Posts by neverendingjourney

12

Looking for a certain image

by magotan in

hey, i'm looking for a certain image.

it's one of the more dopey series of images from about five years ago.

about a "sister" who goes off the rails and she gets counseled and she's dressing all "immodestly" which is really just a streak of color in her hair.

neverendingjourney

I dig the box of Newports on the table.

74

Jehovah's Witnesses May Have Peaked in Membership at 8 Million (+/-)

by OnTheWayOut in

jw
friends

i don't have all the details of their new "service year" numbers, but i have read enough on jwn to state my opinion pretty strongly.. memorial attendance for 2015 was down.while they kept saying they were going to build a bunch of new kingdom halls, and everybody is still in recovery from watchtower taking all the local money away, they say pretty much that there isn't enough money to build new kingdom halls.putting gb members on the videos at jw .

org has allowed people to really put a face and personality to these guys and remove the mystery of how they should be such deeply spiritual serious men.

instead they see silly thoughts about tight pants and, really everything that comes out of lett's mouth is delivered ultra-goofy, along with the money reports.. the gb lost credibility a little more with every new light that shone down, with the strangest one being "overlapping generation.

neverendingjourney

Putting GB members on the videos at jw . org has allowed people to really put a face and personality to these guys and remove the mystery of how they should be such deeply spiritual serious men. Instead they see silly thoughts about tight pants and, really everything that comes out of Lett's mouth is delivered ultra-goofy, along with the money reports.

There was a Spanish-language international assembly in my hometown around 12 or 13 years ago. I grew up in a Spanish congregation, but the younger generation (I was in my early 20s back then) mostly spoke both English and Spanish.

In any event, I was good friends with a Witness who like me had grown up in the religion but had not embraced it until late in his teens (I was baptized at 16; He at 18). There were two or three governing body members in attendance. If memory serves, they were Carey Barber, John Barr and Gerrit Losch. Losch spoke Spanish, the others gave their talks in English and used a translator.

I was still "in" enough to be somewhat in awe of the GB, but this friend was visibly upset. He told me in confidence he thought one of the GB members was disrespectful in the way he delivered his talk. I remember his exact words: "It sounded like he was reading from Winnie the Pooh." His faith had visibly been shaken.

In hindsight, I think a lot had to do with the fact that he was listening to a talk in a different language. We'd grown up immersed in Spanish-language meetings so the rhetoric was second-nature to us. Listening to it in a different language was like revisiting the religion altogether and experiencing it as a person off the street would.

This friend is still a Witness. I believe he's been an elder and pioneer at various points over the past decade. Unfortunately, the experience of "seeing behind the curtain" wasn't enough to wake him, but that may not be the case for others, especially since GB 3.0, and Lett in particular, seem to be wackier in a more visible way than their predecessors.

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

Interesting. It's stupid to keep notes on JCs anyhow.

If I were inclined to put together a legal strategy to combat the WT, I'd start suing individual elders left and right, maybe bankrupt a few along the way from mounting legal defense costs.

It wouldn't "bring down the WT" but it'd send a chilling message to the rank and file and force the governing body to show its hand.

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

Valid point. You're perfectly right! My apologies.

Apology accepted.

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

documents are being shredded everywhere.

How did this come up?

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

Steve2, sorry you decided to be a dick on this thread. I've always enjoyed reading your takes.

You could have simply chosen not to click on the title. Nobody's being forced to reply.

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

Jesus! Sounds like the final days of Enron.

24

Cliff Notes on Construction Halt/Bethel Layoffs

by neverendingjourney in

i don't follow the board nearly as closely as i did years ago and i've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and bethel layoffs.. anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads?

it'd be greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance..

neverendingjourney

I don't follow the board nearly as closely as I did years ago and I've only seen scattered and seemingly contradictory threads on construction delays and Bethel layoffs.

Anyone care to briefly summarize the latest for those of us who haven't closely followed the various threads? It'd be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

27

Samuel Herd's statement about donations and Cialdini's social proof

by slimboyfat in

samuel herd made a statement a few weeks ago about halting construction work, laying off bethel workers and reducing printing output: severe cutbacks all round.

he said, like the head of a household, the gb has to make sure the organisation is living within its means.

but he added a very careful phrase, something like: "be assured brothers these measures have not been taken as a result of any lack of financial support on your part.

neverendingjourney

Maybe the GB are aware of this very important influence on human psychology and it informed their carefully worded statement.

Nah, I think they're a bunch of buffoons. Any similarities are strictly coincidental.

15

Antimatter not so different after all ... poor old Freddy wrong again,another light dims in the JW heavens.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

back in the years after ww2, newly discovered antimatter was perceived as destroying ordinary matter, so in one of old freddy's insane nightmares (forget which book, but it was the early 1950's) he envisioned yhwh-jesus hurling antimatter at the hated humans who refused to submit to him, and destroying their bodies bit by bit.. now, his vision dims:.

antimatter not so different after all.

scientists help make first measurement of antiproton attraction.

neverendingjourney

Following up my earlier post, I've been doing some back of the envelope math and here's what I've come up with.

1 gram of antimatter annihilating 1 gram of ordinary matter would release 3 times the amount of energy as the Hiroshima bomb (per Wikipedia). There are 1,000 grams in kilogram.

Therefore, annihilating 1 kilogram of antimatter would release 3,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. This would exceed the largest nuclear bomb ever, the Tsar Bomba, which released about 1,500 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

Say you take a person of ordinary build who weighs 70 kilograms (154 lbs.). If you took 70 kilograms of antimatter and used it to annihilate that person, the result would be an explosion 210,000 the size of Hiroshima.

That's not enough in and of itself to blow up the Earth. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is thought to have released a billion times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb, but the explosion would be roughly 140 times bigger than the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

This is just for one person. Freddy was apparently talking about using antimatter to annihilate the remnants of the "old system." It's possible you could quickly start approaching scales that would blow the Earth into pieces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html