Robin

“We can’t die if we stab ourselves” and all that.

President Virginia Tsai-Clinton when her mom would be in her 90s (if even alive)? That’s amazing.

But I have become convinced that this isn’t the right framework, or at least not the only useful one

I find a three part framework more useful: God cares about, in alphabetical order

1. Communal-societal justice
2. Interpersonal morality
3. Worship/pious living

Largely unrelated, the historical contingency of Yahweh-Allah becoming the god of more than two thirds of humanity is bananas.

Personal fashion.

I saw a bunch of teenagers at a shopping center and in Uniqlo today, but there do seem to be less of them than I remember from my childhood.

@ellebj.bsky.social

Incredible.

the opposite, that collective obligations do matter, that honor does matter, that there ultimately are things beyond desire worth laying down your life for

one of the reasons i like LoTR so much is that american culture is absolutely saturated with anti-duty propaganda, like the idea of giving up duty for love is so prevalent that we dont seem even capable of imagining the opposite, and LoTR is probably the single work with the most reach which argues

I am personally biased by being a non-Japanese East Asian, but I think defeating the Japanese Empire and helping end World War II more generally is legitimately one of the best things the US has done. But yeah come to think of it, the discourse would suck.

bsky.app/profile/robi...

Moon Landing Day and V-J Day to fill out the summer calendar IMO.

Wait, I have a DV idea: What if the UK and all other Commonwealth Realm countries other than Canada and New Zealand become republics, leaving the House of Windsor as the ruling family of Canada and the Realm of Aotearoa? Not sure if it'd be funnier for them to still rule from Britain or move though.

How do Canada and ex-New Zealand resolve their respective indigenous nations seeing their treaties as being with the Crown itself and not the state?

Honestly, the reconciliation bill being called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” disproportionately bothers me relative to the actual bad things in it. It’s pure slavishness to Trump’s desires and doesn’t even make sense as the name of a law.

I would also drop the South Fremont and North San Jose parts from the Warm Springs and Berryessa station names.

Isn't Israel a counterpoint to this?

Oh yeah, that’s so good.

This is a great concept, but the thick lines on the characters make it hard to read. Can you make them thinner and legible while keeping the aesthetic?

The former meeting chamber of the German Bundestag in Bonn. The seats in the room are arranged in a circle.

On the other hand, the Bundestag's former meeting chamber in Bonn looks fine to me in a way the others don't.

Depiction of Jesus's trial before Pilate in the style of ancient Korea.

Depiction of the last supper in the style of ancient China.

The future of evangelism in the West?

This implies that Asian Christians could be really effective at pulling disaffected Westerners if Asian Christian aesthetics weren't themselves so influenced by Western sources.

This fact is the main interesting thing *about* Christianity. Without the demand for radical abnegation of the self, it's just another cult in the empire

Bird migration - Wikipedia

It seems like there's a cache for page previews. The previous version of the page was a vandalization to insert the AI-generated image: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?....

Screenshot of the English Wikipedia page for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, where the cursor is hovering over a link to the page on bird migration to trigger a site popup. The popup is accompanied by an AI-generated image of a bird with comically-large testicles.

Something is wrong on Wikipedia.

No one should be bound but not protected, and no one should be protected but not bound.

there is this chinese concept, known as 礼貌,

Picture of Liz Truss meeting with Queen Elizabeth II right before Elizabeth's death.

Picture of JD Vance meeting with Pope Francis right before Francis's death.

Picture of Liz Truss meeting with Queen Elizabeth II right before Elizabeth's death.

Picture of JD Vance meeting with Pope Francis right before Francis's death.