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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I had some hands-on computer repair training at a private school once. One old machine wouldn’t boot, complaining that it couldn’t find the keyboard which was plugged into it. I unplugged it while the computer was on. At the time, unplugging a keyboard while the computer was on was… not a good thing. There was a little curl of smoke, a scorch mark on the motherboard, and a sustained tone from the chassis and that computer breathed its last.

    Later, in college, I used the “net send” command on random people in open labs just to watch how confused they got.





  • Mine was pretty spontaneous. I was studying psychedelics at the time (just because they’re fascinating) but I’ve never done any before or since.

    It was… hard to describe. It lasted several days at least, but my sense of time was greatly altered and it’s hard to say how long exactly. I remember feeling like my mind wasn’t fighting against itself the way it usually did. It felt like everything I did, my whole brain was all working/pulling in the same direction. Pretty much all I wanted to do was meditate for hours on end, and doing so was a wild experience with some very interesting visuals. I also came to some revelations about the nature of reality. (Though looking back, those revelations were the logical conclusion of several beliefs I had held before this experience. I think this experience just brought those multiple unrelated beliefs together and crystalized them into one cohesive worldview.) I did experience some synesthesia during the experience as well. The kind wherein seeing somebody else experience something, you feel it in your own body. I was watching a dancer on TV and feeling the proprioceptive feelings I imagined she was feeling.

    Edit: I should add that it never really “ended.” It tapered off over time until I was (in some ways) back to normal, but I couldn’t identify really when I was back to normal. It was more like asymptotically approaching normal. And, I’ll also say that in other ways, I’m still changed by that experience. And only for the better.



  • Nazis aren’t people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes. Nazis hurt and kill people.

    Agreed. Wasn’t trying to say otherwise. But I’d think recovering nazis are frequently “people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes.” I’ve known people who have deconverted from both mainstream religions and cults who have needed support in the transition out, and those folks were “kindof brainwashed but working on it.” And I don’t think nazi groups are entirely dissimilar from cults.

    I don’t remember which episode specifically, but I remember Ian Danskin (“Innuendo Studios” on YouTube and creator of “The Alt-Right Playbook” series) making some points about how it’s good to have spaces meant for people who are “kindof a nazi, but working on it.” (He also said those spaces need to be kept well away from safe spaces for marginalized groups, which of course makes sense.)


  • These programs you’re referring to are voluntary, right?

    So, the folks who would be against such programs on that basis think that if a(n arguably former) nazi enters the group not yet fully free of the bigotry they’ve taken concrete steps to overcome and says something, say, anti-semitic, if the program doesn’t kick them out on a zero-tolerance policy, then the program is supporting (or at least insufficiently condemning) anti-semitism?

    Edit: on rereading, I get the feeling you’re saying something more like some people think having anything to do with (even recovering) nazis is tacit complicity or something.