If you've an issue with the size just hit the 'reader view' on Firefox, or 'Distill View' on Chrome etc..
or 'Distill View' on Chrome Is this an extension or a feature I'm unaware of?
Yes.
Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
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Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a webpage is an article, I don't understand why the normal behavior is that each website get's to (seemingly randomly) decide how its readers will interact with its text. It would be preferable if each user got to define a standard viewing mode for articles right in their browser. Something similar to the rendering settings for reader mode on iOS or on the Kindle or Readability. And then browsers firmly enforced…
I really wish we could differentiate between 'article-like' (where I can strip out everything but one main block of text) and app-like (that requires full javascript and DOM apis). That alone would "fix" 90% of the problems I see today. I don't need to see your fucking autoplay ad just to read your article. At LEAST let me pay you to get a somewhat sane, non-crippled copy of your article in an RSS feed; a single paym…
That's a pretty good idea. I was thinking a reason why this may exist is because there is an organized profit motive on the publisher / advertiser side. They make more money by controlling the user experience, and they make no money by leaving it to the users, because then their ads will be dodged, their in-site links won't be followed and their users will bounce away.
Perhaps, if some sort of fully anonymozied microtip system was integrated into the pages as well then it could work. I am thinking essentially something at the protocol level, where when the HTTP request is made there is a microtip HEADER, the site would collect the tip and respond with simply marked up text. Otherwise the response is the ad riddled tracky garbage we all have to suffer through currently. It would give the publishers some sort of profit incentive to come back over to the users side.
There would be an expectation to provide a second tip automatically managed by the browser after some reasonable amount of time unless the user cancels it, because the article sucked. I think with time (or maybe right off the bat) only the second tip exists as publishers get to trust users more.
I don't think the tips would have to be very large to make it work either. I do think having it integrated right into the browsers ui is pretty important. I also think having a standard protocol and anonymous system (though one which a user could opt out of if they wanted to demonstrate patronage publicly) is also important. And I think that having the tip automatically go through unless the user opts to cancel it either immediately via button in the browser or within a day or a week (in some history blotter, where they could also just send pay it immediately) or whatever is pretty important.
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#13Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#14If you've an issue with the size just hit the 'reader view' on Firefox, or 'Distill View' on Chrome etc..
Or use the zoom feature of your browser...
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#15Hinduism have a rich tradition of rejecting the personal god [1]. Some schools completely reject the creator god while others take agnostic position.
Four Vedas are considered oldest Hindu scriptures. Among the four, Rig Veda which is considered the highest and oldest casts doubts on god's abilities in its creation hymns.[2]
> The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_Hinduism [2] https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rigveda
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#16jesus wept ;)
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#17I normally really dislike comments that are not about the content, but, god, why is the font so HUGE?
When a webpage is an article, I don't understand why the normal behavior is that each website get's to (seemingly randomly) decide how its readers will interact with its text. It would be preferable if each user got to define a standard viewing mode for articles right in their browser. Something similar to the rendering settings for reader mode on iOS or on the Kindle or Readability. And then browsers firmly enforced…
I completely agree. I make heavy use of Firefox's "reader mode", and I wish it were enabled by default. It is by far superior to the normal experience with all that designery crap you're describing. Only very infrequently do I find an article that gets cut off or doesn't flow correctly in reader mode; I'd much rather just use it all the time, everywhere it's available, and disable it manually on the rare occasion I don't want it.
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#18I normally really dislike comments that are not about the content, but, god, why is the font so HUGE?
When a webpage is an article, I don't understand why the normal behavior is that each website get's to (seemingly randomly) decide how its readers will interact with its text. It would be preferable if each user got to define a standard viewing mode for articles right in their browser. Something similar to the rendering settings for reader mode on iOS or on the Kindle or Readability. And then browsers firmly enforced…
Indeed, I think a text mode button is a needed and worthy UI addition in FF and chrome.
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#19Platonism and Christianity both could reasonably be seen as atheistic from the perspective of classical antiquity, in that their view of what god was, was radically different from mainstream religious practice. In Platonism, especially, the One was very abstract and impersonal.
Re: Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
#20Platonism and Christianity both could reasonably be seen as atheistic from the perspective of classical antiquity, in that their view of what god was, was radically different from mainstream religious practice. In Platonism, especially, the One was very abstract and impersonal.
Yes. The way I see it, the term "atheism" is too loaded with its own contemporary meanings to allow reasonable discussion of the ancient world. Today, it is assumed that it negates "The" "God" as we understand the current definition of "him", not "the gods" as the ancients understood them at the time. For the current believer, the ancients all haven't believed in his God.
If one was to describe the gods at that time, they were "like humans, often with the superpowers, but primarily different from the humans by being immortal."(1) That's it. You don't have to completely negate the existence of such entities to claim that Zeus doesn't cause the thunder, or that there are natural laws which fully determine some phenomena. So the "natural philosophers" could search for such laws, negating the particular role of "the gods" but still not having to explicitly declare their complete non-existence.
1) And if you read the Old Testament, you'll find that beautiful scene that reflect the understanding of these times, where "the God" (as we understand him today) makes a visit to the guy, enters his house, sits with him, talks with him, eats with him... Fully comparable to what the gods do in the Iliad, for example. Not to mention that in the Old Testament the "sacrifices" were necessary, even "the God" was regularly "hungry" for the meat of the animals used to feed the "mortal" people. Again just like the gods in the Iliad.