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Tim Smith he/him

Geek, leftist, and maker of stuff

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Jehovah’s Witnesses Finally Join the Australian Redress Scheme

Looks like Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es will join the redress scheme in Aus­tralia final­ly, but don’t think it’s because god some­how inspired them to do the right thing:

The organ­i­sa­tion says it will sign up because of new rules intro­duced by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which mean it would lose its char­i­ty sta­tus — and sub­se­quent tax exemp­tions — for con­tin­u­ing to hold out.

“Now that the law requires char­i­ties to join the scheme, Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es will com­ply,” it said in a state­ment to AAP on Wednesday.

Ah! Okay! Well at least the orga­ni­za­tion is being hon­est about being rot­ten. It can’t lose its pre­cious tax sta­tus! The orga­ni­za­tion still takes absolute­ly no respon­si­bil­i­ty for the abuse that’s hap­pened under its watch, but don’t take my word for it:

“Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es did not vol­un­tar­i­ly join because we object to the asser­tion that the reli­gion of Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren,” the group said.

For an orga­ni­za­tion that micro­man­ages every aspect of life for mem­bers, this is cer­tain­ly an inter­est­ing twist. But hey, a win is a win. I’ll take their hand being forced to do the right thing for vic­tims, over noth­ing, any day.

What is it when all you have is nos­tal­gia? When all there is left are moments and mem­o­ries from years long past? What does the love mean, when it’s for some­one who no longer exists? 

It’s noth­ing. For all that was feared to lose, is already lost.

One of my favorite ther­a­pists to fol­low on all of social media is @DrSprankle. I real­ly iden­ti­fied with a lot of this clip. While the reli­gion I grew up in didn’t believe in heav­en and hell, armaged­don and par­adise were the substitutes.

I was wrong­ly labeled a rule break­er, a rebel, or some type of deviant for not being able to live by the archa­ic and sex-neg­a­tive rules. I’ve spent most of my life inter­nal­iz­ing these labels, hat­ing myself and think­ing I was bro­ken. Thank­ful­ly, I’ve real­ized these were just lies that were spoon-fed to me by most­ly well-mean­ing people.

If you also strug­gle with sex­u­al shame, I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend the episode.

An amaz­ing expla­na­tion of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance by @ProudSocialist here. And while he’s talk­ing about pol­i­tics and how the rul­ing class con­tin­ues to sedate the mass­es with plat­i­tudes, it’s scar­i­ly sim­i­lar to my expe­ri­ence wak­ing up from cult indoc­tri­na­tion. My whole sense of real­i­ty was chal­lenged by new infor­ma­tion that was unde­ni­ably true. It’s dif­fi­cult, jar­ring and it con­tin­ues to bring me grief at times. But as dif­fi­cult as truth can be to stom­ach, that does­n’t make it any less true.

Give the whole episode a listen.

Any of y’all watched Cos­mos on Dis­ney+? I was watch­ing it this morn­ing and it just blows my mind that we’re such an insignif­i­cant spec in the grand scheme of the universe.

Employ­ers expect you to go above and beyond while giv­ing you the bare min­i­mum. We need to start demand­ing more democ­ra­cy in the workplace.

I start­ed watch­ing Ted Las­so on Apple TV+ the oth­er night, and I’m real­ly vib­ing with it. It’s so fuck­ing whole­some and charm­ing. Jason Sudeikis sur­prised me with his per­for­mance too.

I start­ed my free tri­al of Apple Fit­ness+ tonight and decid­ed to do one of the dance work­outs. I had such a blast! The work­out was fun, the instruc­tor was great, and it all hooks up with my Apple Watch. I’m excit­ed for these work­outs to get me more active.

Why We Feel Shame After We Orgasm

Sex isn’t shame­ful. You aren’t shame­ful for enjoy­ing it—in what­ev­er form you like hav­ing it—with oth­er con­sent­ing adults, or on your own. It’s a hard mes­sage to learn, but as we shift into a more sex-pos­i­tive future (hope­ful­ly) it can begin to manifest.

This is the first week­end in a long time that I’ve actu­al­ly enjoyed. I went to my Zoom sup­port group, made time to go shoot some hoops at the park, and I even made it to the beach today. Hope­ful­ly I won’t jinx it, but the fog feels like it’s lifting.

Kel­ly intro­duced me to Find­ing Fred. It’s a fan­tas­tic pod­cast about the one and only Fred Rogers. The episode ​“I Like You As You Are” had me in tears and feels immense­ly rel­e­vant right now. Fred’s words of wis­dom real­ly speak to the bro­ken inner child that I’m work­ing so hard to heal. Give it a lis­ten, I can’t rec­om­mend the show enough.

Music

Listening: Come Back Soon by Lexii Alijai

Another incredible artist gone much too soon

I orig­i­nal­ly dis­cov­ered Lexii Ali­jai on Sound­Cloud back in 2015 with her remix of ​“How Bout Now”. I loved her flow and lyrics, and it didn’t hurt that she’s was a Saint Paul native. Nat­u­ral­ly, I had no choice but to stan and sup­port her.

Lexii is work­ing through some shit on Come Back Soon. She talks about the pres­sure to suc­ceed for her fam­i­ly, depres­sion, drug use, and her unapolo­getic sex­u­al escapades. The EP feels like an artist com­ing into their own. Lexii sounds self-aware and confident.

It’s sad to see Lexii’s life end at the incred­i­bly young age of 21, but she remains alive through her art that we will con­tin­ue to enjoy for many years to come. And I think there’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about that.

My favorites:

  1. Hood­ie SZN (feat. Wale)
  2. All These
  3. Antho­ny

When you’re fat, you real­ize how many brands don’t give a fuck about fat peo­ple. We want soft, com­fort­able and styl­ish clothes too, you know.

Here is my new and updat­ed home screen. I’ve been doing the one page thing, and it’s real­ly worked out for me. I have all the things I use fre­quent­ly here, and every­thing else I just search for or use the App Library.

My new updated home screen.