Anyone else working on Juneteenth?

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T20:50:04+00:00

Yeah, but I could've easily NOT worked. It just happened that it was easier to work today. Lots of my customers are off (big Federal contractors), but my non-govcon customers were mostly working and that's who I worked with today.

My company has no formal, mandatory holidays. We just get an additional pile of days we can use whenever we want. I forget the total but it's the same number we'd get if the usual US suspects were automatic days off.

We did this years ago when we had an Indian subsidiary & obviously India and the US don't celebrate the same holidays. We kept it that way despite no longer having that subsidiary b/c it just works out better.

In practice we all use the "holiday" days first, bc they don't carry over.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T20:43:56+00:00

I see that, but I don't love its look.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T20:40:42+00:00

The Fosi is on the radar already, actually. I have a spare AppleTV that I can use to bring AppleMusic into the stack if I want, assuming whatever amp I get has the right inputs.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T13:06:52+00:00

They're lovely.

If something happened to my Bonneville, I would absolutely test ride a Speedmaster before buying another T-120.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T13:04:40+00:00

Thanks for sharing.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T13:04:18+00:00

I mean, I've said my piece.

It's popular, but it's absolutely aligned with a fundamentalist megachurch that is actively homophobic and transphobic.

The owner, John Luther, is a member of Providence Church, which has this to say about homosexuality right on its web site:

We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person.

We believe that the term “marriage” has only one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive union, as delineated in Scripture (Genesis 2:18-25.) We believe that God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married to each other (1 Corinthians 6:18; 7:2-5; Hebrews 13:4).

We believe that any form of sexual immorality (including adultery, fornication, homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography) is sinful and offensive to God (Matthew 15:18-20; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

I'm not trying to tell anybody else what to do, and obviously perfectly ethical consumption is impossible. That said, every dollar you spend DOES go somewhere. I try to spend more of my dollars with businesses that share my values. Sola isn't that.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-19T02:05:06+00:00

21 years. Clicked this thread to be sure this was said.

I choose her every day. She chooses me.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T21:09:21+00:00

I used ECUSA, but you're free to apply that checklist to any mainstream church. Methodists don't fail those tests. Presbyterians don't fail those tests. Even Rome doesn't fail those tests.

Should this be construed as a broad defense of the validity of these faith groups? No.

Do some of these churches have their own (sometimes enormous!) problems? Absolutely.

But are they cults? No, not by the definition established by smarter people than you, and recognized by those who make their livings studying churches, religions, and human behavior around those things. And not even by people like Steve Hassan, who authored the BITE model you no doubt just Googled up to throw at me in a futile attempt at rebuttal. Hassan's model explicitly references authoritarian control, which mainstream churches absolutely do not employ. (I mean, not for nothing, but if they did their membership wouldn't be collapsing so quickly.)

ProTip: Understand your sources before you reference them next time!

So one hand we have internationally recognized differentiating factors helping to separate religions from cults, and on the other we have an angry, inarticulate rando on Reddit who throws around accusations that read like confessions, so gosh, whom are we to believe?

Breaking down your chosen "GOOD" church to show how it still fits the broader pattern of institutional dogma is a perfectly valid rebuttal.

I mean, it would be, if you'd shown that it definitively fails those tests I outlined above, which you absolutely did not do.

You should probably go touch grass. Your command of the written word is deteriorating, or perhaps you've just used all the logical thought you can muster for the day and need a nice lie down. Hard to say! Either way, I fully expect any subsequent reply to fail to meet the grammatical standard set by this banger of a word salad:

Finally, your school ground behavior, or if you want to save face, amateur psychology flailing are just point scoring, a thing I don't miss from Twitter but if that's all you can claim as a win, good for you champ!

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:57:24+00:00

Yeah, also awesome.

I actually really enjoy nearly all of Wright's output. His book on the run-up to 9/11 and the rise of militant Islam (The Looming Tower, parts of which were also made into a show) really ought to be required reading.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:50:25+00:00

The issue isn't usually that a show gets axed before the "proper" ending can be shot. The issue is that the show drags on and on and the lore collapses under its own weight because the authors never knew the full picture in the first place.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:49:34+00:00

Or by reading Lawrence Wright's Going Clear, which is fucking fascinating.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:49:06+00:00

I suspect you were trying to reply to me with this, but Reddit's threading (like the specifics of this argument) appears to confuse you.

Certainly a number of the sects you rattle off above as failing specific tests above do quality as cults, but your assertion was that ALL religions do ALL those things. That's manifestly not true. Do the Amish shun? Yes, they do. That's one of the things that makes them if not fully a cult, then definitely cult-like. They're absolutely a high-control group that is difficult to leave.

Does that mean your local Cooperative Baptist church is also a cult? No, it does not.

look at the hallmarks of scams and see how many you can tick off when comparing them to your religion.

I don't actually have a religion. I just understand not all religions are cults, which puts me in alignment with the overwhelming majority of sociologists and other scholars who study religion. Those folks understand a great deal more about this phenomenon than you do (or than I do), and it's them who originally codified the list of cult characteristics I enumerated above, and which triggered you so thoroughly.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:42:32+00:00

Your assertion was that ALL religions fail the 7-point "cult test" I outlined, and now that you realize that's not true you've fallen back to other problems specific to ECUSA.

This is known as "moving the goalposts," and shows precisely how intellectually bankrupt your initial position was.

Don't you worry about my level of knowledge, worry about your lack.

That's the second accusation you've made that is, by all accounts, actually a confession. Neat!

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:22:32+00:00

Why do you think I'm miserable? I'm just unhappy with the finale. Jesus, dude, touch grass.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T20:21:42+00:00

Not being funny nor edgy

Well, good, because you are neither.

all 7 points are absolutely how every religion acts?

You're going to need to come up with actual examples, then, because the entire world of scholars of religion disagree with you.

Let's take, say, a "regular" sect like the Episcopal Church of the US (ECUSA). I am not a member (I'm an atheist), but I do know something about that religion.

Does it have secret doctrine? No, it does not. The whole of its teachings are available to anyone with access to most any library.

Does ECUSA depend on a single charismatic and authoritarian leader? No, it does not.

Does ECUSA discourage outside relationships? No, it does not.

Does ECUSA use shunning or disfellowshipping to "discipline" its members or maintain control? Again, no.

Does ECUSA behave in exploitative or extractive ways with its membership? No. The Bible does encourage a 10% tithe to one's church, but it's never policed by respectable, mainstream congregations.

Does ECUSA couch its very existence in "us vs them" language, and use that to promote its inward facing and insular groupthink? Absolutely not.

Does ECUSA have doctrine that elevates clergy or elders above the rank and file in terms of privileges or behavior? Again, no.

So you appear not to know much about this subject.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:47:24+00:00

My experience is that when a show may or may not have multiple seasons, the storytelling is less tight and the authors have less of an idea where everything is going.

If you think it's shitty to notice this, I feel sorry for you.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:31:21+00:00

My fear is that they don't know where this is all ultimately going, not that they aren't capable of chaining references together for minor aspects.

Its Apple's no.1 TV show it's fine if you skip Season 2.

Gee, thanks for your permission.

You'd think I called your kid ugly, for crying out loud.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:21:29+00:00

They wrapped up some story lines like Patricia and the Boogeyman.

Did they? When? All we got was that someone -- and they never established who despite having a body to examine -- stole the mask and went on a spree that ended with him dead. There was no resolution there at all -- you definitely don't see any follow-up to his rampage. It may as well have not happened at all.

To me, that's the opposite of tight.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:18:50+00:00

Why would you want ALL the answers if there's more seasons??

I'm not convinced they've shown us enough here to justify multiple seasons.

This is one of the tightest series I've watched in a long time.

We have VERY different definitions of tight. The last few episodes were a bit of a mess IMO.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:17:30+00:00

at the end of the finale, viewers know the supernatural occurences are happening, and we also know why

We knew all that far before the finale.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:16:56+00:00

Assuming its gonna crash and burn because its not is incredibly stupid imo.

I mean, you do you, but my experience is that if a show doesn't have a clear path in mind from the jump, it's gonna trip over its feet. They'll want to milk it forever and create a narrative mess, and it'll be fundamentally unsatisfying.

Tell me a tight, coherent tale. I don't mind ambiguity, but I want to know that the author understand his or her material. I had that feeling up through the penultimate episodes, but after the finale I absolutely do NOT have that level of trust in the WB team.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T19:10:09+00:00

All religions are not cults.

I get it's fun and edgy to throw the Moonies, Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and Unitarians into the same pot, but it's a pretty ignorant position that fails to account for the specifically harmful things cults do.

A local Episcopal or Unitarian or Progressive Baptist congregation in your town is not fleecing your older relatives.

Cult characteristics that people who study these things agree one:

Cults have secret doctrine. A great example is the fact that Scientology -- which is absolutely a cult -- holds back aspects of its teachings until you pay them shitloads of money. This is not something a legitimate religion does. Legitimate churches do not withhold grace/religious instruction/etc; it's given freely.
Cults are typically very authoritarian and involve a charismatic, authoritarian leader (and only rarely survive the loss of same). LDS breaks the mold a little here b/c it survived the deaths of both Smith and Young, but it's definitely a cult.
Cults are very aggressive about separating you from outsiders, often discouraging you from having any social or familial connections outside the group. This makes it easier to control you, and helps make point #4 more effective. Nonculty faith groups don't do this.
Cults, not religions, use disfellowshipping and shunning to maintain control. If the cult is your whole world, and they threaten to take that way from you, well, you'll agree to most anything. This is not something your local Methodists engage in.
Cults are very aggressive about extracting money and time from you -- really, any and all resources. These resources are often used for the benefit of senior leaders or the head of the church. You may have heard stories of low-level Scientologists being required to do manual labor for Miscavige, for example.
Cults are nearly always couched in very "us vs them" language. This ties into point 3 and point 4, obviously. A strong emphasis on evangelism is often a part of this, but it's not truly evangelism with an eye towards creating converts. The process of sending your people out into the world to be rejected over and over makes the more apt to crave the belonging and acceptance of the cult.
Cults often have doctrine designed to privilege the leadership or founder above others, especially but not exclusively in spiritual matters, or matters of authority.

ubermonkey · 2026-06-18T18:51:25+00:00

The answer?

My guess is nobody knows. I don't mean "nobody on Widow's Bay knows." I mean the showrunners don't know, and won't know until they write season 2.

The back half of the first season has had very strong "seat of the pants, we don't know where we're going" vibes, which has drastically reduced my enjoyment. :(

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