R.J.A. Gilbert

The greatest of all sins is a man's ability to decide that the truth is not important or not what they want to hear, so they turn away and look elsewhere. The second greatest sin is a man's ability to convince other men that a lie is better than the truth.

There is a fascinating book about Theodore Roosevelt's early years, The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, that I often recommend. Also, a rare book that is probably the best "history" books in disguise, "Lost Mines and Treasures of the Pacific Northwest" by Ruby El Hult. This is what inspired the Goonies (but nobody will admit to it).

Please recommend your favorite books on history, any subject. I want to expand my library with good, not “woke” suggestions.

@BasedSamParker Sounds like a you thing. Not all men are horny dogs. Also, if he was raised in the "ministry" culture, he likely was well-versed on the "Billy Graham" rule and the many cautionary tales of men whose entire careers were ruined by those same kinds of women you just described.

One thing (of many) that has bothered me about the Charlie Kirk narrative was his lack of "success" with women. Stay with me here. Charlie Kirk was a 6'5" athlete, with a good intellect & normie-tier politics. Maybe not the best looking guy, but it's not like his cupboard was bare. Women like tall men of influence. He basically spent about 7 years at a single guy hanging around exclusively college kids, becoming the most popular college influencer in America & building real power. The guy was friends with many powerful, rich, connected people. He was the ideal man for legions of women. He should have had girls THROWING themselves at him. He should have had his pick of women. We should have heard stories about who Charlie Kirk was dating. Gossip. Rumors. Etc. He was a certified, bona-fide 20s-something American hero celebrity. But that's not how it all went down. Instead, we heard there were no girlfriends. That he was a virgin until Erika (good for him if true, btw). No sexual encounters, whatsoever—which, if the rumors about many others in TPUSA are to be believed—is extremely anomalous! He was allegedly surrounded by all kinds of people who were sexually active—gay and straight alike! TPUSA is filled with college coeds for its ambassadors. Smart girls, hot girls, motivated girls, calculating girls, politically connected girls, etc. Girls with multiple combinations of those traits. Yet Charlie spurned every single one? Couldn't land even one single girlfriend? Didn't have one fling? Never once got his groove on? Never once succumbed to the horde of women beating down his door? And then, when he did get married at 27, it was to a 32-year old woman. No offense, ladies, but I was once in my 20s. And men in their mid 20s see women in their 30s as ancient. Old as the hills. Washed up. Why marry a 32-year old when you can snag a 22-year old? That's like a 10-year warranty! This is how the vast majority of men in their 20s think. And Charlie had no shortage of access to women in their early 20s. It's weird. And on top of that, the woman he married hadn't been able to maintain a relationship herself into her 30s. That alone is a major red flag for men. Not to mention the many alleged lies she's told. IMO, she lies a lot. About everything. Surely Charlie would have picked up on that. It's really unattractive. People say Charlie had no game. But the "Bob's Burgers" story where he straight up told her he wanted to date her, not hire her, was a total Chad move. I'm sorry, but something about the Charlie Kirk story just isn't adding up for me. I honestly don't know what, but the math ain't mathing. Am I the only one?

@BibleInContext1 Pretty sure the first beast making a statement like that about Christ is also part of Revelation chapter 13. Right before the part where the second beast sends images of the first beast out for all the world to see and hear and marvel over.

Disclose.tv shares a clipped video of Netanyahu, that’s now going viral, completely misrepresenting what Netanyahu actually said. Netanyahu was paraphrasing a statement from the historian Will Durant. He actually says this in original video! The actual quote says this; “…and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ as against Genghis Khan.” from The Lessons of History (1968) In that quote, Durant is not attacking Christ, but making a philosophical argument. He’s making a naturalistic observation about history, not a theological conclusion about truth! Context is always important.

I'm pretty sure the "bad AI" in those videos were post-production editing to make it look like they were AI. If I had a loved one in a hospital only a mile away from where most of those videos were shot, I would not want my enemies thinking they had a high chance of catching me there while I was spending time there. And neither would any of the other hospital residents. Better to let the enemy think their target is dead than to think they have a chance of killing him by wiping out hundreds of innocent civilians.

it is with utmost grief that I confess that i’m desperately looking for conspiracy theories to cling to the hope that netanyahu is actually dead & this press conference is just some next level AI wizardry.

@walterkirn Our world is so overrun with gatekeepers that it is quite plausible for artistic genius to only be allowed to flourish in a gatekeeping vacuum. Consider that even Nikola Tesla was gatekept by Edison, and only flourished when Edison finally bankrupt his own electricity company.

One of the puzzles I find myself mulling over -- too often -- is the question of why artistic genius springs up in geographic clusters rather than in some broad, roughly predictable way. So many great musical talents from Seattle all at once? Whatever may be behind this phenomenon, it doesn't seem to operate with AIs, whose outputs don't arrive in this irregular, qualitatively "lumpy" fashion.

@sheilatebra @MaineRN3

@Chizitere_xyz That's okay. A lot of perfectly nice women are going to end up as cat-ladies because they didn't police their own and now ALL women are manipulative abusers based solely on THEIR gender.

I grew up watching my cousin, David, be the ultimate protector. He was the kind of guy who would pull over in the pouring rain to help a stranger change a tire. He was gentle, solid, and fiercely loyal. So, when he called me at 2:00 AM last july from the county jail, the sound of his broken voice didn't even compute in my brain. "She called the police," he whispered, his voice trembling like he couldn't catch his breath. "They took me." I knew his fiancé. We all knew her. I had sat at family Thanksgiving dinners watching her belittle him, roll her eyes at his accomplishments, and pick vicious fights out of thin air. But David always absorbed it. He was raised to believe that a good man takes the hit, stays calm, and protects the peace at all costs. That night, she had cornered him in the kitchen of the home he bought for them. When she started throwing things and swinging wildly at his face, he didn't fight back. He just caught her wrists to stop her from hurting him. But when the flashing red and blue lights pulled up to his driveway, the truth didn't matter. The police walked in and saw a six-foot-tall man and a crying woman. They didn't care that his shirt was torn. They only looked at the faint, defensive red marks on her wrists where he had desperately tried to hold her back. Watching David go through the justice system has been the most heartbreaking experience of my life. I have watched a vibrant, hardworking man be completely dismantled by a system that defaulted him to a perpetrator based solely on his gender. He was legally exiled from his own house. He drained his entire life savings to pay defense attorneys just to prove he wasn't a monster. But the most devastating part isn't the money, it's the light that died in his eyes. He lives in a sterile, half-empty apartment now. He flinches when his phone rings. He is terrified of his own shadow. The system didn't just fail my cousin; it punished him for surviving. And the absolute hardest part for me, as someone who loves him, is knowing that I can't protect him from a world that has already decided he is the villain.

@Nobleshield That's pretty much what I always do when I play the open world games. I always feel bad when I "beat them" by finishing the main story line. So I don't.

Why do none of these open world games let you make your own character and just be a traveler/adventurer/mercenary out to make a name for themselves? Why do you always have to play as So-and-so who wants to Complete-Main-Storyline?

@pnwguerrilla Your children.

I was asking this last night. What is the best investment right now beyond food, water, gear, and ammo?

are these instagram chicks finally starting to realize their "therapists" are just scamming them?

@alx_128 @camille_moscow "Anarchy amongst honorable men is better than democracy amongst thieves."

@camille_moscow Perte de temps tout ça. Comment un pays peut vivre sans un premier ministre? qui signe les décrets etc ... Tout devient illégal ....

NOUVEAU DEEPFAKE DE BIBI🤔 ? On nous montre Netanyahu “bien vivant”… mais un détail cloche 👀 Regardez la séquence au ralenti : sa chemise surgit comme par magie.

Revelation 13:3-4 Revelation 13:9-10 Revelation 13:15 (I'm not filtering out the rest, just highlighting the parts I find particularly relevant.)

@EmbracingTara A lot of things we think of as "luxury" were once the poor person's necessity, and only after the rich folk found out it was healthier for them did they become "luxury". Also, by making healthy life "luxury", we make the poor even poorer.

Imagine telling me that baking all my family's bread is a "luxury" when it is actually a very peasant activity, traditionally reserved for the poor class who couldn't afford to purchase from the local baker or "bread man". Hilarious that it's now seen as a "luxury".

anon submission

@kenzietuff As a guy who was expected to emulate that man during my childhood, I feel an odd sense of smug satisfaction reading that post.

That’s it. This post made me a real misogynist.

Last night, after she’d gone to bed, my 16 y/o daughter receives a text from a friend. (We keep electronics in our room at night). I know my daughter isn’t gonna see it for a while and I know the answer to the girl’s dance-class-related question. So I just pick up the phone and answer it really quick as if I’m my daughter and leave it at that. Tonight, I see her giggling over her phone. I ask what’s up. Apparently, the other girl’s mother had just wanted to get an answer to the question really quick, so she picked up HER daughter’s phone and texted mine as if she were her daughter. (basically both of us were too lazy to go through the rigmarole of explaining, “hi, this is Mrs. So-and-so, and here’s why I’m texting you on your friend’s phone…” But the funny part was how the two girls figured this out. Because the first one was so appalled at seeing her mother‘s perfectly punctuated and capitalized sentences, that she felt she needed to come clean that it was her mom lest my daughter think she is that conscientious. And my daughter, likewise, didn’t want her friend to think that SHE uses correct grammar when texting either. So what I learned today is that it is apparently humiliating to be caught correctly formulating sentences via text.

🙏🙏

@FiveTimesAugust Ironically, dial-up internet is faster than a lot of "cloud" functionality these days.

Dial up internet and phones that were attached to the wall. That was the right amount of speed for humans.

I have a memory in my head of my mother-in-law finding an old, un-marked video she found in a box that had been in storage. When she put it into our machine, it was of her, her mother, and her daughter, all together before life (and death) pulled them apart. She just stood there, frozen, watching with a look on her face that spoke a thousand words. A lot of us don't realize how much we miss--how much we wish we could go back--until we watch those videos again.