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@doctorow the article I read about this stated that taxes were less for the vast majority of tax players, but the withholding calculation changed, so that someone may have taken home more money every month, but they end up having to write a check to pay for their lower tax bill.

People are just bad at math.

I think people would vote for different tax policy if they were good at math, but also if there was no withholding. These folks, it seems, are keeping more of their money, but dislike that they are more aware of the portion they have to pay to Washington.

SecondJon boosted

@masterofthetiger@theres.life I think it can really vary. One complexity is that we're in relationship with the Church and with God, so there's things we do as a community. When we join into a family, whether through birth or adoption, there's rituals there - we give names, we celebrate. The Christian equivalent is a baptism, right? I daily have dinner with my family, the equivalent is the Lord's supper?

As part of the body of Christ, not just an individual with an individual relationship with God, many rituals are fitting into the way _WE_ do things, rather than just how _I_ do things.

Being a dad has changed my view on this too, I think.

I'm not sure how my kids could say they're in a relationship with me if don't have a pattern of doing certain things together; story time and prayer time at night, dinner together as a family, pancake Sundays.

As Christians, with God communicating himself as our Father, we're part of one family, certainly our rituals have individual qualities, but are also based on the family traditions.

@masterofthetiger@theres.life
I grew up in the context of rejecting "ritual" which often meant refusing to acknowledge that we had our own rituals.

As I've engaged more in the Anglican tradition, I've grown to appreciate that the historical rituals are packed with meaning and purpose, whereas the less historical tradition in which I was raised had patterns (rituals) but it was with less significance and meaning.

I look at relationships differently now. Eating together as a family is a ritual we have that builds the relationships - avoiding the ritual in favor of the relationship doesn't make sense. If the relational meaning was lost the goal would be to restore that to the ritual rather than ditch eating together, unless we replaced that with a new pattern (ritual).

SecondJon boosted

@masterofthetiger@theres.life I've grown to increasingly appreciate rituals. Rituals are an essential part of life and relationships. Without rituals, people talk about interacting with their spouse like ships passing in the night. It's not a positive commentary. The way we sleep, how we eat together, the way we end our phone calls, all of these are rituals.

Certainly rituals can continue between two people who one day look at each other and don't recognize the other person anymore. Equally so, without some rituals at some level of formality, there's not much of a relationship worth salvaging, because relationships are expressed through ritual.

My concern is throwing out the expression of relationship (ritual) in favor of relationship because there are some who lean on ritual without a relationship behind it.

@jacknationalist@social.quodverum.com I boosted though I do recognize that the US government and state governments do assist financially with foster care and domestic adoption. Yet it's taking/preventing the children's lives that is the unifying political position on the left.

SecondJon boosted

I love all cultures, white culture, dutch culture, french culture, vietnamese culture, indian culture, any culture you can imagine. I find them all so rich with lessons to learn from, delicious food to try, unique ways of looking at the world and morality.

It is why there is nothing that will send me running from a person faster than to hear them be hateful towards any culture. Those people have issues and while I hope one day they grow past them I dont need that shit in my life.

SecondJon boosted
SecondJon boosted

No evidence, but AP claims an answer to - no photos allowed, no sources are cited, but evidently she attended a hagiography of herself yesterday.

apnews.com/b94fea4b4a2a408fabc

SecondJon boosted

Suggestion: Bring back Homestar Runner to the top of the internet comedy world.

SecondJon boosted
SecondJon boosted
SecondJon boosted

The ability to research family history and disease risk shouldn’t carry the risk that our data will be accessible to police and used in ways we never could have foreseen. At a minimum, law enforcement should have to get a warrant to access this data. eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/dist

SecondJon boosted
i am all in favor of punching nazis, i just don't think that a boring conservative little jewish man like ben shapiro is a nazi. does this make me alt right?
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