Ahmed FASIH @22@octodon.social

'The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it seems, is going the way of the somewhat more serious Jediism and Avatar religions in that people are deliberately electing fiction as their faith. Interestingly, this may not be a new phenomenon. We are told, for example, that Zarathustra deliberately outlined a new religion… In those days the strict division between fiction and fact may not have been a mental filter yet discovered.' https://steveawiggins.com/2016/04/20/prayer-before-meals/

From the Steve Wiggins NRM goldmine.

"Even should a founder have had less than pure motives, that doesn’t translate to any less verisimilitude on the part of the faithful. Some viable religions have been based on known fictions." https://steveawiggins.com/2015/04/06/new-faiths/

"Paganism began to reassert itself only last century. There had been a social stigma with lying outside the territory claimed by church, synagogue or mosque. … a large, and increasingly expanding, variety of religious options exist for the seeker." https://steveawiggins.com/2015/10/12/nature-of-religion/

"People are not becoming less religious—they’re becoming differently religious. The old sacred texts are being replaced by the fictional Necronomicon. Ethereal beings that have always been there are bowing before ancient aliens who aren’t really eternal or omnipotent, but who feel more real in our culture." —Steve A. Wiggins, https://steveawiggins.com/2016/03/31/cthulhus-tea-party/

I love Steve—I first heard about him when his brother-in-law Neal Stephenson cited their chats about Asherah for "Snow Crash".

Them: "How have you dealt with data that's too big to fit comfortably in memory?"

Me: "I ask the CEO to buy me a 1 TB RAM workstation."

This exchange is a bit embarrassing but I don't think I can be condemned as practicing bad engineering without a lot of careful thinking.

Also, 1 TB RAM makes many of our most important datasets "small data" again and it is So SO GOOD to be able to spend my time on real engineering instead of big data linux bullshittery.

“Japanese students prepare for high school entrance exams in the equivalent of ninth grade, and the school they get into can play a major role in determining the rest of their lives. Despite an increased interest in sex, romantic relationships are considered a waste of precious studying time. Friendships are on the cusp of breaking apart because people may get into different schools.” —Caitlin Moore, #AnimeFeminist

https://www.animefeminist.com/feature-fushigi-yugi-adolescence-apotheosis/

Very wary of cultural insensitivity but this is brutal💀

I think telling your kids “people who don’t believe in god (specifically the one I’ve just described) will go to hell” is child abuse. Not only because it makes it so hard to relate to other kids, many of whose parents are programming them with different gods, but especially because it can create enormous fear in the child, for themselves.

I recognize this is a dissenting view, so I hope awareness expands and this form of child abuse disappears.

Teach your gods through love, not through fear.

“If he kills us, he will also kill our families and our pets, burn down our forests, even poison our water. The enemy is not a human being.”

A hundred years after the Great War, parents like us are reading “The Enemy” by Cali and Bloch to their kids to prepare them for the future.

We don’t program our kids with ideas of religious or racial or gender superiority. But we do teach them that others will disagree with them. Even about this book.

https://octodon.social/media/n4KfossAAhHW-MhcTls https://octodon.social/media/KAQ8440y_beDW1lU-3s

Child was reading and loving a rendition of Beowulf and was curious about monsters and dragons. My attempt at explanation: before we had cameras and airplanes and internet, it was reasonable to believe that monsters and magic and dragons existed.

Like how we tell stories about aliens. Our descendants will explain to their little ones how 21st century people lacked faster-than-light and nanotechnology and synthetic cognizance so they could entertain weird ideas about alien life.

I used to judge people by their gender, their race, their ancestry, their beliefs, their majors, their hobbies… all kinds of things. Now I judge people mainly on how much they judge others. Life is better this way.

‘Both the court and local elites cherished Buddhism for its ability to control the violence of deities, spirits, and demons of all kinds, including the kami. Usually, this entailed building temples next to shrines, where monks dedicated themselves to the conversion of the kami by exposing them to the Buddha's benign teachings. By reciting sutras, and other Buddhist practices, these monks created merit or good karma, which was transferred to the kami.’

Breen & Teeuwen on controlling pesky kami.

Most of the Japanese students take entrance exams given in Japanese and join the university in spring, and learn English as a required subject. Most foreign students apply and interview in English and enter the university in the fall, and learn Japanese as a required subject. First-year students in principle live in campus housing, with a Japanese and non-Japanese student sharing each room — so they can learn each other’s culture and traditions.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/05/25/commentary/japan-commentary/unique-universities-can-rescue-rural-areas/

Major cultural exchange.

"Wars are started by the old, but the ones who die are young people. The government won't protect the youth. I want you all to understand that well," said 96-year-old former Imperial Japanese Navy sailor Kuniyoshi Takimoto during a lecture at the Shinmachi Campus of Doshisha University here.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180524/p2a/00m/0na/019000c

Powerful message. I wonder if his oral history has been recorded by historians. The more personal the microhistory, the more useful and effective it is at conveying the experience.

Yo people with extra money this month and who care about Japanese kanji etymology: give some cash to

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnrenfroe/outlier-kanji-dictionary

I got the early bird discount.

It bothered me enough that I hadn't written a summary ('review') of Tetlock/Gardner's #Superforecasting that I trawled through my notes and came up with this:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2388859547

It's a great book. I learned more from it than probably 90% of things I've read. And the things I learned from it are of the sort that just build on each other, so they'll help me learn more and more, and help me better avoid learning things that aren't true. What more can one ask for?

"In 1970 scientists and administrators of Japan’s Space Development Agency were ready to launch the country’s first satellite. … Shortly before the launch, senior representatives of the agency visited Chichibu Shinto shrine located near Tokyo. Their goal: to petition its deity Myōken (the North Star) that their endeavor might succeed. When the rocket blasted off and placed a satellite in its intended orbit, these same individuals made a return trip to express their gratitude." —J.K. Nelson, 2000

‘Throughout this entire ordeal where I'm uttering ridiculous epithets like “git pipe fork … ssh curl wget pip,” I keep reassuring my students that this bullshit is not intellectually interesting in any way… it's all just a necessary upfront tax required to enable them to do the actual interesting research. I've engaged in so much command-line bullshittery over the years that I can confidently assert how uninteresting it all is.‘

http://www.pgbovine.net/command-line-bullshittery.htm

Guess why I'm channeling this today 🤬.

My review of Bart Ehrman's *Forged: Writing in the Name of God*, about Biblical authorship:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2394317959

But instead of reading it or the book, read Ole Bjørn Rekdal's article "Academic urban legends", an amazing, hilarious analysis of that long-lived academic urban legend—that we thought spinach had high iron for decades because someone misread a decimal point: this will elucidate Biblical authorship, urban legends, and convergent confusion much more:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312714535679

Mari Okada did series composition for *The Woman Called Fujiko Mine*, which could be my favorite show ever, but is also a rare and perfect foil to these terrible feminine archetypes. There, Fujiko Mine is 'the rival'…

That show was directed by the sublime Sayo Yamamoto, whose *Michiko and Hatchin* also exemplifies this. She also helmed *Yuri!!! On Ice*, which is not only masterful but of course also reached new heights in other ways.

Taking a break from shoujo anime for outdoorsy shows—Amanchu &c—and #AnimeFeminist nails why:

"… hold up a passive, childlike version of femininity as the ideal for girls. They are to be attractive and charming but must not be conscious of their own power. They should seek to be noticed by boys rather than doing the noticing and acting on it. They should appeal to a boy’s ego by needing help, not stroke their own egos by taking charge of their own beauty and charm." 😫👏😖

https://www.animefeminist.com/feature-how-princess-tutu-shatters-the-rival-trope/