I’m not a Jew but a few I know who are non-religious told me it is the basis of their cultural and family identity. There are blurry lines around religion, philosophy, and identity. And not just with Jews. There are quite a few Buddhists who practice it as a philosophy but no a religion, and countless other examples.

There’s a guy on YouTube (Esoterica channel) who is a post-theist Jew who (occasionally) talks about this. He observes Jewish traditions and so forth, but he doesn’t think God is real, etc. Fascinating channel BTW.

Anyway, I understand your confusion and I hope this doesn’t sound condescending, I don’t mean to be. I think you’re overthinking it a little bit. I was in the same place years ago.

Hopefully a Jewish person answers you and explains it better than I did.

To give a super silly and reductive example: imagine you belong to a Star Wars fan club that you LOVE being a part of. Some of the members think the Force is real but you do not.

Sorry, my reading comprehension took a little vacation there!

Some cities have gaming stores with active groups and tournaments and learn-to-play events. Public libraries often have a calendar of community events. Restaurants sometimes have them, too. Community theater. Bridge clubs. Churches often have secular events like concerts, games, fairs, book clubs, etc. Maker spaces. Community college adult education. Hobby classes like woodworking and pottery.

Project 2025. They exposed their plan and now thry will implement it, and nithing can stop them.

I believe age and exercise are two important factors here. Older people tend to function okay on less sleep. Regular exercise helps with both regular sleep and sleep schedule adjustments. If you can, try to put in more exercise for a few days after the switch. Hopefully it helps.

BGE soundtrack is so good.

When the weather is nice like it is this year, we put a table and chairs out on our driveway and decorate it. We sit there and have a drink and pass out candy. It’s more fun than answering the door, and we end up chatting with neighbors and parents. Our next door neighbors did the same thing as us this year, and it was even more fun, as they were right next to us hanging out.

I encourage aggressive blocking. Without it, the assholes drive the decent people away over time.

I’d be fine without voting, too. I am glad they at least got rid of karma.

Finished Lawrence Block’s Evan Tanner series, and am now on the 2nd book of his Matthew Scudder series. The Scudder books will be a re-read for me up until about book 4 or 5. I hope to finish them all this time around.

The density of nerve endings varies. Women tend to have more in their fingers than men. Also, skin can vary a lot. Some people have thick tough skin, some have thin delicate skin. This can also vary in the same person on different parts of their body.

Orbital mechanics makes launching stuff at the sun extremely difficult.

The earth has a gigantic a molten layer under our feet, and we couldn’t even dump it down there. Too expensive and difficult.

Long term, my guess is engineered super bacteria and/or robotics may clean up the trash in the future, if we don’t extinct ourselves first.

The Facebook bots are probably trying to make every lesser site feel bad about itself by comparing them to the much cooler and popular sites.

Suckers. People point and laugh at me for free.

Pedro. Duh.

I checked my “content library” and I still have the option to download. Which is good, as I back everything up in Calibre. Maybe there are some regional factors here, or it may depend on which Kindle device(s) you own?

I feel like the NFL is maybe leaving money on the table here, and is too greedy and out of touch to even see it. I could be wrong, but I bet if they charged, say, $5 to watch any out-of-market game the customer wants, they would make a killing.

Instead, they charge like $400 or something for all of the out-of-market games. Most people aren’t going to pay that much. Especially if they only care about one team that’s out of their area.

Thank you for the update! I would like to keep using it. I’ve been very happy with Bitwarden both as a password manager and a TOTP authenticator. I have even recommended it to my boss as an enterprise solution for us to use at work, and so far we are planning on replacing our current password database solution with Bitwarden.

Unfortunately, with “enshittification” being so common these days, it was very easy to believe they were also going to the dark side. I will remain cautiously optimistic after learning it was a packaging bug.

Here’s a link to the post on X (yes, I hate X, too) in case anyone else is doubtful:

https://x.com/Bitwarden/status/1848135725663076446

Yup, thanks. Was thinking along these same lines.

Goddammit. It’s getting to the point I’m going to have to figure out how to write my own app for this.

“What is that? An umbrella? Are you afraid of a little rain? Are you gay? What’s the umbrella for, so you can stick it up your ass?”

I’m ripping off Bill Burr here. Macho men are drooling morons who die at age 54. Why ask them their opinion on anything?