You are using "believed" - past tense.
Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right.
The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.
Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right.
The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.
Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.
Don't be so sure.
Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.
The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics.
Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?
For example
if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic.
if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance.
of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake
Dave Allen's great joke about the relics concerns a doubter pressing on why there were two skulls of different sizes attributed to Saint Placeholder.
The answer was straightforward enough;
this one is his skull taken from his concecrated tomb in the Abbey of Overthere,
and this was his skull from when he was a child.
https://ru-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0...
For more modern miracles and relics the church does have a tight grip, and famously one pope threw a whole bag of Christ teeth in the Tiber river, but many older things have been "grandfathered".
We should ban advertisements of religions. If their gods are so powerful then they shouldn't need advertising. And if you are a believer AND god turns out to be real then banning advertising could lead to the return of Jesus. Win win.
I can't follow you here. Relics only have a meaning when you already believe them to be relics and no just random bones. How is that advertising?
Actually, maybe that's a stupid question as people absolutely do both. But there is an element of "look how great we are because we have a splinter from the holy cross in our church".
I have long believed that being religious primes people to also lose the ability to think critically in other areas of their lives.
"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
They are just so caught up in their culture war that they believe that shouldering such a burden, at least for a time, is worth it for all of the "positives" of the regime - especially the part where people they don't like are suffering.
That's why trying to argue over tariffs is useless - not because they don't believe, but because that's not their underlying motivation. In fact, they would prefer to talk about tariffs, because they have a set of well-rehearsed talking points for arguing against that.
It's better to figure out what they actually care about, as well as their motivations for why.
But if you do believe hard enough, if you give it your all and exclude anything else than your believes, when you become one with it - then you can certainly increase the collision speed quite a bit! :-)
I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships.
Stop contributing to the problem.
I have an uncle that I've always been fond of who recently has spouted some mind-bending support of the current administration, and it was like talking to someone who lives in another dimension. My Dad too was indoctrinated by Fox News (because he was spending a lot of time with my grandparents) and some of his political views are irreconcilable with the man I knew growing up.
???
Yes, this is what we call a "post truth era", for anyone who may still think this is some fringe conspiracy.
From an overall economic policy standpoint, missing facts that provide context are pretty important especially when you're trying to paint an entire side of the isle as completely brainwashed. Nobody can have a conversation when we create straw men to argue with.
Other relevant context:
- The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts.
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lo...
- US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-g...
Q4 forecast https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
- US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.
https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-r...
- US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e...
- The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
- And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:t...
There's a lot of economic doom and gloom in the comments section here that's simply not reflected in the overall economic numbers. It's not perfect, but it's trending in the right direction.
Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.
> US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.
I can find no mention of Q4 gdp results in your linked source, it appears to be looking at annual gdp rates over years and focusing on the US compared to China and India
> US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.
Still above the feds target of 2% but it’s good to see it still trending down
> US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.
It’s winter, prices for gas always drop in winter. Your own source shows that we’re still above pre COVID prices
> The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.
I’m not sure if I’m reading your source correctly but it appears to be saying eggs are $0.45/ dozen
That seems implausibly low but I can’t find other sources to compare as every source I’m finding has conflicting information internally, and the price given doesn’t match up with the lowest prices even if I multiply it by 12 assuming I misunderstood price per dozen for price per egg
> And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.
Yea but over half of that is mag7 and only propped up by the AI bubble. It’s nice temporarily but all the context around the stock market doesn’t make it look particularly healthy atm.
The economy looks about as healthy as it did in 2024. I think a lot of people’s views on the health of the economy, whether it’s good or bad, are being more influenced by political leanings than by numbers. Fits with the zeitgeist of the era.
> Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.
When would increased exports not be a good thing for any country? The tariff conversation was interesting for me in particular as more of an ideological free trade advocate because I didn't realize just how heavily other countries were applying tariffs goods from the US in some cases. The admin initially stated they were going to apply reciprocal tariff's but those numbers never fully lined up.
Anytime you can create an incentive to on-shore production, it's typically good for the country based on jobs, domestic production, supply chains following production, domestic industrial education and training, etc.
I never spent too much time thinking about it, but as a negotiation point the US is the worlds biggest importer. That does mean that cheap access to the US market is a valuable tool in those conversations.
Don’t compare apples to tennis balls.
And in regards to the trade deficit, everytime I look at it the numbers it only includes physical products and not services. We’re a heavily service based economy since producing a Facebook is several steps down the tech tree from producing screws.
So again I will ask why a trade deficit on products is bad. We’re just buying shit from less complex economies or ones where the comparative advantage of trade works out. We’re not getting ripped off.
The absence of capital controls is a political choice that people appear to believe is just a law of the world.
If there were capital controls then local manufacturing makes more sense.
It would kill the US stock market so it's unlikely to happen, but personally I don't see how unrestricted capital and restricted labour is anything but a recipe for disaster (the consequences of which we've seen in the US and Europe since the financial crisis).
Totally. The two things are actually quite different. You (US & industrialised countries) removed capital controls and the cost of transport dropped by a lot (shipping containers etc) which meant that it became more profitable to make things in much cheaper countries and so the businesses did that, and now you're/we're screwed.
Reintroduce capital controls and only trade with people with comparable labour rights and wage levels, and this problem goes away. But ultimately, this change was driven by western economic interests, not China/other countries.
That being said, China played this hand very well (from a manufacturing/export perspective) but they didn't cause this. The US & European businesses did, because they could make more money/pollute with less issues this way.
Please provide this fact also.
Because of the missing data from the shutdown, most financial people are putting the last inflation print closer to 3% which means it's continuing to rise.
Bringing up Biden is funny since that's so far in the rear view at this point. You going to also talk about how much stimulus Trump dropped into the economy during COVID? Regardless, Biden was POTUS when inflation spiked and was killed almost as fast as it went up. It was on a nice glide path back to target until Trump through a tariff grenade into the mix.