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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: November 25th, 2024

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  • Well spelling was solved even earlier than that, with rote-learning at school in combination with the very environmentally friendly technologies known as the paddle and cane. What was wrong with that way of doing things?? Is it progress? Or were things better in the old days?

    In any case, all the words in the sentence in question are spelt correctly - the problem is grammar. Correctly determining if the grammar of a sentence is correct is a much harder problem than simply checking the spelling of words against a dictionary.



  • It’s a *lot* better these days. Here’s how you could use it to improve the English in your comment:

    Can you point out and characterise the grammar mistakes in the following sentence, with tips on how the writer could avoid similar mistakes in future - “I must admit its been a while, but all these things where horrible last time i played with them.”

    Sure — that sentence has a few grammar issues, each pointing to a common kind of slip. Here’s the breakdown:

    1. “its been a while” → “it’s been a while”

    Mistake: “its” is a possessive pronoun (like his, her, their), while “it’s” is the contraction of “it has”. Fix: Use “it’s” because the writer means “it has been a while”.

    Tip: When in doubt, try expanding “it’s” to “it is” or “it has” and see if the sentence still makes sense. If it doesn’t, you probably want “its”.

    1. “where horrible” → “were horrible”

    Mistake: “where” (a location) is confused with “were” (past tense of are). Fix: Use “were” to correctly form the past tense of “to be”.

    Tip: Say it aloud—“they were horrible” sounds natural, while “they where horrible” doesn’t. If it’s a verb (they were), you want “were”.

    1. “i played” → “I played”

    Mistake: Lowercase “i”. Fix: Always capitalize “I” when it’s a pronoun referring to oneself.

    Tip: This is more about habit than logic—just train yourself to always type “I” in uppercase, even in casual writing.


    Full corrected version: “I must admit it’s been a while, but all these things were horrible last time I played with them.”



  • There’s really nothing special about Jesus, if you accept that the voices he heard in his head were not really “the all-powerful creator” speaking to him.

    What I mean is that Jesus did not say anything more remarkable or ground-breaking than say Socrates, Marx or … I don’t know Iain M Banks or any other story teller. Way less remarkable in fact.

    There’s this persistent idea that Jesus was some wonderful caring hippy, and before Jesus everyone was just a callous exploitive bastard. But there’s nothing new about the share-and-share-alike philosophy Jesus espoused. It’s basic game theory and has been present in society since before our species even evolved. Even chimps grasp those ideas.

    Jesus was just a poor Jewish common person who thought he was the messiah. Just like his compatriots of the time, he believed the Jews to be the “chosen people”, and his message was only directed at his compatriots. He had no more grasp of humanity as a whole than any other common person of his time. As the messiah, he believed - as did his followers - that he was going to usher in the end of the world.

    It’s complete nonsense, and if you truely understand what a scam the modern church is, you would stop promoting him as some kind of revolutionary.


  • I feel like MAGA might not come to his defense this time.

    Hope this isn’t wishful thinking. Trump thinks his son is a l33t hacker for being able to turn a laptop on. Musk on the other hand owns a major social media platform and has access to skilled technicians and programmers, as well as huge server farms which he doubtless uses to analyse voter behaviour and find the weak points where efforts should be focused in order to have most impact on electoral choices.

    Trump certainly understands how essential to the disinfo effort Musk is, even though it’s way beyond the grasp of your average MAGA. IMO Trump is not going to abandon Musk in a hurry.


  • maybe, but unless you’re a believer in trickle-down economics, what do we lose as a society if they do?

    the measures covered by this article aren’t about people trying to reduce their tax bill though, they’re about stopping dodgy tax avoidance schemes: “There is a mini-industry of creating tax avoidance schemes which have no prospect of success.”

    If I understand the article right, these dodgy schemes are mostly designed to make their promoters money from fees, because when they are overturned in court, the taxes people have improperly avoided will have to be paid. However the people who ran the scheme will have already taken lots of money in fees.




  • If we’re talking about religion and conspiracy theories then yes, your religious affiliation is relevant. The more religious someone is, the more likely they are to believe in conspiracy theories, such as the ones I mentioned.

    This thread started with geneva_convenience claiming the rape gangs were a hoax. That’s crazy talk. They were not a hoax, heinous crimes were ignored and brushed under the carpet for years, children were seriously let down by the system, police and authorities missed many opportunities to help children in desperate need. There is no hoax there, and to call it a hoax is on a par with holocaust denial.

    Your whataboutism to try to minimise the rapists’ crimes is completely irrelevant and at best missing the point. No one is saying these are the only people to commit rapes, literally nobody is saying that.





  • That’s why I asked if you were muslim. Are you? If you are, you should know that the islamic religion was started by some guy in the desert who heard voices in his head, and he thought the voices belonged to a Jewish angel.

    That’s not very special - go to any mental care ward in any modern city, and you’ll find plenty of schizophrenics saying very similar things. What makes Mohammed special was not the voices in his head, but that he managed to convince other people that he really was talking to this magical flying Jew (who was conveniently enough completely invisible and could only be heard by Mohammed), and they should follow him and do whatever he said.

    So my point is that anyone in the modern world who believes a story like the Mohammed story has already taken leave of their senses, and it would be no surprise if it turned out they believed all sorts of other conspiracy theories, like 911 was faked, or the moon landings were faked, or the muslim rape gangs were faked.