interesting. I had a kurdish muslim neighbour several years ago, and he introduced me to this practice which I wasn't previously aware of. what I found interesting about it is that they'll often slaughter the animal over a ditch or hole dug into the ground into which the blood is drained, which is the process for making offerings to chthonian (ie. underworld) deities in most pagan traditions. they probably don't realize that, but it's almost certainly where the tradition originated. apart from the practical benefit of that method being ergonomic and less messy.
you're welcome. it frustrates me that due to the abuses of certain actors under the rubric of religion, that the baby is frequently thrown out with the bathwater. once the subject is put into a more constructive context it can yield enormous benefits. to some extent however it's much like a blacksmith creating tools first from different types of stones, dirt, water and sticks. it's not enough to hold the tool. to really understand you have to create it from the raw elements. a lifetime of introspection and consciously juggling perspectives.
imo religion serves the purpose of entraining the psyche to a particular set of values through repetition, which brings about a correspondingly habitual behavioural pattern. one can practice this alone or in a group, but the point remains the same, to change/reinforce personal behaviour in alignment with one's values.
*belief* on the other hand is not a necessary component (and in fact is not emphasized in the vast majority of the world's non-abrahamic religions; see "orthopraxy"). it is a pointless exercise that has demonstrably lead to world-wide violent mass delusions and genocide. the emphasis on belief is inimical to the actual point of religion, to align personal behaviour in accordance with wholesome life affirming values.
nearly all sci-fi/fantasy is based on metaphors for things happening real life. imo that's what it stems from. ymmv. incidentally, it's a superior ethic to the one motivating the idiots featured in that article.
you can find out which cities are infiltrated via the links below. so far there're around 12,752 cities in 142 countries representing over a billion citizens. that's just at the municipal government level...
you have a rather idyllic view of what's taking place. in places like oxford england for example it basically consists of toll booths that you have to pay to pass if you exceed your government allotted number of trips. never mind sick family, close friends, or other normal life. if you want to pass, you have to pay the government troll an extortion tax. the idea being to force people to no longer own cars, or switch universally to these high tech mobile surveillance platforms.
it's all well and good that you live in a fairy tale kingdom of castles and unicorns and so on, but the rest of us live in the real world and didn't vote for some douchbags in davos to decide the details of our daily lives.
what I don't get is not that someone would hallucinate such a silly thing, but that others would willingly just take their word for it and happy start chopping off their own dicks. maybe there's a metaphor there.
and in case you're about to say "just the tip", origen actually did and to himself, though in his case it was that his sect of christianity had the syncretized elements from the mystery traditions of cybele and attis.
ancap is an okay philosophy in many respects, but it's lopsided because it's foundation is purely rational/intellectual and leaves no room for the greater forces of human motivation, emotion and passion. particularly the passion one feels when there is no means to support one's self or family, and the typically coercive power of the market in such a circumstance. if you want true freedom you can't simply commoditize absolutely everything and call it a day. there needs to be an element of compassion and prosocial ethos that brings property back into balance with need (as opposed to greed). in order to do so in a voluntary fashion requires not law, but culture. ancap is a very self-oriented philosophy in spite of it's reciprocal nature, and thus it misses that element nearly entirely. consequently in spite of violently agreeing with ancaps on most philosophical points, there's really not a single one I've met as yet that I'd actually want as a neighbor.
I've been mulling this over for quite a while and though I don't relish it, I think there's a good reason our ancestors (vikings, celts, greeks, romans, etc) considered it legal to kill someone on the spot if they talked shit about you in public.
when people think of IP, they typically think of digital assets. but do you think about privacy or reputation? both are a property rights claim over the content of another person's mind.
"Though the absolute number of homicides by firearm reached its highest level of the past five years in 2020 at 277, the proportion of homicides by firearm actually decreased. In 2020, 37.2 per cent of homicides involved a gun, compared with 40 per cent in 2017."
"In Canada, medical errors account for 28,000 deaths yearly, according to the Canadian Patient Safety Institute which campaigns to reduce that number. Errors are said to be the third leading cause of death in Canada after cancer and heart disease, and every minute and 18 seconds someone is injured from unintended harm [caused by medical malpractice]."
The best thing about covid is being able to walk into a bank wearing a balaclava and not get shot in the face. Mind you if you didn't wear a mask, that's a possibility.How well do you think an n95 mask would stop a fart?But hey, that's why there're safe and effective (never before tested, experimental, totally not gene therapy, fingers crossed, honest) vaccines. Not so long ago it was GMO food we had to worry about. Now half the people I know are GMOs, and so is the entire hospital blood supply. Anyway, that's not nearly as important as whether I prefer the pronoun you're using, you bigot nazi fascist who wants to take away our ability to take away your ability to speak to whoever or about whatever we dislike du jour. Nya!Why is it called conspiracy "theory"? Isn't a theory a hypothesis which has been thoroughly tested and has withstood every effort to debunk it? Hmmm...The way society is going in a generation or two from now young adults will be l