Oh, you’re a devil’s advocate? Let’s hear your argument against Pope Francis’ canonisation of
Francis-Xavier de Montmorency-Laval.
More you might like
@actualrealexplode7 replied:
what?
Up until 1983, the “Devil’s advocate” was an official role within the Catholic Church, whose job was to argue against the canonisation of saints. That’s where the term comes from. The joke is the idea of gatekeeping people who claim to be “just playing devil’s advocate” by demanding that they present an on-the-spot argument against a randomly chosen canonisation.
@siliquasquama replied:
I’m kind of bummed that they got rid of the actual position
Blame John Paul II. He was a big fan of canonisation – more saints were canonised during his pontificate than during the Church’s entire history prior to his tenure as Pope – and he didn’t feel like going to the trouble of formally justifying each one, so he just abolished the process entirely.
What
The pope can just do that? Changing the process I suppose makes sense, but adding more saints than the entire church’s history prior to that point seems like something there should be limits on.
You should read up on the history of the Papacy some time. Papal shenanigans are like an entire genre of historical literature.
I think the reason the 2000 Grinch adaptation works so well in gifsets is exactly the same reason it doesn’t work well as a movie. Like, yes, taken by itself, watching Carrey’s Grinch spend an entire scene rattling on about his unexamined self-loathing in increasingly implausible detail is funny as hell, but the problem is that the film’s tone never really varies all that much from that baseline. It’s just 105 uninterrupted minutes of pointlessly belligerent joylessness – which, to be fair, is a reasonably accurate reflection of what Christmas means to a lot of folks, but that doesn’t actually make it fun to watch.
@hypdadaist replied:
Sorry OP, but you’re wrong.
Thesis: people who enjoy the 2000 Grinch adaptation enjoy it principally in the same way that the Grinch himself would enjoy it – i.e., as an exercise in masochism relieved by the knowledge that it’s hurting other people even more than it’s hurting you.
@alabastermenagerie replied:
Not sure how the 2000 Grinch is joyless because watching a manchild completely ruin the pompous and artificial side of christmas is deeply satisfying
Well, yeah, but that’s part of the problem. The film’s understanding of Christmas is characterised by bone-deep cynicism, but it doesn’t actually have any answers to the criticisms it’s posing. We’re just watching a guy running around replacing one form of artificial misery with a different form of artificial misery that he finds more aesthetically appealing.
Basically, I think life-sim RPGs that span multiple years of in game time should have older protagonists for plausibility reasons. If you’re in your thirties, looking exactly the same after four or five years isn’t especially remarkable, but if you’re asking me to believe that the protagonist looks exactly the same at age twenty as she did at age fourteen, I can only suspend my disbelief so far!
It really entertains me watching all these people who’ve come to my blog via vent posts I’ve written about leftist shenanigans, assuming that I’m some sort of crypto-fascist and insisting that those anecdotes must be made up because no real person could possibly have their head that far up their own arse.
Like, buddy, in terms of my actual political beliefs I’m about two hairs shy of being a full-on anarchocommunist. And I’m actually kind of curious where y’all are living, because if there’s a world out there where the political left isn’t rife with crypto-authoritarian dimwits with a worrying enthusiasm for discussing what things – and what people – will have to be Sacrificed For The Cause™, I want to live there too!
I have had long conversations with people who think we should stop medicating mental illnesses because palliating the symptoms of a diseased society is counterrevolutionary.
Just the other day I had the privilege of hearing from a dude whose big, world-saving plan was to abolish all remote and rural communities in order to make it easier to plan bus routes.
And don’t even get me started on the fucking Leninists – you do realise you’re claiming the Holodomor never happened in front of a guy who lost half his family tree to it, right?
Does it seem like it comes up rather a lot? Well, yeah – because this is the only community where I can vent about it and people will have the slightest clue what the fuck I’m talking about. Can you imagine trying to take this particular constellation of grievances to Facebook?
This is just me idly speculating here, but: do you suppose anyone’s ever made a serious attempt to challenge online terms of service agreements like Paypal’s on the grounds that it’s impossible in practice to know what the agreement’s actual terms are?
The trick works like this:
1. When you sign up, the initial terms of service that you must accept in order to complete your registration include a statement that continuing to make use of the service constitutes automatic agreement to any and all future iterations of those terms.
2. They reserve the right to alter their terms of service at any time, for any reason, without notice.
The intersection of 1 and 2 means that you can’t ever be certain what terms you’re actually operating under. Even if you go to the trouble of an exhaustive reading of the terms of service before initiating each individual transaction, you cannot rule out the possibility that the terms were revised without notice during the time it took you to read them.
Could somebody get up in front of a judge and argue with a straight face that they couldn’t reasonably be expected to stick to the terms of service because the service provider rendered it impossible for them to know what they were?
I just got my first inexplicably pissed off unfollow on Pillowfort. I guess it really is a viable Tumblr alternative!
@cincosechzehn replied:
You’re on pillowfort too? *follows!*
Yeah, this is still my primary blog, but I’m cross-posting most things (with the exception of Tumblr-specific content, like reblog responses) to Pillowfort for the benefit of mutuals who are jumping ship on the 17th. I’m not sure how long I’m going to keep it up – it really depends on whether Pillowfort gets their current spate of performance and UI issues sorted out in a timely fashion – but we’ll see how it goes! My username there’s the same as it is here.
I used to roll my eyes at those “tasty poison” memes, but then last week I bought this fancy pear-scented dish soap from the local farmers’ cooperative, only to discover that the smell makes me hungry every time I do the dishes. I’m talking to myself like “no, you stupid monkey, you literally just ate”, but the monkey brain is just “I SMELL THE FRUIT”.
Since it’s going around again, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that the following can both be true at the same time:
1. Content hosting platforms need to ask for a surprisingly broad range of rights and permissions regarding your work to do the things you want them to do. For example, without the right to distribute copies of your work, they wouldn’t be allowed to show that work to other people; without the right to create derivative works, they wouldn’t be allowed to display your art in multiple resolutions or produce thumbnails for your gallery; and so forth.
2. Nonetheless, the set of rights that content hosting platforms ask for in their terms of service is frequently over-broad for its purpose. Appending the proviso “for the purpose of operating this website” doesn’t narrow it down, because what actually constitutes the website’s operations is almost certainly not defined anywhere in those terms of service – the site’s owners could plausibly argue that just about anything qualifies.
Basically, the very same permissions that you have to grant a hosting provider for them to be allowed to host your content at all are more than sufficient for them to screw you over in a variety of exciting ways. The only “safe” terms of service is one that narrowly and explicitly enumerates the specific purposes for which each individual permission is being requested, and no hosting provider I’m aware of – even the ostensibly “good” ones – actually does this.
