I think the idea was that he could be invoked by his name, but they couldn’t have people going around saying “Jehova” (or whatever) randomly without any cool powers happening, so they made up the rule to discourage people poking holes in their flimsy story.

I don’t think that’s the case, but trees in general are sadly not common in American landscaping, at least in my experience with urban areas. You tend to see newer (90’s+) homes with very small trees that suggest the idea of nature without providing any shade or other benefits. I keep hearing about people buying older houses with big lovely trees and having them immediately cut down because it’s disturbing the driveway or they’re afraid of it falling in a storm. I think insurance costs may have something to do with these concerns, but it’s really sad regardless.

In California they’re constantly giving out these little saplings that will grow into very functional and deep-rooted shade trees, but no one wants them because they aren’t pretty and drop needles.

that’s probably in areas where such a yard is the only safe space for wildlife and people don’t live with nature as a daily part of their lives.

I think this is the case. In urban areas you get the rats and such nesting directly in people’s homes because there’s nowhere else for them to be, thanks to the absolute miles of pavement. When I’ve lived in more rural areas you would see a lot of animals all the time, but everyone was pretty much minding their own business. I think habitat destruction is the real problem.

Littering your yard with food attracts things like rats, raccoons, squirrels, etc, which destroy property and infrastructure, spread disease, and cause injury to people and pets. I’m not saying I’m against fruit trees, but I do understand people who are. It’s a legitimate concern. Some areas even have things like boars or bears which are extremely dangerous.

I’m also curious with the way you can sue people in the US what would happen if someone becomes sick after eating one of your fruits. I imagine it varies by state.

I’ve often thought that maybe time is like color or weight. Electromagnetic radiation exists, but color only exists as an idea in our heads, how we’re perceiving and interpreting what does actually exist. Our weight is variable based on our mass and gravitational effects in our environment, rather than being an actual property that describes us. Is what you’re saying about time potentially being an emergent property of entropy the same deal? Are color and weight emergent? (I’m asking both about the actual wording and also how analogous the ideas are.)

Karl Marx stated that technological development can change the modes of production over time. This change in the mode of production inevitably encourages changes to a society’s economic system.

I dunno, man, that doesn’t sound too crazy. I’m in a really bad condition for learning new things right now, and I can’t even figure out what claims this idea would be making. It sounds like it’s just describing a process of advancement and the types of conflicts that arise?

I’m finding this especially hard to grasp because my brain’s on a tangent about how you’d really go about falsifying most stuff in history or sociology. You gonna put a bunch of people in a series of jars with carefully controlled conditions for hundreds of years and observe the results? Like we have this piece of paper from 1700 that says Jimothy won the big game, but our understanding of this guy and his alleged win of this supposed game are totally vibes-based because we don’t have a time machine. I think like the best you can do is try to base your beliefs and claims off things that have been observed repeatedly, but does that make these kinds of topics unscientific? We test what we can and go with our best guess for what we can’t, right? This is going to bother me.

Many people claim the Loch Ness monster is an animal thought to be extinct though. The thylacine is generally held to be a cryptid in my experience.

The wording for the fad diet section bothered me. If benefits of calorie restriction and fasting aren’t scientifically supported, why are their Wikipedia pages full of scientific research regarding their benefits?

Things like the actual uses of aromatherapy make me wonder what to call them. Maybe the word placebo applies, but I feel that there’s a certain level of arbitrariness needed for that specific word.

There’s something about aromas and the soft gestures of reiki that are pleasurable to us in a more objective sense. We don’t like them simply because we’ve been told they’re good for us; we like them because we like them. A waterfall will make most people feel good even you don’t tell them it’s good for them, so I don’t feel it can be called a placebo effect. What is the term for a thing which isn’t directly a medicine, but is medically beneficial by promoting a sense of wellbeing?

I don’t think that laughter should be considered medicine in a literal sense because it would make the term too broad, but also because these things are at least somewhat subject to taste rather than the truly objective effects of drugs. A given drug might effect two people differently, but the difference is a matter of chemistry rather than the subject’s opinion.

(Maybe it will all be the same someday when we’ve dialed in how everybody’s brains work in exact detail and tailor treatments more specifically. Maybe we’ll actually prescribe touching grass instead of suggesting it.)

Do you have any fun mnemonics for remembering your SSN? :D

I cannot recommend that film enough to anyone who’s a fan of horror movies which are more than just a fun spoop.

Powders can be good, but they can also be garbage. It depends on the brand. But with whole foods like legumes or animal meats, you can be sure you’re getting quality protein.

The documentary style quickly takes a back seat, but the interviews are always there and heavily used. Try Modern Family first and see of the Office doesn’t hit better once you’re used to the interviews there. They’re brief fourth-wall breaks and not diagetic.

e: I would say if you’re not having an absolute blast by the Dundees episode (I think that S2E1?), don’t waste any more of your time.

I didn’t get that far into the show because I was bored and lost in the space battles. Action scenes are always shakey cameras and me being confused about who’s on what ship. I was extremely interested in the human dramas, politics, and especially the mystery of the fungal thing. The acting and dialects were really cool though, and I’d probably miss out on those unless the author does a good job writing them. Does it seem like I’d prefer reading it instead? I kind of feel like I just talked myself into trying the show again. :s