The collection of texts today known as the Bible were not written at once. There’s actually a lot of interesting history about how it came to be, but the short of it is that there were a multitude of maybe-canon Christian texts floating around during the early period of Christianity. These texts were written decades or even centuries apart, and often falsely attributed to authors who did not write them. There was also the Septuagint, a Greek text which was a translation of various Jewish scriptures, many of which now form the Old Testament.

The early Christian church decided which of these were deemed to be canon and which were non-canon. The canon texts were compiled together to form what is now the Bible. Everything else that was deemed not canon is called the Apocrypha. Many of these texts were also deemed heretical or blasphemous to read, publish, or teach by the various ecumenical councils.

Each Christian denomination has a slightly different version of the Bible depending on which decisions and ecumenical councils they accept.

The most interesting difference would be the Bible of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church), which has an additional text called the Book of Mormon. That was written in the 19th century by a guy named Joseph Smith, an American religious leader who founded Mormonism. According to Mormon theology, it contains the revalations he received from God about various other unknown saints who lived in America and other holy happenings which took place, making the US a second holy land of sorts. His group travelled to the western United States to find their own promised land and establish a Mormon theocracy (they were successful; it’s now the US state of Utah).

There’s no historical evidence that any of these texts were intended to be read as anything other than religious scripture, but keep in mind that in Biblical times, people seemed to have had a really difficult time differentiating texts written by people having fever dreams versus actual genuine accounts of observed events or legitimate attempts to write scripture. If you want a fun time, you can read some of the Apocrypha, which are often similar in style to the canonical gospels but are slightly… weirder. The line between religion and insanity was not so easily found back then. Regardless of their authors’ original intent, the Apocrypha certainly can be read for entertainment in the 21st century.

I think there is a line to be drawn between what is theoretically better and what is meaningfully useful.

It is realistically not useful information for an attacker to know what country you are from by observing your UTC offset. It’s simply much easier to guess this information by observing your other behaviours. For example, the text and time of your post is already leading me to guess UTC+5:30 as the time zone in question. But again, knowing what country you’re from is not really useful information most of the time, as even if my guess is correct, that narrows it down to a whopping one-eighth of the human population.

Can’t believe Portugal is nearly the same size as Portugal

The definitionition of “American” is pretty flexible. If you move here, live here, and want to consider yourself an American, then you are an American. Some loud zealots may say otherwise (typical in any country) but most Americans literally do not think about this at all.

I’m pretty sure all cultures adapt and learn from other cultures. That’s just how human culture develops. Vietnamese takes on French favourites resulted in bahn mi and Vietnamese coffee, both of which are very good. Poor Hongkongers wanting to eat like Brits resulted in Hong Kong’s famously weird “Cha chaan teng” food and Hong Kong-style milk tea. And, of course, Europeans went crazy over Mesoamerican chocolate and created a cornucopia of confectionery products made from the cacao bean.

Well, colonialism did bring tomatoes and potatoes to Europe.

I think the joke is that Americans like to adopt foods or cooking techniques from other cultures, then change them to fit local tastes. This is how a lot of “traditional American” foods came to be. There is also a stereotype that American cultural practices (gastronomy included) are “not real” or that American culture as a concept doesn’t exist because it comes as a fusion of cultural practices from other countries. The meme is poking fun at people who may hold that belief.

People also have a habit of describing the American versions of things to be “not real”, even if it never really claims to be. For example, fettuccine Alfredo in the US is an adaptation of fettuccini al burro (a real Italian dish), but is described as “not real Italian food” because it isn’t actually eaten in Italy. Or that orange chicken is “not real Chinese food” because it isn’t eaten in China. Which, to be fair, is true, but most American diners are aware that Panda Express, Olive Garden, and Taco Bell aren’t accurate representations of food eaten in China, Italy, or Mexico. They’re Americanised versions of food inspired by Chinese, Italian, and Mexican cuisine.

Americans associate the orange colour with cheese so it’s more cultural than practical. Other than the fact that some cheese being orange and some not being orange helps tell apart different varieties. For example, bright orange cheese is usually young cheeses that are used to make sauce or for sandwiches. Duller orange cheeses or slightly brown ones are expected to have a more sophisticated flavour (e.g. aged longer or smoked).

This is false, due to contaminants our air is legally considered dairy in Europe, and thus the average American actually consumes twice this quantity daily

“Management” like there are ever more than 2 people working at a 7-Eleven

I’m not underselling anything. I believe a quick napkin calculation will show that it’s roughly in the right ballpark.

• Private jet: 100 million USD each (reference)
• Superyacht: 500 million USD each (reference)
• Sports car: 150 thousand USD each (reference)
• Mansion: 10 million USD each (reference)

Total: 741 million USD

Most billionaires keep most of their wealth in actual investments (stock, bonds, Caymanian bank accounts, swimming pools filled with gold coins). Though this information is not public, let us assume that only 10% of their wealth is contained within these “lifestyle” objects, which is likely an overestimation. This would give us a total of 7.4 billion USD

Given the actual average wealth of a billionaire to be 5.3 billion USD (reference), I maintain the objects I have described accurately describe what a typical billionaire would be able to afford (if not slightly more than they could afford, actually).

It’s not reasonably possible to own the stuff on the left without being a billionaire. All of that would cost hundreds of millions.

Now, I’m not one of those “muh free market” morons, but I also think that not every potentially-abusable business practice immediately deserves government regulation against it. By and large it seems that most customers really don’t care that much about this (myself included). The ability for customers to choose where they shop has regulatory power which I think a lot of people fail to recognise. If a behaviour is really repulsive, then customers will just not shop there, which provides a strong negative incentive against the behaviour in question, without any state intervention or enforcement resources required.

An example of this working in practice is the practice of restaurants attempting to introduce tipping in Australia (where it is not customary to tip). Whenever a restaurant frequented by locals tries to force them to tip or makes it awkward to not tip, there is an immediate and strong negative reaction to it from the customers which usually causes the restaurant to give up on the idea.

They can track what people are buying just as well without needing to know who is buying what. If all they cared about was making sure they are stocking items that are popular with customers, they could just monitor how many of the item were scanned at the checkout counters.

When you give your phone number to the store, it serves three functions:

1. The rewards scheme encourages loyalty. Once you have spent hundreds at the store, they give you a minor discount on something small, which saves you only a little bit of money. You only need to decide to patronise this store one time over their competitors for this bribe to be worth it.
2. By learning your shopping habits, they can offer you personalised advertisements to encourage you to buy certain products. For example, a grocery store chain which has a location near where I live has learned that I always buy a certain brand of cheese, and so occasionally they will try to tempt me with something like a 50 cent discount on that cheese, or they will send me a message saying “Hey do you still want (the cheese brand)? We have it in stock!”
3. Some people, when putting things into their basket or shopping cart, will see the large, advertised discounted price and think “this item is reasonably priced”, but then they forget to put their phone number in when checking out and are thus charged the inflated price. The store pockets the difference as customers are unlikely to notice or complain about it. Most people do not closely monitor the price of items as they are being scanned. They only look at the total price at the end before tapping their card.

I don’t know; if we get found out, we might be on the hook for a lot of value-added tax.

90% of this sort of “organisational recognition” boils down to worthless lip service. Not just to indigenous land but also climate change, LGBTQ rights, and Palestine.

Saying “we care” doesn’t mean you actually care, and frankly, saying that and then doing nothing is really just insulting.

What happened to blursedimages?

It looks like a one-piece outfit in which case I think women tend to just pull it all upwards when they need to use the toilet

Women do not urinate out of their vagina