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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • In my hyper religious, Southern Baptist upbringing, I often heard Christians say that Christianity is not a religion. The mental gymnastics employed to explain this position were varied. Most often it was “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship [with God]”, or something along the lines of “Christianity isn’t a religion because it’s true”.

    “Religion” in general was thus deemed a bad thing, because it was a term used to encapsulate all the other (and thus false) faith-belief-philosophy systems that were used by Satan to lead the world away from God. It bears noting that Catholicism and other major denominations always all fell under that umbrella of “other”.






  • May or may not be relevant. Statistically, people with illnesses like schizophrenia are no more likely to commit violent crimes than the general population (but are more likely to be victims of violent crimes). There are documented cases of people with schizophrenia killing or commiting other violent acts in response to delusions, but it’s usually in an act that they perceive as self-defense rather than being driven by malice or desire to harm. I.e., it’s generally more like “I killed my dad because he was going to kill me” rather than “I went out and murdered some random women because no women like me.”


  • It’s a toss up between

    1. R telling me she was on birth control, I guess thinking it’d keep me around if we had a kid, then when our kid was age 4 she said she had cancer and disappeared for several months. Turns out she never had cancer and just said that so I wouldn’t think poorly of her for abandoning her child to run off with a guy in another state. …Her child that she was barely present for anyway.
    2. D getting me to empty my 401k to buy a house as an investment property for “our” retirement, only for her to keep it in the divorce. I could have pushed for it to be sold and gotten at least some of my money back, but she would have put up such a fight that I’d have spent in attorney’s fees as much as I would have won from the sale, so it wasn’t worth the fight to me, and she knew that.

    What’d I learn from these? Not a whole lot, it turned out: my next relationship wasn’t much better. But at least I figured out to end that one before it got TOO too deep.





  • Sounds like it could be interesting to try snow biking. Doesn’t often snow here, and when it does it rarely sticks. Maybe 1-3 actual accumulations per year, so my gravel bike is suitable practically all the time. It’s just the cold that makes it unpleasant to me - layering when it’s 50F is fine, in the 40s F is doable if it’s sunny. Anything below that is just miserably uncomfortable to me because of cold wind to the face and the need to adjust layers as I warm up and cool down.




  • I definitely feel better overall when I ride my bike regularly. My mood is better, I have more energy, and I sleep better. I got into it around the time I separated from my ex-wife, and I think it’s a significant part of what kept me from falling into a serious depression when I got divorced.

    I hate running. I hate swimming. I hate lifting weights, or anything in a gym. Hiking is nice, with the right company. But I enjoy biking around my neighborhood and along the city greenways. I was wanting to be more active, healthier, etc. but couldn’t find anything I actually would stick with until I found an activity I actually enjoyed. Lately I’ve been feeling pretty down, getting uncomfortably close to a major depressive episode, but riding my bike for a while always makes me feel a bit better, at least while I’m doing it. I think not biking, due to it being winter, is indirectly part of why I’ve been down - I just haven’t been doing much that is enjoyable while dealing with a lot of stress including some major life changes.

    Fwiw, I’m a psychiatric nurse. I’ve read the science news articles that say exercise is better than anything and the ones that say it doesn’t do much. I’ve also read some of the actual research/journal articles. The reality is that we’re not really certain how much difference it actually makes, but it probably depends on a variety of factors that vary from person to person and based on the type of exercise. We do know that people who are physically healthier also tend to feel better mentally. What I have seen personally, and experienced myself, is that exercise helps with mood, but it’s not a cure-all, and it’s not instant, and it makes a difference if it’s something you enjoy doing independently of it’s health benefits. Exercising outdoors, particularly in green spaces, probably also helps.




  • I’m not optimistic about her winning - this is Tennessee, after all. Outside of Nashville and Memphis, it’s a sea of painful ignorance and R voters. Even relatively purple places like Knoxville can’t seem to elect anyone other than R’s who are hellbent on destroying civil society for no particular reason - the pro-wrestler mayor dismantled the county health department in the middle of the pandemic, for crying out loud. And people applauded him for it!

    I’ll donate to her campaign and cross my fingers, but I’m not holding my breath.


  • Depends on district policy and state/local law. E.g., in my kid’s district a parent can request for their child to attend any school of the same grade within the district if space is available, but parents have to provide transportation if it’s not the zoned school. For the district where we lived previously, a family moving out of zone could request that students be allowed to keep attending their current school through the end of the year.

    Per the article, both state and federal law allows these kids to continue attending the same school in such situations. It’s the school’s fault because, even if their district has no such policies, the clear and obvious course would be to seek an exception until policy could be addressed to align with the law. Instead, they simply refused to meet with the mother.


  • Last house I rented, when I moved in the dryer lint trap and its housing were so jammed full of lint I could have made a blanket from it. It was astonishing. I don’t think the prior tenants knew it needed to be cleaned ever. I honestly wonder how the dryer wasn’t broken and no fire had started.

    The HVAC filter had a solid inch thick cake of dust and dog fur.