As Someone That Has Grown Up Surrounded By Beaches And Done Surf Life Saving, I Know How The Sea Works.

happy old gnoll

Going through older videos I found this from years ago and thought it may interest you.

This was taken at a tide pool at Bar Beach on the east coast of Australia.

I spotted something in here that didn’t quite look like a rock and it turned out to be this little octopus.

The animal was very curious and interactive and would reach out for my finger so I could pull it through the water.

It felt like it was playing a game with me and this process of holding my finger and getting pulled through the water then darting back repeated for quite some time and it was more me who ended the interaction as couldn’t stick around at the beach much longer.

At no point in the interaction did I hold its tentacle myself so it being pulled by me was entirely of its own decision as if it wanted to it could let go at any time.

I still think about it now and wonder if it tried playing this game with others who got close enough.

This was my first hands on interaction with an octopus and what surprised me was just how gentle and precise it was with its tentacle arm when it reached for and held my finger.

I feel so lucky to have been in just the right place at the right time to have gotten to experience this and I definitely understand how people who have these experiences with octopus say it’s like a bond you can’t quite describe forms between you and it.

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This is incredible and I love this octopus so much

IS THIS YOU MOOT??? DO YOU KNOW THAT YOURE ON INSTAGRAM Y2K CLICKBAIT ACC 😭

I didn’t even like. realize until I read the blog username in the screenshot and was like omg oomfie is famous

HOLY MACKEREL I’M FAMOUS!

I swear, the original post doesn’t even belong to me (it belongs to @msboutofcontext ) but somehow it’s my addition to it that broke containment.

Recognizing propaganda and reminding yourself why it is BS does a huge amount to reduce the effectiveness of propaganda.

But, let the reader be aware, this does not make propaganda ineffective. It still works. It just takes longer. Some people fight it better than others. But for the average [White] American, the time we are 40 or so, we internalize too much of it find ourselves falling asleep into the American Dream and identifying with White upper middle class suburbia, status quo, the cops, American Empire, Capitalism, and billionaires.

im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes

Salaried is just another word for full time slave. All your time is their time.

Hourly full time is just another word for exclusive part time slave because for 10 hours of your life 5 days a week or whatever you belongs to them.

If you are part time, you are a full time slave with uncertain pay because all your time still belongs to them because they keep jerking you around and they always fuck up your hours.

But they aren't slaves. Nobody owns them. They can go with somewhere else if they must. Nobody is holding a gun to their head.

Well, that is all true. But if chattel slavery is the only thing that counts as slavery to you then you need to open your eyes, man.

Using someone's poverty against them to take shitty pay for shitty working conditions where you do whatever they tell you or lose your kids doctors food and shelter and join the growing masses of unhoused.

Sounds even worse than putting a gun to my head. Have you seen how we treat homeless people? They have to huddle in the corners and alleys and vacant buildings and bridge underpasses breathing the exhaust of our cars on every street and feeling our scorn everywhere.

We won't even let them duck in to shit in any store like you or I can. They have to shit in the street and get filmed for Fox News.

A response on a friend's Facebook page to a fundie trying to pick a flight over a single verse because he has a gotcha lined up.

I'm pretty sure you would walk out of my talk too. And a lot sooner.

I don't read the Bible the same way you do. I used to. I used to be a very good fundamentalist and 6 day anti-evolutionist. So I understand where you are coming from. And I empathize with your position. So I’m warning you that what I believe is going to offend you and probably make you think some uncharitable things about me, my relationship with God, and my salvation.

I have no expectation of changing your mind, I’m just sharing what I believe and we are going to have to agree to disagree and live as good neighbors as best we can and discuss things nicely till God sets us both straight in a few decades after you and I have both kicked the bucket.

I am not a gap theorist. I believe, much like CS Lewis seemed to based on some things he said in "The Problem of Pain" that creation stories are meant to communicate deep spiritual truths and they were not meant to communicate historical accuracy or scientific understandings.

Unlike fundamentalist Muslims, I don't believe God dictated the scriptures to a prophet. Unlike fundamentalist Mormons, I don't believe prophets copied scriptures off of golden plates.

I believe that the Jewish scriptures are far more of a team effort.

The Jewish scriptures are the result of imperfect humans trying to hear Holy Spirit's whispers. Being human, they could not hear perfectly and were understanding Holy Spirit through their own cultural lenses and personal experiences/lenses. There is a huge subjective element to the Jewish scriptures as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets did their best to write/tell their understandings within their very small and isolated worlds.

Genesis did not have Genesis chapter 1 when first put down by Moses.

It only had the Garden creation story that came from Noah.

The creation Week story was written during or soon after Babylon. It does not plagiarize the Babylonian myths as some like to snidely accuse. It uses them like a meme. The meaning is in the differences. Everyone knew the Babylonian myths because they were the main superpower and had been for centuries and would be for centuries more. Using the Babylonian myths seemed a good way to keep their own creation story relevant and understandable for a very long time. The Jews include a huge amount of snide swipes at the Babylonian’s mythology/religion while also communicating the beauty and goodness of God and the goodness and beauty of God’s Creation. Mel Brooks carries on that tradition.

So for most of events in the Bible, the Jewish people only knew the Garden story of how it was all perfect till the snake tempted the woman to sin and the woman then tempted the man to sin too and then God cursed not only the snake and those two humans, but all of their descendants, the animals, the planet and the whole universe to death and suffering. And the sin stories that followed showed how sin ruined everything and that even wiping out all of humanity and starting over didn’t work so God chose Abram and the Jewish people to be God’s special project and that God was a patriarchal suzerain king who demanded perfection to God’s every demand even when it came to murdering your own children. (Or other people’s children who were living in the land God told you you could have.)

What followed was a learning experience lead by the prophets and opposed by the priests/aristocracy to learn how God was different from that and that God really really wanted people to treat each other and even the animals and the land fairly and that caring for the poor and oppressed was the most important thing. While the priests and the rest of the aristocracy and fundamentalists were convinced it was primarily about perfect obedience and worshipping God correctly and within their religion and justice, kindness, and mercy were secondary.

It was not until the priests and aristocracy had their power and wealth stripped from them and were exiled into Babylon that they began to question their understandings without their “promised” land or temple or sacrifices.

When several generations later they were returned to the land their ancestors had lived in, they were a different kind of people. The priests and other aristocrats had lost so much of their wealth and power and pride and were a new people with a better understanding of God. And they wrote a new creation story that focused, not on sin, but on Creation and God’s goodness and generosity. That they lived in a good creation. And that the things other people thought controlled everything were lights and calendars to help them. That the world was full of order and beauty. Even if it wasn’t safe, it was good.

And humans were no longer sinners. They were very good.

And they put this new piece of scripture, not in its own book as you or I might have, but instead they put it at the very beginning of their most important scripture to change the way they read and understood all of their scriptures.

That argument between the Priests/Aristocrats/Fundamentalists vs the Prophets was still going on at the time of Jesus and is still going on today.

I think that if we can let go of our fundamentalist reading and interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis, and reinterpret things in light of Genesis One as being it’s own little section from a different place/time/context, we will have a much truer understanding of God and, more importantly, God’s heart and the purpose of Jesus and the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And furthermore we will have a better relationship with God and our neighbors and God’s good Creation.

Sorry not sorry to write so much. But it is a complicated question and a complicated answer and I still only gave you a barebones outline.

Porn and Instagram

The true damage of instagram girls (and guys) is comparison of normal people to "perfection." When you spend all your time looking at the most "perfectly" proportioned and "beautiful" women, you will constantly be aware of the difference between women (including your own beloved wife) and the ideal woman. So that awareness can lead to dissatisfaction, actively wishing your wife to be more ideal, possibly more tempted by "better" models. In any case it leads to less intimacy and satisfaction in bed.

And it blinds you to the beautiful people all around you till you will only accept someone who looks like a "model" to feel attraction for or even just to give them a chance.

They did it to us and they will do it to you too.

We thought we were better than our parents because we could see one another's beauty a little bit. It took less then 10 years for the powers of this world to do it to basically all of us too using swimsuit issues and Internet porn.

Making men detest women who aren't "beautiful". Driving women, girls, boys, and men insane. So so harmful to our sisters in this world. You see how we are now? You think we wanted to be like this? But now we aren't even aware of it and think there are objective beauty standards we can judge others and ourselves on.

Even our men are deeply insecure about our appearance and only believe we're good-looking if others tell us. See what it does to everyone as they get older and less and less akin to a beauty standard based on being a 20yo.

Even if you know it's propaganda, you are not immune. They will do it to you if they can.

bell hooks mentioned going through a time in her life where she was severely depressed and suicidal and how the only way she got through it was through changing her environment: She surrounded her home with buddhas of all colors, Audre Lorde’s A Litany for Survival facing her as she wakes up, and filling the space she saw everyday with reinforcing objects and meaningful books. She asks herself each day, “What are you going to do today to resist domination?” I also really liked it when she said that in order to move from pain to power, it is crucial to engage in “an active rewriting of our lives.”