@CarloOdorizzi@alojoh@elonmusk@aaronburnett Today’s self driving, with supervision, is quite useful and convenient. I find it sufficiently compelling that I would not at all consider buying a non-Tesla vehicle.
@alojoh@elonmusk@aaronburnett I think Elon honestly expected consumer demand for Tesla vehicles to be far stronger.
However, I also believe it’s irrational, in most cases, for anyone to spend $40k+ on a vehicle and not buy a Tesla.
Galatians 4:4 looks like a transition verse.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son.”
If you read it fast, it sounds like a timestamp. But if read slowly, it is the most staggering sentence in the Bible.
‘Fullness of time’. Paul isn't saying God picked a convenient moment. He is saying God declared a moment complete. “The preparation is finished and everything I have been building across centuries is exactly where I need it to be”. God looked at human history and said: now.
Which forces the question. Why then? Why not a thousand years earlier, when Moses was fresh? Why not a thousand years later? What was so perfect about the first century?
I started looking into it and I have not recovered.
God needed a people with the theology. He spent 2000 years forming Israel; the covenant, the sacrificial system, the prophets, Isaiah 53 written seven centuries before Calvary, the framework of a coming Messiah who would bear the sin of the world. The Jews were shaped by wilderness, exile, and divine discipline, until the theological infrastructure for substitutionary atonement was fully in place.
But theology alone could not travel. God needed a language. Not a tribal dialect, but a universal tongue. So five hundred years before the Gospel, He let the Greek philosophers begin.
Heraclitus sat in Ephesus and concluded the universe was governed by an invisible rational principle. He called it the Logos.
The Stoics built on it. Philo of Alexandria stood at the intersection of Greek thought and Hebrew scripture and said the Logos was the mind of God in creation. For five hundred years, philosophy built a conceptual category it could not fill.
Then God sent a conqueror with no interest in theology. Alexander the Great wanted glory and empire. God let him want it. In satisfying his ego across three continents, Alexander Hellenized the ancient world and forged Koine Greek, the common tongue of the docks, markets, soldiers, and slaves. A language stripped of complexity, simple enough for anyone, universal enough for everyone.
The Hebrew scriptures were translated into it. The Septuagint was born. God used a pagan conqueror’s ambition to translate His own Word.
Then Rome came and paved the road. The Pax Romana. Piracy cleared. Stone highways stretching from Spain to Syria. A framework for movement the ancient world had never seen.
None of them knew they were collaborating.
Heraclitus thought he was doing philosophy. Alexander thought he was building a monument to himself. Rome thought it was building an empire for Rome. Not one of them understood they were stagehands. God was with Heraclitus in his pondering, with Alexander in his conquest, with Roman engineers laying stone, quietly requisitioning their work for a purpose none of them could see.
And then, when the covenant people were in place, the language primed, the roads built, and the category ready, when everything He had been quietly assembling was finally set, God stepped into the room they had unknowingly prepared.
John picked up his pen and wrote: “In the beginning was the Logos.”
Every Greek philosopher in the Mediterranean felt the ground shift. “And the Logos became flesh.” The category they spent five centuries constructing was not a principle. It was a Person.
The ‘fullness of time is not a timestamp’. It is God’s signature on a completed work. And the humbling thing is that this work was not built by saints. It was built by conquerors, philosophers, and emperors who thought they were writing their own story. God let them think that. And used every word. If this is not amazing then I don’t know what is.
@MattWalshBlog The issue is loyalty, not place of birth. We need to take loyalty oaths more seriously, and there need to be real consequences for lying. And no dual citizens allowed in office.
God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, as the sacrifice in our place. Amazingly, Jesus was sacrificed on Mount Moriah, the same mountain where Abraham was earlier commanded to sacrifice Isaac. “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
Many Muslims seem to believe that they should sacrifice their sons as shahid (martyrs) in the cause of jihad. But the true and living God sent His Son for us.
@DavidNinth@C_S_Skeptic@elonmusk@profstonge I don’t think anything in the Bible precludes humans living on other celestial bodies. Earth is certainly the focal point of eschatology, but that doesn’t rule out human activity elsewhere. We have a God-given drive to expand and explore.
@azfec I agree with you on many things, but you are wrong on solar and batteries. Most people don’t understand just how far costs have dropped. So much so that, in Arizona, it is a no-brainer for me to set up a DIY solar/battery system for my home.
@No_Lemming_Here@andybiggs4az There are plenty of barren landscapes, with zero saguaros, that would be perfectly fine for solar plants and battery storage. We also need nuclear deregulation and faster nuclear development.
@JLOinNC@MattWalshBlog We shouldn’t allow people to live on the streets. But we need more options than just jail or mental institutions. Rehab for addicts who are willing. Shelters for people who are simply going through hard times and for those escaping abuse.
@ithedarkranger@krassenstein@elonmusk Why so much hate for another human being? Even if you disagree with him on everything else, at least he had the guts to build the Cybertruck!
@azfec If we are to prioritize affordability, then solar and batteries should be front and center. De-regulation is needed for nuclear to take its rightful place in supplying reliable power. I'm not a fan of air pollution from burning coal.
@azfec Left or right, a walkable public realm sounds good to me. Walking and cycling are great for personal health and fitness. However, cars/trucks are also essential, and urban planning should be guided by practical considerations, not communism.
In low traffic and/or low speed areas, spreading across the entire traffic lane is generally considered acceptable, if not legal. However, there is also the expectation that riders will move to the right to let cars pass.
The bottom line is that, in most states, cyclists have the right to use most roads, and also the obligation to stay to the right, to the extent practicable.
Any driver, frustrated or not, using a vehicle as a weapon should absolutely be prosecuted. Cyclists who refuse to move to the right should be ticketed.
Thankfully, self-driving vehicles will make the roads safer for everyone, including cyclists. Personally, I’ve mostly shifted to mountain biking in order to avoid the dangers of the roads, but I would do more road biking if it were safer. I live in a rural area, and my presence on the local highway would have very little effect on traffic flow.
@TeslaPatriot@ExxAlerts Yes, I do agree that, if honked at, most normal cyclists would move to the far right side of the lane. Personally, when cycling, I want to minimize inconvenience to other road users. I’m just trying to get a workout and enjoy being outdoors, not make some sort of political point!
@TeslaPatriot@ExxAlerts Rude and entitled behavior isn’t exactly “terrorism” - the latter requires a level of intent that you won’t generally find on group bike rides. Most cyclists also drive cars and are not exactly anti-car activists.
@TeslaPatriot@ExxAlerts Cyclists taking up the entire lane is generally illegal, and very rude, but as a cyclist myself, I wouldn’t presume that they were trying to intimidate motorists. More likely just socializing with each other. I do not at all condone their behavior, nor that of the driver.