NeuroTypical

Well, just to be clear, my point is that's true of every single artistic creation from every single human artist as well. Everything's a compilation of derivative stuff and checking off checkboxes the artist has learned over time. Wrap it all up with some faux-humble stuff like "I drew on [previous artist X] for inspiration", and there you go. I'm not saying art is useless. Art rocks. Our human brains react to it, get wrapped up in it, inspired by it, love it, hate it, experience lifechanging catharses through it. But none of it is new. Including my criticisms.

Roleplaying and trying on different personalities and styles of speaking is a normal part of regular old child and young adult development. For whatever reason, various activist arms of the woke movement have forgotten that, if they were ever taught it.

Guard dog, because it was small and had a belt loop. Neither kid has a keychain, and neither one wants something bigger.

There's "Forgot my password" functionality, right? That should work, unless you set the thing up with an email address you no longer can access. Then it's a call to the Church IT department.

This is the point I've been trying to make about music vs poetry. I haven't closely followed the conversation closely enough to know which one of you this will tick off, but: All art is derivative, and has been for thousands of years. There's no such thing as 'original art' or 'new art' any more. No matter from what creative human soul place it's pulled from, someone else already did it.

With various daughters reaching the age where they vector off in different directions, Mamma and I are prepping them with various things that'll hopefully never be needed, but if they are, they'll certainly come in handy. The gel, because there's less blowback. The UV tinted stuff, to make it easier for authorities to identify the assailant later. The extra strong stuff, to make sure it'll be effective no matter how drunk, high, or amped the bad guy might be. I'm ordering an extra one, so we can empty one in practice. I'm quite happy to have this readily available, safe, effective, and legal pretty much everywhere.

Good, because this got old years ago:

Y'all wrong. Only Squidward has it figured out.

Yeah, pretty much agreed. The govt (translated as the people working for the government) gets to have an opinion, even a govt funded and advertised opinion. Problem comes when the govt works to silence other's opinions (like we learned all about in the #twitterfiles collaboration between FBI and Twitter). And yep, you show me someone who doesn't know or admit to bias, I'll show you someone whos opinion is simply less valid and useful than other opinions. It's easy to find people who react to a challenge to their opinion in the same way a mathemetician reacts to an argument against 2+2=4. People get entrenched, defensive, and eventually lash out against what they consider arguments against truth. Only thing I'd change about @Traveler's post, is I'd say our constitution protects rights granted to us by God - it doesn't grant rights itself.

Y'all arguing over art and music makes me remember the Star Trek episodes focused on Lt. Commander Data's quest to become human. He couldn't whistle, but he could process the unique styles of multiple different violinists, and play something in a style that was his own unique blend of those different violinists. Data argued against that making him human, but Picard argued in favor of it. And that all happened before he installed his emotion chip. The Android Data was TNG's version of Spock. Vulcans started off with the claim that they have zero emotions, but the canon evolved into Vulcans having ALL the emotions, and just having an entire civilization and culture built around suppressing them. And the pre-emotion canon Vulcans had Vulcan harps to play.

Just finished binging a show on Hulu, 4 years after it's season finale. Nobody around to share the feels on the series finale.

Hey, I'm totally fine with news sources that are open and transparent about their bias. Problem comes when people don't think they have bias, or pretend they don't. Anyone else ever listen to AM Radio guy Hugh Hewitt? Lawyer, professor, inside beltway government experience, with a talk radio show on the side. He used to do a bit on his show where he'd interview a left-leaning journalist/columnist/broadcaster/etc. It was fascinating to hear their opinions on bias in media. The average opinion from these folks are "there's no bias in media - there are just occasional bad actors out there producing propaganda (like Fox)". Hugh would ask them if they thought they were lefties or liberals - most would refuse to answer, claiming to be unbiased and the answer didn't matter. Hugh would ask questions like "do you own a gun?" and "are you in favor of expanding abortion rights?" You could hear people squirm. Eventually, word got out at what an interview with Hugh would be like, and people stopped appearing on his show. So he had to dump that bit. His analogies have stuck with me over the years: "You're like a coal miner with no canary - you don't know that you're sick." "When I play golf, I take wind into account, and aim into the wind. I'm not opposed to you being biased, I just want you to admit which way you make the wind blow. So people looking for truth know how to interpret what you are saying."

After reading this thread and a few others like it, I think I'm sure what to believe. Every time someone interacts with ChatGPT, someone's copy of the BoM has the page containing D&C88:118 burst into flames.