Wow. I was just going to snoop around people’s houses…

Dogs can’t look up

I was popular in primary school. Then, in High School I hung out with friends who were into Dr Who and nerdy stuff, because I knew and liked them and could never play the social status game by just cutting them off to be cool.

Four years in, when i was about 15, one of the jocks decided that we were gay (which was social death in the early 90s in rural Scotland), so my status plummeted even further.

That summer, at 16, I got drunk and had sex with a girl, which was something we both regretted. The rumour got out and that seemd to elevate me, socially. By this point me and my friends were big into Nirvana and had formed our own little clique of stoners so the jocks left us alone.

I look back on it all with some regret. I wish I’d been more confident. I would have liked to have been involved in team sports and activities that I was drawn to, but my friends derided.

My understanding is that these days kids are less socially segregated and you’ll find nerds doing physical stuff and jocks trying to be academic. Dunno if that’s true, but it sounds like progress.

It was really university that changed me. I left the small town and found people outside that tiny place to be friendlier, and I grew in confidence.

Looking back, I think the socially harder times in school made me who I am. I’m fairly resilient and find it easier than my colleagues to communicate with others and find common ground. It was a baptism of fire and I was miserable through my teens, but now life is pretty manageable.

Sorry. I was out of my element.

Too late, I’m already banned

That’s just like… your opinion, man

Great list. The Princess Bride somehow passed me by. Is it one of those movies you could watch now and enjoy, or more something that you enjoyed at the time and therfore still holds up?

Yeah, I get what he’s saying, but I agree. I think we’ve lost a lot in this post-nuance world. It’s kind of like saying you wouldn’t watch American History X because it’s got nazis in it.

Starlink, sadly, is essential for many rural communities. But yeah, everytime we sign up one of our properties at work to one it always feels like a Faustian pact.

Work-wise fairly awful. Dodgy software and shitty MS updates resulted in hundreds of users having debilitatingly slow logins, and as the IT department we had to respond rapidly, which we do anyway, but we were also hounded by angry managers. Fortunately we’re on it today and all has gone well. Plus there was the sweet salvation of beer and family boardgames over the weekend.

Now that you mention it…

I think there are many thousands of folk in fields beyond IT that use it all the time. It’s by no means perfect, but for many of us managing teams or doing boring AF admin, working with procurement, writing user documentation or trying to navigate basic system configs then it’s immensely useful.

Turns out I only have one kidney. Went in for a scan of my bladder (which was fine), and the nurse doing the scan just casually mentioned it. I had no idea. I was 43 at the time.

There was something about it I found obnoxious. It was just kind of lazy and, although the cast did a decent job, the writing was meh.

I hear you. But then does the existence of some sort of higher purpose/unknown science necessarily imply everlasting life?

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I was a bit annoyed for a while. I made it worse for myself by trying to actually evade my ban using a VPN etc, but I hadn’t appreciated how sophisticated they are these days and once you’re banned you’re banned for life.

It’s odd to me, as when I first started using it throwaway accounts were common and it was a fun place to an anonymously comment on stuff. I might try and rejoin when I next upgrade my phone, but I understand they track your Google account and various other identifiers so maybe it’s to call it a day.

I wouldn’t say I heap them in together. At times in my life I have rejected a belief in anything ‘higher’, which fits your definition of atheism, although perhaps my mindset was closer to an agnostic atheist stance, which to me is more along the lines of ‘I don’t believe, but I can’t be certain as there’s a limit to my knowledge’, as opposed to being a strong proponent of the belief that there is nothing beyond death.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s all baseless. It could just as easily be the passing down of allegorical tales — stories seeded by some guiding or controlling force countless generations ago in our collective development. There are even arguments for things like a collective consciousness or sub-atomic networks, suggesting that our linear experience of time might just be a way of processing information.

Honestly, who really knows? But speaking as someone who has oscillated between Christianity, Buddhism, and atheism in my youth, I’ve come to see atheism as just as much of a limiting dogma as any other belief system.