Also how there are tons of different Bible translations, BUT where they are on the paraphrase to word-for-word accuracy scale seems to have as much to do with the KJV as anything else. There'd be an entirely different translation environment if it hadn't been authorized at that grammatical moment.
The biggest lie that kept me in the SBC was that all 'real' churches were basically alike and therefore it was better to stay where you already knew people.
My parents trusted the local Episcopal church enough I went to preK VBS there. We could have moved when things first got questionable.
They do know what came of the generation that went through that back then, right?
The 'leaving the church in droves' waves when our parents could no longer make us or when we aged into Marry Someone With A Quiet Time And Compatible Gametes To Breed STAT lack of any not-dating-mill programming?
Like, the goal isn't to make it welcoming for the age-peers of parents, the examples who can show what their lives could be as the kids become young adults, or potential godparents who don't have a pack of their own under 15 to deal with (which isn't something the evangelicals have to worry about)?
One of the first shoves out of my first parish up here was getting the vibe that leadership felt betrayed that the newlyweds who said they weren't having kids had predictably not made a God Decided Otherwise human donation to the nursery dept.
Which was the same as Mom got in the SBC before me.
This was going on long before he was on the court.
Raid happens, no documents unless the employer deigns to provide them.
Employer abuse of any or all kinds happens, no documents if you leave and thus exposed to immigration enforcement as undocumented if you try to report.
The other time I knew on first visit is the local big-draw TEC parish.
We were greeted *once*, during Coffee Hour. My best guess was one or both of us looked like people who don't show up there 'often enough', and if that's how they treat folks known to them then we didn't want to become known.
Only time that's held true to me was because a church member 1) complained I was behind instead of in front of him so he couldn't harass me during the service (sitting w/ his wife!) and 2) bragged that their pastor was the only one in town who didn't use notes bc ALL HE DID was memorize his sermons.
Second best.
I've been wondering what happens with the 404 page for the existing links all over the conservative web.
Some seniors in my building visibly experienced me as 'that youngster who won't get vaccinated' bc I kept masking and wasn't even eligible yet, and I experienced them as 'the seniors who took permission to unmask if vaccinated to bar me and my finally treated asthma from lingering in common areas'.
Including experiencing the same events completely differently.
Still processing the fact that my parents' county was *this close* to raising a mob to go after any teacher who coughed when the first case was school staff, bc 'teachers should be smart enough to not get exposed by Those People'.
1. What did Dolly Parton do to them?
2. Great, the worst horror of my great-aunts is in the Guaranteed To Get This Far Into The Alphabet zone.
Oh and by default any employer who pulls the 'I'll hold your documents for you' trafficking trick makes even workers who are here 100% legally functionally undocumented when the feds come calling. Not that they really need that aid in victim removal and silencing now that any other excuse will do.
There are a large number of laws that depend entirely on victim reporting that *magically* stop mattering when the consequence to the victim is their abuser getting them deported before they can do more than file an initial report.
(H1-B 'exit on loss of job' requirements also apply the same way.)
There is an active market for It Can't Make Phone Calls mp3 players based on Android, some with app install access many without for kids. And enough of the reviews are about hardware problems or the OS being too old that It Runs Current iOS On Apple Hardware But No Calls would make so much money.
A while ago.
The occasional 'why isn't this compliant with [New Release]' comments on a fic started right after Avengers (based on seeing it in theaters once and Thor screenshots) gave me a mild anxiety attack watching Iron Man 3 and that's why I haven't seen Black Panther or later.
Wtf, fandom.
I'm remembering the one advanced level guest-taught writing class I had in undergrad.
And on one hand, we paid for about 1/3 of 3 semester credit hours of being smack-talked because EVERYONE was SFF or horror. And on the other, the only assignment I did she liked was horrifically badly plotted.
My godfather's funeral hymn was His Eye Is On The Sparrow (which is when I broke down).
I don't know if it was intentionally planned or if they used it because the entire parish knew who kept putting it in for Favorite Hymns Request Month every year.
The "You tore a page from the holy scriptures to make a pirate's death sentence." speech by itself is a work of art.
One of the worst and yet in the long term most beneficial events of our first married holiday season was me getting a pie-lifting injury at the grocery two days before Thanksgiving.
When you've broken the And It All Came From The Microwave barrier for a significant holiday, shortcuts feel easier.
So many things went wrong when the social concept of 'making money off investments' moved from 'all bonds held to maturity, sit on stock and collect dividends for years or decades' to 'assume sale as often as price goes up, investors' own fault if they hold anything long enough to go back down'.
This is also where the kids who were bored in church and already tried instead of listening get the weird looks.
Yes I was the sweet innocent kid who immediately knew which two chapters in Leviticus had the sexual offense lists. Because I thought the split between them was weird and remembered.
I honestly feel emotionally robbed that I didn't know the Artemis missions were even happening until THIS YEAR.
I got to nerd out about New Horizons with a NASA staffer at a roaming Come Touch A Moon Rock exhibit days before that flyby. I am part of an obvious target audience. How did I not know?
Families like his are why when my parents were looking for their current house, a realtor offered to show Dad places where the neighbors wouldn't notice if his wife and mid-twenties daughter *stopped going outside entirely*.
This was not the realtor they ended up working with. Creeped Dad out.
Yup.
Although I question why anyone would buy one with a wooden handle, since that immediately cuts out 'into the oven' functionality completely.
Re 2: Or make it favorite extinct archosaur and let Deinosuchus into the list.
In my case: 'Go look on Amazon for something called [thing]. We're not going to say that items called [thing] range from safe to very unsafe, you don't have the knowledge to tell l which, or that the chief market for [thing] outside medical ordering channels is a widely discriminated against group.'
The thing that gets me is this was rolled out at the exact same time as smartphones became de facto required.
It's not just that you can pull a device out of your pocket at any time and gamble the rent money, it's that schools, doctors, my local transit system, etc basically insist you have one.
Add in that Gen X were the older cousins and siblings who did things that led to a constant escalation of restrictions as we got older. In combination with lead levels, that meant a generational level *misaimed* collective punishment.
I was more free to roam my own yard at 5 than at 15. (Also 25.)
My child self was *sheltered*.
My child self would start at Why Don't You Have Kids and be immediately horrified at the 50 obvious to anyone who knew us at all reasons she would not want to have kids that they didn't bother telling us until after we'd absorbed OF COURSE YOU WANT TO HAVE KIDS.