News You Can Bruise

Sumana mentioned that the other night we went through Craiglist for entertainment. Eventually the well started running dry and we did searches in the personals for unlikely strings like "Linux". Well, "Linux" did uncover a thread in the "rants and raves section", in which a troll exhorted everyone 'DON'T USE "LINUX" SOFTWARE or BUY A LAPTOP WITH "LINUX" ON IT' because Linus Torvalds is an atheist and--stay with me here--therefore a worshipper of Satan.

There were a number of responses to this, covering almost the whole spectrum of possible responses: "Atheists don't believe that Satan exists." and "You are dumb." and my personal favorite:

First, what do you mean exactly by "Linux"? The entire OS, or just the kernel?

Torvalds created the kernel but not the operating system. The OS was written by Richard Matthew Stallman and his crew of volunteers, collectively known as the GNU project...

However, I was a bit disappointed not to see it pointed out that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs[0] also lack a God-belief, so really what choice do you have? You're screwed.

I really hope someone is archiving Craigslist for the future. It'll be a useful training corpus for turning emotionless, super-rational AIs into crazy, human-like AIs.

[0] Under the reasonable-to-me assumption that Jobs doesn't practice a theistic kind of Buddhism. Gates is clearly a "that's not an interesting question" agnostic. Fleeing to your Apple II? Not so fast--Steve Wozniak is a flat-out atheist.

We got some sleazy religious snail-spam today, from "Saint Matthew's Churches" (there are no real churches). The envelope is stuffed full of papers with complex instructions for getting stuff from God. It's like doing your spiritual taxes. The point is to get you to blow cover and reveal yourself as a sucker to the all-seeing PO Box in Tulsa, whereupon SM's Cs start asking for money and it's like doing your render-unto-Ceasar taxes. Recall that Matthew was a tax collector, and is now the patron saint of bankers.

The envelope is actually the best part of this buffet of lunacy. (front, back) On the back there's fake handwriting that starts out saying "Dear Jesus, ...". I guess I was absent that day in fifth grade when they taught us how to write a business letter to Jesus.