (and non-lethally) on all devices. We hope you will continue to enjoy this new feature for years to come. Stay human, friends15.
Your… Eye hands.
Maybe there’s other animals out there, we only harvest the ducks though
Your… Eye steps.
“for what?” For removing duckstacks from caverns and leaving them on people’s doorsteps.
People’s… Eye steps.
Your… Eye eyes.
dont tell my shareholders
There was a thread, lost to time, about how honor cultures and societies around the eye for an eye concept viewed vengeance as a moral duty, to be carried out logically in such a matter that grievances would be resolved in perfect balance, so that both parties could move on, that I was going to link here. It looks like the user got banned from twitter for posting covid memes though.
Edit: my friend Jesse found a mirror of it
There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is “God’s been through it” as in hebrews <6?> and Alma <7?>
I am a loud music guy, but the distinction here is whether you're trying to numb your conscience. It makes numbing easier, but it doesn't necessarily entail it.
they might, but covering a multitude of sins only really works when you stop sinning
I believe God sees many of us as “cute.”
hope it was worth it
retrieving a lost artifact from the bottom of a skeleton infested and waterlogged cavern. Our Duckstack feature did so well, emerging full of bruises and scrapes but with the lost artifact (two chicken legs) held triumphantly above its head.
you can stay duck or whatever too, I think we’re okay with pretty much any animal, mineral, or vegetable
:."Great read! Enjoyed Jonathan Bi, loved Previous Post, the Toddler is hilarious, I pick #12 for you!
"I believe God sees many of us as “cute.” made me smile and think "so true," Guitar Hero is a cute friend--you and AI did swell! Thank you for bringing a smile!
I believe God sees many of us as “cute.”