Yeah, I get paid 1/10th of that and I could do a lot better - and I used to - but I work for a nonprofit I care about. Greed is a hell of a drug.

The author should have quit long ago. Many employees are complicit.

As someone who has done a bunch of phone repairs with the help of YouTube, assembly isn’t that hard. If they don’t want to assemble them here, it’s completely about profit margins. We should be taking steps to reduce that profit margin. Tax the rich and all that.

I will take your windows 10 PC and give you a keychain made of DDR2 RAM in trade.

I did the cigar thing for about a year. After that I went to a pack of cigarettes a month. About a year of that and I finally quit. I smoked for about fifteen years but I haven’t smoked tobacco in over fifteen years.

I did that once.

I honestly have no idea why anyone who cares even 1% about their privacy would have ever bought one of these abominations in the first place. If I ever receive one as a gift I will burn it with fire.

I like to pick out my own produce, shop markdown items and sales, and I like getting out of the house. My regular store has a bar too. I never drink there, but there is usually some eye candy around. And for those who want to shop from their PC or phone, Kroger delivery is quicker where I’m at.

The car I drive was only $22k new and it’s able to drive moderate jeep trails and get me deep into the forest and up mountains on unmaintained roads/trails which when I’m not on a trip for work, that’s where I’m going. You can’t rent vehicles like that in my area. I have a Thule hard sided cargo carrier on the roof to hold the extra gear.

This is why there are no plans to try to sell something like this in the US. I drive three hours each way on day-trips fairly often, and a couple times a year I drive around 1000 miles per day for longer trips. Even people who live in cities with short commutes often want to travel to places several hours away pretty regularly. Here you can drive for hours and hours and hours and not even leave the state. It’s not like we can take a train either.

Do you suspect me of a crime? Am I being detained?

Bring an old point and shoot digital camera though. Pics and video might keep you from getting locked up.

There are a lot of gnostic writings but they don’t hold much value. They were essentially rejected when they were written. You did ask an interesting question though, why we aren’t born with knowledge of every language if God wanted to diverse languages.

I’ve read theology about this as well, and the answer that I’m hearing at the moment regarding that has to do with the speaking in tongues that was released at Pentecost. On that occasion, there were people from many other regions assembled in Jerusalem and when they began to speak in tongues, people from foreign lands heard their own native tongue spoken clearly. The way it’s described, it seems even the dialects were correct.

It’s not clear if that was a miracle of being able to speak in a language they didn’t understand, or if it was a miracle of understanding. But it does seem to be a reversal of the confusion that was caused by the multiple languages at the tower of Babel, yet retaining the diversity and also creating unity. The inferred implication is that the same kind of understanding will be available in eternity when all of the brokenness of this world is restored with a new heaven and new Earth.

The theological explanation I’ve been hearing recently for that is that God didn’t want humanity to be a monolithic entity, but rather to have many different flavors and cultures. Supporting evidence is that in Revelation there is reference to all of the nations and tribes on the Earth being represented in heaven. Meaning that those cultures are retained, minus the worst parts of them. It’s actually a great argument for intentional diversity and allowing people groups to maintain their uniqueness rather than assimilate into a global conglomerate.

It’s true in many ways. If I buy McDonald’s without the app I pay more for it. If I fill up my gas tank without an app like upside, I pay more for it. There are services that aren’t even available to people without modern phones (I refuse to call them smart phones). Maybe we need legislation to ensure all available discounts, services and benefits are available to customers equally regardless of how they engage services.