So i (m20) have read Water Music twice and it is simply the craziest thing i have ever read. The Ideas and the language are sp extreme unique that i still haven't quite "recovered" from reading it the first time.

Budding Prospects i loved because of the quirky Charakters, the uncool Protagonist that acts like he doesn't gives a shit about anything but does and also the story.

I also am a huge fan of Bukowski, but i feel like many people try to imitate his style, but no one really gets it quite right. Any recommendations for books like Bukowski short stories?

Thank you

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"Well, I must admit Sir Vency, you work fast and well. I won't lie to you, there are a few areas where there could be some improvement, some of the outer shell looks a bit rough, but it is very good otherwise," Master Vunasa states as he reviewed her work for James's experiment.

"That's because it's not quite done yet, but it was close enough to show you my progress," Vency replied as she patiently stood back as James and Master Vunasa inspected things.

"Ah, that is fair enough then, we weren't exactly expecting it to be ready today. What do you think James?" Master Vunasa asked him.

"Yeah, looks good," he answered. “Some of it looks great even! I have no idea how you got things as precise as you have, this is some machine level accuracy.”

“Oh, I was just persistent with it, not stopping until it was right,” she replied.

"This level of precision at this speed… it’s very impressive and I have no idea how you did it. This level of craftsmanship is honestly quite amazing considering no spells were used,” he continued. “All that I can say with regards to what’s left is polish up the outer shell, finish on the wire that's mostly done, make the copper brushes, and I think the machine will be done from the Dragon Forge's perspective. All that's maybe left will be to magnetise the iron and make wires to connect things, but I've managed to salvage enough from some of my old electronics that we can make more of and use for what we need. Good for general use, but not quite what is needed for the core of the generator."

"And I just need that coating from you James, the one to stop the short circuits," Vency reminded him.

"Yep, I have it ready back at the Well. Once the wire is done, we can apply it and coil it all up," James replied.

"Well then, you may want to bring it tomorrow. At the rate things have been going, it will be done this afternoon barring any issues," she warned him, casting

I'll be posting one update a day until HFY is caught up! In case you missed the previous topic:

Link to Chapter 84 (Part 1)

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A haunting, soulful melody echoed throughout the theater as Zamira reached the end of her song’s final chorus. Riardin’s Rangers stayed perfectly still and quiet, absorbing the experience in full until she’d finished singing the very last verse. As the remnants of Zamira’s voice faded into silence, swallowed up by the depths of the Party’s admiration, Rob found himself at a loss for words. He’d never had an issue with his own voice, but he felt that if he spoke now, his diction would sound like the mumblings of a drunken frat boy in comparison. Zamira’s performance was the most beautiful thing he’d heard in a long time, and like the rest of the Party currently sitting in the theater’s front row, he wanted to savor the afterglow and commit as much of it to memory as possible.

Unfortunately, from Zamira’s perspective, she’d sung her heart out and now her friends were staring at her without saying anything. Consternation crept into her demeanor as she tried and mostly succeeded to keep her composure. “Did I perform well?” She asked, her tone wary with a hint of dread.

The Party stood up in unison, clapping and cheering as they sang her praises. Zamira’s eyes widened, her mortification swept aside in an instant. A budding smile warred with pleased embarrassment on her face as if she were a kid at her first club recital. Rob knew that the Party would have clapped regardless of how well she’d done – and on a certain level, so did Zamira – but luckily, she’d knocked it out of the park. They didn’t have to fake a single iota of their applause.

And moreso than being treated to great music in a world where that was depressingly difficult to come by, Rob was overjoyed that Zamira’s hobby was being given the positive reinforcement it deserved by her friends. Riardin’s Rangers got along well with each other, but most of that was a result of trauma bonding rather than sharing mutual interests; partially because most of them barely had interests outside of growing stronger and surviving the next day. Rob wanted their friendships to mean more than that, and he wanted them to have something to live for once the fighting was over. When the dust cleared and the last of their enemies had been put ten feet under, they were going to need hobbie

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

Josephus is typically seen as having referenced Jesus of Nazareth twice in his book Antiquities (93/94 C.E.). While the reference to Jesus in Antiquities 18 as we have it now has probably been doctored by a later Christian scribe in a couple or a few areas, most of the passage as we have preserved now is authentic, according to most critical scholars (though the tone of the passage has been debated upon). Paula Fredriksen for example says in her book Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews (1999):

>"Most scholars currently incline to see the passage as basically authentic, with a few later insertions by a Christian scribe."

Likewise, Fredriksen reverberates something similar about the state of scholarship in her 2018 book, where she assumes that most take the TF (the Testimonium Flavianum) as authentic in it's core:

>"... most (though not all) scholars assume that Josephus’ originally brief notice on Jesus has been partially rewritten by later Christian scribes."

(Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation, Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 80-81)

Bart Ehrman likewise says in his book Did Jesus Exist? (HarperCollins, 2012):

>The big question is whether a Christian scribe (or scribes) simply added a few choice Christian additions to the passage or whether the entire thing was produced by a Christian and inserted in an appropriate place in Josephus’s Antiquities. The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that it was the former—that one or more Christian scribes “touched up” the passage a bit (pp. 49, emphasis mine).

Regarding the reference to Jesus in book 20, Alice Whealey writes,

>". . . Josephus’s passage about James the brother of Jesus (Ant. 20.200), the authenticity of which is in any case accepted by most contemporary scholars . . ."

(Alice Whealey, "The Testimonium Flavianum" in A Companion to Josephus, Honora Howell Chapman; Zuleika Rodgers, Wiley Blackwell, 2016, pp. 353).

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Josephus on John the Baptist

We begin with the paragraph relating to John the Baptist:

>*But to some of the Jews the destruction of herod’s army seemed to be divine vengeance, and certainly a just vengeance, for his treatment of John, surnamed the Baptist. For herod had put him to d

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Edit: Some of y'all made good suggestions in the comments so I've updated the list accordingly.

Alright, this is a long one. This post is a result of both lockdown and AFL-offseason boredom. I'm quite obsessed with both sports and see quite a lot of similarities between teams in each, so I decided to actually take the time to draw comparisons. This is also the kind of thing I wished existed when I first started following the NFL, so hopefully if there's anyone interested in following the NFL, this is for you. You can either continue the joy/misery with selecting a similar team, or admit your jealousy of another team and choose their NFL-doppelganger.

I've mainly drawn these comparisons based on recent form, finals/premiership success, age demographic, and future prospects, but I've also mildly incorporated various characteristics including culture, fan perception, and team history. To the best of my ability, I've tried to focus on just the last 20 years. I've also done my best to list one main doppelganger unique to each AFL team, while including a few others that also fit fairly well. Each NFL team is also represented at least once. This is by no means perfect or objective, at the end of the day it's mainly my gut feel and looking at stats/results.

Throughout this post I'll use AFL and NFL terminology interchangably. I'll do my best to use AFL terminology as much as possible as it's what will be understood best in this subreddit, but be aware that both terminologies are applied to both leagues. Here are the main examples:

• Finals = Playoffs
• Grand Final = Superbowl
• Premiership = Championship
• Hawthorn Hawks = New England Patriots

Without further ado, lets get into the table first, and then I'll break down each team and why I've made my choices.

Disclaimer: I'm going to pre-emptively apologise to anyone who is offended by the slightly mean things I've written about certain teams, particularly Carlton, Essendon, and St Kilda. I promise this is all in good fun, I'm not trying to generate hate for anyone, just a bit of a laugh.

Doing some related research to a topic led me to a recently published article in “Capitalism Nature Socialism”, titled "Anti-Communism and the Hundreds of Millions of Victims of Capitalism" by Saed or I think Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro. This article basically argues about Capitalism and war being linked with the former causing the later and tallying up the ensuing deaths. Mauro is the editor-in-chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism, an associate professor with a PhD in the field of geography.

I wasn’t sure if this was a really good troll or an actual legitimate Ecosocialist because this was such a garbage piece that, if earnest, really emphasizes the brainrot of “Ecosocialists” in academia.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not some staunch defender of Capitalism itself, it has a history of serious failures and abuses, that is true. But I believe that arguments against it that follows are pretty poor.

So; the first paragraph is an interesting strawman, Saed claims that the main source of criticism of Communism comes from:

>“the simultaneously fictitious and slanderous claim that communism caused 100 million victims… through a propaganda volume titled The Black Book of Communism”

This is not a very good book afaik, but where is the book discussed besides reddit and twitter posts? Saed doesn’t source any political or even media figure that uses the book.

>It suits a more recent China-bashing campaign, where the Communist Party of China is purposefully conflated with communism.

I don’t understand why socialists need to die on the hill regarding China. China describes itself as a Communist nation, while it features elements of Capitalism, it’s govt stated goal is to create a communist state. The deviations come in when discussing whether it's “real socialism/communism” because everyone is going to have their own shitty definition from being “Market Socialist” to “Marxist Leninist” or “State Capitalism” to even considered partially “Neoliberal” by the Nation in:

>internal training courses show that the CCP presents itself as a neoliberal-inspired managerial structure, aiming at efficient management of the population and the economy.

What is true today though is the state pursuing wealthy business owners and crackdowns on various for-profit institutions in the, at least superficially, [goal of pursuing a socialist

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

I won't be doing that today!

Previous | Royal Road (up to chapter 21!) | Next | FIRST

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Dismissing his status menu, Brock watched on in silence as the remaining streams of energy slowly left his body, obscuring parts of it in a crimson mist that reeked of power. Disbelieving, he searched every part of his 'Inner Self’ before stopping as he came to the heart of dim energy nestled beside its physical counterpart. What the?

A small aura of red enveloped it, appearing weak and feeble to Brock as it sluggishly pulsated, just trying its best to keep itself alive. The core of energy that it surrounded was blackened and hollow, as though it was denied the very blood that gave it purpose.

Mentally, Brock attempted to prod it to wakefulness, to rouse the dormant power he so very clearly felt it capable of, yet it was with shock that he realized it wasn't asleep, or dying, or evening weakened. It was restrained. Ethereal, almost invisible, chains rippled in response to his continued attempts, their empty forms speaking of an unperceivable truth, one of gluttony and absorption.

It reminded Brock heavily of the echoes he saw in the Beyond.

He simply watched his second heart for a while as the truth of the matter began to dawn on him. Frowning, he reopened his status menu to check one last thing.

Status.

Brock Carter.
Race: Human [F] LVL 1
Ascendancy: SEALED [F]
Level: 1

[Stats]

[+5%] - Strength: 26.25
[+5%] - Agility: 24.15
[+5%] - Dexterity: 24.15
[+5%] - Constitution: 27.3
[+5%] - Vitality: 28.35
[+5%] - Intelligence: 33.6
[+5%] - Wisdom: 30.45

[Titles] - At The Precipice, Agent of Chaos, Blessed, Destined for Greatness, Underdog, Hidden Fangs, Leader of the Pack, Login Bonus.

Free Stats: N/A
Shards: N/A
SEALED: N/A

His eyes were immediately drawn to the capitalized ‘SEALED’ in bold next to his Ascendancy. It didn’t take much piecing together for Brock to gather that the heart at the centre of his pathways was really his Ascendancy, the core of his power, if he guessed correctly. The chains were obviously the literal result of it being stated as sealed. He had no idea why the ot

[Removed]

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

When I got home, they were still there.