I grew up as a Lutheran Christian in a small, conservative town—and attended Sunday School/summer Bible camp for many years—but became an agnostic after I began questioning things at 16 years old. About a month after that, I became an atheist. I’ve been one since… so almost 14 years.
Unfortunately, I was afraid to tell my parents, so I still went to church with my family almost every Sunday until I left at 18. I was also still effectively forced to be anacolyte/perform piano/sing in the choir/attend most other church activities. Fucking painful.
I still haven’t told my parents, though, and probably never will; it’d cause more pain than anything else, sadly.
I wonder how many other people at the mosque secretly think the same as you? If you have children, do you think they will be less constrained than you? In which case, there is some hope that the next generation will escape the strictures of organised religion.
I mean, boxes in general are my organising style. I keep a lot of aquariums so I bought 8 shoebox sized boxes, one for substrate, one for decor, one for water testing, etc.
In my bathroom I used to have a lot of stuff so I bought a few wicker baskets, hair stuff, skin care, and make up, then a tall cupboard with fabric boxes for cleaning products, toothcare, hair dyes, bath bombs, you know. I have boxes everywhere.
Jeff Long’s The Descent:
In a cave in the Himalayas, a guide discovers a self-mutilated body with the warning “Satan exists”.
In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old.
In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave.
So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them “devils” or “demons.” But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them…
And it’s sequel, Deeper:
A decade has passed since doomed explorers unveiled a nightmare of tunnels and rivers honeycombing the earth’s depths. After millennia of suffering terror and predation, humanity’s armies descended to destroy the ancient hordes. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, a doomed science expedition killed the subterraneans’ fabled leader, and suddenly it seemed that evil was dead and all was right with the world again.
Now “Deeper” arrives to explode that complacency and plunge us back into the sunless abyss. Hell boils up through America’s subways and basements to take its revenge and steal our children. Against the backdrop of a looming war with China, a crusade of volunteers races to find the vestiges of a lost race. But a lone explorer, the linguist Ali von Schade, learns that a far greater menace lies in the unexplored heart of the planet. The real Satan can’t be killed, and he has been waiting since the beginning of time to gain his freedom. Man and his pitiless enemies are mere pawns in the greatest escape ever devised.
My absolute favorite thing is exploring big buildings (hotels, schools, etc.), especially if there is a surreal element to how different areas are connected.
At some point my nightmares just turned into exciting adventures that can be scary but not horrifying. I kinda like those. I’d especially like to visit this abandoned factory again I once dreamt of but the dream ended with the building being demolished, and in the future dreams there’s only been the foundations left and apparently my autistic, logical mind doesn’t turn off even when I’m dreaming so ofcourse that building can’t just magically respawn for me.
My SO says I make noises indicating I’m not having a good time but I never wake up thinking I’m glad it’s over. I often dream about zombies or being at war but I like those dreams.
I don’t know if it’s the worst, but I am very disappointed with the movie adaptation of Mortal Engines. The series has such a rich world to explore and very good plot points that would have been amazing to see on the big screen.
The movie ruined any possibility to see a sequel or even a reboot in a very long time (similar to what happened with His Dark Materials), although the fandom now prefers that if there is another attempt at an adaptation it has to be a TV series and animated.
I know of two couples that dabble in it to some extent. One as far as I know is unicorn-hunting, because their rules for it suggest a 3rd member genuinely capturing someone’s heart would lead to relationship implosion of epic proportions, and I suspect that couple isn’t mature or stable enough to be doing what they’re doing without leaving people open for hurt. Not that I have any say in it, lol. But I feel sorry for any thirds that interact with them thinking there’s even a chance of them being an equal partner.
The other couple has much better communication skills, and claim they’re poly, but as far as I can tell from the outside “poly” has happened as an attempt to save the marriage. Maybe they’ll make it work, but I’ve watched them make some dumb mistakes, and the wife has jealous behaviors when women interact with the husband and a history of bending to his needs before her own so I think even if she says they’re poly she might have talked herself into it as a way to attend to him.
I think healthy poly is possible–but it requires extremely mature individuals with exceptional communication skills, and that’s rare even in monogamous couples.
I’m now working in a large corporation for the first time ever, so I’m not sure if anything makes sense.
But if I were running a big organization, my reason for communicating overall strategy to everyone in the organization would be to ensure they have context they need to make decisions themselves, as opposed to always needed to seek guidance from their boss.
I meant more like abstract business phrasing that is stuff like ‘aligns with lean principals’ or ‘improve efficiencies through cost driven metrics’ stuff that sounds like a high school essay written by a student adding as much fluff to every sentence and ending up with whole sentences that didn’t need to be said.
I mean, Lean as a methodology is meant to improve efficiency so it makes sense that they’d want to follow those principles, but the issue is (at least in my business) that people don’t actually know or understand those principles so they’re not followed well and it does just turn into random buzzwords.
In theory, project management and the push for efficiency through certain (what might seem like useless) planning measures actually does make for a smoother, better work environment. In reality, very few people understand any of it and worry more about instant results and ignore long-term plans, making any discussion of the topics totally irrelevant and useless.
Yeah this topic is not one to easily just jump into. I tried to make a summary in a long post here, but its really hard, there is too much information. If I were you I would just sit this one out altogether.
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