I agree with "do one thing and do it well", so splitting up the functionality makes a lot of sense. Will iTunes still be the one application to sync everything between your laptop / desktop and your iDevice? Or is Apple pushing people to save everything on the iCloud?
right... and some idiots are out there panting over how much we need to ban driver controlled vehicles and we must move to AI/Autonomous vehicles ASAP!!!! This right here is why we shouldn't
can you imagine if your car was "grounded" for months while a safety computer control/sensor issue was worked out/tested and approved before the Dept of _____________ signed off on it. horse hockey.. no thank you.
If something goes wrong with autopilot in a plane, very bad things happen. If autopilot goes wrong on a car, not so bad things are probable. You can walk away from most car crashes. These glitches illustrate why we need the capability to override autopilot.
What happened to just sending a verification code to the email to verify that you have access to it? I would never give a password to a 3rd party. And to iterate, I would never give my password to any employee of my email provider either.
We should be so lucky that they'd use a fixed definition of unlimited.
My honest reaction to the article was, oh no, we're starting the huge parade of different offers every other week *again*?
TFS says you can only purchase tickets at most 3 hours before the showtime and must show up between 15 and 30 minutes before the movie starts. I like to buy tickets at least a week out so I can coordinate schedules, not to mention avoiding block busters being sold-out. Seems like the left-over hotel rooms sold for cheap on third party sites.
A man can drown swimming in a lake with an average depth of 1"...!
Let me simplify that to a man can drown in 1 inch of water - no swimming required. Average (is that mean or median?) is almost always useless without standard deviation or chi squared.
You also seem to think this amendment would be retroactive, but such wording stands near-zero chance of being passed
The current President publicly suggested he could do so as an executive order. He was rebuked. People have argued that making it retroactive is important and should be done. We CURRENTLY remove citizenship if naturalized citizens break laws, somehow, which is ridiculous and seems unconstitutional. Some of the folks we've recently deported were stripped of citizenship and then declared illegal immigrants.
You're right: a constitutional amendment would be needed to make children of illegal immigrants ineligible for birthright citizenship.
My point on that section was that the Constitution actually doesn't confer Congress the power to regulate immigration--i.e. there is no Constitutional provision that supports the existence of an "illegal immigrant".
The Supreme Court agrees, and says that a sovereign nation naturally has that power, whether it's in the Constitution or not, so Congress has it even though the Constitution doesn't give Congress that power.
The United States - as a sovereign nation - naturally has the power to regulate immigration; anyone who immigrates without following the laws regarding immigration is by definition an illegal immigrant. I don't know what this has to do with not granting birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants (whether retroactive or not), but c'est la vie.
This is a long post, so I will break it up in sections to address.
Every time a conservative talks about illegal immigration the Left declares said conservative a racist, xenophobe, and against all immigration.
Yes, I'm aware that's a problem. Liberals think the Conservatives are all racist white nationalists. We have a lot of those, but it's certainly a minority of conservatives. Our disagreements remain, but that isn't the disagreement at hand, although it appears to be to a lot of folks on the liberal side--it's one of those things that looks different from the outside looking in, but also from the inside looking out.
Some factions of conservatives want to get rid of birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants.
We have people who were born here, lived here all their lives, and are citizens of nowhere but the United States. Their parents came here illegally. They didn't cause any trouble, and they didn't come and have kids and go back home to collect welfare from abroad. 30 years an American citizen and you want to strip their birth right because they were born to farm workers who snuck across the border from Mexico and worked hard?
You seem to be under the impression that I am among the faction that wants to deny birthright citizenship to those born to illegal immigrants. In reality I haven't stated my position. Denying this birthright would require a constitutional amendment. You also seem to think this amendment would be retroactive, but such wording stands near-zero chance of being passed. Instead, it would only apply to new illegal crossings after it takes effect. The rational is that it would take away one incentive for entering illegally.
I have a simpler objection, however.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish uniform rules of naturalization, wherein "naturalization" confers natural citizenship to a person. That isn't the power of control over immigration--the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution does not grant the Congress the power to control immigration, and instead argues that this power is an "obvious" right of a sovereign nation. That's an objectionable argument, but it's what we've established.
You're right: a constitutional amendment would be needed to make children of illegal immigrants ineligible for birthright citizenship. We have amended the Constitution in the past (indeed, the Constitution itself wouldn't have been ratified without the first ten changes).
The Constitution also clearly contains this gem:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This is section 1 of the 14th amendment - itself a change to the Constitution. And your argument continues about retroactively denying citizenship from those who already received it, but any amendment likely would only affect those born after it's ratified. And again, I just posted that a faction within the Republican Party is pushing for this change without stating my personal stance.
My personal stance is we first need to stop illegal entry into our country. Then we need to determine how to handle the 12+ million illegals already here (including those who overstayed visas).
Explain why the only illegal immigrants that Republicans seem to care about are Hispanics and we'll stop calling it racist.
Zero tolerance means we won't tolerate illegal entry by ANYONE.
The majority of illegal immigrants are Mexicans (52% in 2014), though those numbers have been declining in recent years; others come from Asia, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report, there were about 6,840,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico making 56% of immigrants present in the United States illegally. 24% were from other Latin American countries; 9% were from Asia, 6% from Europe and Canada, and the remaining 4% from the rest of the world. In 2014, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that the illegal immigrant population from Mexico had reduced to 5.6 million or 49% of the illegal immigrant population.
The number of Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States grew quite rapidly over the 35 years between 1970 and 2004; increasing almost 15-fold from about 760,000 in the 1970 Census to more than 11 million in 2004—an average annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, maintained over more than three decades.[citation needed] On average the net Mexican population, both documented and illegal, living in the United States has grown by about 500,000 per year from 1995 to 2005 with 80 to 85 percent of the growth attributed to unauthorized immigration. There was a net gain of 2,270,000 Mexican immigrants to the US between 1995 and 2000; a net loss of about 20,000 between 2005 and 2010; and a net loss of 140,000 between 2009 and 2014.
The total number of Mexicans residing in the US, with and without authorization, was 11.7 million in 2014, down from the peak of 12.8 million in 2007. The drop is primarily the result of the decrease in the number of unauthorized migrants—which make up 48% of the Mexican population in the US in 2014, down from 54% in 2007.
52 + 24 = 78% of illegal immigrants are from Mexico or other Latin-American countries. With a vast majority of people illegally entering the US being Hispanic or Latino, it's little wonder that being anti-illegal-immigrant has an appearance of being anti-Latino. My wife is Brazilian. One brother married a Mexican who was born in the us. My sister married a US-born Latino. My foreign-born sisters-in-law are both from Asia. Again, this is about how someone enters the country, an not their race or ethnicity.
If I knock on the door of the USA I'll be told there's no way I'm coming in, and I should stay in a desperate situation where I could be killed by gangs and I worry for the lives of my wife and children. So please, don't let me make you feel uncomfortable with my presence. Your comfort is far more important than my family's survival.
I successfully brought my wife here on a fiancee visa. Two of sisters in law were foreign born and legally entered the US before meeting my brothers. We need immigration reform (and I don't mean amnesty with this phrase) for those wanting to follow the rules, but we definitely need to stop illegal border crossings. BTW, if you think me holding a weapon while approaching a stranger in my kid's bedroom while seeing a broken window is a matter of "comfort" then you obviously don't know much about the protector role that a parent has. As it is my house, I'm under ZERO obligation to let you in, but I probably would after verifying your identity and intentions.
Saying that a spanish word is a slur, is slurring people that have spanish as their first language. Please stop saying that spanish words are slurs, it only serves to marginalize spanish speaker, it is racist and generally disgusting. If you think continuing to do it, please consider separating yourself from society so that it can become more fair to everyone. More socially just, if you will.
Surely gringo is a slur. Oh, Mexican is a nationality, not a race.
The whole thing is very strange. What bothers me, really, is when somebody starts talking about getting rid of birthright citizenship because people born here aren't "real Americans" unless they're born from the right lineage. That's when you get the torches and pitchforks out.
As usual you choose to misinterpret. I'm a white conservative Republican. Some factions of conservatives want to get rid of birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants. Every time a conservative talks about illegal immigration the Left declares said conservative a racist, xenophobe, and against all immigration. I'm pro-immigration (I brought my wife here and two brothers married foreigners who were here legally), but vocally against illegal immigration. I've often used the object lesson of someone knocking on my door vs breaking a window to enter my child's room. I don't care what race you are - if you break into my home I will treat you like a hostile, and will protect my family with whatever force is necessary. If you knock on my door, odds are you will be invited to dinner.
Check your receipts from the store to see if they accept feedback.
Let them know that the premature Christmas season music was annoying and when you stopped shopping there and when you came back.
Tell them the approximate amount of money they lost.
Supposedly, they would be interested and might see you as an indicator of lost sales.
I live the US and have noted that many stores have Christmas stuff out for purchase in October. Back on topic, I rarely notice music at the places I buy groceries, and my department stores have live piano music (I go there for the clothes, not the music).
Blood sacrifices. Dietary laws. Circumcision. Most of the festival observances. By the time Christians were done removing those 'cultural traditions' they wasn't much left to mark the religion as Jewish in origin at all.
Jesus is our Paschal Lamb - he fulfilled the need for further blood sacrifice; all previous sacrifices were symbolic of the sacrifice Jesus would make. Festivals that got left by the wayside were mostly cultural. Circumcision and dietary restrictions were cause of conflict between early Christians who were Jews by blood and early Christians who were Pagans. Revelation introduced these practices, so revelation was needed to end them. What was left was the theology. Yes, Christianity evolved from Judaism. Christians equate Jesus with Jehovah of the Jewish faith.
Until his followers later tossed almost all of the Jewish aspects of the religion away as the new religion adapted to more easily fit with Roman culture.
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18 NASB)
Christians kept the religion while removing cultural traditions. Blood sacrifices were no longer required, because Jesus fulfilled that part through his atonement.
I honestly can't recall for certain, since that was such a long time ago and much of my former religious life is a big blur; but with some of the services I had to sit though, it seemed like the preacher was going on for hours on end. Then again, that could just be due to the Theory of Kid Time Relativity, where the younger you are; the slower time appears to move.
How about imagining instead someone suddenly speaking out in tongues, and Alexa then "interpreting" the so called message. That has a lot of great church trolling potential...
LOL! I must say that gibberish sounds are outside of my religious background (if someone's going to speak in tongues, there's got to be someone to interpret or else its nonsensical chaos according to the Apostle Paul). Alexa would have to be pretty smart to detect which language is spoken in just a few words (think the Latin-based tongues).
Can you imagine an entire 2 hour sermon being read in one of those annoying text to speech voices?
Two hour sermon? How does the priest keep people's attention that long? My Sacrament Meeting lasts 1 hour and that includes hymns, prayers, the Sacrament, and 2 or 3 talks. I don't think I've heard a sermon last more than 30 minutes.
Well not all Churches are so focused on Satan. There are a number of moderate churches out there. Like it or not America is Amazons biggest customer base, and is also a very religious country.
I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We focus on God blessing / rewarding people for doing good instead of punishing them for doing bad. Very rarely is Satan the main topic. Also of note, we don't have a paid / professionally trained clergy. Most talks during our Sacrament Meeting are from lay members instead of clergy. Our local Sacrament Meetings are not recorded nor broadcast. Stake and regional conferences are broadcast real time to chapels in the area, but not recorded or put online. Our biannual General Conference is recorded, translated, broadcast, and posted online (both video and transcripts), and published in the Church's monthly magazine (also available online). All formats (except the printed magazine) are freely available.
I myself wouldn't want Alexa to read the sermon, but make it cheap and easy for the local churches to record them onto Amazon, and have Alexa rebroadcast it on demand, I think would be a good use of the technology.
I don't trust having Alexa in my home because microphone is always listening, etc, but I agree with your post up to this point. If I wanted to revisit a sermon, I would like to be able to ask Alexa to rebroadcast Elder Ballard's talk from the April 2015 General Conference (change to meet your own preferences); even better would be ask Alexa for a list of discourses on a certain topic. This would be a great benefit to people who want it without consequences for those who don't use it.
From listening to some of the religious people (poor) arguments about atheism. It makes me worry, that the only thing stopping some religion people from being mass murders is the fact they have religion. So having Alexa, broadcast these sermons, to keep such people morals aligned, it probably a net positive.
But Hawaii is small, and reusing bottles on the Island rather than shipping them in from the mainland might be easier
How small do you think Hawaii really is? There are seven permanently inhabited main islands for a total of 6,419 square miles (almost 11,000 if you count state waters). The state is 1,522 miles long.
Wouldn't it also be cheaper for the recipient, at least in a privatized health care nation like the U.S.? I hear you pay for the appointment plus the treatment over there. Two appointments plus two vaccines would cost more than one appointment and two vaccines, correct?
It depends on your health insurance. Most health insurances here don't even have a co-pay for "wellness" visits (about 1 visit per year). My insurance has no out of pocket costs for required vaccines, but will charge for optional vaccinations (eg. if I want to go to Brazil, I'd have to pay for the 3-4 vaccinations required for entry into Brazil, but not on the list of vaccinations required for my state). A co-pay for a doctor appointment rarely is more than $25 with insurance, so parents need to make an informed decision.
No, you also can't force it there. Don't like it, keep your kid at home. In Canada at least, education is a right. Forcing a vaccine isn't.
College - where is your data coming from that you must have vaccine for most colleges?
Private schools set up their own requirements (including vaccinations). You should google to see if your state requires vaccinations for college / university admissions. As an example, here are the vaccination requirements in Texas (I didn't have time to search all 50 states, DC, plus territories). Another resource is vaxopedia
Accept that in a world of freedom, not everyone will agree with you. And as much as I want others to follow my ideology (science based or not), we won't always agree. Telling someone that that if they don't vaccinate their kids, they can't go to school where YOU send your kids is ridiculous. I get the issues, but accept the consequences of a free world. Try to find another solution to work with those that aren't like you.
My sect believes in agency. We are agents unto ourselves. We can choose our actions, but we can't choose the consequences. If you choose not to be vaccinated, you will limit your college choices. If you choose to attend a school where virtually everyone is vaccinated, you limit your choices.
I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I, too, have noticed that many use caricatures when describing other religions and cultures. My Christian sect does not observe Lent, but we have our own fasting. On the first Sunday of the month healthy members fast either 2 meals or 24-hours (depends on personal interpretation) without food or water. This can be modified based on individual needs (eg. drink minimal water in some climates, or avoid low blood sugar for diabetics). We donate the money we would have spent on food to a "fast offering" fund which is used to provide for the poor and needy. We are strongly encouraged to be generous in this offering. No, the money doesn't go into the bank account of the bishop or other leaders. Members can also fast at other times based on their needs. We believe that by combining fasting with prayer we can increase our spirituality. We've been doing this since our sect was founded in 1830. It's good to see that there might be some health related benefits to our religious practices.
They are called chips, you illiterate, uncultured fuck.
The term "french fries" comes from the fact the potatoes are "french cut" (julienne cut) and then fried. As to "uncultured", that's just hogwash! Nearly everyone has a culture, even if it doesn't match your own.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with "do one thing and do it well", so splitting up the functionality makes a lot of sense. Will iTunes still be the one application to sync everything between your laptop / desktop and your iDevice? Or is Apple pushing people to save everything on the iCloud?
right... and some idiots are out there panting over how much we need to ban driver controlled vehicles and we must move to AI/Autonomous vehicles ASAP!!!! This right here is why we shouldn't can you imagine if your car was "grounded" for months while a safety computer control /sensor issue was worked out/tested and approved before the Dept of _____________ signed off on it. horse hockey.. no thank you.
If something goes wrong with autopilot in a plane, very bad things happen. If autopilot goes wrong on a car, not so bad things are probable. You can walk away from most car crashes. These glitches illustrate why we need the capability to override autopilot.
What happened to just sending a verification code to the email to verify that you have access to it? I would never give a password to a 3rd party. And to iterate, I would never give my password to any employee of my email provider either.
We should be so lucky that they'd use a fixed definition of unlimited.
My honest reaction to the article was, oh no, we're starting the huge parade of different offers every other week *again*?
TFS says you can only purchase tickets at most 3 hours before the showtime and must show up between 15 and 30 minutes before the movie starts. I like to buy tickets at least a week out so I can coordinate schedules, not to mention avoiding block busters being sold-out. Seems like the left-over hotel rooms sold for cheap on third party sites.
I am Groot?
A man can drown swimming in a lake with an average depth of 1"...!
Let me simplify that to a man can drown in 1 inch of water - no swimming required. Average (is that mean or median?) is almost always useless without standard deviation or chi squared.
You also seem to think this amendment would be retroactive, but such wording stands near-zero chance of being passed
The current President publicly suggested he could do so as an executive order. He was rebuked. People have argued that making it retroactive is important and should be done. We CURRENTLY remove citizenship if naturalized citizens break laws, somehow, which is ridiculous and seems unconstitutional. Some of the folks we've recently deported were stripped of citizenship and then declared illegal immigrants.
You're right: a constitutional amendment would be needed to make children of illegal immigrants ineligible for birthright citizenship.
My point on that section was that the Constitution actually doesn't confer Congress the power to regulate immigration--i.e. there is no Constitutional provision that supports the existence of an "illegal immigrant".
The Supreme Court agrees, and says that a sovereign nation naturally has that power, whether it's in the Constitution or not, so Congress has it even though the Constitution doesn't give Congress that power.
The United States - as a sovereign nation - naturally has the power to regulate immigration; anyone who immigrates without following the laws regarding immigration is by definition an illegal immigrant. I don't know what this has to do with not granting birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants (whether retroactive or not), but c'est la vie.
This is a long post, so I will break it up in sections to address.
Every time a conservative talks about illegal immigration the Left declares said conservative a racist, xenophobe, and against all immigration.
Yes, I'm aware that's a problem. Liberals think the Conservatives are all racist white nationalists. We have a lot of those, but it's certainly a minority of conservatives. Our disagreements remain, but that isn't the disagreement at hand, although it appears to be to a lot of folks on the liberal side--it's one of those things that looks different from the outside looking in, but also from the inside looking out.
Some factions of conservatives want to get rid of birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants.
We have people who were born here, lived here all their lives, and are citizens of nowhere but the United States. Their parents came here illegally. They didn't cause any trouble, and they didn't come and have kids and go back home to collect welfare from abroad. 30 years an American citizen and you want to strip their birth right because they were born to farm workers who snuck across the border from Mexico and worked hard?
You seem to be under the impression that I am among the faction that wants to deny birthright citizenship to those born to illegal immigrants. In reality I haven't stated my position. Denying this birthright would require a constitutional amendment. You also seem to think this amendment would be retroactive, but such wording stands near-zero chance of being passed. Instead, it would only apply to new illegal crossings after it takes effect. The rational is that it would take away one incentive for entering illegally.
I have a simpler objection, however.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish uniform rules of naturalization, wherein "naturalization" confers natural citizenship to a person. That isn't the power of control over immigration--the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution does not grant the Congress the power to control immigration, and instead argues that this power is an "obvious" right of a sovereign nation. That's an objectionable argument, but it's what we've established.
You're right: a constitutional amendment would be needed to make children of illegal immigrants ineligible for birthright citizenship. We have amended the Constitution in the past (indeed, the Constitution itself wouldn't have been ratified without the first ten changes).
The Constitution also clearly contains this gem:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This is section 1 of the 14th amendment - itself a change to the Constitution. And your argument continues about retroactively denying citizenship from those who already received it, but any amendment likely would only affect those born after it's ratified. And again, I just posted that a faction within the Republican Party is pushing for this change without stating my personal stance.
My personal stance is we first need to stop illegal entry into our country. Then we need to determine how to handle the 12+ million illegals already here (including those who overstayed visas).
Explain why the only illegal immigrants that Republicans seem to care about are Hispanics and we'll stop calling it racist.
Zero tolerance means we won't tolerate illegal entry by ANYONE.
The majority of illegal immigrants are Mexicans (52% in 2014), though those numbers have been declining in recent years; others come from Asia, Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report, there were about 6,840,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico making 56% of immigrants present in the United States illegally. 24% were from other Latin American countries; 9% were from Asia, 6% from Europe and Canada, and the remaining 4% from the rest of the world. In 2014, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that the illegal immigrant population from Mexico had reduced to 5.6 million or 49% of the illegal immigrant population.
The number of Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States grew quite rapidly over the 35 years between 1970 and 2004; increasing almost 15-fold from about 760,000 in the 1970 Census to more than 11 million in 2004—an average annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, maintained over more than three decades.[citation needed] On average the net Mexican population, both documented and illegal, living in the United States has grown by about 500,000 per year from 1995 to 2005 with 80 to 85 percent of the growth attributed to unauthorized immigration. There was a net gain of 2,270,000 Mexican immigrants to the US between 1995 and 2000; a net loss of about 20,000 between 2005 and 2010; and a net loss of 140,000 between 2009 and 2014.
The total number of Mexicans residing in the US, with and without authorization, was 11.7 million in 2014, down from the peak of 12.8 million in 2007. The drop is primarily the result of the decrease in the number of unauthorized migrants—which make up 48% of the Mexican population in the US in 2014, down from 54% in 2007.
Illegal immigrant population of the United States
52 + 24 = 78% of illegal immigrants are from Mexico or other Latin-American countries. With a vast majority of people illegally entering the US being Hispanic or Latino, it's little wonder that being anti-illegal-immigrant has an appearance of being anti-Latino. My wife is Brazilian. One brother married a Mexican who was born in the us. My sister married a US-born Latino. My foreign-born sisters-in-law are both from Asia. Again, this is about how someone enters the country, an not their race or ethnicity.
If I knock on the door of the USA I'll be told there's no way I'm coming in, and I should stay in a desperate situation where I could be killed by gangs and I worry for the lives of my wife and children. So please, don't let me make you feel uncomfortable with my presence. Your comfort is far more important than my family's survival.
I successfully brought my wife here on a fiancee visa. Two of sisters in law were foreign born and legally entered the US before meeting my brothers. We need immigration reform (and I don't mean amnesty with this phrase) for those wanting to follow the rules, but we definitely need to stop illegal border crossings. BTW, if you think me holding a weapon while approaching a stranger in my kid's bedroom while seeing a broken window is a matter of "comfort" then you obviously don't know much about the protector role that a parent has. As it is my house, I'm under ZERO obligation to let you in, but I probably would after verifying your identity and intentions.
Saying that a spanish word is a slur, is slurring people that have spanish as their first language. Please stop saying that spanish words are slurs, it only serves to marginalize spanish speaker, it is racist and generally disgusting. If you think continuing to do it, please consider separating yourself from society so that it can become more fair to everyone. More socially just, if you will.
Surely gringo is a slur. Oh, Mexican is a nationality, not a race.
>
The whole thing is very strange. What bothers me, really, is when somebody starts talking about getting rid of birthright citizenship because people born here aren't "real Americans" unless they're born from the right lineage. That's when you get the torches and pitchforks out.
As usual you choose to misinterpret. I'm a white conservative Republican. Some factions of conservatives want to get rid of birthright citizenship for the offspring of illegal immigrants. Every time a conservative talks about illegal immigration the Left declares said conservative a racist, xenophobe, and against all immigration. I'm pro-immigration (I brought my wife here and two brothers married foreigners who were here legally), but vocally against illegal immigration. I've often used the object lesson of someone knocking on my door vs breaking a window to enter my child's room. I don't care what race you are - if you break into my home I will treat you like a hostile, and will protect my family with whatever force is necessary. If you knock on my door, odds are you will be invited to dinner.
Changing the ringers in the phones. You know, the tune when incoming calls happen.
I think the more common term is "ring tone"
Check your receipts from the store to see if they accept feedback. Let them know that the premature Christmas season music was annoying and when you stopped shopping there and when you came back. Tell them the approximate amount of money they lost.
Supposedly, they would be interested and might see you as an indicator of lost sales.
I live the US and have noted that many stores have Christmas stuff out for purchase in October. Back on topic, I rarely notice music at the places I buy groceries, and my department stores have live piano music (I go there for the clothes, not the music).
Blood sacrifices. Dietary laws. Circumcision. Most of the festival observances. By the time Christians were done removing those 'cultural traditions' they wasn't much left to mark the religion as Jewish in origin at all.
Jesus is our Paschal Lamb - he fulfilled the need for further blood sacrifice; all previous sacrifices were symbolic of the sacrifice Jesus would make. Festivals that got left by the wayside were mostly cultural. Circumcision and dietary restrictions were cause of conflict between early Christians who were Jews by blood and early Christians who were Pagans. Revelation introduced these practices, so revelation was needed to end them. What was left was the theology. Yes, Christianity evolved from Judaism. Christians equate Jesus with Jehovah of the Jewish faith.
Until his followers later tossed almost all of the Jewish aspects of the religion away as the new religion adapted to more easily fit with Roman culture.
Christians kept the religion while removing cultural traditions. Blood sacrifices were no longer required, because Jesus fulfilled that part through his atonement.
So, you're saying Thor had something to do with it?
Was Jesus a Christian, or a Jew? Is there no irony?
Jesus was a Jew, raised in the Jewish faith. He reformed much of the tradition Jewish leaders added through the centuries, but kept the faith intact.
I honestly can't recall for certain, since that was such a long time ago and much of my former religious life is a big blur; but with some of the services I had to sit though, it seemed like the preacher was going on for hours on end. Then again, that could just be due to the Theory of Kid Time Relativity, where the younger you are; the slower time appears to move.
How about imagining instead someone suddenly speaking out in tongues, and Alexa then "interpreting" the so called message. That has a lot of great church trolling potential...
LOL! I must say that gibberish sounds are outside of my religious background (if someone's going to speak in tongues, there's got to be someone to interpret or else its nonsensical chaos according to the Apostle Paul). Alexa would have to be pretty smart to detect which language is spoken in just a few words (think the Latin-based tongues).
Can you imagine an entire 2 hour sermon being read in one of those annoying text to speech voices?
Two hour sermon? How does the priest keep people's attention that long? My Sacrament Meeting lasts 1 hour and that includes hymns, prayers, the Sacrament, and 2 or 3 talks. I don't think I've heard a sermon last more than 30 minutes.
Well not all Churches are so focused on Satan. There are a number of moderate churches out there. Like it or not America is Amazons biggest customer base, and is also a very religious country.
I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We focus on God blessing / rewarding people for doing good instead of punishing them for doing bad. Very rarely is Satan the main topic. Also of note, we don't have a paid / professionally trained clergy. Most talks during our Sacrament Meeting are from lay members instead of clergy. Our local Sacrament Meetings are not recorded nor broadcast. Stake and regional conferences are broadcast real time to chapels in the area, but not recorded or put online. Our biannual General Conference is recorded, translated, broadcast, and posted online (both video and transcripts), and published in the Church's monthly magazine (also available online). All formats (except the printed magazine) are freely available.
I myself wouldn't want Alexa to read the sermon, but make it cheap and easy for the local churches to record them onto Amazon, and have Alexa rebroadcast it on demand, I think would be a good use of the technology.
I don't trust having Alexa in my home because microphone is always listening, etc, but I agree with your post up to this point. If I wanted to revisit a sermon, I would like to be able to ask Alexa to rebroadcast Elder Ballard's talk from the April 2015 General Conference (change to meet your own preferences); even better would be ask Alexa for a list of discourses on a certain topic. This would be a great benefit to people who want it without consequences for those who don't use it.
From listening to some of the religious people (poor) arguments about atheism. It makes me worry, that the only thing stopping some religion people from being mass murders is the fact they have religion. So having Alexa, broadcast these sermons, to keep such people morals aligned, it probably a net positive.
Straw man is a straw man.
But Hawaii is small, and reusing bottles on the Island rather than shipping them in from the mainland might be easier
How small do you think Hawaii really is? There are seven permanently inhabited main islands for a total of 6,419 square miles (almost 11,000 if you count state waters). The state is 1,522 miles long.
Wouldn't it also be cheaper for the recipient, at least in a privatized health care nation like the U.S.? I hear you pay for the appointment plus the treatment over there. Two appointments plus two vaccines would cost more than one appointment and two vaccines, correct?
It depends on your health insurance. Most health insurances here don't even have a co-pay for "wellness" visits (about 1 visit per year). My insurance has no out of pocket costs for required vaccines, but will charge for optional vaccinations (eg. if I want to go to Brazil, I'd have to pay for the 3-4 vaccinations required for entry into Brazil, but not on the list of vaccinations required for my state). A co-pay for a doctor appointment rarely is more than $25 with insurance, so parents need to make an informed decision.
No, you also can't force it there. Don't like it, keep your kid at home. In Canada at least, education is a right. Forcing a vaccine isn't.
College - where is your data coming from that you must have vaccine for most colleges?
Private schools set up their own requirements (including vaccinations). You should google to see if your state requires vaccinations for college / university admissions. As an example, here are the vaccination requirements in Texas (I didn't have time to search all 50 states, DC, plus territories). Another resource is vaxopedia
Accept that in a world of freedom, not everyone will agree with you. And as much as I want others to follow my ideology (science based or not), we won't always agree. Telling someone that that if they don't vaccinate their kids, they can't go to school where YOU send your kids is ridiculous. I get the issues, but accept the consequences of a free world. Try to find another solution to work with those that aren't like you.
My sect believes in agency. We are agents unto ourselves. We can choose our actions, but we can't choose the consequences. If you choose not to be vaccinated, you will limit your college choices. If you choose to attend a school where virtually everyone is vaccinated, you limit your choices.
I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I, too, have noticed that many use caricatures when describing other religions and cultures. My Christian sect does not observe Lent, but we have our own fasting. On the first Sunday of the month healthy members fast either 2 meals or 24-hours (depends on personal interpretation) without food or water. This can be modified based on individual needs (eg. drink minimal water in some climates, or avoid low blood sugar for diabetics). We donate the money we would have spent on food to a "fast offering" fund which is used to provide for the poor and needy. We are strongly encouraged to be generous in this offering. No, the money doesn't go into the bank account of the bishop or other leaders. Members can also fast at other times based on their needs. We believe that by combining fasting with prayer we can increase our spirituality. We've been doing this since our sect was founded in 1830. It's good to see that there might be some health related benefits to our religious practices.
LOL "french fries".
They are called chips, you illiterate, uncultured fuck.
The term "french fries" comes from the fact the potatoes are "french cut" (julienne cut) and then fried. As to "uncultured", that's just hogwash! Nearly everyone has a culture, even if it doesn't match your own.