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According to the relevant Wikipedia article, around 6 billion people in the world identify with one of the 5 major religious groups in the world. Another couple hundred million identify with "medium sized religions". That's by far the majority of the world's population who are engaged in some form in organized religion and the common interpretations of spirituality.

I was born in the late 1980's, in the UK, my formal education spanned the 1990's and early 2000's. Unlike most who frequent this site, I never went into formal higher education beyond day releases arranged by my employer at the time.

Older generations of the family, parents and grandparents, have never displayed or discussed any religious affiliation. One of my grandparents was by all appearances an atheist. Strongly against religion being taught in school, in any form. Passing away before I was even a teenager, never had the opportunity to discuss the nuances of the anti-religion disposition.

With that, religion never being discussed in the home, the contrast to that with my state-sponsored education, in the 1990's especially, gives me pause for thought. There were christian prayers and hymns every day in my primary education. The only reason possible for not taking part in that was being one of the few Muslims or Hindus in the school. Everyone else had to participate. The only time religion was mentioned at home was "if you're asked what religion you are, you're C of E" ... I had no idea what that meant at the time, just knew what i was told to say if the question ever came up. As a child, i was never introduced to the idea you could not have a religious affiliation. We're all Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs of some stripe or other...

Both my parents, and my mother's parents were very concerned about the social isolation and stigma resulting from not publicly identifying with the established religion. I was going to be christened to ensure I would have the ability to get married.

Now times have apparently changed since then, and I doubt primary education in mainstream state schools have hymns and prayers still. In hindsight, to me it's quite surprising it was still the standard in the 1990's. There was numerous attempts made to indoctrinate the youngest and most impressionable into Christianity, sponsored by the state, there was non way to opt-out of this. It was very much part of the curriculum. It continued to a lesser extent in high-school, everyone got given a bible for some reason, although I do not recall prayers and hymns.

I do believe in a spiritual side of life, my experiences make it impossible to deny. However, that blending organized religion, faith and education, especially when state-sponsored for the general population is very troubling to me.

Organized religion is often just a tool for control, and what better time to introduce people to that than in their formative years, in a formal authoritative institution in which they have to attend continuously for years, but have little to no agency within. This kind of education does not encourage actual learning.... Text books, like the bible are gospel. Critical thinking and comprehension get in the way of rote memorization of various elements of propaganda, especially in the social sciences. Religion and formal education institutes seem primarily designed to give us a framework for our worldview to be confined within, not to expand out from, in the hopes of avoiding the difficult questions that might arise.

The psychological prison needs to be just big enough that we can't see all the bars at the same time.

Has anyone else had similar experiences of an apathetic family and a proactive state in religious indoctrination?

Los Angeles Gang Tour Puts A Twist On Drive-Bys

2010 article I found for crutchy on IRC.

Today is my birthday. It's also my wife's birthday. Yes, we have share a birthday.

You might be thinking, "Oh, that's pretty neat!". It's not that great. When it's your birthday, you want to be treated even a little special. Maybe have dinner prepared for you, or something like that. Well, when it's both of your birthdays, it becomes just like every other day. After work (yes, I'm working on my birthday), I have to go to the store to pick up dinner. I'll have to help prepare it, and help clean up after. It's not that big of a deal. I don't really like celebrating birthdays anyways.

My wife is still preggers. Her belly is showing now, and it's pretty exiting. The morning sickness is over, but she still feels pretty tired at the end of the day. She goes to be early, and doesn't really have much energy anymore. Sometimes I feel bad because I wish I could take some of the burden off her. The frequent headaches and tiredness must be pretty tiring. I've been trying to help out more around the house and do what I can.

The girl that I talked about in my last entry is gone. I really liked her -- she was smart and sexy -- but I did end up scaring her off pretty much right after the last entry. I wanted (and still do want) a serious secondary relationship. She had just come out of a long term relationship, and so just wanted something more casual. Anyways, she decided that we were looking for different things (and we were, but I would have taken whatever she could offer). Since that girl, I kinda gave up. A pregnant wife complicates things a bit. Catching an STD at this point in the game could result in serious consequences for the baby, and adequate protection and testing to reduce that chance is a lot to ask of a new partner that you just met. That, combined with not really knowing what I will be able to offer once the baby is born, has left me in a position where I don't really feel all that comfortable dating.

I miss it though. I certainly don't miss the rejection, but I definitely miss those fleeting moments of excitement. I love cuddling, and I just don't feel like I get enough cuddles from my wife -- she's just too tired at the end of the day (no, 'cuddles' isn't code for sex. I just want someone to nuzzle into me). It's also summer and I really like getting out to the mountains. My wife doesn't have the energy to do anything strenuous, and so it's been a little frustrating because when we go out, I just want to go, but she can't keep up. Maybe I should just look for a female hiking partner... I don't know...

Don't get me wrong -- my wife is amazing. I have never met anyone more compatible, and there is no one on this planet that I love more. I really want to be clear - I love her to death and she is the most amazing woman I have ever met. I really don't know what this open relationship will look like after the baby is born. I hope I still have the time to date. Maybe the baby is exactly what I need in my life. Who knows?

Overall, things are good. I'm excited for my baby. My wife and I are great and I'm another year older - the big 33.

NVIDIA Announces “NVIDIA Titan X” Video Card: $1200, Available August 2nd

Move Over GTX 1080, There’s A New Titan X In Town

Meaningless for anybody who doesn't want the general compute features. It's $200 more expensive than its predecessor, probably to avoid cannibalizing sales of more expensive Pascal GPUs intended for businesses.

The billion-dollar RNC question: What is Peter Thiel doing there?

Fun for everyone.

So, audioguy (one of our sysadminy types) was checking the firewall logs and apparently one of the speedbumps we put in for bots got tripped by an L-3 Communications Holdings address. Not to be confused with Level 3 Communications, L-3 is the sneaky spy corp born of the Lockheed Martin merger. So, yes, we're officially being actively (as opposed to the passive scraping the NSA does to everyone's traffic) electronically surveiled.

Mind you, since they're tripping our firewall, they're not going to be seeing much unless they throttle back how many connections they use at once. They really should make use of the API for bot stuff. It's still firewalled but there are bits in it that can get you much more info at once and save us both the overhead of inefficient scraping.

Not a big enough deal to get an article. Prices start at $460-$535, significantly more than 8 TB drives which can be bought for $200 on sale.

Seagate Announces 10TB Consumer HDD Lineup With Five Year Warranty

Seagate's New 'Guardian Series' Portfolio Brings 10TB Helium HDDs to Consumers

Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB Helium HDD Capsule Review

Melania Trump speech appears to plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention address

Watch Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention Speech

Pakistani QT killed by brother for what would be usual vanity stuff for Westerners on social media:

Qandeel Baloch: Pakistani social media star strangled by her brother

Qandeel Baloch, one of Pakistan's most famous and controversial social media stars, has been strangled to death in what police are calling a case of so called "honor" killing in the city of Multan in the country's province of Punjab. Azhar Akram, Multan's chief police officer, told CNN that Baloch was killed by her brother in her family's home after he had protested at the "kind of pictures she had been posting online."

[...] She had nearly 750,000 followers on Facebook, where her videos went viral but were also the subject of much debate and discomfort. In recent weeks, several of her posts encouraged her audience to challenge old practices of Pakistani society. In a July 14 post, Baloch referred to herself as a "modern day feminist."
Hamna Zubair, the culture editor of Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told CNN that she had received much criticism for carrying pieces on Baloch. One commentator asked her if she would be "reporting from a brothel" next.
Baloch tightly controlled her narrative in the media. She shared little about her personal life and was something of an enigma; nobody really knew which city she was based in.

She found fame and slipped into the national consciousness after declaring that she would perform a live strip tease online if Pakistan won a cricket match against arch rival India.
As her media profile grew, Zubair said Baloch became aware "of her power to deliver a certain message about being female in Pakistan," and that she had become a "burgeoning activist for increasing women's visibility" in the country. She made more headlines after posting selfies on her Instagram account with Mufti Abdul Qavi, a senior member of the clergy. The bizarre pairing led to frenzied media coverage and resulted in Qavis's suspension from his post on one of Pakistan's religious committees. After news of Baloch's death, while waiting to go on air on a local channel, Qavi told CNN that "her death should be a lesson for all those who point fingers at someone's honor."

[...] A couple of days ago, local media reported that Qandeel Baloch had married at 17 and left her husband about a year later. After the reports were published, she confirmed that her legal name was Fouzia Azeem and that she had been using an alias for safety reasons. Earlier this week Baloch had stirred up more controversy by releasing a kitschy music video on YouTube called "Ban," which mocked some of the restrictions that she had been subjected to. Behind the scenes, however, things were a bit different. Hassan Chaoudhry, a reporter for local paper Express Tribune, told CNN he had spoken to Baloch on the phone just two days ago, saying she was sobbing and "feared for her life." On the morning she was murdered, Qandeel had shared a picture of herself staring defiantly into the camera, wearing a pair of leopard print pants and a black tank top. She had written that she was a fighter. "I will bounce back," she said, adding she wanted to inspire women who have been "treated badly and dominated by society."

This is a story that can only be found on NextBigFuture and wire services:

Super controversial Brilliant light Power aka blacklight power claims to be generating bursts of megawatt power and claim independent validation

Wikipedia article.