You should check my other messages in this thread. I don’t know if I really believe it like your brother, but it is interesting to interpret the Bible as if it was inspired my aliens.
I just looked up the Ojibwa Indians and while I tend to try and be respectful of native/aboriginal religions, that, uh, that’s a pretty interesting story. Like, for those of y’all who haven’t looked it up, you should. It’s… Interesting.
It’s also fascinating to me because I’ve had a pet speculation that I like to entertain about “Xeno Christ”, which originated from my observation that the creation story in the book of Genesis is very similar to how we believe the universe came to be (scientifically speaking). It’s not a perfect 1:1, but if you use a little bit of creative license (like dinosaurs=birds, 'cause they kinda were), then it gets really close. The fact that the Ojibwa creation story seems to describe what we’d consider aliens kinda aligns with my speculation that many ancient religions were established as a message to humanity that was meant to persist as long as possible. Basically a mind virus that instructed people on how they should conduct themselves in order to be accepted by the greater galaxy/universe.
Imo, at the very least Christianity makes more sense when interpreted that way. The rules about what you can or can’t eat, what you wear, homosexuality, etc are more reasonable if you think of them not as a deity who cares about whether or not you stick your dick into another man’s butt, but instead instructions that attempt to warn humans away from behavior that’d potentially lead to parasites and STDs.
The concept of heaven and hell makes sense from the standpoint of establishing staying power as well as a way of discouraging immorality or potentially harmful behavior. It discourages certain behaviors because going to hell is a Big Deal. It also has staying power because, unlike an immediate threat, you can’t break a rule and then find out that there’s no one enforcing the rule. Additionally, by not using a karma system (what goes around comes around) but instead promising punishment after death, you solve the “billionaire problem” aka, “Zuckerberg is evil, why is he one of the richest men on the planet”. Finally, it gives a reason to continue in your beliefs and spread them as far as you can, because we as humans are (typically) empathetic and none of us want to see a favorite relative go to hell when we’re going to heaven or vice versa.
On a side note: it’s also kinda interesting that, according to the Objiwa story, one of the miigi was so spiritually powerful that they accidentally killed everyone in their presence. Kinda like how God is described in the old testament. Makes you wonder sometimes.
Tbh I don’t know if I actually believe any of it, but it’s fun to play with the idea.
Edit: damn, people here thinking humans had health classes and knowledge about microbiology 4000-something years ago. There’s the real ancient aliens shit LOL. Also, the Bible banned sodomy in general, which was defined as anything that wasn’t for the purpose of reproduction. That includes a man having anal or oral sex with his wife.
Listen, I love ancient aliens stuff; it’s fun to speculate about. It sucks that people get fixated on the pyramids or Nazca lines though. There are other mysterious things that aren’t as easily explained by, “they used a bunch of slaves and some logs to stack stones”, why do people get so hung up on the pyramids?
They already do this fyi. Solar plants tend to use mirrors that concentrate light to heat water and turn a turbine instead of actual solar panels. Amazingly, iirc converting light into heat, the heat into steam, and then the steam into kinetic energy, is still more efficient than a normal photovoltaic cells.
It wasn’t the name alone that did it, but I got the Newbury Comics pressings of Phanerozoic I and Phanerozoic II (by The Ocean) on vinyl because A) the name is cool, and B) the pressings looked cool. Turns out the albums sound cool too.
I gave The Crazy World of Arthur Brown a try because of the album artwork. Turns out it’s now one of my favorite albums.
I’d heard Ziltoid the Omniscient was good, but what really won me over was the album artwork. Between the cheesy name and cheesy artwork, I had to give it a listen. It’s easily one of the greatest albums of all time.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
I’ve been considering getting one of Intel’s Raptor Lake cpus.
Uh, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. There have been games that have caught my eye purely because of the name, but none of them were that great iirc. I think Risk of Rain mighta been one of them, and that one was pretty good; but most of the games I’ve tried based on name alone were pretty meh from what I remember.
I’m not a huge fan of relationships in media to begin with (unless it’s somehow tied into the plot), so it’s possible I’m being more critical and skeptical than I should be. I’m not exactly cishet so I’m not sure that’s really it, but as someone else pointed out it’s still not super common for gay characters, especially male characters, to be shown as being romantically involved, which can be jarring when you’re not used to it. Dunno, it’s weird.
That’s not a particularly unique perspective, many Trekkies choose to process Star Trek as “historical documents.” There’s a movie about it.
That’s kinda interesting, do you remember what the movie is called? I might watch it at some point.
I mean, I guess it’s possible. When it comes to my gender and sexuality, I’d say, “it’s complicated” because I’m not cishet, it’s just… complicated. Additionally I don’t tend to enjoy romance in media all that much to begin with, so it’s possible that I’m being more critical than I should. It’s just that gay relationships in media don’t bother me, it’s more when it feels “in my face” that I start to question the motivations behind it.
I guess the big thing is that if you’re happy with it, then cool! Something about it just felt off to me.
Tbh I might have a unique way of processing fiction, because my brain seems to process it as, “I’m watching a future documentary” or “I’m watching future reality TV” or something. Like, these people have a camera crew or something following them around, so the camera crew is part of the act if that makes sense; so when the camera crew focuses on something, my brain interprets it as being important to the fictional future-history.
As such, while I don’t remember anyone actually being upset about them being gay in-universe, the fact that the camera crew seemed to like focusing on them being intimate makes my brain say, “this must be important to 23rd century humans in some way”.
Then again, I’m also not super into shows that feel like they spend too much time focusing on romantic relationships, so I might also be more critical that I should be as a result. If you’re gonna spend a bunch of time exploring a romantic relationship in a non-romance show, at least make it interesting. Maybe one of them is a cold-blooded lizardman and there’s some conflict about the temperature of the crew quarters or something.
Yeah, I mean, one of the most annoying parts is that there could have been ways for them to draw attention to characters being gay without it feeling pandery. Like, maybe Joestar Humantrek has a Caitian boyfriend and there’s a recurring gag where Joestar Humantrek is regularly in sickbay with a bleeding anus. Now you draw attention to the gay characters but it doesn’t feel pandery because the focus isn’t that Joestar Humantrek is gay, the focus is that Joestar Humantrek keeps winding up with a perforated colon because he can’t stop taking his boyfriend’s barbed cat dick in the ass.
I kinda disagree with this because at the end of the day the federation kinda did end up forcing their will on the Moclans. However, the federation tried as hard as they could to find solutions and compromises that would have allowed them to maintain their culture while also allowing people who didn’t want to be a part of it, primarily female Moclans, to have their own space where they could live the way they wanted to.
The reason why the federation eventually ended up forcing their will on the Moclans was for the same reason that modern society tends to eventually tell bigots to fuck off; the bigots weren’t content with bigoting off in their own little corner but instead felt offended by the fact they weren’t allowed to bigot everywhere else and threw a hissy-fit about it. Then people got tired of the bigots throwing whiney tantrums about not being allowed to bigot outside of their designated bigot-spaces and said, “fuck you, eat shit.”
I know I might be about to ruffle some feathers, but The Orville is how you do representation right imo. The whole story arc with Topa was beautiful.
Like, something that turned me off of nu-trek was how the representation was handled. It felt pandery to an almost gross extent. Like, Jesus Christ man, it’s the year 24-something-something, why are you still acting like being gay is a big deal? OoOoOoOoo oh nooooo, there’s gay people WoooOoOooo. And while I don’t remember there being spoken pandering in the few episodes I watched, there was something about how the scenes were constructed, the shots were lined up, etc, that felt like they were trying to draw attention to the LGBT members doing LGBT things. Again, it’s 24XX, I’m supposed to believe humanity has achieved near-utopia, why am I getting the feeling that you’re trying to show me how gay these dudes are purely because they’re gay. You don’t need to do that. It’s 24XX, who the hell is still getting bent out of shape about homosexuality 400 years from now?
The Orville, on the other hand, just kinda… treated it like it was normal. Some characters are gay, some characters are straight, but the show didn’t really focus on it; some guys just liked other guys more than gals and vice versa. They treated it like it was normal.
Okay, okay, but I brought up Topa, and Topa’s story arc is literally all about Topa’s gender problems. How does that not go against my previous complaints? Well, Topa isn’t human. Topa is from a male-dominated culture that believes femininity is weakness and should be eradicated via gender reassignment. It’s not a human culture, and so it doesn’t clash with the idea of humanity having a near-utopia. A human utopia involves everyone being treated equally, so when you imply different treatment, whether through dialog choices or cinematography, it clashes with that idea. But the Moclans don’t have a utopia, and so putting emphasis on Topa being female makes sense, especially when it comes to the human crew struggling with the clashing ideas of Moclan forced gender reassignment and the human take on sapient rights. Unlike nu-trek, there’s no dissonance there.
Not Hispanic or a mom, but I’ve been wanting more Latin-american music in my life. Will have to check it out.
On a side note: does anyone know of any Latin-american metal bands? Like, kind of a fusion of Latin-american stuff and metal?
Edit: thanks y’all for the suggestions! I’ve been sick so I haven’t really been able to check anything out, but I’ll be sure to do so when I feel better.