Some really important context for anyone who’s not familiar with JW’s practice of disfellowshipping:

Within the church, dissent or even asking questions has often been punished by labeling members as apostates and ostracizing—or “disfellowshipping”— them. As a result, Doe and others choose to speak anonymously to avoid retaliation that could cost them family, friend, and professional relationships.

Watch Tower knows all of this, of course. That’s precisely the point. They’re not sending DMCA subpoenas to Google and Cloudflare because they have a genuine interest in protecting their copyrights — they’re using the subpoena process as a surveillance tool with a built-in punishment mechanism waiting at the other end.

This is one of the most powerful tools they have to keep people too afraid to even question beliefs.

To add an extra layer, deliberately “working against God” (which is what they label any criticism) is actually treated with even more severity. It gets the additional label of “apostasy”. Some disfellowshipped people, while ostracized, are at least looked upon with some sympathy and occasionally still get some (limited) communication with the community. Apostates, on the other hand, are treated with utter disdain and hatred and have no real path to ever reconnecting with the community again.

For anyone who’s not been in this situation, I cannot overstate how terrifying this prospect is. JWs are very isolationist, so many people in the religion have no network at all outside of the religion. Meaning that the above ostracization is so much worse than losing a family member or two. It often means losing every relationship in your life all at once. I have watched this process absolutely destroy people’s lives, sending them spiraling into depression, hopeless, and guilt.

Ghost. They’re the only band I’ve seen more than once. I’ve seen them 3 times so far, and I will definitely go again next time they’re in my area. The main thing that makes it worth it is their stage presence. They go all out on the costumes, choreography, and set design. Even the fans will get all dressed up. And their music is also super solid. Imo almost every song is a banger.

What an exciting time to be building software! With AI, we’re able to achieve production outages with unprecedented frequency!

Mainly just piano. I like playing chords with my left hand and the melody with my right hand. I’m not great at keeping steady rhythm. If I or anyone else starts singing along, I immediately lose focus. I mostly just play for myself for stress relief.

I’m trying to learn guitar, but it’s slow going for the time being.

My experience from community college was quite a mixed bag. Some of the professors were amazing and genuinely loved to teach, and I benefited so much from those classes. And then some professors just seemed bitter that they weren’t at a university and made their classes miserable. I even had a few classes “taught” by someone that didn’t even have a bachelor’s (through a technicality where the dean proctored the actual exams). Overall, I learned enough and got the degree, and I was able to break into software engineering with just an associate degree and no debt. So worth it in the end!

Yeah. I opened the comments because I was genuinely interested in how communism tackles this and was kind of looking forward to a thought-provoking answer. The above just kind of dances around the question entirely. I especially loved this line:

No one knows that communism looks like yet.

Gives me major “trust me bro” energy. Kind of reminds me of the religion I was in as a kid where every difficult question was answered with “no one fully understands God, you just have to have faith”.