The question is typically described as “the historicity of Jesus”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
There are similar debates for other famous ancient figures.
The general academic consensus on Jesus (and many similar figures) is that they did exist and many of the details have been fictionalized.
“Worse than expected,” depends largely on the individual and what they were expecting. It comes down to expecting one thing and being disappointed in the outcome.
People who expected him to be an ally of immigrants are disappointed in his border policies.
People who expected him to fix Trumps “easy” trade wars are disappointed in his trade policies.
People who expected him to support labor are disappointed in his ban of the railroad workers strike.
People who expected him to champion human rights are disappointed in his support of the IDF.
He may have met your expectations and the expectations of the majority of Democrats. Biden’s 2020 victory depended on several groups who only showed up because they hoped that he would address their specific concerns.
There is no single reason. It’s the sum of many reasons. They’re too many to list exhaustively but when we see a concrete example the vast majority of people come to the same conclusion on creepy vs appropriate.
When there isn’t a clear line, trying to define one is misleading. You can always find some couple somewhere on earth with an arbitrarily large age gap where people will agree that it’s the result of informed consent. People then try to make the argument that this justifies all relationships with that age gap even though most relationships don’t have whatever extenuating circumstances made the one example palatable.
Large age gaps are creepy. Whenever someone has to ask if a particular age gap is also creepy the answer is almost always, “Yes.”
There’s not much to discuss. The vast majority of the time it’s creepy grooming and we all know it. It’s technically legal and there may be cases when it’s genuinely a case of consent and mutual attraction but those are the exceptions.
Attempts to find the exact line are futile. “Half your age plus seven” is a rule of thumb, not a clear border.
The girls themselves are mostly “all for it” when it’s people roughly their age. There are exceptions but most girls that age see 30+ year olds as lame old dudes. Most 30+ year olds aren’t going after high school girls either. That’s why we all cringed at David Woodson’s line in “Dazed and Confused”.
The people who don’t want them to “exert this right” are the responsible parents, friends and community who know that a 30+ year old dating a teenager is creepy AF.
The few people who actually support this are mostly rationalizing.
TIL about John Wolf.
At the time, it never would have occurred to me that each one was different or that there was beatboxing involved.
I think you have a fundamentally different view than I do on the characters. That’s clearly true :)
Even when the characters behave reasonably I always felt that they were motivated more by the potential for public embarrassment than by moral concern.
It’s hard for me to think of George as a fundamentally nice. This is the guy who shoved children and elderly out of the way when he saw smoke, goaded an alcoholic into relapsing because he felt left out, constantly lied to get advantage in situations and even tried to kill a guy out of jealousy.
That’s exactly my point. None of the characters in these shows are role models. We can sympathize with the Bundy’s or their neighbors but the show makes it obvious that nobody wants to emulate them. We can understand why Walther White did the things he does even if it’s clear that he shouldn’t have. The gang in Philly is all about showing us the worst possible decision in any given situation.
Seinfeld, on the other hand, celebrates their behavior. It canonizes our intrusive thoughts as though they were a more authentic form of expression.
Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to the timestamps.
I honestly never understood the attraction to Seinfeld.
There were a few good jokes in there but the whole show was about them being assholes and proud of it.
They’re selfish, judgemental and entitled. They’re constantly mocking and bullying other people and each other. The final episode even lays it out explicitly.
Shows like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, “Married… With Children” or “Breaking Bad” have various unsavory characters but we’re invited to reject these flaws or at least identify with them as flaws.
Seinfeld is shameless about being an asshole and pretends the rest of us are just too dumb to understand his genius.
They’ve already started shooting into Rafah. That was the safe zone they told everyone to go to.
What push or shove are we waiting for? The start of the full scale invasion? The conclusion of a full scale invasion? Is there some number of civilians deaths that would be too much?
Thank you! I can finally fill the void that vibeless OSes have left in my soul.
All joking aside, it does raise a good point.
There are many things that can be objectively analyzed and it might not be a good idea to choose them based off of vibes. When you’re designing those things it’s still a good idea to take vibes into account because people will ignore all that and put googly eyes on their 3-D printer.
What support did he provide to the protests?
I may just be to cynical at this point but I don’t trust that at all. It’s just a pause.
Biden has structured that block as a “Type 2” decision. It creates the illusion of standing up to Israel but it allows him to instantly and unilaterally completely reverse it as soon as public attention has shifted.
Given history, I expect that’s exactly what will happen. Once the IDF murders enough people in Rafah, they’ll be “done”. Then they can pretend that they’ve turned over a new leaf and definitely won’t do any more genocide. Biden will congratulate them and resume all the weapons shipments, including sending the stuff that’s currently being held back.
Short of restructuring this as a “Type 1” decision, there’s little reason to think this is anything beyond theatrics.
You pick your OS based on vibes?
General Ripper has entered the chat.
Absolutely!
The CPC has board seats on many Chinese companies, including Bytedance. You can’t get more official than that.
The CIA engages in information operations both domestically and abroad. Those activities are often in violation of official US law. So they have to be done covertly and we only find out about it decades later after someone manages to push through a FOIA request.
The fact is that US, Chinese, Soviet (back when that was a thing), British, German, etc are all spying on each other. There’s a big spy vs spy thing going on in Africa. The Germans got really grumpy when the US wiretapped their phones a few years ago.
On the surface it may seem like “the authoritarian CCP” is engaging in an extraordinary amount of skullduggery, subterfuge and other clandestine activities but it’s just standard operating procedure for any country. Don’t take my word for it. There are a bunch of retired US intelligence officers saying exactly the same thing on the record.
Maybe. China probably has more official channels to interact with Bytedance but we have hard evidence that the US does the same thing.
FOIA provided a lot of insight into various clandestine interactions between US government agencies and private companies. There are a bunch of NGOs that get almost all of their funding from the US.
We also just reauthorized warrantless wiretapping.
The bigger issue is that Meta doesn’t really care. Nobody needs to force them to conform when they can just pay them. As far as Zuckerberg is concerned USD spends just as well as RMB.
I’d go even further than that. There’s a whole network of tools and organizations that many countries around the world use to influence and spy on each other.
China has a whole portfolio of tools they can use for that stuff.
The US has a whole portfolio of tools they can use for that stuff.
Many of those companies are very comfortable working with both countries, or anyone else who’s willing to sign a big enough check.
The former richest man in the world gave away much of his fortune and continues to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Wealth_and_philanthropy
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He’s in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.