We had a babysitter whose husband was a pastor and would always talk about being scared for our souls. In her eyes, being a good person and having a private relationship with God was inadequate to avoid going to hell. She truly felt that church attendance and renouncing other religions was the only path to salvation - belief, prayer, and following the teachings of Jesus would be inadequate.

Now I can’t claim to know what God wants. But I can’t see how paying the church and excluding people with different belief systems outweighs kindness.

“The Future” by Naomi Alderman goes somewhere along these lines

I recall seeing a Reddit sub that was entirely populated by bots. The replies were nearly indistinguishable from humans. It really coloured my view of Reddit - what’s the point of engaging when I’m likely talking to lines of code?

I want to tell myself that sub is mostly bots, but then the guy clearly got elected, so maybe they are real…

It’s quite something when I really can’t decide if Joffrey would be a preferable king compared to Trump

I must ask the shoes on people: at what point in the house do the shoes get removed?

I’d expect that you wouldn’t want them in the bedroom or bathroom, getting gravel or dirt in bed. Is it that the main living room for entertaining guests is shoes on, and shoes off is for personal rooms? Or do you have a specific set of indoor shoes? Or do your outdoor shoes go everywhere?

Everything’s coming up corpse plants

We’ve been called worse things by better people.