Posts by Anony Mous

26

UK Hospital using Kingdom Melodies - complaint

by AEnEm in

i found out that a uk hospital (nnuh) uses kingdom melodies as hold music, apparently for some years!

i called and heard it myself.

i wrote an email to the complaints team and await a response.

Anony Mous

If that is the case, I hope the brother gets fired for perpetuating this copyright infringement.

26

UK Hospital using Kingdom Melodies - complaint

by AEnEm in

i found out that a uk hospital (nnuh) uses kingdom melodies as hold music, apparently for some years!

i called and heard it myself.

i wrote an email to the complaints team and await a response.

Are you sure they were actually Kingdom melodies? I occasionally attend Presbyterian churches and their hymnals (which are properly attributed all the way back to the 1400s, but most being from around mid-1800s, about the same time JWs started) are VERY similar both in melody, structure and content to the JW muzak, there are entire songs that are just a few bars and octaves different.

It is well known that Russell, Rutherford and to date, the WTBTS has plagiarized a LOT of their output, including a lot of their belief systems from mid-1800s religious revival including the Presbyterians, Mennonites, spiritualists etc. their more modern 'songs' have lots of contemporary influence including Disney, REM etc.

41

Why are JW's THIS blind?

by BoogerMan in

i had a conversation about this 22 carat gold contradiction with a couple of zealous jw's a couple of days ago.. even their personal "explanations" contradicted each other as they tried justify their cognitive dissonance!.

an absolute delight to witness such absurdity.. "after all, no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world.

the unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [john 5:29] before their death.

Anony Mous

I think the contradiction is apparent but OP highlights the wrong aspect:

IMHO, the contradiction is here: The unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [John 5:29] before their death

which does not stroke with the believe they have that death wipes out all sin.

When the article says, they won’t be allowed to practice evil, that means nobody can commit sin, so nobody can be judged or get killed (they won’t have free will).

What I understand as the logical conclusion from the article as quoted is that the “unrighteous” according to this Noo Light are pre-judged before death and thus have no chance to avoid judgment in the new world.

It indeed does not make any sense in light of other doctrines they themselves hold or core Christian doctrines. Sure the article can make sense, but only if you throw out all other believes JW have about resurrection and the 1000 years.

24

Nisan 14 or not?

by LostintheFog1999 in

if jesus memorial meal is meant to follow on from the jewish passover celebration, would someone explain to me why the jehovah's witness community are holding their "lord's evening meal" on tuesday 4th april; when the jewish community are not holding their 2023 passover until the 5th april 2023?

doesn't this mean that the jehovahs have got their date wrong?.

https://www.londonworld.com/read-this/passover-2023-what-is-passover-dates-and-greetings-4091833.

Anony Mous

So am I correct in reading that the JW argue that Jesus celebrated Passover a day early on Shabbat? This would have been extremely controversial in both scripture and historians would argue about it today. Also, where would they get the preparation of the room and the lamb, Jewish people at the time would be outraged, also then the Passion would occur during Jewish Passover (which is technically 2 days), no Rabbi, Pharisee or Sadducee would be caught dead ‘working’ on convicting Jesus on those days, no mob would have formed. It only makes sense that Jesus did a ‘regular’ Jewish Passover and then after, when he was on the Mount of Olives the next day had begun, then the mob came out, he was tried and convicted.

41

Why are JW's THIS blind?

by BoogerMan in

i had a conversation about this 22 carat gold contradiction with a couple of zealous jw's a couple of days ago.. even their personal "explanations" contradicted each other as they tried justify their cognitive dissonance!.

an absolute delight to witness such absurdity.. "after all, no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world.

the unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [john 5:29] before their death.

Anony Mous

@ExBethelite, what scriptural grounds do they have for these assertions, the first assertion is indeed supported by Christian writings, the second assertion not by the canonical biblical text, since the idea of a 1000 year ‘in-between’ purgatory-style earth or reincarnation is not in the Bible.

Thus if you ask to justify, it does indeed become contradictory to the biblical texts. Yes, you can make excuses for it, but you can’t assert biblical sourcing, redemption through faith is the core of Christianity and a resurrection to incorruptible state is asserted by Paul (1 Cor 15) and various other verses.

The JWs assert a 1000 year temporary reincarnation based on misinterpretation of a single scripture in Revelation and off course Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach and a few other Judaic and early Christian apocrypha and commentaries which Russell and Rutherford were quite fond of plagiarizing for their interpretation.

21

Is English a hybrid language?

by LoveUniHateExams in

jw
friends

the short answer is no, it is not.. i have heard one or two proposals that it is, including from langfocus, a usually excellent youtube channel.. but no, english is actually a germanic language which has borrowed many words from other languages.

here are several reasons why english is germanic at its core .... 1. verb forms.

i play - ich spiele.

Anony Mous

Again, not arguing that it's not a Germanic language, only that it's a lot more complicated than saying it doesn't have a huge Romance language influence that could be considered 'hybrid' (whatever that means).

Gerund is a word that looks like a verb, but it acts like a noun, which French has a ton of, as does English, which is rare in Germanic language.

Your argument is that Old English from Old German (actually Low Countries Germanic is more accurate, as Germanic historically is itself split into two or three 'languages'), thus it hasn't always had anything. Most of the merging happened over thousands of years as people conquered each other. The Romans were in control of modern day Britain for a long time, as did the French, and the Dutch/Frisians/Norse influences came later, but there is a LOT of influence from both languages. English was long seen by royalty and ruling classes to be the language of the 'poor' and spoke French in their courts instead, so to say there was no influence and that there is no hybridization is a stretch imho.

21

Is English a hybrid language?

by LoveUniHateExams in

jw
friends

the short answer is no, it is not.. i have heard one or two proposals that it is, including from langfocus, a usually excellent youtube channel.. but no, english is actually a germanic language which has borrowed many words from other languages.

here are several reasons why english is germanic at its core .... 1. verb forms.

i play - ich spiele.

Anony Mous

As far as the English to French grammar: multiples ending in s or es (one chair, two chairs or chaise and chaises in French) whereas in German multiples is eine Stuhl and zwei Stuhlen (multiples end in en).

Same for gerondif, although in French you have more of them, English also has the -ing suffix on things “you do” (eating, driving) whereas in Germanic languages you just keep the same word unless it is pointing at multiple people or past action.

12

Is Wokeness a Religion

by JeffT in

jw
friends

this is long so i'll just post a link, i think many here will agree with a lot of what the author has to say.

it certainly resonated with my thinking of the last few years.

https://instapundit.substack.com/p/it-should-be-safe-to-be-unpopular?sd=pf.

Anony Mous

@Riley: that seems to be exactly the definition of woke, it is editing the past to make yourself seem more pure in the present. If you publish an album or t-shirt, you shouldn’t change it just because it’s offensive ‘today’, things have historical meaning, censorship in any form is bad. If you did something truly bad, say so, embrace people are fallible and change, but don’t try to hide it, because that is how you forget history and the mistakes people make.

As far as the confederate flag, that entire debacle is exactly fake history and why this re-interpretation of history shouldn’t be accepted. It was never the official flag of the South, it never represented slavery, the flag was a battle flag for Robert E. Lee, who never purchased a slave and set his (inherited) slaves free at the beginning of the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant on the ‘union’ side purchased slaves and held onto his slaves until after the war because ‘good help was expensive and hard to find’. The North actually didn’t completely eradicate slavery either, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the southern states and wasn’t completely ratified in the North until Delaware ratified the Emancipation Proclamation in 1901.

21

Is English a hybrid language?

by LoveUniHateExams in

jw
friends

the short answer is no, it is not.. i have heard one or two proposals that it is, including from langfocus, a usually excellent youtube channel.. but no, english is actually a germanic language which has borrowed many words from other languages.

here are several reasons why english is germanic at its core .... 1. verb forms.

i play - ich spiele.

Anony Mous

I am multi-lingual (both in Roman and Germanic languages), English is in most cases structurally the same as Germanic languages, but it borrows a LOT of words and most grammar exceptions are similar to French. Basically it’s a Germanic language, with a strong influence from French/Romance-like grammar but the early English didn’t want to deal with things like gendered words and implemented the rules without the reason (the gender).

I do think that older English is structurally closer to old Flemish (especially West Flemish) and Frisian which are Dutch ‘dialects’, Flemish also borrows heavily from French, which is where I see similarities.

I’m not sure when borrowed grammar and words make a hybrid language, I’m not a linguist, but the case can be made it is a hybrid, a significant amount of words you use daily are Romance.

Things like human (Latin humanus), manuscript and manual (Latin word man for hand) etc etc.

22

AI Generated Art - Impact on Artists

by Simon in

unless you've been hibernating under a rock for the last couple of years, you're probably aware that ai is the new hotness.. chatgpt gets a lot of attention but equally amazing is how capable ai is at generating art.

if you'd been ask to name anything that would be the last holdout for humans, creative arts such as writing, painting, and music would probably be some of the things at the top of the list.. yet those seem to be the things that ai can do best.. it's fascinating to use the tools, but one thing you realize is that they are just combining patterns and shapes, there isn't yet any real "intelligence", artificial or otherwise.. as an example, you can ask it to create a painting in the style or a particular artist, with a whole raft of things you want to include.

it will do a great job on first glance, but can often give people more arms or fingers than is normal, and lamp-posts can grow to different heights, like trees.

Anony Mous

Here’s the thing, it uses existing inputs, it can only give existing outputs, it won’t generate anything novel in the sense that you won’t get a new style like Cubism in the early 20th century (Picasso).

Here are the things that will be replaced: generic artists, the people in advertising that look to influence the average person with safe, generic boilerplate ‘template’ art. It can generate a website, copy and images with a simple prompt, where current website systems (eg. wordpress) have oodles of templates that no sane person could ever pour over, you’ll basically ‘search’ for your style and it will generate that style. Big companies like Coca Cola will never use it, but instead of having a 1000-person website team, they’ll now have to seek out select true artists and pay them a lot more.

I’ve used it in the field of computer and neurosciences, where I currently work, it’s great IF you know what you’re looking for, it improves your productivity but it can’t do anything new. So your code is now better commented because you have to form better sentences to have it generate semi-decent boilerplate. But it won’t implement your logic, it doesn’t understand starting points and end goals.

So what will happen: people at the low ends of each industry, the ‘gophers’, they’ll have to quickly adapt and either get better or get out. You won’t need to fill offices with useless people like HR, PR. In most fields however, people won’t be allowed to stay ‘junior’ for very long as the junior roles will be completely replaceable. People at the top will get better and more productive as they won’t have to think about and work out small details anymore.

It’s going to have a huge impact, people that haven’t taken up the ‘knowledge economy’ in the last few decades, the accountants that stubbornly stick to Excel and QuickBooks instead of specializing in R and SQL, the 50 year old entry level IT person making $80k+ because he creates his own work, the HR and legal at your average company that just search through hundreds of pages of rules, those are all gone because I can ask a trained model the same questions and get the same answers.