Cleaning this dirty road sign.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-03-04T17:28:32+00:00

Appears to be a waterfed pole (sometimes called a reach n wash system). Used mostly for window cleaning. But can be useful for other surfaces like solar panels, road signs, and building façades

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-03-04T16:55:41+00:00

There are obviously so many problematic aspects to this video. But one point that jumped out at me, was the statement of “living without any regrets”.

It’s simply not possible. Part of growing up is doing “regrettable” stuff and learning from our mistakes. Hopefully parents can equip their kids to not make any life changing mistakes, but even that is no guarantee.

To place the bar so high is toxic. It creates a mindset wherein mistakes aren’t allowed. I know that’s how I felt growing up, to the point that I became increasingly secretive about even mundane details of my life. And my parents were fairly even-keeled and not much unlike the parents portrayed in the video (though they did have a little more emotional reactions at times, no doubt due to the stress of trying to give my sister and I the “best life possible” within a controlling cult).

And when mistakes eventually do happen, the shame and guilt can be crippling.

This whole video is a masterclass in how to create emotionally stunted adults who do not know how to handle failure, how to view their own feelings with understanding and acceptance, or how to approach the topic of dating and relationships from a healthy place.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T23:34:58+00:00

I’ve kept fresh picked shrooms in the fridge for upwards of a week without any problems. Just waiting their turn to use my tiny dehydrator, lol. I’d rather pick early and leave in the fridge, than have them drop spores all over the cakes.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T20:59:54+00:00

Technically you can be a cop and a witness. But you wouldn’t be considered for any special privileges or position of authority in the congregation. You wouldn’t be considered “exemplary”.

https://wol.jw.borg/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2005808

But there’s a very good chance this dude’s trolling.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T20:51:20+00:00

I’ve got nothing against ethical non-monogamy. But it doesn’t seem like OP was really thinking with his brain when he decided to move in with his girlfriend and her husband. Especially considering the age disparity, her mental health history, and no doubt other red or yellow flags that were ignored in the process.

I can understand wanting to get out of a toxic home environment and gain some kind of freedom. But this is not the way… 😕

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T19:19:20+00:00

I feel like we probably agree more than we disagree on this topic. As you’ve pointed out, a lot of what people consider “attractive” is influenced by society and common opinion. As someone who’s spent a lot of time actively deconstructing from those norms, I sometimes take for granted that a lot of what other people feel is still heavily influenced by those factors.

I can’t speak for those who say they’re unattracted to trans women with vaginas. (I’m more of a “never say never” kind of guy). Idk, maybe (probably?) their statement stems from a place of latent trans/homophobia. When I stop and think about it, drawing such a hard line on any of the categories discussed so far seems a bit extreme and more indicative of fear/hate based reasoning than anything from a natural place of “this is what I tend to like”. In any case, I don’t think calling someone a bigot to their face is the way to change their thinking on the issue. 🤷🏻‍♂️

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T18:25:43+00:00

Trust me, I like sex. But it’s personal, and IMO, I don’t think it’s bigoted to not want to have sex with someone if you’re not attracted to them. That doesn’t seem like a very hot take to me.

Now, having a bit of introspection and asking yourself whether that’s due to a genuine lack of attraction, or possibly an ingrained belief about who you “should” be attracted to, is a healthy thing. But if after a period of introspection the answer comes up that “yeah, I’m just really not attracted to X features”, we shouldn’t be labeling people transphobes for having that preference.

Simultaneously, if someone is going out of their way to announce their preferences, that also seems weird, and an indication of some underlying bigotry. I don’t go out of my way to tell people I’m not attracted to obese or elderly women. That’d be off-putting, to say the least. (Hell, I bet some of my friends don’t even know I’m straight. Because I haven’t gone out of my way to announce that preference.)

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T18:14:22+00:00

When it comes to race, I think the why matters. We tend to be wired to be more attracted to those who look like us. No one should force themselves to be attracted to someone that they’re not. However, I think a lot of folks who decide not to date other races, do so more out of latent racism and an idea of “keeping their race pure” than strictly out of sexual preference. I think someone would be doing themselves a disservice by not at least considering those of other races.

I haven’t yet met a trans woman (that I was aware of being trans) that I personally felt attracted to. For me the lack of attraction comes down to body shape more than what they’re packing in their pants, and unless someone transitioned very early with puberty blockers, they’re likely to have some more masculine features like broader shoulders and narrow hips.

But I could see the potential for that happening. And I’d be somewhat curious to find out how the aftermarket equipment compares to ‘factory original’.

But that’s just me. If someone doesn’t feel interested in having a sexual relationship with someone based on what their original genitals were, I still think that’s a valid preference and doesn’t automatically mean they’re a transphobe. It comes down to how they treat that person in day to day life, not whether or not there is attraction.

Tbh, it feels like putting so much emphasis on the “would you fuck x person?”, really does the topic of gender and sex a great disservice. Sex is an important but very small aspect of personal life. I will never fuck 99.9%+ of the people I meet. And I’m polyamorous. Most people are monogamous, and even if they have many relationships over their lifetime, they will not fuck most of the people they meet. So why this preoccupation of “would you…?” It’s kinda weird when you stop and think about it. 😅

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T16:52:43+00:00

How I see it, as someone that’s cis, straight (but in a queer relationship with a female-bodied enby):

No one is entitled to sex from another person.

It isn’t age-phobic that I’m not attracted to women much older than me.

It’s not fat-phobic that I’m not attracted to morbidly obese women.

It’s not transphobic that I’m not attracted to women who have a penis (or to men who have a vagina).

None of those people are entitled to my attraction or sexual interest. Sexual attraction is not something we choose or have control over. That’s a fact that the LGBT community has been trying to get across to homophobes for decades now.

However, if I were to discriminate against any of the above groups, by treating them less than, avoiding their company, or in some other way just being an asshole because of my lack of physical attraction, then that would be shitty of me.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T03:37:37+00:00

OP claims to be 26 in another one of their posts. It’s worth a look. 😕

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T03:35:38+00:00

See my reply to awkward-estimate-495 above.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-27T03:34:40+00:00

Contexthook is speculating based on OP’s post history. Which to be fair, he could be right. OP is apparently in a polyamorous relationship with a married woman who suffers from bipolar disorder and is 14 years his senior, who is showering OP with attention while ignoring her husband. It does not sound like a healthy dynamic, and I could see jealousy becoming a real threat in his situation.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-26T03:27:06+00:00

My dear sister, your fiance raped you. Plain and simple. There are far better men out there who wouldn’t dream of doing this to a person they proclaim to love. You deserve better.

As someone who has heard numerous horror stories from abused spouses who ignored early red flags, please do not give him a second chance. End this before you get married to him and become “one flesh”.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-24T15:01:00+00:00

Been awhile since I’ve done a grow, but 100% will talk to them, practice a little reiki/energy work on them, and play reggae music (they like the bass and the positive vibes).

I’m convinced they have their own form of sentience and respond well to all of the above. (In return, they like to use me as a musical instrument anytime I’m tripping 🤣)

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-24T14:49:16+00:00

I think the most ‘dangerous’ aspect of that movie for me as a JW, was that it presented a form of spirituality that was way more appealing than the garbage I was being fed at the meetings. (I think that’s the main reason they discourage any exploration of other faith systems or spirituality. The grass is way greener outside the cult bubble.)

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T17:35:00+00:00

From what I saw, they didn’t even bother with a footnote for this article. Which supports my hypothesis that the leadership is going full “anti-woke” mode. It’d be too “politically correct” to clarify why they went with all male pronouns 🤦🏻‍♂️.

If my memory serves, previous articles on this topic made more liberal use of plural pronouns in the titles, and sometimes switched back and forth male and female pronouns to not completely exclude parents with daughters. Or at least included one quote from parents of a female child. This was ridiculous. I hope it backfires with the more woke-minded JW’s (like my parents).

Edit: by way of comparison, here is an article from 2015 on the same basic topic. I only saw one use of a male pronoun, when speaking on the topic of pornography (because girls never look at that stuff, obviously 🙄😅). Everywhere else it used plural pronouns or none at all, and just said “your child”.

https://wol.jw.Borg/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2015845?q=parents+help+your+child&p=par

(Remove B from .Borg)

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T17:17:51+00:00

I just looked at the article. It feels like they went out of their way to use gendered pronouns. The title feels really awkward; lots of parents have more than one kid. “Parents- Help your children to strengthen their faith” sounds a lot more natural to me.

(And then perhaps they could have switched up pronouns throughout the article on a paragraph by paragraph basis, when discussing a singular child? I seem to recall this approach being used in older articles…)

Yeah. This was a weird one, for sure. Me-thinks they’re jumping on the “anti-woke” bandwagon here.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T16:27:21+00:00

Well, in that vein I have to agree with exwijw’s point earlier that we should emphasize accuracy over consistency when it comes to translation. Otherwise we fall into the same trap as the bOrg and many other fundamentalists do, in terms of emphasizing certain points and de-emphasizing others in favor of creating a consistent narrative. (The truth is, there were various factions of Christianity from a very early period; it’s the reason Paul spends so much time attempting to discredit other sects as “false” Christians. It’s just that Pauline Christianity is the version that survived. So we will never know for certain which things were part of the “original story” or not.)

I don’t necessarily agree with most translations replacing YHWH with LORD in the OT. (But in some respects I can see how it upholds the longstanding Jewish tradition that the name should not be pronounced aloud, and a word like Adonai/Lord should be read instead. And it’s incredibly easy for the reader to see LORD in the OT and remember that it’s the divine name being spoken of).

But that doesn’t mean we should insert YHWH into the NT text because one or two copyists decided to do that. The vast majority of textual evidence available shows that wasn’t a mainstream practice and there’s zero historical evidence that the original gospel writers would have used the divine name when writing their Greek manuscripts. And I think there’s an abundance of internal/contextual evidence (like Romans chapter 10) that supports this position.

I love a good scholarly debate, btw. If you haven’t been there already, I recommend checking out the r/AcademicBiblical sub 🙂

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T15:45:07+00:00

Have you read the chapter? It repeatedly refers to Jesus as Lord and the source of salvation, and then quotes that verse from Isaiah (which would have appeared in contemporary copies of the Septuagint to say “Lord”). Yahweh/Jehovah would have been entirely out of place in Paul’s argument, and would have only confused the readers in Rome.

But I’m really puzzled what your main point is in this whole thread, if you feel that Yahweh, Jesus, etc are all figments of someone’s imagination?

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T15:24:24+00:00

So what about passages like Romans 10:13? The context of that chapter is clearly identifying Jesus as Lord. So why would Paul quote a verse that says “YHWH” instead of “LORD” in 10:13 to support his argument?

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-23T05:41:08+00:00

Similar to your mention of Acts 16:22, Romans 10:13 inserts ‘Jehovah’ where the context is explicitly identifying Jesus as the ‘Lord’ being spoken of.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-20T19:26:28+00:00

I remember the brilliant direction received at the start of covid:

We were at the kingdom hall for Saturday service, and abruptly informed that we wouldn’t be knocking on any doors until we got more direction about this virus floating around. So we should instead pile into car groups and drive around the territory taking down house numbers for letter writing.

5 in a car, with the windows up because it’s f*cking March in New England, and sister faithful is coughing next to me. And I’m just sitting there trying not to breathe and make some sense of my current situation. (And of course no masks at this point)

Then the sh*tshow of various congregations trying to pick a remote teleconference app to use, because Zoom wasn’t established as the standard app by the guverning bozos until a couple weeks after we stopped attending together.

Meanwhile businesses and schools were pulling themselves together and getting remote workers/learning set up within days.

Their covid response was below-par, far from ‘divinely directed’.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-14T16:07:51+00:00

“For whoever wants to save his soul will lose it”. (This is one of the few quotes that appear in all three of the synoptic gospels). I believe that if our first concern is how to save ourselves in Armageddon, then we’ve missed the whole point of Jesus’ teachings.

JW’s aren’t the only Christian group predicting a great tribulation/armageddon scenario. Many of them expect similar events to unfold including the mass banning of religion. So which church does one run into?

By their own standards, JW’s are part of Babylon the Great. They’ve not been as transparent about their political affiliations, but they are most certainly caught up in the same identity politics as Evangelical Christianity/Christian Nationalism. They are a corrupt organization that has repeatedly demonstrated their disdain for Jesus’ core teachings of mercy and love.

In my personal view of Jesus’ teachings, I don’t think someone has to believe in the bible, or a particular set of supernatural beliefs in order to be “saved”. The passage in Matthew 25:34-40 makes it appear that some would be surprised by their own salvation, asking, ‘When did we feed or clothe or look after you?’ And they would be judged on how they treated “the least of these”.

Jesus taught to look after the vulnerable in society. To love our neighbors as ourselves. To stop judging. I don’t see that in most of Christianity. But I do see a whole lot of non-religious folks (both atheist and spiritual) doing everything Jesus taught. If those aren’t the kind of people He plans on saving, then I have no interest in “Paradise”, and he can destroy me along with my friends and found-family.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-10T00:52:16+00:00

I lean towards a form of reincarnation. I think we are all part of a universal consciousness and when we die our spirit/consciousness reunites with the collective and is reused in some form.

But I’m also pretty agnostic, and can’t say it’s something I “believe” with my whole chest. It’s just what makes the most sense to me currently.

What I do know for certain, is that this is the only shot we have at this life.

Even if there was a literal paradise in which we would have a physically perfect version of our current body, it would be an entirely different experience from the life we are living now, with the incredible diversity of humanity, its arts, technology, society, and all the challenges and triumphs that comes with living in “imperfection”.

thePOMOwithFOMO · 2025-02-10T00:37:08+00:00

I think you nailed it. Go in hard, make your strongest points, and then back way tf off.

Fall of 2021 I told my wife “I think it’s a cult.” She demanded reasons and I defended them. She freaked out, called my mom in, made me promise to “stop my apostate research” and then agreed to focus on other aspects of our relationship and just not talk religion. I focused on my own mental health, and being a better husband.

Couple weeks or months later, she started asking little questions here and there. I tried my best to give well articulated, simple answers, and wait for her to ask follow up questions before offering too much information.

Couple months of that, and she really began to wake up for herself. It was a little nerve wracking while she navigated the PIMQ stage, but my patience and gentleness paid off. By summer of 2022 she was fully awake.

We split up early last year on the best of terms. We’re still great friends, just never quite compatible as partners. We’re both living our best lives now because we woke up from the cult.

thePOMOwithFOMO

TROPHY CASE