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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2026

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  • Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, I got an invite as part of the Boy Scouts to go to an international Scouting event in St. Petersburg.I got the special invite through my Uncle who is very involved in the Dallas area GOP and the Boy Scouts.

    My parents went with me and during a hike we were taking on one of the mornings it started sprinkling. I was buddied up with a Russian child my age, I don’t remember his name but his father’s name was Rudolph, which I thought was funny.

    Anyhow, Rudolph noted how he hated walking in the rain, and my dad commented about how this rain was nothing compared to the storms we have in Texas. Anyhow, the whole trip was kind of high emotion, and my father and Rudolph started arguing about what constitutes rain.

    Eventually my mother got really embarrassed and shouted “Honey! I believe Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear!”






  • Orthodox

    The Orthodox communion is having a bit of a revival right now. Which happens on occasion for them, because they are really misunderstood in the West.

    For example, in the 2000s they had a brief boom period where “new-agey” type people were attracted to the mystical aspects of the church. I think that boom was short lived because those people really just wanted spiritual consumerism, and, as far as Christian denominations go, Orthodoxy is hard work. It’s not for beginners. If you aren’t born into it then it’s really hard to break in. (By my understanding is that if you do the hard work the community and spiritual benefits are really meaningful.)

    Unfortunately, today their current boom (if it’s still going on, this information is a few years old now) is coming from Proud boys-type people. They were interested it it because it’s seen as adequately homophobic and sexist for them. My guess is that their interest was ultimately short lived as well because they aren’t going to be interested in doing the work any more than the Live-Laugh-Love crowd was.




  • Orthodox

    I’m sure the Catholics would disagree with me, and that’s fine with me. But personally I would say the Orthodox are the oldest continuous movement of Christianity. Not only do they historically beat out the Romans by a few decades, but also they have maintained a far more consistent liturgy over the millennia. The Catholics have had a a good handful of major liturgical changes that I would say constitute a few major breaks in historical consistency.

    That’s not a criticism from me. I’m Anglican.




  • The guy is really just not right about that. There was a lot of cultural mixing going around back in the early iron age, but Judaism borrowed much more from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Greeks than they did the Persians. And it also has a lot of very unique features as well.

    Yes there was also cultural exchange with the Persians that found it’s way into Judaism, but it’s just not correct to say it’s a copy.