Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, but the aphorism is not usually understood as it ought to be: how miraculous must be this eye of the beholder, to serve as source for all the beauty in the universe! Beauty is not a physical phenomenon. No "beauty particle" flies through space to strike the retina. A goldfish or a GoPro could look up at the stars, process the visual image just as well as we, and yet remain unmoved by the sight. Only human beings wonder what they are -- and that wonder is such a deep part of our nature that our youngest children sing about it in nursery rhymes. Immeasurably tiny as we are beneath the cosmos, we have the ultimate power over it, that of appreciation. The laws of physics wrought the stars as blind, dead things hanging in emptiness; it is only in our eyes that they become sublime.
And it gets better. We are not merely beholders of stars. When we turn to behold each other, then the magic really begins. Every single human being has their own vision of the universe reflected in their eyes. We all see the same universe, but we all see it differently. Seven billion universes, each one similar enough to our own that communication is possible between them, but utterly unique in its majesty. As if one cosmos were not vast enough to give us endless marvels, we will never run out of new ones to explore. With friends!
We have got to be the luckiest damn creatures in existence.
So don't waste these opportunities. Don't waste this power of appreciation. If you don't see the beauty in stars and rocks and beetles and humans, then nothing else in the universe will.
Don't be so proud as to think that you have nothing to gain from listening to other perspectives. You're missing out on entire universes. And the craziest ones are often the most fascinating.
And don't be so humble as to think that you have nothing to offer others in your perspective. You, too, contain an entire universe, and nobody else can see it unless you let them.
- bLatch
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Member for 17 years, 3 months, and 5 days
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Blinking Spirit posted a message on Independent Presidential Candidate Evan McMullinPosted in: Debate -
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Mockingbird posted a message on Gary JohnsonPosted in: DebateQuote from Highroller »
The two party "lock" exists because people aren't voting for anyone else, bLatch.Quote from bLatch »
The two party lock has never been more obvious,
You're putting the cart before the horse. A good chunk of the reason no one votes for 3rd Party candidates is because of the stigma label "3rd Party." Many people don't ever go past that phrase to even learn about platforms or candidates. The only time they even really come up is when a high profile positions (namely the presidency) has only unpopular people running for it. That's not "no one votes for them;" that's "no one knows they even exist." -
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Ljoss posted a message on Gary JohnsonPosted in: DebateQuote from Highroller »
However, you do not understand why we disagree.Quote from Ljoss »
Yeah, I get it, we disagree.
Or reality.Quote from Tiax »
There are many such scenarios, but they all start with a third party adopting a platform which is not comically out of touch with Americans.
The two party "lock" exists because people aren't voting for anyone else, bLatch.Quote from bLatch »
The two party lock has never been more obvious,
So again, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld both served as Republican governors of Democratic states, are on the ballot in all 50 states and currently carry 10%+ of the vote with very limited media exposure and without the kinds of resources that the big parties have developed over more than a century of exploitation against the people of this country. To suggest that they are comically out of touch with the American people is... comically out of touch. -
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Highroller posted a message on Donald Trump's PresidencyPosted in: Debate
Yeah, so do I. Hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised, but it's looking like Trump will steamroll the competition.Quote from Glamdring804 »I doubt it will accomplish anything significant.
Oh well. Maybe Hillary Clinton's presidency won't be so bad. -
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Blinking Spirit posted a message on Donald Trump's PresidencyPosted in: Debate
Isn't she innocent until proven guilty as well? If you don't want us calling Lewandowski a batterer, don't call Fields a confabulator. Or does that principle only apply to people on your side?Quote from HolyJello »The current guilty until proven innocent onslaught against Trump, in r/t Corey Lewandowski and the confabulating reporter...
When I compare this election cycle to the 1932 Weimar Republic you complain that you weren't alive back then and can't be bothered to read about it, but now you compare the presidential candidacy of a rich and powerful man to the Salem Witch Trials? What, were you alive in 1692 and then un-born for a few centuries? Or maybe you have a time machine with spotty coverage? Tell me one thing about the Salem Witch Trials to convince me you have a functional knowledge of them.Quote from HolyJello »...very much reminds me of the Salem Witch Trials.
Do you not see the specific narrative you are creating here? How politically expedient it is for Trump to be able to dismiss all criticism as part of a media conspiracy against him?Quote from HolyJello »Obviously it is politically expedient to create a specific narrative instead of discussing Hillary's criminal activities or Cruz's inability to more closely compete with Trump. -
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Blinking Spirit posted a message on Caitlyn Jenner no longer super-awesome transgender spokeswoman of the world.Posted in: Talk and Entertainment
You're right, it's totally unfair that access to space is limited to the super-rich and government-handpicked so-called "astronauts".Quote from FourDogsInAHorseSuit »Voting, marriage, access to space. -
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Tiax posted a message on Donald Trump's PresidencyPosted in: DebateQuote from DJK3654 »
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE AMENDMENTS.
Unless you want to get rid of all of them, you think there has been improvements.
Well, except for that one we had to mulligan on. -
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Highroller posted a message on Donald Trump's PresidencyCNN Iowa Caucus projections are out.Posted in: Debate
It basically shows Cruz, Trump, and Rubio as the contenders, with Carson being the only other candidate with any significant amount of votes.
So sort of what you'd expect. But hopefully this leads to an exodus of candidates so we can get the field narrowed down.
Hopefully Rubio gains more support after this, because honestly, all he has to be is a better, saner option than Cruz and Trump, and that's a bar set so low it's underground. -
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Highroller posted a message on So, CO Planned Parenthood attackPosted in: Debate
I mean, I made the same assumption when I first heard about the incident. But that's just it: it was an assumption. We didn't know anything about the guy's motive. He could have shot the place up because he had a personal vendetta against someone who worked there. He could have had other reasons. We didn't know.Quote from hyalapterouslemur »
So, you don't think someone targeting Planned Parenthood did so because abortion?
Yes, reference an article posted after I posted my response to invalidate my saying that we didn't know enough about the guy's motivations, then act like this somehow reflects negatively on my intelligence. You do know how time works, right?And talking about baby parts? Well, golly gee, maybe he wasn't a terrorist at all. And maybe two and two make (3+i)/0 - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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VERY unlikely. Shock+Fetch turns standard into "the 60 best cards, colors be damned", and makes a very boring standard.
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https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/985736004911771648
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Reminds me of a joke:
What do you call a drop of wine in a barrel of raw sewage? Raw Sewage.
What do you call a drop of raw sewage in a barrel of wine? Raw Sewage.
Even an infinitesimal amount of nastiness can be sufficient to ruin an entire lot. If the "isolated incidents"* in magic were lower publicity, it might be fair to argue that Magic Community isn't toxic. But, at least in this case, they aren't they are high publicity. While there are a lot of small welcoming communities of Magic, probably more than aren't welcoming, the problem of publicity ruins many women's desire to go in the first place. So they never discover the communities that are welcoming.
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Can you "call" something that has already been officially announced and confirmed for a while now?
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That's not going to slot into anything. /me immediately slots this into literally every blue deck he owns.
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