At least some of the plauges approximating some of what is described in the Torah were real things.

Locusts were certainly a common problem.

Sometimes, you would get an absurd amount of frogs birthing all at the same time from a particularly severe natural climate cycle … the entitety of the history of Egypt very much involves figuring out how to handle the Nile’s flooding seasons.

A red algae bloom could possibly have turned the Nile red, and made it basically toxic.

… But the part where the historicity falls apart is the supposed timing of the Exodus event, and the number of Hebrews involved.

…

Long story short: Traditional religious dating of when Exodus occured basically puts it occuring before the time Yahweh even existed as a monotheistic God, in Israel/Judah/Canaan.

At this point in time, the Levant was largely still a bunch of varying cults/clans based around the polytheistic Caananite pantheon.

Yahweh did not develop into, or emerge, as the singular monotheistic God of peoples in the Levant… untill hundreds of years later, after they had been held captive in Babylon/Persia for many decades, where they absorbed much of thr dualistic framework of the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda as the great good God, vs Angra-Mainyu as the great evil God… and then were allowed to resettle in their homeland by Cyrus.

Roughly what I just described is inline with the actual existing and properly dated texts and artefacts from the relevant regions.

When Exodus is tradtionally supposed to have occured… Caananites were still worshipping El, Ba’al, Ashera, Astarte, Anat, Dagon.

El and his son Ba’al more or less merged into Yahweh over time, and gained many attributes of other members of the Pantheon… this is why Yahweh is a jealous god who does not suffer any idol worship, worship of his progenitors.

…

The other huge problem with the Exodus story is the numbers of Hebrews involved.

The Torah is very explicit at a few points about how many men there were… and what you end up with is something like 2 to 3 million people leaving Egypt, spending 40 years lost in Sinai or possibly Arabia… all while leaving literally no archaeological evidence of such a huge movement of people.

2 to 3 million people leaving Egypt is utterly absurd. Its comparable to the estimated entire popation of Lower (Northern) Egypt at the time of the traditional religious dating.

There is nothing in any Egyptian records to indicate anything like that number of people up and leaving.

What there is, is a good number of mentions that small numbers, as in hundreds, maybe thousands, of Caananites … well if Caanan was having a bad drought, or had just had some kind of city state conflict… Egypt would fairly routinely allow some refugees to basically graze their herds in Egypt, or even a few of them would settle into being farmers, or do trading caravans.

There is no evidence whatsoever that millions of Hebrews, or people who would in the future become Hebrews… ever lived in Egypt as a slave class, and then all left at the same time.

To me, the actual main problem with the interactions between Moses (as a proxy for Yahweh) and Pharaoh…

… Is that for the majority of ultimatums that God instructs Moses to give to Pharoah… God also ‘hardens his/Pharoah’s heart’, which compels Pharoah to not comply.

Like, outside or above the scale of things threatened… God literally mind controls Pharoah, manipulates his emotions, and forces him into saying no, not acquiescing or truly negotiating.

This happens multiple times.

So now… God isn’t just an asshole threatening insane plaugues and death… God is just puppeting Pharoah at these key moments, so basically God is orchestrating this entire chain of events… he was in total control the whole time… God is thus just punishing the Egyptians, while also doing a kabuki theatre, a false flag, whatever, to make it look like they actually had choices and chances to avoid this, to make it look like they willingly defied his will… when this was not the case.

This takes God from a belligerent asshole into now also being a sociopathic, deceptive manipulator.

Its abuser mentality.

What are you talking about? That’s not what happened.

If that is what happened, it wasn’t that bad.

If it was that bad, you deserved it.

Oh, yes, that’s … a whole thing as well.

Wonderful time to be Autistic in the US, what with RFK Jr (the guy with the actual brain worm, life long anti-vaxxer, who is now in charge of essentially medical policy in the US) describing all Autistic people as literally pants-shittingly stupid, saying that he’d like to take all people using any kind of psychiatricly prescribed medication to detox, no electronics, farm labor camps.

… I wonder if Canada would accept an asylum petition from Americans who either are, or suspect they may be Autistic at this point?

I agree, the poor phrasing of many questions is annoying.

But as best I can tell, that test is the most widely recognized as valid initially screening test, in that it essentially never produces false positives (neurotypicals do not score 65 or over).

It is also supposed to be properly administered by a professional who is sufficiently trained to address questions you may have about how to answer the questions.

On one hand, if it isn’t a big deal to you, than I absolutely do not want to pressure you into pursuing it just for my sake.

On the other hand, I am reasonably confident that taking issue with the poor phrasing of many of the questions… is itself an indicator, to some extent, that you are more likely to be higher up in the score, on the spectrum… because constantly asking to further specify things that are poorly or ambiguously worded… is a common trait of Autists.

Neurotypicals tend to barrel ahead with the first possibly ambiguous meaning or question answer without reflection or reconsideration.

Autists tend to do the exact opposite.

… This is part of the reason you’re supposed to do this test with a trained professional observing/proctoring, when you go for a formal diagnosis.

Sure, yes, making your own art would be better in one sense, one way of looking at this, but I guess you don’t appreciate the whole ‘turning it against itself’ aspect of this.

Turning a system against itself is the literal definition of subversion, in the context of complex systems, anyway.

Sure, its not as subversive as intentionally poisoning AIGen stuff to stupify itself over time, but I do think this counts.

Its not like you have to get the AI to draw the image every single time anyone sees it, we can still copy and paste images, host them where many can see them, etc.

To me, there is a sense of ‘art’ in the subversion itself.

If the theft machine already exists, and you don’t have the ability to destroy it, contain or restrain it more directly… using it to generate propoganda against itself, its creators?

I think that’s a clever use of it.

Like, would you say that that one piece of … kinetic/performance art, where its just a machine that you must go up to and hand crank, and it spits out penny by penny at the rate of minimum wage…

Would you say that isn’t art because it forces the art ‘experiencer’ to perform exhausting wage labor, which is simply 100% bad, all the time, no exceptions?

I mean, when Elon bought Twitter, I, having never used Twitter before, created an account just to scream at him, and I managed to get banned in a few hours.

But to attempt to answer your question: Arguably, technically, yes, but it really only matters if it significantly fucks with Elon, or inspires other to meaningfully resist him, or aide those he oppresses.

One person doing that?

Flash in the pan.

Coordinated , consistent swarm, of people or bots, doing this untill the entire site goes down?

Even better: hack in their and reroute it to fucking DDoS itself?

Maybe a bit more meaningful.

I find the use of AIGen to essentially advocate against itself to be fairly clever.

Its not like you have to burn down a bushel of wheat’s cropland every time you copy and paste an already generated image.

If you are subverting the means or process of exploitation against itself, well, that’s pretty subversive, anarchist, punk.

If you’re doing that in the digital realm?

Pretty fucking cyberpunk.

These idiot tech bros whoooshed over understanding the cyberpunk genre as a warning of what not to do, and instead adopted its aesthetic and are just now building that world, as its villains.

Well fine then.

Time to reclaim our culture.

Oh I am still at the 2014 phase.

We… used to have a term for people that advanced further: sell-outs.

Though I do very much prefer the recently popularized Cyberpunk lingo:

Fucking Corpo Scum.

EDIT: Wow, my internet dropped or something as I was posting this, duplicated a few times, and my clipboard has now just lost the text I tried to copy paste out of it… derp.

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Without getting into a massive discussion about self-diagnosis and validity of various tests in which demographics and what not…

https://embrace-autism.com/raads-r/

If your total score is 65 or over on this, you may wanna look into a formal diagnosis.

… And I am saving this comment, as you have well voiced the madness of all of this experienced in particular by high-functioning / highly-intelligent Autistic children.

A short summary of how Ive felt much of my life would be: constantly being mocked and belittled by hypocritical idiots who are too stupid to realize they are hypocritical and have totally logically inconsistent worldviews, and inconsistent applications of them… as well as just that they are idiots in the sense of just being objectively wrong about most things.

…

Yeah, it is quite cathartic to realize that masses of the general public are themselves, and voted into power officials who… are just literally schoolyard bullies, absurd, malignant, anti-social narcissists who literally cannot concieve that they could ever have any flaws or ever be in error, who are actually incapable of empathy, of mirroring emotions of others experiencing or describing something that did not happen to them personally.

…

I no longer mask.

There is no point, and it is too exhausting to be expected to be some kind of mind reader.

If people can’t actually succinctly verbalize their thoughts, or express them in writing, that’s their problem, not mine.

Just say what you actually mean.

Use your words, and know what those words actually mean.

I am done learning how to be an interpreter for every different person I meet.

Its the age old problem of government:

Anyone who strongly desires to be in a position of power likely is not the kind of person you would want in a position of power.

I appreciate you saying that though. =D

Impostor syndrome is basically the inverse of the Dunning Kruger effect, as it is known in popular culture.

If you actually read the actual studies by Dunning and Kruger, and subsequent work based off of it:

Idiots consistently wildly overestimate their correctness.

… But people who actually are quite correct, quite competent… well they actually tend to self evaluate themselves as somewhat less competent than they actually are.

Because humility and a fundamental idea of ‘i could be wrong’ are foundational to a rigourous system of critical thinking that can actually allow for that true, detailed knowledge to be gained.

So, ironically, Dunning Kruger effect also describes more or less impostor syndrome, its just that that isn’t the aspect of those kinds of studies that pop culture focuses on…

So we now have a situation where understanding of the ‘Dunning Kruger effect’ itself is subject to the ‘Dunning Kruger effect.’

I am only hesitant to agree because:

1: I have terrible social anxiety (yay autism and trauma)

2: I assume, at least, some of them are competent people… at… at least something.

That being said, I also cannot think of a single one who falls into category 2.

Hrmm.

Sorry, due to ‘gestures vaguely’ whatever, they’re expired, moldy Feastables, brought to you By Mr Beast Burger

Fortunately, I just recieved a bag of magic beans from the local apothecary to help me with with restful sleep!

… hdroxyzine beans … funny name, I wonder what realm they are from…

EDIT:

Also, to everyone in this comment thread freaking the hell out… this is a joke meme.

The original top half of this is from a Buzzfeed video from a decade ago, featuring gameplay of … well, some Grand Theft Auto game, beating up strippers.

It has since been a meme template for a decade.

The original video didn’t even mention fantasy games as a genre or anything.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/video-games-appeal-to-the-male-fantasy

In fact you’ll now probably find a whole, whole lot of LGBTQ+ people, as well as cis/het people, agreeing that Baldurs Gate 3 is actually pretty awesome.

The fucking clownshow continues.

This is you going in to your Professor’s office hours to ostensibly turn in your final paper for a course, it is half your grade in the class, and you actually just sit down and explain you are ‘still working on it’ and ‘can i get it to you maybe by the end of next academic quarter?’

I am honestly so, so relieved by this high level public idiocy.

I really am not kidding.

I’ve struggled with impostor syndrome much of my life.

All gone. Done. No more.

I am legitimately more competent than almost everyone in this administration at their own jobs, despite the fact that I hardly have any relevant credentials to most of their positions.

Lol, as long as you properly plan in advance and coordinate such a thing, not the way that uh… Dead Matter tried to do it.

Dear god what a fustercluck.

So, I initially wanted to just kneejerk respond yes, it is absurd to suggest this ruling against Apple… would have any kind of generally noticable effect on inflation.

But I wanted to check the actual numbers.

Ok, so, total US consumer spending in 2024 is about $64 Trillion.

… The Apple App Store generated $105 Billion in revenue in 2024.

Ok, napkin math: 30% off of lets just say literally all App Store payments… , ok, we’ve cut costs by about $32 Billion… shave that off the $64 Trillion…

And voila!

A rough general price reduction of… 0.05%

Call a median US yearly income $60K, and they’ve saved $30 bucks. Maybe the cost of either one or two DoorDash meals, depending on where you live… probably much closer to just one.

We’re saved from inflation rofl!