Sed is a remarkably useful tool. Once I started using it regularly, I began wondering why I had not used it earlier. I can't imagine doing menial labor with text files manually now.
For example, I have some HTML files, that are from a Markdown to HTML converter. They contain a lot of spans with hljs-* classes for syntax highlight. But I really didn't feel like writing CSS for that, and it also made the HTML itself unreadable, so I wanted it gone. Had I done it manually, it would've taken me ages, but with sed:
sed -i 's/<span class="hljs-[^"]*">//g; s/<\/span>//g' *.html
And done. All gone.
Learn sed.
Of course there are recurring nods to themes within the rest of the Bible, as usual:
Acts 16:31 (sola fide)
Acts 15:19 (universality of the New Covenant)
Acts 10:34 (more universality of the New Covenant)
Acts 14:22 (suffering building virtue)
Acts 5:29 (putting God above man)
Acts 4:12 (salvation only through Christ)
Acts 2:17 (baptism gifting the Holy Spirit)
Acts 2:21 (God hearing every seemingly insignificant prayer)
Acts 2:38 (repentance => forgiveness)
And the list goes on...
But it made me think about continuationism. Personally I believe that the only gifts I ever received were the Holy Spirit's presence in my life, my faith and my unearned justification before the Father, which all more than suffice for me, but Charismatics and Pentecostals would disagree with that.
Honestly, no particular thoughts on them, I just kinda remembered that they exist. That's about it. And they basically take Acts as an instructial manual from what I've seen. Which is interesting, I guess.
Aristotle was a great guy. He was right. Let me elaborate with some word vomit:
I watched Gate: Thus The JSDF Fought There and thought about it. That empire went into our dimension, into Tokyo, and started raping and pillaging. The JSDF responded with the cold, unfeeling, but absolutely 110% lawful response you can expect from a democratic military of a post-Axis country.
And so I thought about it. I'm German. Russia has been doing very similar raping and pillaging in Ukraine. What would I do if the Russian Armed Forces do that on our soil?
I came to the conclusion that I would make sure to prosecute criminals with the coldest, most ruthless rule-of-law the world has ever seen. Completely cold and unfeeling, but also meticulously law-abiding. Not because I like them, or sympathize with them, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw it as a mark of superiority to treat even the worst, unrehabilitable criminals like they are worth the mercy, clarity and hope of law.
I have no idea what this kind of nationalism is called, but it's certainly not the normal one. Basically "the right response, with the wrong (debatably) justifications". Now yes, technically Verfassungspatriotismus. But I feel like Verfassungspatriotismus is often taught as motivated by enthusiasm for virtue, not disgust at its absence like I feel it. But I feel like the latter is more honest. It protects you from a lot of traps.
Focusing on the positive sets you up for disappointment. You lose hope in institutions when you look at things like lobbyism and nepotism, but when you are motivated by the disgust at the absence of institutions, you can channel that motivation into actually reforming institutions and improving them incrementally. Disappointment meanwhile is more a driver of revolutionary momentum, something that is for one destabilizing, and is also deeply allergic to virtue. Look at every revolution ever. Were any of them virtuous? You can argue that some were necessary for the course of history, but even then: A lot of European countries are still monarchies, they never needed a revolution for popular sovereignty. Would those ideas have been that popular without the French Revolution? Maybe not. Probably not, in fact. And that's a fair counter-point. But in general philosophizing about alternate history is a waste of time, this is the timeline we are given, and there is more than enough to learn from actual history.
Those military and historical thoughts aside, I thought about the virtues of virtue, if you will: A society needs glue. Ever since the advent of nationalism, that glue has been the nation. And it's proven to be the most effective. But the nation needs glue too. What do you take as the nation's glue? You can use culture, but culture is fluid. Culture changes. Thus your nation will change. And glue that changes its properties regularly is not good glue. You can use ethnicity, but we're in Europe, there is no French or German ethnicity. There are some traits here and there, sure, but there was always some men or women here and there thinking "Scottish women are cute" or "Italian men are hot" every once in a while, so a lot of mixing happened throughout the centuries. It's like using water as glue. Bad idea. And also the whole genocide thing, of course. Now, standards. Standards are good glue. Standards don't have to change. True virtues are timeless. Justice, liberty, etc. And a society that strives towards virtues is self-defending, because it filters out anyone who does not abide by its virtues, without arbitrary ethnic or cultural lines even being a factor. So out of all possible forms of glue, virtue is the least bad one. Again, not saying it's the best one, just the least bad one.
And that's basically Aristotelian virtue ethics. Arrived at not by reading his works, but by thinking about our current world. Because in two millennia human nature did not fundamentally change. Naturally, the manual on how to handle human nature didn't have to change either.
Every few months I have a little phase where I spend a lot of time revisiting the lore of the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
It's interesting how David/Solid Snake is the only "morally clean" character. The man was used as a tool by basically everyone, realized it, said "fuck that", went and founded an anti-MG NGO and just did that instead. What a guy.
Then there's The Boss's Will. Major Zero and Big Boss had two opposite interpretations and both managed to be wrong. While The Boss basically just said "live and let live", Zero interpreted a necessity for totality into it and Big Boss derived a necessity for anarchy from this very simple mindset.
Speaking of The Boss and the fight against her: In the Metal Gear games you never really hate whoever it is you're fighting. You are just both in the way of each other's vision, so one of you has to go. And that's it. I can't think of any fight off the top of my head that has any actual animosity in it.
And the cutscenes...wow. The final cutscene to MGS4 is enough to bring me to tears every time. That day Solid Snake and Big Boss didn't meet as soldiers, but as men. As John and David. And that was that.
But one thing that stands out as a uniting factor between Zero and Big Boss is how they held to dogma. And that dogma turned into mountains of corpses.
In the words of Big Boss himself: "Zero turns to one. And one will always turn to one hundred."
Something worth thinking about.
When reading Scripture, I try to read as much of the Old Testament as I read from the New Testament, because I believe the OT to be very underappreciated.
Some people seem to adopt an almost Marcionist view of God in the Old Testament. They call Him a menace or evil, but I don't see it, frankly.
Yes, he's strict. But I'd say it's just a very "tough love" kind of strict. But he's also...fair. He keeps His promises.
Let me show you some examples. Now, me being German and Lutheran, I will quote from the LU17 translation, as that is my preferred one (but since I provide exact citations, you can just look up the text yourself in whatever langauge you prefer, whether that be English or anything else):
"Und Gott erhörte ihr Wehklagen, und gedachte an seinen Bund mit Abraham, Isaak und Jakob."
- 2. Mose 2,24 (Exodus 2:24)
What we can learn from this: God remembers promises. Just like He had made a covenant with the Israelites, He has made a new covenant with us through Christ. By this covenant we are saved. So long as our faith is true, He will not forget His promise.
"Der Herr wird für euch streiten, und ihr werdet stille sein."
- 2. Mose 14,14 (Exodus 14:14)
What we can learn from this: This is a theme that also appears in the New Testament frequently. We cannot by ourselves do anything in the spiritual realm. We are nothing without the Lord. (On this topic also see: Confessio Augustana Article 18, Luke 18:27, 2. Corinthians 12:9)
"[...] Wem ich gnädig bin, dem bin ich gnädig, und wessen ich mich erbarme, dessen erbarme ich mich."
- 2. Mose 33,19 (Exodus 33:19)
What we can learn from this: Again a recurring theme. Divine sovereignty. This also ties into the Lutheran doctrine of Single Predestination. Our salvation hinges entirely on the Lord's will, and consequently His sovereign election of those He chooses to salvation as He pleases.