I proposed to my wife at Christmas by putting the ring in a bigger box so she was surprised. It was a box for skincare product, and she was actually excited for it before she even opened it to see the ring. Obviously she was happy for the proposal, but she also seemed a little disappointed she didn’t get skincare stuff.

The following Christmas, I got her a tiny container of a skincare product she liked and put it in a ring box.

“I’m not gonna rape you, I’m a little boy”

And he gets to keep the flute after!

I suggest breaking it down into sub questions based on expertise of the audience and nature of the information: technical, narrative, cultural, emotional, etc.

I love nature. Termite mounds are nature, honeycombs are nature, spiderwebs are nature. Humans are a part of nature and our infrastructure is a part of who we are.

Carving out exceptions for human artifacts like this takes for granted that a bunch of arboreal primates figured out how to melt down the rocks themselves to extract their purest essence, then wound that essence into ropes that contain the lightning we learned to generate ourselves to power the many other artifacts we developed to bring light into our dwellings, communicate with primates on the other side of the planet, and automate the menial tasks of our lives.

While certainly selfish and misguided at times, everything we make is nature, just as much as honeycombs and spiderwebs.

This is too broad. It’s like asking “what’s the best wrench to tighten nuts and bolts?” For some applications that’s a torque wrench, some it’s a box end, some it’s a socket wrench, some it’s a crescent wrench, sometimes it’s a pair of vice grips and a hammer. Anything that could properly be called a mode of communication has use cases where it’s clearer than others.

The OBD code that’s unintelligible to the lay person is the clearest way to communicate a discrete engine problem to a mechanic. A graph that plots a particular change over time might perfectly communicate the raw data, while being incapable of communicating narrative context. A meme image or referential quote might perfectly communicate a specific emotional concept to a broad group that gets the reference, while being totally opaque to those who don’t.

There are a lot of ways to interpret this question, it really depends on the information and the people.

Between experts trained in the method of communication? Between experts and a general audience? One expert and one non-expert? Is it technical data? Nuanced opinion? Simple message?

I didn’t wear a trenchcoat. If I told you what I did instead, I’d probably doxx myself. It was cringe.

Not OP, but also an annoying adolescent atheist. After actually giving it some thought, I realized I was contextualizing the concept all wrong. Just because most people seem to contextualize God as a Santa Claus figure (bearded man who lives above us and judges our conduct, with fitting consequences) didn’t mean I had to accept that context.

There have been many very intelligent people across history who had many interesting things to say about deity. Few of them were using the Santa Claus model.

And complementary to Chesterton’s Fence is a principle I’ve heard called Grandma’s Ham or the Monkey Ladder Experiment. Sometimes “we’ve always done it that way” is covering up outdated practices for purposes that no longer exist.

Daddy mole pops his head out of the mole hole, sniffs the air, and catches a whiff of a farmer nearby having his morning pancakes. “Ooh, it smells like maple syrup!”

Mommy mole wriggles up next to him, and pops her head out of the mole hole. She sniffs the air “Ooh, it does smell like maple syrup!”

Baby mole tries to wriggle up between them, but can’t get his head out. “All I can smell is mole asses”

I would imagine the FSM to be composed of the platonic ideal of gluten rather than physical gluten, though I’m not sure if that would be more irritating or less. I’d consult a GI and maybe a metaphysician.

See if you qualify for any down payment assistance programs. Combined with an FHA loan, you could possibly get into a house with under $5k.

I just got the 9 Fold and I really like it so far. The fold screen has a weirdly square aspect ratio, but it’s excellent for reading.

You can do worse for hobbies than fighting fascist-enabling rhetoric.

“Over time” being the crucial detail. I’ll take every opportunity I can to buy time to slow the trend toward greater evil. Gives us time to get actual leftists into positions that will actually make them viable presidential candidates.

The fact that you think your fascist enabling methodology does anything but jeopardize what democracy we enjoy is mostly just sad.

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When it comes to battling fascist-enabling rhetoric, I prefer as comprehensive an approach as possible. In truth, the circle jerk tankies and bad faith actors won’t be swayed by any amount of intellectual engagement. The goal isn’t to convince them, it’s to publicly counter their garbage takes in as simple and straightforward a way as possible, in order to avoid letting sincere but impressionable leftists fall for superficially reasonable looking moral imperatives.

When you are filtering out the young, the dumb, and those arguing in bad faith, overly simplistic is an excellent first filter. If they can pass that base level filter of rudimentary critical thinking skills, then you can feel free to enter into more nuance and subtlety.

No point in engaging with those who can’t even grasp the simplest concepts.