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(This is a continuation of my reply to the recent thread about the Civilization series.)
It's got some issues with, for lack of a better term, historical accuracy. There's some weird dodgy stuff in the tech tree. You may try to scoff and say that it's just a game, it's not meant to be accurate. Yeah, of course not, to a certain point. Old Man Redactor once saw me playing Darklands and pointed out that if you just changed the data files you could use the same engine to make a game about running a laundromat. What elevates games over spreadsheets is that there's some kind of story that it's telling you where the numbers mean something. In Civ, that story is history in general, so it had darn well better at least feel like it has to do with history.
I only realized later that actually my father is a Satanist who was trying to drive me away from good Christian games. One day on the solstice he made carry a bunch of 1-gallon milk jugs full of blood (I dunno what kind) from the garage to the trunk of his old Honda. Then he got in and it flew away into the night. That's when I put two and two together.
The way religion is handled I think is pretty butt-backwards. In the original Civ, it's all abstract. You build a temple and that's it, it's assumed that it's a temple for whatever these people believe in. It doesn't really matter what religion it is because, for the purposes of the game of Civilization, people from different religions act pretty much the same for the most part because we're all human.
The other approach you can take is what they do in Europa Universalis. (I dunno if they still have the guts to do this but they did when I played it.) Where you decide which religions are good or bad and give them bonuses and penalties. This obviously has some disadvantages. Like it's really fricking obvious what's going on when the game is made in Sweden and the good religions that get bonuses are in northern Europe. You can't get away with that if you're making a game outside of an extremely ethnocentric culture like Sweden.
Swedes always score themselves as the happiest country on Earth when they make those rankings, yet all the Swedes I know complain about how their husband just drinks all day and won't do anything even though she physically beats the shit out of him. Curious.
Civ IV tried to have their cake and eat it too but you end up with nothing and you're still hungry. The religions use the superficial trappings of ones from the real world but in gameplay terms they're completely generic with nothing differentiating them except which tech activates them. If they're generic why do we need them? Why not just leave it completely abstract like in Civ I? If we're assigning them to real world religions, why don't we give them their own special bonuses like we do with different civilizations?
The approach in Civ IV is kinda stupid both in terms of gameplay and theme. You might as call the religions pokemon because you're best off just collecting them all. Each one in a city adds happiness and gives you the opportunity to build more improvements. Honey, please. This is a stupid gameplay mechanic where you're encouraged to build missionaries to convert all your cities and build the same improvement several times for each religion. I consider this to be what Soren Johnson (designer of Civ IV) himself called a "degenerate strategy" in his seminal piece "Water Finds a Crack". You're doing something that's stupid and not interesting because the game rewards you for it. There's no interesting choices going on here. The other gameplay impact religion has is that basically it makes some of the AI civilizations hate you for no reason. This was obviously intended to stop you from just turtling and being friends with everyone, but it's annoying when you're left with fewer options to pursue in diplomacy.
In terms of history, this is all really stupid. Religious diversity works in America because the Founding Fathers designed our nation around it. In the rest of the world in the rest of history, having many different religions in one city is not a recipe for everyone to love each other. Let's look at the late 1500s, when religion was perhaps the most important in history that it's ever been. You had stuff like Protestant mobs surrounding the convent and yelling lewd suggestions of what the nuns should do. Today in Beirut they've got 15 religious sects and it's not giving them +15 happiness points. It's giving them continuous simmering animosity. Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, great cities that have "stood the test of time" like the ones represented in Civilization are not finding that diversity is their strength. By ignoring these real issues, I feel that Civ IV is demeaning both to America, where we actually solved them to some extent, and to the poor bastards living in those shithole countries where they have to deal with sectarian bullshit on a daily basis.
In 1976 the Lebanese decided that their happiness bonus from being multicultural society was so great that they asked the Syrian Army to come and violently put down sectarian violence experience it for themselves.
Also, what do you do with the Jews and Hindus? If you're putting real world religions into the game they're incredibly important so you have to include them, but they're not like the other ones featured in the game. They're not sending missionaries around trying to convert people. So what do you do? Write special rules for them? Who's gonna do that? You'd need to hire some guy from Hebrew University who also loves 4X to do any justice to it.
Now this is a nice campus.
The way that religion affects diplomacy in the game is stupid in the other direction. Countries won't make alliances with the "infidels"? How fricking naive do you have to be? Are like 4 fricking years old? Let's look at the late 1500s again. I don't have the book at hand at the moment, so this is from memory, but there was an alliance against the Hapsburgs that was something like this: Sweden, Denmark, England, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, various parts of Italy, and the Ottomans. They'd have added the Moros in the Philippines if they had better communications technology. In Lebanon they've gone through every possible combination of different sects allying with each since 1975. Most hilariously the Druze who have been both allied with and fought everyone else at least once since then. The elites running the country or the faction usually don't give a shit about sectarian hatred except as a tool they can use to manipulate the plebs.
Sana'a Mehaidli. Carried out a suicide bombing against the Israeli occupation force in 1985. I guess nobody ever told her that as a Christian she wasn't supposed to be on the same side as Muslims. 
Which takes me back to my original point about how Sid Meier did it with generic temples. It's not because he's some atheist who hates religion. (He's actually a Christian of the actually going to church kind btw.) It's because trying to fit too much low-level detail about religion into a 4X game is really tricky and probably won't work in terms of gameplay or theme. I've always had a strong impression that this feature was basically put in because there was a feeling among (mostly atheist) 4X fans that religion was a big thing in history so we need a gameplay mechanic for it. And my feminine masculine intuition is rarely wrong.
After all this time I spent writing this I really feel like... starting up a new game of Civ IV. It's a great game. 
donates to Orange Man's Inauguration fund 
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"All the trillion dollar corporation CEOs are donating money and having one-to-one dinners with him. Hello oligarchy." - /u/erotic_sex_worker
So just like it's always been: Biden inaugural committee raised $62M with big sums from billionaires, corporations
I love that it's only news now because Trump does it.
It's (D)ifferent ya know
God America is corporate wasteland now. They don't even hide buying politicians anymore. But don't worry rich orange Jesus is here to save us, he totally knows the struggles of the working man.
This is what 78 million Americans voted for.
They wanted corporate welfare, billionaire immunity, and pay for play.
Oh, you thought you'd get cheaper groceries and a one time $600 dollar check? Fricking dolts.
"I don't want consumer protection, workers rights or more financial freedom like never having to worry about healthcare costs again! I want to stop woke and trans and poor people from having freedom."
terrorists don't attack us anymore because they cant achieve our level of destruction with ignorance voting. - /u/herefromyoutube
I'm certain they wanted more corporate welfare and to not own the libs lmao
Look, I didn't like Trump and never voted for him. I thought Biden was honestly doing a pretty okay job. But as a lifelong Apple fan, if Tim's on board, then I'm willing to give him a chance. - /u/Ok-Echo-7764 [-50]
It's even worse when you consider the fact that he's a gay man supporting this admin. Sad.
These people really think the GQP is really going to take away gay rights lmao - /u/OmniAtom91
Honestly I don't blame Cook that much for this. With Trump as president, you have to pay to play. Trump would be petty enough to do something to ruin Apple stock if Cook didn't pay.
Didn't hate the player, hate the game. - /u/d-cent [-8]
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.webp?h=10 "Top Hat (black) - Traditional. Classy. Elegant.")
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i havent posted in a while but my favorite event happened again, the independent thinkers at the `farms decided to discuss an article headline, from "instant update news"
"I'm Human Too!" - Trans Activist's Outrage After Gynecologist REFUSED To See Them
The local transgender farmers are not happy
"erm... do you have a source??"
"looks real to me"
!nonchuds !chudmoment @The_Homocracy
@BWC
@pizzashill discuss
- 14881350 : Groomercord pdf-file total Groomercord death
THE ROBOT IS STUCK! - 29
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https://instagram.com/p/DE8lvTEynSU/
Drumf reps more Black Culture than K-hive confirms
That's only half-way through the fricking first page 
Nelly Will Reportedly Perform at the fricking Inauguration | LA
As far as I can tell HHH hasn't found out about Snoop. Probably too busy blowing Feminemn and Kendrick Lamebars
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been getting into ja rule, mystikal, missy elliot, ludacris, all the greats of the 2000s
got any favorites?
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A friend of mine has skin cancer and was about to start a clinical trial at MD Anderson after his other treatments did not work.
— Eric Koch (@EricDKoch) January 24, 2025
Trump's decision to temporarily halt funding for medical research also applies to clinical trials.
His treatment is now canceled. pic.twitter.com/7L8cxrwND5
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not much drama at first
some actual flga strag discussion about colour theory or something
symbols used by evil people are OBJECTIVELY bad
the Orange 
in the Indian 
flag represents Bharat racism, except absolutely UNIRONICALLY 
some brave chuds farm downmarseys
"Yes it is" "No it isn't"
https://old.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/1hdybyq/does_it_look_better/m1zqnja/?context=8
"Firstly I for one would compare the Apartheid flag to the confederate flag or Rhodesian flag neither of which are appropriate. Furthermore, both the Union Jack and rising flag should be seen as problematic and I'm glad you agree with that." "The BritBong flag is raping meeeeee" 
miraculously even some circlejerk gets counterjerked against the usual Vexilloligy Intellectual shitlibs which equates symbolism of historically abhorrent regimes/nation-states/movements to be automatically abhorrent
https://old.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/1hdybyq/does_it_look_better/m1zpdij/?context=8
Anyways the weird things in all of these tiresome debates and slapfights, is that virtually zero safricans are ever involved with these flag MEDIA LITERACY and/or the denial of association with past atrocities/Apartheid connotations ect.
It's very difficult to explain, but trust me you can instantly pick up on the speaking patterns, lexicon and terminology with regards to how Safricans usually have internet slapfights - of of this shit you've seen is exclusively foreigners/westoids/yanks - be they performative shitlibs or Eurocuck Stormfronters utilizing Boers as a proxy for whatever pan-white racial international brotherhood whatever.
1st, actual Boers/Afrikaners, the actual turbo giga-chuds, would never ever utilize this
for pan-Afrikaans cultural celebration or whatever. The green Y symbol is already a racial-harmonious symbol in meaning, and the Black/Yellow stripe is explicitly african in connotation, as well as a call-back to the ANC (African National Congress) early symbolism. The Modern Safrica flag was explicitly chosen by the Mandela Administration to be a blending of previous Eueropean and african symbolism, whilst deliberately excluding symbolism of the Union of SA (the Apartheid State) flag characteristics.
Back in early 2000s internet, when the early web was not so sanitized, and linkrot would not claim like 75% of the internet, and old forums could still exist, including many many Stormfront and actual Boer supremacy sites - the vast majority despised the Y-green stripe symbolism, and conflated it to an Assegai (the signature short stabbing spear of Zulus/Xhosas/Swazi peeps) busy raping/stabbing 
the old Transvaal flag (which was the much more dominant between the two historic Boer republics)
https://zuluwarstore.com/en-za/products/iklwa-zulu-war-assegai
So that the modern 
flag was basically being R*PED by BBC 
Like i'm not joking or lying, this was the dominant discussion for afrikaans teenage white supremacists on the pre-4chan dustlands of the internet, as small as it was in the early 2000s, and would continue to do so.
Thus any replication of the modern by just replacing the colour from red to orange, would not have been done by boers, and was instead, strangely enough done by foreign Stormfronters, not grasping the already pan-racial unity symbolism of the rest of the flag.
Additionally there had been a few adult discussions for using the orange coded flag for afrikaans, but that was a great rarity
https://www.fotw.info/flags/za!afrik.html
like if you read the above fotw article, you'll be under the impression that this "Afrikaner" flag was a large movement, when in reality it was small, unpopular, and with even the majority of Boers being completely ambivalent. In reality it was some last ditch, Boer giga-boomer vexilloligy neurodivergents having a hobby thought experiment
Long boring point, there has never been a real threat of resurge of such symolism.... especially when the actual South African brainless white supremacists with no self-preservation would just fly or parade the Union flag as it was.
==========
On the opposite side, the shitlibs who foam at the mouth 
for evil WRONGTHINK racist symbology, you know the kind of fools who take 4chan bait of OK 
and milk drinking 
as fricking subterfuge attempts of conveying coded Mayo supremacy between racists, is a very Westoid yank shit type of purity secular type religiosity
similar to Christian Soccor moms, trying to out purity each other, by demonstrating how they got rid of Rock-and-Roll, Pokemon and Harry Potter from their household cuz that shit is Satanic - it's all very performative - to the extent that these progressives brainwash themselves into fricking believing the colour ORANGE is itself racist, not because of any local connections to their home country, but simply because their purity spiral on the /r/vexillology sub has reached it extreme conclusion, so that just because the Apartheid South African regime had orange within its flag, it automatically means frickin all orange colours on all flags must be associated with chuddery 
========
Additionally the lexicon of of these obvious, white, western, upper-middle class is NOT that of black Safrican peeps, whom often do have real-world reasonable and unreasonable beef with white safricans, and especially afrikaners - the fact that many afrikaners racists do in fact try to find ways in which to transmit racism against blacks without being caught, such as in schoolyard poems, songs, jokes and lymrics. Many very unsubtle
The racial tension is also much so between black and white peeps in Safrica, that ill feeling in the air, in meetings can be cut with a butterknife. Uncomfortable associations like black manual labourers sitting behind a pick-up truck, while whites sit in front can lead to friction, regardless if there's cause for that. Example if i work on my father's farm, we are often so dirty that only the designated driver sits in front, because we've worked with pitch-coated wooden beams, and our hands are covered in sticky residue, and thus I and the black labourers in in the back, until we reach the tap and soaping point - but it often enough occurs that it's only my father (who has to do the driving), and the black men with their gloves sit in the back - a Speedcop/Traffic-cop might take out his ire on my father, replicating the behaviour of Apartheid era bosses, who never let 2nd -class blacks sit within, or the front for any reason, because of their inferior status.
Because of this, a large amount of racism afrikaans humour revolves around being in a superior/inferior status in life depending upon whether you sit in front or the back of the Bakkie - and blackcoloured peeps are certainly aware of such, there is no need for coded flags.
Additionally when black liberals talk about latent afrikner racism they don't talk like fricking redditors and call each other "Media illiterates", or use "context and connotation" or "inconvenient symbolism" - black liberals are much more blunt when they tend to describe safrican white racism, it's difficult to convey.
- box : wtf I love Protonmail even more now
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Original post in /r/protonmail, where the CEO responds to the controversy:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/
Excerpt from Yen's comment:
This is not going to be a popular opinion, but on the specific issue of antitrust, Democrats fell short. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation. Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote. In the aftermath of this failure, great people like former Democratic rep David Cicilline left congress, leaving few strong voices for antitrust left in the Democratic party. In the meantime, at a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
Redditors:
Today /r/privacy, in a removed post, Redditors continue to seethe.
https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1id1lo5/proton_ceo_responds_to_backlash_after_his_post/
One particularly amusing comment chain where people are scarmbling to find a service that isn't in the hands of a chud:
https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1id1lo5/comment/m9vi9tu/?context=8
Sardines with more soyseethe:
https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1i2q6a9/comment/m7gq8v5/?context=8
Diversity Is Our Strength 
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If you’re thinking of running for office, I’d love to chat with you.
— Bostonians Against Mayor Wu (@AntiWuCoalition) February 8, 2025
Check out three months of data—@AntiWuCoalition delivers real engagement, not just impressions. Unlike traditional digital ads that get ignored, my audience actively engages.
Spend your political ad budget… pic.twitter.com/6MAixhUzex
If you're thinking of running for office, I'd love to chat with you.
Check out three months of data—@AntiWuCoalition delivers real engagement, not just impressions. Unlike traditional digital ads that get ignored, my audience actively engages.
Spend your political ad budget wisely—reach out with what you need, and let's get your message seen, shared, and talked about.
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Holy shit it is bleak. There are three Harry Potter books in there and two Hunger Games books in there in the top 10 best books.
Then you compare it to the best books of the 20th century ( still one harry potter book in there in top 10 but they are still doing way better than the 21st century.
How did the quality of the "greatest" works fall down so quickly. It is like humanity has forgotten how to write anything with any depth anymore and it is all at the level of quality of teenage story writing.
Is it simply over for the writing genre as a whole or is it that the best quality writing is actually no longer being recognized as the best because it didn't sell enough copies nor got enough appreciation from writing critics, or is it that there is a complete disconnect between what the average person considers enjoyable writing and what is considered actually good high brow writing?
I think it is a shift in medium where all the people looking for depth and high quality in their literary works moved on to movies and video games instead and all who are still hanging around the writing genre are those who will pick a random niche and the general books based on lowest common denominator which is teenage angst or teenage wonderment slop.
What this means is that the writing genre is going to keep going further down in quality over time and we need to look at the possible extinction of reading one day if everything turns out to be possible to be done by video because people are clearly getting worse at appreciating literature while getting a whole lot better at their expectations and appreciation of better video entertainment content.
Conclusion:
In terms of ease of entry into the writing department this is the easiest time period. In terms of making money from it, likely one of the harder time periods. We can expect the quality of writing meant for general audiences to have reached the lowest floor and never rise above it again this generation. The Zoom zooms are too r-slurred when it comes to quality writing in just a book.
Also if you still read Harry Potter books, READ ANOTHER BOOK!
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An Indian travel vlogger visited Nigeria and she never wishes to visit again. She gave some reasons here. pic.twitter.com/saiIi4HNe8
— Lord Immy Kant (Eastern Exile) (@KantInEast) January 31, 2025
have your Social Security number 
? What DOGE 
has done so far – Baltimore Sun - 20
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reminder that a random no name company "accidentally" leaked every single American SSN to the dark web and 
hardly talked about it and no one went to jail/got fined. The SSN is literally worthless now especially if ur young
https://rdrama.net/h/mnn/post/292567/killherkillherssn-of-every-american-29-billion
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https://old.reddit.com/r/CleaningTips/comments/1hp8ezp/everything_in_my_house_is_turning_green/
The tl;dr is a woman notices shit in her house is turning green and a r*dditor helps her find out it's because her husband is cheating with a woman that wears jeans.
NPReddit reports on it like it's in the news. All of the articles are slop just quoting the thread.
Most obvious reddit slop reddit shit I ever saw. Clearly trying to ape that ancient carbon-monoxide post.
Let's take a look:
She found out he's cheating because she snooped through his phone and just by "chance" he had dm's on Instagram from a woman that "happened" to be wearing Old Navy jeans on her page. https://old.reddit.com/r/CleaningTips/comments/1i2htjj/update_everything_in_my_house_is_turning_green/
She has nine fricking cats https://old.reddit.com/r/pacmanfrog/comments/1iag4zz/comment/m9azbwn/?context=8
It's a woman.
She looks like this: https://old.reddit.com/r/PlasticSurgery/comments/16k14fy/lipo_360_295_cc_breast_implant_one_week_post_op/
I'm sure parts of it are true but this is the gayest shit I ever saw.
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Most Based Comments
Basedness: 🔥🔘🔘🔘🔘
Basedness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘
They don't even want freedom for themselves. What they want is the people they dislike to suffer more than they are. They know they'll lose things they love from all this, but as long as those dirty non-christian gays, or trans, or blacks, or immigrants are having a worse day than they are, then they will be happy. It's worse than you think. It's all about seeing how many people they can make more miserable than they are. (80)
Basedness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘
Angriest Comments
Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡
Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡
Angriness: 😡😡😡😡😡
Biggest Lolcow: /u/pgrechwrites
Score: 🐮🐮🔘🔘🔘
Number of comments: 4
Average angriness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘
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Minimum angriness: 😡🔘🔘🔘🔘
NEW: Subscribe to /h/miners to see untapped drama veins, ripe for mining! 
autodrama: automating away the jobs of dramneurodivergents. 
Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion 
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Literally crying.
ensues
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The embargo for reviews of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has lifted. We don't have a review on the site here at Polygon. This is not an editorial decision; we had hoped to review the game. On Jan. 2, Polygon requested a code for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 from Warhorse Studios, the studio behind the game, and received no response. On Jan. 7, we reached out to the PR firm working with Warhorse, who told us they were "not able to provide access. We'll let you know if this changes." We reached out to parent company Plaion on Jan. 9 as well — no response. On Jan. 10, we saw our peers publishing early previews for the game. We re-upped our request and were again told we would not be given access.
This was very unusual. But this was the situation that transpired with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It can be difficult to tell when a studio's decision to withhold a code from a publication is intentional and personal. That's due in part to the fact that the process for getting advance review codes is about as rote and administrative as it gets. Sometimes, PR firms working for studios send us codes unsolicited in hopes we'll cover the game in question. Other times, we request codes from the game's representatives ourselves, several weeks ahead of the release date, and we get those codes when and if they are available.
As part of our final request for code on Jan. 10, Polygon's editor-in-chief Chris Plante contacted Plaion and Warhorse's PR firm to get a comment as to why we were denied advance access to the game. He stressed in his message that our hope is that this decision wasn't due to any personal bias against Polygon, nor motivated by any of our previous coverage of games made by Warhorse or any other. In short, we wanted to know: Was Polygon being blacklisted?
On Jan. 10, we did receive a response to this request stating that we could get one code for the game on launch day, Feb. 4. We did not receive any clarification as to how this decision was made. Nor did we receive the requested clarification on why the developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 declined to provide Polygon access to the game.
Because we will not receive access to this game until its public release, our review is nonetheless forthcoming but will not be published in time for its release date. We look forward to telling you more about this game in the weeks to come.
KIA Gloats
And now, for the why. From Charlie Hall's review (12 February 2018)
"The game is also not without its controversies. Warhorse is a team of more than 150 people, but the game's creative director has gone out of his way to rationalize his support of G*merGate, a loosely knit hate group that has devoted time to harassing women, people of color and journ*lists in the past. So outspoken is the studio's leadership on cultural issues that they have found it necessary to work with a German outlet to publish anti-fascist, anti-sexist and anti-racist statements prior to their game's launch."
Thank you for that completely unnecessary bank-shot that turned a poor review into a politically motivated hit piece. And you wonder why they weren't lining up for more of that?
BRUM 
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https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1idisls/comment/m9zzfkr/?context=8
Inside job!!
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1idisls/comment/m9zyssb/?context=8
All religion 
bad, not just Islam!!! Islam 
is not to blame
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1idisls/comment/ma00d6f/?context=8
Mohammad peepee suckers trying their hand at spreading misinformation 
for the religion 
of peace
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1idisls/comment/m9zzr6d/?context=8
Muslims murdering people for Islam 
reminds me of Christians not being cool with abortion 
as birth 
control!!!
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1idisls/comment/m9zz874/?context=8
DAE BOTH RELIGIONS ARE THE SAME? As an atheist 
on Reddit, I am euphoric 
(x24)
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