You’re welcome! It’s always a pleasure to geek out about something I find interesting.

Sort of but not really.

All branches of Christianity believe that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God and that the Bible was written under divine inspiration and is the literal Word of God, among other dogmas. They only differ in how they interpret the sacred scriptures.

Not only is there no centralized textual source for Buddhist teachings (there are several different sutras and each “kind” of Buddhism gets to pick and choose), and therefore no dogmas universal to Buddhism other than “what the Buddha said was true”, but as I said some believe in the Hindu gods, some in other local gods and some in none; some believe in reincarnation and some don’t; and some believe that the Buddha himself was born special like Jesus (though not from a virgin) while others believe he was just a regular Joe for his caste but who was brilliant enough to figure out a way to cease suffering.

So you could make a case for there existing Buddhist Hinduism, Buddhist Shintoism and even “atheist” (in the literal sense of not believing in the supernatural, not in the acquired sense of not being a religion) Buddhism. This last kind views the Buddha’s teachings as basically brilliant psychology lessons masked in mystical language to be more accessible to the audiences of the time.

The central point of mystery religions like the Eleusinian Mysteries is to cultivate the mystical experience. In judeochristian theology, that experience is considered sacrilegious. Some Jews let Jesus have it and became Christians, but nobody else is allowed. And the ones we call Jewish today didn’t even let that one guy have it.

The similarities between Christianity and Greco-Roman mysticism are only surface-level and were a marketing ploy to gain followers. In its core, Christianity is still Judaism, just packaged for export. Hence why two thousand years later, Christians are still quoting the Old Testament to justify bigotry, even though they claim to be followers of the guy who said “love each other as I have loved you”.

“Better” doesn’t tell the whole story. There are hundreds if not thousands of different technologies involved in making an electric vehicle, from material selection for the frame to batteries to all the different components, software, conforming, etc. BYD cars may be overall superior to Tesla cars (I don’t know if they are, both are above my budget) but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t two or three hundred little things that Tesla cars still do better.

It isn’t a US-only thing. Conservatism in the Western world in general is closely linked to sexism and misoginy. If the guy were being an asshole in a politically neutral way, like taking up too much space in an airplane or getting drunk and talking too loudly, people wouldn’t bring politics into it. But he was being an asshole in a political way.

Nothing lasts forever, not even suffering. You can get through whatever is going on and come out stronger and happier on the other side.

I’ve survived a suicide attempt and I know what rock bottom feels like. If you want to talk to someone or just vent, feel free to DM me.

How does a monotheistic religion whose prophet explicitly claimed to be part of the succession of Jewish prophets and to have “come to confirm” their teachings seem more like a polytheistic religion where gods aren’t known for using prophets to send messages to the people to you? Serious question. I’m intrigued.

The Buddha never said to kill yourself, though. Your comment reads like those people who thought Nietzsche was depressed.

It’s much more diverse than Christianity, actually. Buddhism isn’t so much a religion in the judeochristian sense as a characteristic that many religions have. There are Buddhist traditions that worship gods, there are godless Buddhist traditions that worship the Buddha, and ones thay don’t even worship the Buddha but just think he was a pretty wise dude. Some require you to meditate daily, others to chant some mantras, and there are Buddhist traditions like Zen that worship nothing and are all about getting your head out of your ass.

#NotAllWomen but the ones who do like it rough often have fantasies that involve losing power and agency over what their partner does. Hence roleplaying rape and “do what you want to me”. However, sometimes they do have a script in their head and don’t like it when the partner deviates from that script because they just want to play at losing control, not actually lose it.

Then, if they haven’t agreed on a safe word beforehand, which they haven’t because we’re talking about people who don’t communicate properly, it turns into a confrontation.

This idiot has no idea what he’s doing.

Yeah I don’t get that leap either but I did my best.

If I understood it correctly, this is actually simpler than most SovCit insanity. Taxes are owed on the transaction, but they’re owed to the government, which represents the people, aka you, personally, so you can tell them to just not charge the taxes and file the zeroed out receipt with their tax returns to prove that they already paid the taxes to you personally by not charging you.

All hail the orphan crushing machine.

Well, I suppose that’s a good thing.

TLDR: “It’s not our fault, it’s the market!” and “We price every game individually based on its particular characteristics. It’s a wild coincidence that they all have the exact same price except the one we knew everyone would buy, which was more expensive”.

How did she respond?

The current CEO of Microsoft.

At least somebody thinks so.

This is more like a hype wagon, really.