Polyglot Thoughtspot
Telepathy is the curse wherein everyone nearby is allowed to think for you
Time flies when you’re having Duckstack1
Alright, its time for a Duckstack magic show! Imagine me disconnecting my thumb, imagine me throwing a quarter from hand to hand but like in a way that you don’t know that I’m throwing it, imagine that I’m pulling scarfs from my sleeve, imagine I’m pulling Duckstacks from my sleeve.
The Paradox of Tolerant
Any sufficiently advanced judgement is indistinguishable from magic
All Christians know that at baptism you are “born again”, this time spiritually, in the Lord. What most Christians don’t know, is that when some insane addict or prostitute tells you that as a Christian you’re not allowed to judge them, that’s puberty.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged” is certainly something Jesus did say, I don’t think in our eagerness to mob and smite that we should gloss over that. Meekness is a virtue, and judging righteous judgement is more than just an autistic focus on being scripturally compliant. But I don’t want to dissuade you from autistic compliance, because in some real ways the choice Christians must make at this junction is to become a libertarian or to serve God. To say “oh well sin only matters in a sort of institutional sense.” And this might work for a lot of Christians, as long as the sins of others around them aren’t things that affect them.
But when some scold tells you “let him without sin cast the first stone” the basic, immature retort is “but he also told her with his words “go and sin no more”” which is generally sufficient to justify arguing online, but God wants spiritual adults, not teenagers, so lets grow a level beyond this, and first toss out that entire story as invalid- The dilemma posed in The Woman Taken in Adultery was that the pharisees were trying to get Jesus to go against either Roman law (which forbids stoning adulterers) or God’s law (which commanded at the time stoning adulterers), either of which could be used to undermine Christ’s credibility. So by answering b“let he without sin cast the first stone” Jesus was actually saying “do it, I dare you” or “be my guest” not “nobody’s perfect so you’re not allowed to care about sin”.
I have also found that generally people are very willing to forgive an adulteress or prostitute or whatever of her sins, but a lot less willing to forgive a rapist or murder or sex offender on this same basis, which mostly goes to show what sins our society favors. As Christians we would do well to remember social acceptance isn’t what absolves sin, but rather sincere repentance and reliance on Christ’s grace.
Later in Christ’s life a bunch of pharisees came up to him and very judgmentally said that Christ was committing blasphemy when he told people he was God. Christ replied (citing scripture) “ye are gods”, essentially saying that they were gods too, in God’s eyes, and it wasn’t blasphemy to agree with God. To call a mere human by the name of Eloheim strikes many as blasphemous even today. Creedal Christians never tire of telling me “you (a human) can never be a God!” and I’m always like “well that’s kind of up to God not me anyway isn’t it” because either way God can delegate. When his apostles in the New Testament asked what they would get for following him, he told them in a word, judgement2. And there are a lot of positions within the church that are very formally “judges”, but that means more than just calling things how you see them. It is one thing to judge, and quite another to issue a decree, to execute on another’s behalf upon your judgement.
There’s a difference, semantically, in how the word “judgement” can be used. One usage is closer to “evaluate”, one is closer to “judge” as in the legal position with the powdered wig, one is closer to “jury”, and one is closer to “executioner”. To say sin is bad, that is a descriptive statement. To say X person is going to Hell, that is proscriptive. If you tease out these different definitions, then I think “judging righteous judgement” becomes a lot clearer. Does God want you to avoid evaluating good from evil? I insist that he does not. Adam fell that men might be, knowledge of Good and Evil is your heritage and you will not return to Eden by hiding your talents. Instead you must forge your way through, you must judge, you must evaluate good from evil, you must learn to be gods. You must learn this from God, of course. You aren’t a ruler, you’re just an heir. Whether you go prodigal is on you. But what you inherit is very likely to be related very closely to how well you’ve learned the lessons to keep that family business going. In general, the greater you learn discernment, the more you are capable of following Christ. And it is understandable to shrink from this, because if you make a bad judgement call you could theoretically hurt someone, yes. I don’t think that usually happens even on really bad judgement calls but obviously its a possibility. But I think you can look around yourself and see people everywhere in a state of judgement atrophy, and they aren’t really the better for it.
So maybe you’re like me and you don’t really have issues with “judging too much” if you know what I mean. Maybe you’re balanced the other way and are a little too comfortable with judgement. Personally this has not burned me very often in life, but if you’re bad at discernment I can see how this would cause a lot of problems, and I think the solution is just to learn to run all your judgements by mercy first. And remember that with what judgement ye mete it shall be meted unto you3. Ask yourself: “What if someone metes this at me one day? Would I want mercy?” and if the answer is yes then you should probably slow down lol. This doesn’t mean don’t evaluate, it doesn’t mean don’t analyze and don’t diagnose and don’t theorize ways to avoid it in the future because those are helpful things to do, processing things is how you develop judgement. But do it meekly. For in many cases, many more than we would suspect, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Rockslides that don't exist
10 rockslides that don't exist (because I just made them up)
multiple rock bands, falling down a mountain
A slide made out of rocks glued together
Rolling a really large rock down a children's slide
A golem losing its footing
The golem then losing its foot (by it falling off) and falling down the mountain onto the bands4 and then getting bonked in the head with its own foot ten seconds later
Dwayne Johnson going down a children's slide, saying “whee”, before reaching the bottom, and being clonked in the head by a really large rock ten seconds later
A slide with an automated rock-shooting-at-you feature like an arrow hallway in an Aztec temple
A water slide, but you go down it on an innertube made out of rocks
A water slide, except you go down it as a golem made of rocks
A new dessert dish of creamy cheesecake designed to look like a scoop of mashed potatoes, with rock candy, rock chocolate, or pop rocks sprinkled down the side of it, with a caramel drizzle56
Investigation: Meditative shortcuts
So we looked at the data
Okay so I needed to wash dishes and I didn’t want to because I was feeling lazy so I asked twitter if there was anything I could simply “think” to get an instant energy boost, and a few of them were pretty good lol so lets go over some of them
imagine your enemies hoping you fail: This seems like a downright decent way to get more energy fast. I think it might not work if you don’t really have enemies or if you’re also kind of shameless as a person.
shouting “Hitlerrrr”: I think this mostly would only work for guys, but I don’t really have a way to test it otherwise. I first encountered this concept on a weight lifting advice page, but I see no reason it can’t also apply to getting up and doing dishes.
“f*** it we ball”: A mantra for the cocky, I can see some clear drawbacks though, if you’re averse to profanity or have a childhood trauma involving any sort of ball game.
“You must construct additional pylons”: I don’t think this one is very good, but it might work for some. The issue I see is that it doesn’t imply any sort of “fine, I’m building the pylons already” in the mantra, and so what you’re doing is just setting up your internal monologue to not only nag you about doing the dishes (which it was already doing) but now its nagging you about additional pylons too.
“yass queen slay”: I think this one would mostly only work for girls, but if you are a beautiful diva, by all means slay those dishes. But not literally, just like, with a wash rag or something.
cold shower: Assuming you’ve got the energy to go take a shower, I do think the discomfort of cold showers is enough to induce general flight or flight, which could be harnessed to accomplish tasks.
Just do drugs: While things such as coffee and meth do increase energy, I have some reservations about them and cannot recommend them as productivity augmenters.
“There will be a reckoning”: A mantra for the vindictive, nemesis of the galaxy personality type. Certainly this will enable you to accomplish your tasks, but will be much more motivating if you enjoy crushing your enemies. So its a bit situational.
Just imagine how much lazing around you will be able to do once you’re done with it: though this doesn’t work for me usually, but I can see it working for a lot of people. Relaxing without the crushing weight of procrastination is a quite the luxury. Don’t you want this?
Just listen to sabaton: Yeah that’ll work
Bistory
Warning: poop
Jethro has started his third chemotherapy regimen. He has to take like 8 disgusting syringes of medications per day, but we are having fun saying “yuck!” and sticking our tongues out after each one. This chemo can be done at home, and he seems to be doing well.
Be careful what you wish for- we wished for him to eat more and something with the chemo has kicked his appetite into overdrive, or maybe even a little past overdrive since he eats like 6 bowls of oatmeal per meal now and in between meals cries at us in this most pathetic whimper “I’m hungry… I’m hungry…” so anyway, now we need oatmeal on tap too. We had been adding heavy cream to his hourly chocolate milk protein shakes, to try to increase the calories even more to make up for how little he was eating, but the last two days that seems kind of overkill.
One of the side effects of this chemo is diarrhea, so we’ve been watching his potty efforts more closely this week. My wife asked how his poop was and I said “creamy” and Jethro was like “Oh, I know why my poop is creamy. It is because my chocolate milk has cream in it.”
Later I was watching a show on my computer next to him while he was eating a popsicle and it started getting violent and I had this moment where I was like “Wait, maybe this is too violent to be watching next to him, I don’t want him traumatized” and it turned out he wasn’t paying attention at all, but was lost in complex thought, and as I looked at him he turned to me and said “Papa, do dinosaurs poop?7”
Toddler found in church that he has natural returning projectile weapons: shoes
We’re working on building Jethro a playroom downstairs, there’s a lot of construction and one of our church friends has generously been coming over to help us out. We were working on it tonight and Jethro told mama he didn’t want to leave our bedroom. “Why is that?” She asked. “I’m shy about the human papa has in the basement.” So I guess that’s how he thinks of me. Someone who keeps humans in the basement.
I like to think you and I are having a Duckstack right now.
Mathew 19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?
28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Mete me outside how bout that
No rock bands were harmed in the making of our Duckstack
Imagining this showing up on some cooking blog but the 50 paragraph spiel about where the recipe comes from is this very emphatic personal ramble about The Duckstack
“I remember as a child reading The Duckstack upon my mother's knee”
He was running mental calculus on this for like 20 minutes I swear