PurpleTentacle

Small Gods is indeed a great choice. I never thought of it as a "book for atheists" and it's quite unlikely to turn someone religious into a non-believer - but it's clever, funny and one of my personal favorite Terry Patches books. So, worst case scenario: you've read a highly entertaining book.

"The Bible" is the book that ultimately turned me into a convinced atheist. If you actually read it, without having it filtered and read to you by religious people with agendas, it's hard to continue believing in any of its insane ramblings. But it's a really tough, slow and often immoral and revolting read. Mostly, it's just really stupid.

"The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" is the opposite. It's a funny, light and often silly read. It's not exactly deep, but neither are the books it's parodizing. As a satire of other religious text it works reasonably well in putting the finger in the wound.

"The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever" is just that: a collection of texts and letters on the subject by some brilliant minds: Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Lucrecius, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and many more ... collected and edited by Christopher Hitchens. As an anthology it allows you to dip your toes in and read the texts you are interested in. Maybe my first choice as serious "atheism for beginners" literature.

It sounds too much like those frozen Rocky Mountain oysters on a stick. You know, Testsicles.

🎵 Pop a Poppler in your mouth

When you come to Fishy Joe's

What they're made of is a mystery

Where they come from, no one knows

You can pick 'em, you can lick 'em

You can chew 'em, you can stick 'em

And if you promise not to sue us

You can shove one up your nose 🎵

He could shoot the economy on 5th avenue and not lose any supporters.

I was going to add stupidity, but they usually go hand in hand.

With a reasonably powerful induction stove there's no real difference between time 2. and 3.

To be fair, neither do most Lemmyngs.

The only question I'm wondering about:

Is Trump just an idiot or Putin's useful idiot? How much of this is sheer stupidity and how much is deliberate chaos controlled by a foreign entity?

The fact that Trump put Tariffs on penguins but not Russians feels telling.

Kompromat / компромат

and, yes, the Chinese government has used similar methods.

Ich hab nicht viel beizutragen außer: danke, ich habe deinen Beitrag mit Aufmerksamkeit gelesen. Ein Upvote allein schien mir dafür nicht ausreichend.

Tesla understood the "computer on wheels" approach to vehicle engineering far before most, if not all, traditional manufacturers. Their EV route planner in combination with their Supercharger network is still mostly unbeaten and was long its biggest selling point. The software is far from perfect, but it's mostly polished, mature and has been a focus from the beginning.

All your criticism is perfectly valid, though. But most of them aren't owed to lack of software quality but merely bad management decisions. I'd even argue that the autopilot is doing well with the limited sensors its been given - a restriction its unlikely to overcome with software alone, regardless of Elon's lies.

I would never buy a Tesla, but most manufacturers struggle more when it comes to delivering software people actually want to use.

Software was probably one of the last areas where Tesla still had a small edge over the competition.

The competition has caught up when it comes to range and Teslas were never really competitive when it comes to quality or price.