First things first.

Second, given that the author has hidden this in a paywall–you have to sign up in order to access the article and presumably any links–I’m going to immediately distrust the motives.

Third, Medium is a glorified blogging site; anyone can say anything on it.

Let me see if I can explain what I mean.

A historical Jesus might have had a small cult following, enough that the Romans couldn’t ignore him. He would have been talking about Jewish liberation from the Roman rulers, and how he was called by god. And then boom, he gets executed. His followers probably believed that he was actually the son of god, sent to liberate them. But now he’s dead. How do they reconcile the belief with the reality? So they retcon everything; he was a spiritual messiah, and he’ll eventually return and free the Jews, once the people are spiritually prepared.

You can see traces of this in the way that the four gospels don’t agree with each other, but they all include bits of prophecies from earlier scripture about the messiah. They were written with the intent of making Jesus appear to fit in to older prophecies about who the messiah would be, since he ended up not being the liberator that they had been expecting.

You can see similar behaviors in cults now. It’s clearly visible with Q; Trump was supposed to be their messiah, but he hasn’t managed to make any of their prophetic beliefs come true. So they’ve invented reasons why Trump’s holy will has been thwarted, and changed their history, rather than accepting that he was a false messiah.

As far as I know, we simply don’t have directly contemporary, first-hand evidence of him. Even the most ‘contemporary’ accounts of him that still exist were written at least 50 years after he would have died, and those are quite cursory. Perhaps primary sources were lost–or intentionally destroyed when they didn’t align with beliefs–or perhaps they never existed. There’s not even much evidence for Pontius Pilate (I think one source mentioning that he was recalled to Rome and executed for incompetence?), and there should be, given that he was a Roman official.

People that study the history of the bible–as in, the historical bible, not the bible as a religious text–tend to believe that a historical Jesus existed, even if they don’t believe that he was divine.

IMO, the most likely explanation is that Jesus was yet another in a long-line of false messiahs, and was summarily executed by Rome for trying to start yet another rebellion. Since cult members tend to be unable to reconcile reality with their beliefs, they could have reframed their beliefs to say that he was a spiritual messiah, rather than a physical messiah.

I have a brand (yeah, the kind done with red-hot metal); my impression was that burning skin and subcutaneous fat smelled like a delicious pork roast.

I have not. On the other hand, I’m familiar with Armin Miewes, who spent a fairly long time in prison for murdering and eating someone that wanted to be murdered and eaten as a sexual kink.

there is no species barrier

There are a few things to unpack here.

First, most of the bacteria, et al. that we have to worry about right now from meat production and consumption are already well-adapted to human hosts. The solution, in most cases, is to adequately cook the meat, and to practice very basic food safety at home. Most food-borne illnesses are the result of inadequate cooking time and temperature. Other toxins–like botulism–are actually a biproduct of bacteria that colonize meat during putrefaction; you can kill the bacteria that produce the botulism toxin, but once it’s present, there’s not a lot you can do. (This is why you refrigerate meat. Clostridium botulinum reproduction is primarily room temperature, and anaerobic, so it’s mostly a problem with canned goods that weren’t sterilized properly during canning.)

The same solution to bacterial contamination in meat now would be the most effective solution for any lab-grown meat: cook your food correctly.

you’ll create a swamp of human meat factory farms that use huge amounts of antiviral, antifungal and antibiotic agents

I think that it’s unlikely that, aside from cleaning agents, that you would need antibacterial/antifungal/virucidal agents in producing lab-grown meat of any kind. Many of the most effective cleaning agents work because there’s no way to evolve protections against them. 70% isopropyl alcohol for instance; any resistance that bacteria evolved would also severely inhibit their ability to have any other functions. You can use radiation, or heat + steam (or even dry heat) to sterilize all of your equipment prior to introducing cells, and you have more control over the nutrient bath that it grows in. Depending on the nutrient bath, you can sterilize that by filtration; .22μm filtration is the standard for sterilizing IV and IM compounded medications. (.22μm is smaller than all bacteria, and many viruses. Molecules will still pass through that filter pore size though. You can also get filters down to .15μm if you need to remove more viruses.) Cows, chickens, etc. use so many antibacterials because they aren’t able to put them in ideal conditions and maintain the desired production levels.

I think that the lack of a species barrier is a far, far smaller risk than you might believe it to be.

BUT.

I think that there is one enormous risk: prions. Misfolded proteins are exceptionally hard to detect, and anything that denatures them will denature other proteins as well. The risk is likely very, very low, given how uncommon prion diseases are, but it’s definitely a risk when you can grow a culture indefinitely.

Let’s take this a step farther.

Would you eat human meat that was grown in a lab, if you could know for certain that the cells that were used to form the cultures were harvested from a consenting adult that was duly compensated? What if that person not only had consented, but wanted to be eaten, because they had a vore fetish, and enjoyed the thought of people eating pieces of them?

but people regularly think I’m 10 years younger than I am.

This is the same kind of magical thinking that leads some vegans to believe that they don’t produce any body odor, or that they can cure cancer through diet. I eat meat, I’m nearing 50, I’m physically healthy, and regularly mistaken for being in my 30s. The idea that vegan = healthy diet is, well, pretty obviously nonsense, since Oreos are vegan and still terrible for you.

A lot of aging is just genetics.

“Repressed” memories aren’t a thing. I would suggest that you read up on the body of work by Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. On the other hand, people forget thing, and certain things–smells, sounds–can trigger those memories. But these aren’t deeply traumatic memories that your unconscious mind is repressing to protect you, you’re just forgetting things.

Dr. Loftus has also authored a number of papers about the formation of false memories, and how people can be led to believe that they remember things that are absolutely, 100% false. Almost all of the cases of “repressed” memories from the 70s-90s, particularly during the Satanic Panic, are actually false memories created by the person asking questions. Unfortunately, much like the nonsense idea of multiple personalities, it’s one of those alluring concepts that simply won’t die, even among clinicians, despite the dearth of supporting evidence.

Interestingly, every time you recall a memory, it’s wiped out, and then has to be re-encoded. So recalling and rehearsing a memory makes it more likely that details will change and be lost. Even things that should be hugely significant–like where you were on 11 September 2001 (…for the people in their 30s and older…)–often get misremembered, and sometimes very strikingly.

I’ve looked into this before. There are several ways of achieving this kind of effect. The first is simply using translucent paints. The second is to use a ‘glaze’ that has to be fired and forms a permanent bond with the glass.

The second gives less consistent, but more permanent results. And is very, very technically challenging.

I am fairly certainly that the large lines are the lead came, and the smaller black lines are an opaque glaze. So the head and hair, for instance, are a single piece that was probably a peach-colored glass that was then painted with glaze–the hair is a built-up color from the base–fired, and soldered into place. The garment appears to use a different color of glass as the base, with built up shadows, fine lines, and (I think?) a white glaze for highlights.

It’s an artform that requires a high degree of technical mastery over multiple different elements. It’s a pity that it’s so rare to see this kind of work anymore. Then again, I’d never be able to afford it, so…

The cost of entering the market is so high that it’s functionally impossible for any new carriers to enter the market without having major investor backing. The only way to make the cost reasonable for most people is to have a very large risk pool; you can’t get a large risk pool without having a lot of people signing up, which means already having the infrastructure in place to handle that kind of numbers.

If you insure, say, 1000 people, and 999 of them are incredibly safe drives, and one of them drives drunk and kills a busload of school children–costing the insurer a “mere” $1,000,000 because that was the limit of their liability–that means that every person in that risk pool needs to pay $1000 annually for that single accident, and that’s just to break completely even, without accounting for any of the overhead involved in running an insurance company.

Shannon Larratt. He strongly influenced my beliefs in individual bodily autonomy, and individual liberty (which dovetail nicely with Mikhail Bakunin). He led me to be a Satanist even though he was not one himself.

This is why you do 8-10 hours of jump school before you do your first non-tandem jump, and your first bunch of jumps with main and reserve side coaches. Shit can go really bad, really fast. One thing they drilled into us repeatedly was always always cut away your main canopy if it didn’t deploy correctly, and you couldn’t clear the malfunction fast. Your AAD will deploy your reserve if you’re moving too fast when you get to your minimum altitude, and you don’t want your reserve tangling up in your main canopy. (Which makes a horseshoe especially dangerous, since you can have your cut away canopy still streaming from your foot, and that can get tangled in your reserve; it’s Bad Shit all around.)

I only did a few solo jumps before deciding that it was too expensive for me to get my license. It just wasn’t my thing; I could do it, but I didn’t love it. My ex-wife though… She spent nearly $10k in a year–on a credit card she took out in my name–because she couldn’t get enough.

Maybe I should have said that any attempts to game ranking–versus actually creating content (e.g., no repackaged content)–would result in being blacklisted until such content was removed.

If search engines really wanted to fix this–and it would require Google and Bing taking action, not smaller search engines–they could de-list any company that engaged in SEO so that nothing from that company showed up in searches at all.

Well. You don’t. OTOH, you can pre-treat clothing with a 5% permethrin solution, and that will keep arthropods away from you. You can safely treat pants, shirts, jackets, and socks, but should not treat underwear, gloves, hats, or balaclavas. Let it dry completely before wearing though.

Sure. I fairly frequently get invited to Civiqs polls in email. Civiqs is generally a very good polling company, they ask very neutrally worded questions, but do exhibit about a +3 bias towards the political left.

Permethrin. You should be able to get it at a Tractor Supply or Quality Farm & Fleet. Dilute it according to directions, or to about 10% overall concentration, put it in a sprayer, spray all around your garage. Follow all safety precautions, and wear googles and a respirator just to be safe. DO NOT allow any cats to come in contact with it until it fully dries; permethrin is very toxic to cats, but it should be fine once it’s dry.

It will kill arthropods (spiders and insects), and acts as a fairly long-lasting repellent to prevent future infestations.

As someone else said, if you have a spider “problem”, your real problem is that you have a lot of other insects that are acting as a food source for the spiders. Figure out what the other insect infestation is, fix taht, and you should fix your spider problem.

EDIT: black widow spiders aren’t actually particularly dangerous to people. Most bites resolve themselves without any medical attention, and the very, very few fatalities are usually very young children, very old people, or people that are already very ill.

Technically not a still life, because the cat is still (represented as being) alive.

One single superpower, or a suite of powers that exists within a single character?

Assuming that we’re talking conventional media (e.g., not religion), and we’re talking about powers that exist within a single character, I’d probably take the powers of a witcher, from Sapkowski’s novels. They’re not immortal, but they live multiple times longer than a normal human. They’re not invulnerable, but they’re able to take more physical abuse and heal than any normal person. They’re able to use magic in a limited way. They move faster and are stronger than humans. So they’re not so far outside of humanity that they can’t still blend in with and appreciate humanity.

I feel like most other super powers would quickly lead to intense alienation, because you’d be so far outside of the normal human experience that you’d lose the ability to empathize.