Whoever told you that was incorrect. Literally means the plain textbook definition of the words written, as opposed to euphemism or metaphor. If I say “I would literally die on this hill”, it means that there is an actual large mound of dirt that I am willing to lose my life on.

Any other interpretation is literally incorrect.

I’m thinking about it, and I think they might be right. Sunbeams are a part of the sun, albeit mingled with atmosphere. If they were in direct line of the sun, i could consider them technically, literally, correct.

It all depends on whether you consider an object bathed in the radiance of something to be “in” that thing, but I’m kinda inclined to consider that.

Starship Troopers is not misunderstood satire

I’ve read a lot of Heinlein, and while I don’t think “satire” is quite the right word, I’d consider it more of a thought experiment than sincere belief.

As long as they stay to the right I don’t care that much

I’m fine with language evolving over time, but I reject “literally” being used to mean “figuratively”. Distinguishing figurative from literal is, literally, the word’s one job. Take that away, and the word literally doesn’t mean anything but a generic intensifier. There literally isn’t another word that fulfills that disambiguating purpose, this semantic drift only decreases clarity.

Not really, no. A lot of the major ones, like the Flood, but there’s plenty of original content in every religion. It’s silly to suggest otherwise.

And my point is that if all these same stories keep popping up, maybe there’s some significance to them.

Like pwnd, which is something like pünd or /pʊnd/

The typical therapist advice about focusing only on the things you can personally change does not work well on macro issues. Issues that were created by lots of people working together like climate change require a bunch of people working together to fix.

But collaborating with others to address macro problems is something you can personally do.

The justification I’ve heard is that these guys have knives on their feet. If you didn’t have an approved fight process, you’d have unapproved fights that turn out way worse for the participants.

There are centuries of religious thought by mystics developing upon the texts inspired in part by those stories. The parts based on common ancient legends comprise a relatively small part of religious texts.

And still, if anything that’s supportive evidence. The ancient legends that pop up again and again, that survive centuries of canonical revision, probably reflect deep and spiritually apparent features of reality.

They contradict each other on many aspects.

Yes, which is why I said to compare them to see where they don’t contradict each other.

So either only is from God or none of them are.

Never said any of them were from God. They’re all from humans attempting to describe God.

The Bible, and the Quran, and the Vedas, and every other religious text are human attempts to describe God. None of them are going to get it quite right in every detail, but you can learn a lot by cross referencing them to see what they agree on.

Ignoring the AI part, since it doesn’t even know it’s gaslighting you.

Maybe read some Buckminster Fuller. He opined to some length about trends in real-world changes.

Isaac Asimov as well, just for a general sense of the approach.

But overall probabilities are kinda arbitrary when applied to specific events. They work fine for a whole lot of similar events (e.g. pulling colored marbles out of a bag) but they don’t really have any tangible meaning for unique events. Either you guess wrong or you guess right.

If you want to predict future events, you need to have a good grasp on current events, past events, and systemic behavior in general. There isn’t one methodology that yields results generally. You need to tailor your approach to suit each prediction.

That’s not something you can learn from one book, course, or series of exercises. It relies on broad scholarship.

Narrow the scope of policing. Have more social services and emergency mental health resources so cops aren’t expected to do all that.

“Defund the police” never meant “Remove all funding for police”, it means “Reallocate potions of police funding to more comprehensive social services”

How bout the power of flight, that do anything for ya?

I chose my wife in large part for her honesty. It’s much easier to teach a brutally honest person to be more tactful than to teach a dishonest person to be honest.

It’s spicy, salty, heavy on a particular ingredient, anything that might be off-putting to some.

What is the soup of the day?

“Soup du jour”

Mmm, that sounds good.

This is an actual exchange I had.

Especially roasted

I’m on Sync, dunno about anything else.