There’s a conspiracy theory that Jesus is a composite character plagiarised from half a dozen or more pre-Christian faiths, and in particular the key points of his life are actually personified versions of the Winter solstice and the movement of the sun and the stars (including the Zodiac in some versions of the theory).

It’s widely believed amongst atheists, but it’s simply not true on any level. He was a real dude and was really crucified, and the supposed earlier versions of Christ-like characteristics are either extremely tenuous coincidences or simply outright lies (with some honest mistranslations/misinterpretations). Bart Ehrman, an atheist himself but a world-renowned scholar on the history of Christianity, has several books which deal with this question to varying degrees, the main one being “Did Jesus Exist?”. It’s worth reading (or listening to) if you’re curious about it. He addresses the specific claims of proponents of the conspiracy theory directly, like those of Richard Carrier.

I’m atheist, but I respect history and historical scholarship. It’s one of the handful of disciplines that humanity can’t really afford to overlook or devalue in 2025 if we want to survive into the next millennia. Agreeing on reality is one of the hardest things to do in the current climate. Overeager atheism that plays fast and loose with historical fact is not helping us secularise the world. It’s making us seem like we’re debunkable, because in this specific case, we are. It’s like in a video game when you get to a boss fight and see that the boss has a glowing section on its body that you’re supposed to shoot. Pretending Jesus wasn’t a real person is like us placing a giant glowing chest plate on our efforts and watching helplessly as Christians fire directly at it. There’s no need for it.

Dutch sounds like a Dutch person doing a mocking impression of Dutch.

These groups are so sad. Imagine all the cultural enrichment and great gameplay they’re missing out on because they trust the word of a terminally-online doofus that huge swathes of games are dangerous to play because of their sticky psychological rootkit-like messages about not hating marginalised people.

We’re getting to the stage where normal everyday traits are being attributed to neurological dingleberries. It’s like when people say “only those with Asian mothers know about keeping lots of plastic bags in a larger plastic bag in the cupboard under the sink” even though this is something everyone does.

Don’t tell me we need to bail out Amazon’s banks now too?

SOMA

I’ll replay the game once someone goes in and removes the myriad dead ends that can happen. You aren’t even informed that you’ve reached a dead end, so you spend hours fruitlessly hammering away at it until you give in and check a walkthrough, only to discover that the game is just… over.

Definitely don’t agree with the commenter’s take on his acting, but what a utopian future it would be if everyone could be critical of a person’s work while also remaining an ally.

There’s a “famous” gore video showing a Russian soldier being brutally murdered by Chechen rebels. Ya’ll probably already know what I’m talking about, so I don’t need to explain (and if you haven’t seen it or don’t know what it is, don’t bother looking for it, it’s not nice and does you no good to have it on your psychic hard drive). Since seeing that clip in ~2000, I’ve desperately wanted to know the man’s identity and the circumstances in which he was killed. I’ve had people swear to me that they also saw the clip, but the version they saw was quite a bit longer than the ~20-second clip everyone is aware of, and they describe some details that could well be useful in identifying him, but alas this alleged longer version seems to have vanished entirely, if it ever existed. The version we have is obviously heavily-edited, lots of quick cuts and time-jumps, so there is at least a version without all of that, somewhere.

Trust me when I say that I’ve looked into this issue on and off for the last 25 years, and I have heard many bullshit claims about who he is: they’re all wrong and provably so. I’ve watched hundreds (literally) of clips from that conflict that show barbarity of one degree or another, and in doing so I have identified the clips that specific reports and testimonies are alluding to when they claim to have identified the victim. None of them is our guy, it’s always some other video clip where some other Russian is knifed by a Chechen (there’re a lot of such clips).

There was a user on a gore forum who uploaded the Tukhchar massacre (safe click) video in full, and he claimed to have the full version of our mystery clip, but refused to post it and grew increasingly hostile the more people asked him for it, eventually taking his ball and going home by stating his intention to never post it because people were mean to him. He was obviously a bullshitter who had a few good uploads and decided to use that momentum to generate hype around this other ‘holy grail’ clip which he almost certainly did not have. Other than that one prick, nobody online has access to the full video or the identity of the man. At least, not on the English-speaking internet.

I’ve seen a lot of awful videos on the net, but there’s something about that one in particular that really energised me to find out who he is. I guess it being the first video of that kind I ever saw would probably have something to do with it, but it’s also just so fucking cold. You could sense the all-consuming hatred in the killers in the way they staged the scene and the matter-of-fact way they slaughtered him. Just pure inhumanity. There are “worse” videos, there are drug cartel videos that would make a Spanish Inquisitor lose his lunch, but man, that Russian dude is always lingering in my mind.

Did the Chinese state preapprove these titles?

No Devotion = No Sale

she is the pertiest rodent i ever sawed i very much like to feed her a cheese but one with rohypnol in it so she will stop singing her musics for an hour and give my head peace and quiet then afterwards i release her back into the field to rejoin her mouse family and her capybara husband

She’s said this every year for the last 3 years at least 😆

I recently made an Unpopular Opinion post about this (TL;DR I’m supportive of remakes/reboots if done with genuine passion for the material, just as I am with cover versions of songs or transplantations of stage plays to modern settings/Disney cartoons, etc.):

https://lemmy.world/post/35309322

The originals aren’t going anywhere (unless you’re George Lucas 😒), and there are new films coming out every week from all over the world, the reboots/remakes are like less than 1% of what gets released in any given year. Marketing and social media can make things seem bigger and more pervasive than they actually are. Having said that, I’d honestly be happier if the number was more like 5% (with the aforementioned caveats about passion, talent and quality).

But yeah, there are lots of remakes/reboots that are borne of pure cynicism and boardroom sociopathy. Fuck those. But they aren’t the only ones on offer. Baby/bathwater.

The Steam forums are the most repugnant and racist-filled psychotic right-wing shitholes I’ve ever encountered (and I once went to the Stormfront forums). Genuinely, Steam forums exhibit the most pure and concentrated anti-woke, “every single thought in my head was placed there by Ben Shapiro”, “blacks are the real racists”, x-phobic bigoted brain cancer on earth. I block them where I find them, report the ones that seem actionable, but it’s like trying to hold off a tidal wave with a tennis racket.

If the first person to write this headline had patented it back in the day, they’d be richer than 10 Jeff Bezoses by now.

Fuck clipping health insurance CEOs and college-touring bigots, these are the ones…

There’s a 100% correlation between a child coming into direct physical contact with their family doctor and that same child later being diagnosed with autism. Show me an example where this was not the case. Family doctors are sporing autismomes like a tickled mushroom and no one is talking about it.

Wait, we’re already at the Aktion T4 stage of the MAGAcaust?

Why would they not just stay on Twitter, Truth Social, reddit or Facebook? Those places are tailor-made for MAGA 🤔

We’re all (as political blocs) guilty of taking away people’s livelihoods for unacceptable speech. I don’t even mean dangerous speech, like vaccine disinfo, but people just being cunts and bigots. Pretending that we’re free speech paragons in the face of the Kirk nonsense is silly and just gives those cretins all the impetus they need to carry on with it.

Also, burn in hell Charlie Kirk.