A clear fishing wire is tied around the island of Manhattan | Hacker News Reader

A clear fishing wire is tied around the island of Manhattan

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27 pointsvinnyglennon21 comments

The biblical idea is that you're supposed to stay home. The first level of cheat was that multiple buildings surrounded by a wall could be defined as "home". The next cheat level was that the concept of "wall" was defined down. I'm surprised that some clever religious type hasn't figured out a cheat to define the whole planet as "home".

It's all kind of tacky, like kosher elevators and kosher light switches. You're supposed to suffer a little.

It’s much more complicated and interesting than this. Books have been written about it (eg. Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Legal Loopholes and Integrity by Elana Stein Hain). One of the ideas is that halachic loopholes are meant to be discovered. It’s also been compared metaphorically to the difference between tax evasion (impermissible) and tax avoidance (legal means to reduce our obligation created by the authority’s design) which is something we all do.

What is really incredible and worth dwelling on is how self-deception can be so clear and obvious to every person except the self. This, of course, applies to us all equally.

It honestly feels like a corollary to the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Your ability to morally justify a cheat to yourself is proportional to how badly you want to win.

Why bother 'cheating' at all? If you don't want to follow those precepts, then just don't.

Around Santa Monica too and into the ocean so that people of the Jewish faith can go to the beach and swim in the ocean on the sabbath.

I love that as part of their religion they think that they can trick their god. It just seems healthy to me, as an atheist.

It's not tricking, though. The rules come from holy texts, they're perfect, if you find what seems like a loophole then it must obviously be intended. It's blasphemous, even, to think that you understand what god means better than he did when he had the texts written.

Seems odd that his precepts would be satisfied by stringing a wire from some sticks, sure, but he's god, presumably he has his reasons.

That’s what surprises me. To truly believe and live your life by a set of rules, and then think you’ve hoodwinked the Creator. I’d like to know exactly how they expect their final judgement to go. There must be more going on in their thoughts than appears.

As others have pointed out, as long as they're inventing rules and then imagining technicalities to avoid rules, they should just tie a string around a stick and make everything outside the stick inside the eruv. It would make just as much sense.

Somebody at a fishing line company won salesman of the month.

Visible on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MvPQhHgjkKMJpPws5

Full line boundary on maps: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0...

original NPR article: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...

Why am I not surprised to find that this weird clickbait topic is tied to some nutjob religious idea?

Once you take the leap of believing there is some big invisible guy in outerspace, pretty much any belief is possible after that...

Same thing around the ex-island of Amsterdam: https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1K9JpabMj1Wgdjy6O41T...

Learned about that years ago when I ran into one of the maintainers on a walk. It's... not something I understand, but do respect, given that it's ancient history that is older than, well, most living people, and entirely well-intentioned and harmless to non-believers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch

Christians: the symbol of the fish represents Jesus

Jews: Hold my beer, guys. We need to do something.

For people without exposure to Hasidic Judaism, it's way more "deranged cult" and way less "Jewish people". I don't know any Jews who have anything good to say about them. Nor does anyone else for that matter.

You may argue I'm being antisemitic, but I'd counter that they don't get to hold a religion hostage so they can be totally off the wall insane.

I lived in a Hasidic neighborhood in Los Angeles and only have had good interactions with them. Always liked seeing their Hatzalah ambulance staged down the block.

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