when researching nursery rhymes for this book, i enjoyed how odd and tautological some of them were. this is my favorite: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/6ace0060bc6d12cd840562c0afe428e83daf0a357c9f3a545d72e33862213ed9.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/20aac15322b2623cde5f5f40b5f1fe7fc11f6d679b6b901014217416af61bf26.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/a1b8460c401c310d2b9d22c86193173efecacfd541e16c398c75f8aac3067a0d.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/567d8dae173e4ffc549ad747673e62cf5af401a2f8d0ea1290c3fbeb8cbb48d3.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/930c61d8f10de39f07dfae85e1cdbc22b48eea70a830b9f16d69c2a500e221cf.file

if you still need to get a gift for anyone, i got you. in: this thread https://hell.twtr.plus/media/2a1b75e0ca58b4500d9b55d218aa5c4026670c29a5b87830017d0ef1ae86e642.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/8840a1f1148089ee473737c1e72289071ae98e9a3bd9b0bfc0c60124ce92590d.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/95e1aafc97882c750a170df36035efb8ac10795ced3830e8ed01d739401001f1.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/8a53db4fc042526557af6f4372373ecb80575388ae53b0e3a8e8fb3ca75b1f4f.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/8f66f011ab6f486043559dbc8c09d2155266fd0a811f183bc7d6855a054fc7d7.file

we do the st nicholas day thing: kids wake up to find treats left in their shoes. so im looking at my 1 year old, who’s just getting a grip on reality, up at 6 eating chocolate out of her shoe and her face says: damn im really back to square one here i have no idea whats going on

aquinas says in the summa theologica (my note here is ST III, q.68, aa. 1-2) that in an emergency even an unbaptized person can validly baptize another. this means that if a ship of atheists wrecked onto an island, the population of that island could go from 0 to 100% catholic.

interestingly, i am not any of these people, the middle individual being richard scarry: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/2a969c373f061b44ce2f93627e02fd4952bbe3774140321147567de908173387.file

kid's don't operate the same way adults do. there's a dimension of the santa question that forces children into an adult paradigm. maybe it's correct or incorrect, but there's a meta aspect: is it fair to do that? - to ask a prehistoric person to be modern, like you. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/e112c2cea74de13f4b4596dcadbfcc6bc1232b4943c0b31e4e27965c6965c695.file

but, for me to engage with that is technically lying, if doing the "santa thing" is lying. in that paradigm, it's a lie for me to pretend to call his sheep toy on the phone to find a lost object. you can't really wiggle out of this, because he thought it was real, for sure.

now, would it be appropriate for me to say: "stop doing that. that's not a phone. it's just a block. you're not really talking to the sheep toy. also, he's just a toy, he can't talk." i think most people would say that there is something unideal about this. to me, that's clear. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/042be965f6bd9cef89713ad6df4cd62101d29b64cd03856ed9c842b8645b1d73.file

one example of this is: i have a son. when he was very small, if we lost a toy, i'd take out a block and "call" his sheep toy on this "phone block", and ask where the lost toy was. eventually, he started doing this. he would say: "i'm calling stormcloud sheep, maybe he knows".

the santa question is often presented as, "well, you're lying to them". it's never presented from the other direction: are you giving them information that is (great phrase) developmentally inappropriate? are you taking an egyptian person and giving them a book on postmodernism?