smitten

https://key.portend.place/@smitten_

most of what I post is religious in nature, the rest is art critique or jokes.

I broke my other account, migration mostly didn't work so you can follow this one if you want.

CWs: I generally use CWs but generic warning for use of 'you'. I don't specifically mean you the reader.

Public Key

npub188qt7g2mve78gd8ufjcpff8d6evyt79r63jsed2mde7t5rgy5jrsc6m6uv

NIP-05 Address

smitten__at_key.portend.place@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrns9ly9dkvlr5xn7yevq55nkavkz9lz3agegvk4dkul96p5z2fpcprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntax6gs5

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub188qt7g2mve78gd8ufjcpff8d6evyt79r63jsed2mde7t5rgy5jrsc6m6uv

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Last Notes

2026-09-15 16:19:47 UTC

I'm just wondering if there are examples when creating joy and unity through not taking sides worked to accomplish something? Does bringing people together despite differences of opinion ever change anything or does it just always postpone the inevitable by straining denial until it breaks?

2026-08-22 14:37:18 UTC

I would rate this game 0.83 out of 1

2026-06-29 22:23:20 UTC

I saw the phrase 'Tesla bagholders' to describe the weird nerds who always show up to defend Tesla and I really like that word. I don't like saying cuck or the other feminized insults they like to use. but I do want a word that represents their chumpness and draws attention to the reason they are such weird nerds about it. which is investment, whether money or identity. so I might start calling them bagholders.

2026-06-04 12:35:09 UTC

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three things fedi loves the most, cats trains and piss

2026-03-17 01:05:03 UTC

https://key.portend.place/files/9a5b2437-9fe5-468b-a44e-324723b8cae3.webp

2026-03-01 21:05:02 UTC

'you shouldn't care what other people think' is individualist propaganda isn't it? strong people should be an island they should only ever think of themselves and their own preferences. there's something about shared meaning and communication probably. you can't create any meaning without caring about what other people think. communication itself is about causing other people to think something. what do you get for not caring what other people think, what's the reward?

2025-12-26 15:22:03 UTC

you'll go to fiction hell for that. and that's on you, because of your lack of faithful adaptation.

2025-12-26 15:14:50 UTC

weird nerds will be arguing that a movie adaptation should always match the original book but why is that good? what is the virtue of being consistent with written works? it's just something somebody made up, often some sexist guy wrote a sci-fi in the past. also sometimes authors self-censor, they might have wanted to make a gay character or a woman character but decided against it because of audience bias (see Pluribus' Raban). so why is the original work good? it's this ethical thing for them, adaptations must be faithful they just must be. why, why is that your faith?

2025-12-17 01:53:54 UTC

join fediverse, there's no search and it's constantly scrolling the content away never to be seen again

2025-12-17 01:52:43 UTC

fedi auto scroll is just auto hide that post you were looking at

2025-12-11 02:09:36 UTC

AI as a colonization of confidence (as @npub159p…dhu3 so aptly [put it](https://sightlessscribbles.com/the-colonization-of-confidence/)) is offering a way to perform ignorance, or at least slide into the social performance of it. maybe ignorance is the wrong word, it's a character of not knowing or not being concerned over certain thoughts. confidence is a kind of knowledge isn't it, self knowledge? this is making me think about the homophobia of anti-intellectualism. I feel like it offers this subscription to a personality, of someone who doesn't worry about knowing. knowing is for the bookish people, the monastic-y library-y ones who are probably gay for each other amirite. so in that way AI is a beard, and more than that it's a conversion therapy. you don't have to be a gay knower anymore, you can be a straight subscriber.

2025-12-10 19:29:07 UTC

anti-intellectualism has a pretty strong homophobic vibe to it doesn't it? like, learning things is gay, knowing things is gay, wanting to communicate things is extra gay. media analysis is gay, can't we just enjoy things without them having some deeper meaning or commentary, which are gay? thinking is a form of caring, and caring is gay. that's why accessibility is gay and public health is gay. being gay is a kind of being a woman, which is why it's bad.

2025-11-15 14:41:24 UTC

words barely mean anything and they usually just translate into an emotion that the speaker is trying to create. I think about that whenever people are splitting hairs on a definition, it's always like "no it's not [bad sounding word] it's [bad sounding word you don't have as much emotional association with yet]"

2025-11-12 15:14:05 UTC

god gives the most intense magnetic fields to his strongest neutron stars

2025-10-26 13:07:49 UTC

when people were skeptical of Biden the response was "they're Russian bots" or "it's astroturfed" or "secret Trump supporters". now when people are skeptical of Platner it's "billionaire-paid smear campaign". same shit different day. sometimes people are just skeptical because of actual reasons.

2025-10-25 16:55:34 UTC

what you're referring to as mastodon, is in fact the JSON network

2025-10-16 13:22:50 UTC

"they're just being edgy" is an intuitive explanation even for people who aren't into internet culture. and I legitimately wonder why that is. is it human nature to say horrible things just to get a rise out of others? was this a cultural bubble a few decades ago that just happened to continue into the internet age?

2025-10-07 18:23:22 UTC

- reply

Sometimes those harms eventually become so strong that they can't ignore it, maybe it happens to their own kid or they get kicked out or something. They will be shocked when it happens, they won't remember your warning. They actually only remember the feeling of you attacking them, and don't remember the issue you were bringing up. I wish it didn't work like that but I feel pretty confident it usually does.

2025-10-07 18:19:55 UTC

if you try to talk to a mind controlled person about concrete harms that their beliefs cause, whether to themselves or other people, you almost always get the same response. The unpleasant feeling makes them feel threatened, and then they feel victimized because their constructed sense of safety was messed with. It will be 'why are you always so negative?', 'you just want to start a fight', 'you just hate [organization]', 'you don't want anyone to be happy, can't you let people have their own beliefs?' They will never engage with the harm you're describing, they will only engage with the (perceived) assault you are making on their cozy world. They will try to figure out what your ulterior motive is.

2025-10-07 16:45:50 UTC

young women are like 19. they keep saying young women when they mean teenagers, so gross.

2025-10-05 15:36:43 UTC

'is anybody weird on fedi?'
yeah but not in a likable way

2025-09-27 13:56:19 UTC

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> Simon Peter said to them, "Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of the life." Jesus said, "Look, I am going to guide her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
People get upset at this line, and I can see why. I don't think it's so bad though, because male was the seen as the default, women were the special case. So if Mary was one of the guys and didn't feel held back by her assigned gender role, rather than describing elevating a woman they might describe it as turning male. I don't think she literally was trying to transition, but I read this as endorsing the idea that the bodily sex is not the most important thing. I have to imagine a group of unmarried followers hanging out with a woman was pretty transgressive at the time to begin with, and coupled with Jesus known support for sex workers and other outcasted people it just seems gender expansive to me. More reading to do though, I'm just taking it at face value so far.

2025-09-27 13:17:21 UTC

I found this but haven't read it yet, it sounds great. I wonder if people who understood queer experience without having words for it might have described it like this, "critical of the material world, while being hopeful for spiritual transformation" and a "demand for replacement of the outer person with the inner person".
> Treatments of gender in the gospel are discussed from the author's position as a queer woman of transgender experience, informed by postcolonial, feminist, and gender-critical theory and practice. Literary and historical comparisons with Philo of Alexandria and the apostle Paul are explored to uncover Thomas's worldview, which is seen to be darkly critical of the material world, while being hopeful for spiritual transformation. Though the Gospel of Thomas participates in the prevalent masculinist ideology of most literature of the day, many of its sayings may garner a new or nuanced meaning when read through a transgender lens, including especially the demand for replacement of the outer person with the inner person (Gos. Thom. 22), and potential salvation through erasure of conventional gender difference in the making of an ungendered Living Spirit resembling Jesus (Gos. Thom. 114).
https://works.hcommons.org/records/56pmb-0pz61

2025-09-21 22:06:25 UTC

> When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all. "Peace be with you," he said. "Acquire my peace within yourselves.
> "Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, 'Look over here' or 'Look over there.' For the Child of Humanity* exists within you. Follow it. Those who search for it will find it.
> "Go then, preach the good news about the kingdom. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I determined for you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it." After he said these things, he departed from them.
Early Christianity seemed to involve a lot of embodied perception and warned against legalistic approaches. But of course all this stuff got banned and burned.
* sometimes translated 'Son of Man'.

2025-09-21 21:48:26 UTC

> For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by people; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept this, let him accept it. - Matthew 19:12
We have to give some leeway, they didn't have the word trans back then, but since Jesus knew trans people were coming in the future, shouldn't he not have said this? Or is it that Jesus clearly says trans rights. The one who is able to accept this, let them accept it.

2025-09-17 04:11:50 UTC

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> If you come to me but will not leave your family, you cannot be my follower. You must love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life!
Luke 14:26

2025-09-17 04:08:29 UTC

Christianity is treated as identical to the family hierarchy but that's an artificial connection. Jesus did not talk about the family much at all. What little he did say was about leaving your family! He did teach children but not through their parents, he taught them directly or answered their questions directly. He probably didn't have children and didn't marry, or if he did it wasn't important to his ministry. The only thing the patriarchs have to hang their hat on is that he talked about "the Father", and the gospels differ a lot on that, it's mostly John and Matthew who are big on it. All this stuff in modern Christian churches where the husband is below God and the wife is below the husband is just totally added on and made up, yet they treat it as the core idea.