Yeah lived in Appalachia, if you drove 1 or so hours out of the city, into the mountains you could find some wild shit.

I lived an hour away from a “church” that did shit like snake handling. They did not talk about their sect to strangers and were generally very wary of anyone not in their cult. Very strange people. Sorry you had to live through that.

A lot of this is because people had to do a lot more exercise during the day than we do now. Not that the lard was better for us. This is where a lot of the downvotes come from. Even the rich had to do a lot more walking. If we could return to the amount of exercise we averaged 50+ years ago, you would see a lot of this decline. The next big thing is the amount we eat. We consume significantly more calories now than we used to. In the past 100 years it has increased ~20%. All the while we have been doing less physically. The third big factor is where the shitty food comes in. Having sugar/highly refined carbs added to just about everything promotes over-eating, while also fucking with your insulin production, and other endocrine issues, that promote fat retention, while also increasing addictive eating disorder likelihood.

Yeah we had a big quiverfull church not far from where I used to live. They were in a cycle of being in the news every few years for how they promote their flock to get on government assistance to afford more kids. People making six figure incomes were getting a variety of benefits because they had over a dozen kids, in two cases two dozen kids. This would piss people, garner calls for legal changes to stop this abuse, bring up how they are exactly the type of people who want to scare people with “welfare queen” stories, etc.

For a couple generations, the pumping out children mandate made it grow. However, around the third generation they started seeing a steep decline in parishionership. Basically the founding members’ kids weren’t nearly as willing to stay in this cult, and by their grand children’s generation, their birthrate wasn’t enough to replace their flock. By the time their great grand kids’ generation came around (current time) they were quickly dwindling in numbers. Now every time their welfare stuff hits the news they now have interviews with people who cut their families off, and left the cult, being interviewed about how insane they are.

From what I have been able to find, this seems to be the general timeline of these “super family” sects. They burn themselves out, and as time time progresses, the burnout comes more, and more, quickly. So the long term prospects of the baby factory faiths isn’t good.

Ok, for one example, after the 2008 housing market drop, banks bought the debt from other banks intentionally writing bad loans, which they then resold to third parties. This buying up of the debt of the banks that collapsed during this time lead to banks pushing families out of their homes, many of which were paid-up, but the lending institution behind them had failed, in order to resell the property later, when the market prices had recovered, or use the land for other developments. This was enforced by the police. Bankers did not go around forcing people out of their houses, the police did it at their behest.

Another is laws created specifically to punish people for being homeless. Laws like not being able to camp anywhere near a place they might be able to get themselves out of homelessness, e.g. a place with jobs, and other resources, not some place way out in the forest. These are also only effective because the police use violence to enforce them. Anti-solicitation laws fall into this category. Police often don’t realize that (speaking for my country) they are not constitutional at the federal level. Police departments that know about this tell their cops to do it anyway because it’s not like homeless people will likely be able to sue them.

A third is the enforcement of petty traffic fines. Things like window tint, or minor violations in situations where the safety concern isn’t present. These fines are, often, the brunt of how they fund themselves. Petty violations, like tint, are also used to go on fishing expeditions, so they can either wrack-up more fines, or make an arrest, even if that means intentionally escalating the situation, lying about what happened, and giving false testimony in court. More arrests, more convictions, equals more money for the police, and the legal industry as a whole. If you work with, or around, police, like I have, you will hear them discuss things like testilying. Bouncing ideas off of each other as to how they can make bad arrests, and use illegal levels of force, while having a technicality to maintain their immunity, e.g. screaming quit resisting, while in a position where they know cameras can’t really see what is happening. This is just the tip of this iceberg, I would need thousands, upon thousands, of words to detail all the shit I have heard police say, and see police do.

I can go on, but I think I have made my point.

Don’t know about the whole population, but as someone who has known a bunch of people who would stick people up, at one point, they definitely would target open carries. They said it was almost a guaranteed minimum of 500 dollars right there, a nice handgun could easily get 1000-1500, a really nice one could get a couple grand. So, yeah, people who do stick-ups target people who obviously have a gun on them. They said that if that person goes into a low population area, they are gonna get robbed. They will have their gun drawn, and ready to go, before the person is even aware of what is happening, so they are extremely unlikely to try and draw on them. If they do, they will almost definitely get shot before they can get their gun in a position to shoot.

It isn’t that out of touch with contemporary prices. Maybe 10 years at most, as a lot of the cost increase has been the past 5 years. Doesn’t mean the image isn’t older, just commenting on the price here.

A current restaurant serving Lobster Thermidor costs about 55$. While any place serving this dish is likely a high quality restaurant, it’s not until one obtains a michelin star that it becomes a 3 digit affair.

Is that lincoln in the back there?

Also Cathode Ray Dude

Also sponge bob skin theory. Dude had a little video putzing around, then a couple years later dropped a couple hour long video to convince people of some absolutely wild shit about sponge bob, then just disappeared.

Yeah, also, imagine in the bronze age, a shaq sized dude was found and trained to be an elite warrior. I could totally see the men of that era, who encountered him in battle, telling tall tails of a 9 foot giant they had to fight.

I remember Obama having a number of people, who were like actually attracted to him, and fan-girled over him, with like editing them into wedding photos with him and shit. However, they were looked at as freaks. It was also not a lot of people, and they kinda turned themselves into social media freak shows, to continue the attention they got from their weird post of them kissing Obama, or whatever.

It is because there is actually no documentation of biden being associated with Epstein, like with Trump and Clinton, that was a lie, and the stuff about touching ranges from photos that are not nearly as weird looking when seen in the context of video footage, to videos that are more like him putting his hands on kids’ shoulders, patting their heads, etc., nothing really that strange for an old man interacting with small kids, a stretch to call it something sinister at best, and a claim that, while may be true, has a number of issues in its story.

It is, as they say, a nothing burger, unless something with a lot more strength behind it, comes forth.

I mean, Goliath was called a giant but wasn’t “my skull is the size of a full grown man’s torso” big. He is said to be about 9’-9’9". Which, if there was historical legitimacy to the story, could easily be within the range of a very tall person that had their height exaggerated over time.

Hey now, auqa man is royality, and the kingdom of atlantis could do with a housing expansion!

But they can just sell their houses if the water levels rise, Mr. Shapiro told me so.

i think it is older than that now isn’t it? I happened in 2016, i thought it came to the news in like 2019 or 2020… then again, life is like a blur to me, so…

People change faith all the time. In fact if you type into google “does faith change” the first several things I get are papers discussing that faith does change and why, including the introduction of new information on a subject. So you are wrong.

Then my faith will change

I have faith that there is an attractive force tied to mass