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InequalityGodzilla posted:Better yet, make a few trips to the bank and get it all withdrawn as singles. Then scatter them on the floor of your apartment and roll around in them. It's insanely satisfying in a Scrooge Mcduck kind of way. Guy managed to get LF to give him $1200 to buy new jeans, and then remarkably ran away with all of the cash
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Sep 10, 2014 10:33
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Well Jesus, he was practically obligated to at that point.
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Sep 10, 2014 10:52
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SedanChair posted:I believe the correct purchase is 10 pairs of lovely khakis. These days it's to open a hot dog shack.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:13
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InequalityGodzilla posted:Better yet, make a few trips to the bank and get it all withdrawn as singles. Then scatter them on the floor of your apartment and roll around in them. It's insanely satisfying in a Scrooge Mcduck kind of way. In addition to what others have already said, Brother Aziz was an LF poster who claimed to be an unemployed gay quasi-homeless member of a Nation of Islam splinter (Goatstein, I think it was, described him as "an 'adult' convert to 'Islam'"), with an agoraphobic transgendered boyfriend. This developed over the course of some time, as had he made the claim all at once I'd like to think even some of the idiots he eventually swindled would have seen through him. Anyway, supposedly he was living in a communal squat of some sort using pirated internet to waste away his days  ing in LF, and eventually he came around to mentioning he'd gotten some job interviews lined up, but was thinking about ducking out on them as he didn't have clothes good enough. I don't remember who, but someone suggested a donation drive, which accumulated something to the tune of three thousand bucks, which he blew on a few pairs of designer jeans, and then moonwalked out of the thread, and forum, laughingly shooting everyone the bird. As I said, it was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on this forum.
Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 17:40
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Captain_Maclaine posted:As I said, it was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen on this forum. Fixed that for you- sorry, that is pretty great.
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Sep 11, 2014 21:59
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Just Offscreen posted:Fixed that for you- sorry, that is pretty great. I didn't mean to imply it wasn't hilarious as well.
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Sep 11, 2014 23:53
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Sorry it's been so long, but my VPN borked and then school started, so I've been up to my eyeballs in paperwork, lesson planning, and meetings. As an aside, ACE is definitely designed to be brainless for the teacher. A "supervisor" with no background knowledge in the subject can skate by by just needling the student to memorize the specific answers repeated throughout a PACE, and since the material and answers has already been created, there's no need to create lesson plans, tests, or projects. Later PACEs have book reports and research projects for the student, but, again, there's no up front work needed from the supervisor. Anyway, I was going to talk about Young Earth Creationism. Which is to say that ACE school and the School of Tomorrow believes totally and utterly in the fact that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and was created in precisely six 24 hour days. Thankfully, they do not additionally believe the earth is flat. A lot of you are probably familiar with this belief. It stems from the fact the Bible, being written by Jews, has an utterly exhaustive genealogy starting with Adam, and bored theologians roughly figured out the age of the world by adding up the ages of all these ancient Jewish men. And because it's in the Bible, a lot of ignorant, change-fearing Christians have started with this as an assumption. Every single piece of the vast body of evidence that contradicts this is met with deliberate misunderstanding, willful ignorance, or dismissal as tricks by the great Satan. Here's an few examples from my training PACE. I'm no scientist, but even what snips I remember from high school make me suspect these 'proofs'. Proof 1 that the earth is <10k years old: scientists have observed the sun is burning its surface at 5 feet an hour. (burning it's surface matter? Burning its radius? Don't stars grow as they age?) Therefore, a million years ago, the sun would have been more than 100 million miles in diameter and should have already consumed the galaxy! (Things I am unsure are taught in ACE schools: density's effect on gravity, Astronomy) Proof 2: Wind and water erosion is grinding down the planet's mountains and prairies at an observable rate. If the earth was millions of years old, it should already have been reduced to a round, muddy ball! (Things I am unsure are taught in ACE schools: how geography and temperature effect weather patterns, plate tectonics.) As an aside, the training PACE then offhandedly mentions the Ice Age as a thing that really happened, meaning I can only assume SoT believes that Adam and Eve hung out with mammoths and dinosaurs and poo poo before all those critters got wiped out because they didn't make the cut for Noah's totally real and legit Ark. This part of the book is also where SoT starts shaking its fundie fist at  Humanism . I honestly haven't seem the label outside of discussion about Terry Pratchett and Bill Nye's religious beliefs but the way this PACE goes on about it you'd think a humanist had killed their dog. Get this.Wisdom posted:Atheism and Humanism are not intellectualism. They reject the intellectualism and greatness of the mind of man - a mind able to see and understand a God Who is far beyond human comprehension. And one more for the road. Wisdom posted:... Science has proved that spontaneous generation does not and never did take place. Evolutionists simply accept that life "just happened." In their unbelief they are unwilling to accept and believe in a Creator.
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Sep 12, 2014 11:48
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In right-wing Christian discourse, it's much more frequent to see Humanism referred to as "secular humanism".
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Sep 12, 2014 11:56
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Pope Guilty posted:In right-wing Christian discourse, it's much more frequent to see Humanism referred to as "secular humanism". I'm not sure exactly why, but evangelical Christianity has a massive hateboner for humanism. I remember being taught that humanism is basically the cause of all the world's problems and all humanists are going to Hell, etc. Prester John, great thread. I thought my education was super conservative but 
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Sep 12, 2014 13:34
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Pedestrian Xing posted:I'm not sure exactly why, but evangelical Christianity has a massive hateboner for humanism. I remember being taught that humanism is basically the cause of all the world's problems and all humanists are going to Hell, etc. Humanism ultimately proposes that a world without religion can be safe, sane, and beneficial to humanity, and that's about as antithetical to their beliefs as fascism is to communists'.
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Sep 12, 2014 13:41
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Pedestrian Xing posted:I'm not sure exactly why, but evangelical Christianity has a massive hateboner for humanism. I remember being taught that humanism is basically the cause of all the world's problems and all humanists are going to Hell, etc. They think the Enlightenment wars are still going on. Often they'll even use the exact same arguments christian apologetics used nearly 300 years ago completely ignoring that those arguments lost them the war back then. Good luck trying to win over a modern population with them. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Sep 12, 2014 |
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Sep 12, 2014 14:02
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M.c.P posted:Anyway, I was going to talk about Young Earth Creationism. Which is to say that ACE school and the School of Tomorrow believes totally and utterly in the fact that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and was created in precisely six 24 hour days. Thankfully, they do not additionally believe the earth is flat. I don't know if this is a weird aside or whatever, but how do these institutions explain time-based nuggets like the technicalities of leap years and the rules thereof? e.g. In how leap years occur once every four years, save for centennial abnormalities.
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Sep 12, 2014 15:59
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Pedestrian Xing posted:I'm not sure exactly why, but evangelical Christianity has a massive hateboner for humanism. I remember being taught that humanism is basically the cause of all the world's problems and all humanists are going to Hell, etc. On a theological level, a lot of the evangelical brands of Christianity insist that humanity is degenerate to the point that the only reason we're not murder-raping our way through the day is a hidden nugget of understanding God's goodness. If you're suggesting we look to our humanity, it sounds similar to seeking guidance from rabies. Chocolate Teapot posted:I don't know if this is a weird aside or whatever, but how do these institutions explain time-based nuggets like the technicalities of leap years and the rules thereof? e.g. In how leap years occur once every four years, save for centennial abnormalities. It was never a concern with anything I've heard.  God made a world that doesn't nicely fit into perfect decimal timekeeping, God is mysterious.
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Sep 12, 2014 19:39
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ZeeToo posted:It was never a concern with anything I've heard. See also: Pi I think there was a cartoon on the subject over in the political cartoon thread. A kid is told to follow his heart, he asks his heart what he should be doing, and the reply from his blackened devil heart is SIN. It was... something. M.c.P fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 00:49
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ZeeToo posted:On a theological level, a lot of the evangelical brands of Christianity insist that humanity is degenerate to the point that the only reason we're not murder-raping our way through the day is a hidden nugget of understanding God's goodness. If you're suggesting we look to our humanity, it sounds similar to seeking guidance from rabies. Interestingly enough, that's still a humanistic position. "What a peice of work is man" and "Man is the measure of all things" are both incredibly myopically human-centered.
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Sep 13, 2014 15:41
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Oh, hey, a thread about ACE! That brings back memories. I also did the ACE curriculum, though my setup wasn't quite as bad as the one described by the OP. (We didn't have A-level, C-level, and E-level breaks, for instance.) I don't think I have too much to add to the thread regarding ACE, I don't remember the details of the curriculum very well, and I assume the worst parts have been covered. Still, it's kind of weird to reminisce about that poo poo after all these years.
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Sep 13, 2014 18:11
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Nicolae Carpathia posted:Oh, hey, a thread about ACE! That brings back memories. I also did the ACE curriculum, though my setup wasn't quite as bad as the one described by the OP. (We didn't have A-level, C-level, and E-level breaks, for instance.) Post/username combo ++
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Sep 13, 2014 18:45
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Here's a little story from my time in the ACE system. It's not horrifying (it's actually one of my happier memories from that time) and hasn't got anything to do with religion, but it demonstrates... I'm not sure what, but it definitely demonstrates something about ACE. This would have been sometime in 1998 or 1999, I think, which would have been 10th grade. I had a lot of free time because I usually got my work done early, so I spent a lot of time playing on the computers around the classroom. One of the programs on the computers was made by School of Tomorrow for the ACE program, and it was used by the supervisors to record what PACEs people had completed, the scores they'd got on the PACE tests, average grades, that kind of thing. You'd see the supervisors using it all the time. One day while loving around, doing my The-Lone-Gunmen-wannabe thing, I discovered a file, SECURITY.TPS, that was mostly gibberish but right in the middle were the username and password for the record keeping program, stored as unencrypted plaintext. I discovered this during break time with a bunch of other students standing around nearby and when I successfully logged into the record system they were quite impressed.  But anybody with enough knowledge of MS-DOS to use "more" and "dir" could have found it, if they were in the habit of poking around. I guess School of Tomorrow assumed good Christian students don't try to hack into the records database.
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Sep 13, 2014 21:43
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Nicolae Carpathia posted:I guess School of Tomorrow assumed good Christian students don't try to hack into the records database. Your willful disobedience was an egregious sin and showed that rebellion dwells in your heart. Rebellion is the seed Satan uses to grow you into one of his minions. None of the other students told the supervisor what you did? I thought part of the lessons of this school were teaching children to always be obedient or you would burn in hell.
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Sep 13, 2014 22:44
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He ate from the tree of knowledge.
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Sep 13, 2014 22:54
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Nicolae Carpathia posted:Here's a little story from my time in the ACE system. It's not horrifying (it's actually one of my happier memories from that time) and hasn't got anything to do with religion, but it demonstrates... I'm not sure what, but it definitely demonstrates something about ACE. This would have been sometime in 1998 or 1999, I think, which would have been 10th grade. God used you as a test for the other children, who will eventually go to hell when they die because they didn't turn you in.
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Sep 13, 2014 22:58
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Your willful disobedience was an egregious sin and showed that rebellion dwells in your heart. Rebellion is the seed Satan uses to grow you into one of his minions. Well... yeah. quote:None of the other students told the supervisor what you did? I thought part of the lessons of this school were teaching children to always be obedient or you would burn in hell. A lot of the kids at my school didn't seem like the super-hardcore true-believer type. A lot of them were into Jesus and came from evangelical backgrounds, of course, but I don't remember many of them going into all-out goody-two-shoes-sell-out-your-peers-for-the-Lord snitchin'. My school was less hardcore about that angle than some of the others in this thread. Most of them just wanted to know how I did it and what the password was. As a contrast, though, let me mention my other major memory from ACE, which was considerably more terrifying than hacking the Lord's Gibson. Every Wednesday before lunch, everybody in the school would gather in the chapel upstairs for a half hour chapel session, which involved sermons, sometimes some singing, etc. Your basic Jesus stuff. This was a K-12 school but there were maybe 100 kids, tops. One day, the choir teacher (the mother of one of my classmates) was giving the chapel session. She'd recently been hospitalized, I think it was a real bad reaction to some poison ivy. It started out normal, talking about how she was grateful for everyone's support and prayers, etc., but then it got a lot darker when she started talking about hallucinations while she was in the hospital, and the devil trying to trick her, and memories of her childhood coming back, and how Alfred Kinsey was a bad, terrible, wicked man. (I think she was implying some kind of child abuse, but she wasn't very explicit.) Then she started speaking in tongues, while everybody in the school just watched. Eventually she calmed back down, she seemed a little shy about the whole thing, wrapped up and apologized for making us late for lunch. The really messed-up thing, which I didn't even think about until just now, is that nobody really treated this like a thing to be worried or concerned about. A few of the other students were looking at each other like "what the heck just happened?" as we walked out, but the general feeling was that even though this wasn't a usual thing, it was in no way unacceptable or a problem that a teacher spent an hour talking about the devil and child abuse and then having glossolalia.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:13
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Nicolae Carpathia posted:Well... yeah. Was she saying that she dreamed that Kinsey raper her, or that he was wicked for saying that children had sexual desires--or that the person who raped her used Kinsey to justify what happened?
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Sep 13, 2014 23:27
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Jack Gladney posted:Was she saying that she dreamed that Kinsey raper her, or that he was wicked for saying that children had sexual desires--or that the person who raped her used Kinsey to justify what happened? I don't remember the specifics, but my impression was something like the second and third options: that she had been abused and Kinsey's thoughts on childhood sexuality had been involved somehow, and that Kinsey was a wicked man just in general, since evangelicals aren't big on sex researchers whose results aren't "don't, till you're married". I'm not trying to mock her abuse or anything, and it was clearly something traumatic, but it's a really big mindfuck to lay that on a group of schoolkids who were expecting a brief sermon and some upbeat pop hymns.
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Sep 13, 2014 23:38
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Nicolae Carpathia posted:It started out normal, talking about how she was grateful for everyone's support and prayers, etc., but then it got a lot darker when she started talking about hallucinations while she was in the hospital, and the devil trying to trick her, and memories of her childhood coming back, and how Alfred Kinsey was a bad, terrible, wicked man. (I think she was implying some kind of child abuse, but she wasn't very explicit.) Then she started speaking in tongues, while everybody in the school just watched.  As to Alfred Kinsey being described that way: Wikipedia's Alfred Kinsey article posted:[Alfred] Kinsey is widely regarded as the first major figure in American sexology; his research is cited as having paved the way for a deeper exploration into sexuality among sexologists and the general public, and as having liberated female sexuality. For example, Kinsey's work disputed the notions that women generally are not sexual and that female orgasms experienced vaginally are superior to clitoral orgasms.  Really though, Kinsey would be a horrible boogeyman to anyone seriously involved/brought up in the ACE community, since Evangelical Christians see the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s as literally the worst thing that ever happened to America, and they're still trying to fight it (See: Hobby Lobby and birth control, all the newly passed abortion restrictions, the screaming over gay marriage). On a final note: "Then she started speaking in tongues, while everybody in the school just watched" and the fact that that isn't treated as abnormal in any way is extremely  worthy from my outside perspective. "Speaking in tongues" as a religious thing has always been really, really weird to me, even more than all the other Evangelical stuff.
fade5 fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Sep 14, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 03:22
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fade5 posted:Before I begin, I just want to say I'm really sorry about whatever happened to your choir teacher. She probably had some sort of mental/physical trauma happen to her as a kid, and she probably needed/needs psychological counseling to deal with it, but she almost certainly won't get the helps she needs as long as she's stuck in the ACE community. This happened back in the late 90s, and after I graduated I didn't see her again. I do know she died a few years ago. Hopefully she got some help before the end. quote:On a final note: "Then she started speaking in tongues, while everybody in the school just watched" and the fact that that isn't treated as abnormal in any way is extremely It wasn't even the only time I saw speaking in tongues while I was there, though the other time was just one of the teachers getting real carried away during opening prayers. At the time, I totally believed in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, but it was definitely something I didn't actually expect to see in person.
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Sep 14, 2014 03:58
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fade5 posted:On a final note: "Then she started speaking in tongues, while everybody in the school just watched" and the fact that that isn't treated as abnormal in any way is extremely
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Sep 14, 2014 08:30
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drat...reading threads like these always make me feel deeply uncomfortable. I am sorry for everyone who was exposed to the ignorance and hate this system had wrought. I always feel weird though, because some of my friends and family, who I like and care for deeply, could be called conservative if not fundamentalist. It's not something I pry into a lot - last time I did, I learned my grandfather believed that black people were victims of the curse of Ham. After that, you kinda avoid asking about someone's beliefs regarding evolution. That being said, I think all of them would be utterly disgusted by what is going on with A.C.E., at the very least because they don't believe in sheltering kids like that. You go to high school and are taught evolution, but you just reject it as bullshit based off the culture and community you grew up in. Or not! It's treated as a personal thing and, at least in my little subsection of Southern Baptism, personal things are left alone (unless you act in a way deemed "loud and obnoxious". None of this creepy cult stuff. That being said, the reaction to education in these communities frankly worries me. For point of reference, I'm a liberal Christian with roots in rural Virginia. My dad was smart enough to go to college, which is why my branch is off reading Voltaire and doing its own thing. But my cousins never read Harry Potter because of witchcraft and currently go to Liberty University majoring in religious studies. My aunt got her Doctor of Psychology from Regent, founded by Pat Robertson - who she personally admires. They think I study at a hotbed of liberalism and worry about me - despite my school basically being as moderate as a college campus can get. Even so, when I went to this university and participated in some of the Christian organizations, we would be routinely be called into neighboring churches to talk to the high school students about going to college. "These kids are proof that you guys can go to college and still keep your faith!" the pastors would say. And those are the good ones! They at least encourage their sheep to get out in the world a bit and see what there is to see. One time, during a sermon, the pastor turned to us and said, "You girls know what I'm talking about, going to that college, being assaulted on all sides by sin and temptation!" And I just thought to myself, "Yeah, assault on the soul by atheists and liberals is WAY worse than sexual and vehicular assault, yes." Because honestly, that's somehow what they find most terrifying. That minor crises of the soul incurred by a liberal education will somehow turn them astray to SATAN. Rather than, you know, looking at it as an opportunity to strengthen their faith and relationship with Christ or whatever. So they all go to big echo chambers like Liberty, or worse, Patrick Henry instead. That being said, there is hope! While this is a pervasive thought, I went to school with a lot of kids from even more dreadfully rural areas, as religious and rationalist as me, who were utterly confident that all this was changing. That, for example, based off the people they knew in high school, homosexuality would just gradually become more accepted simply from the older generation dying off and the new one taking over. Maybe it is naive optimism, but at the same time, that's exactly the source of many of these communities' fear - that they are simply going to be outmoded by time. And I like to think they will! Balqis fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 19:03
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Thank for starting this thread (and filling me with murderous rage). I'm only on page 4 so excuse me if it's been asked before but have you considered writing a book about this and your subsequent experiences? I think it would make a fine exposé and you come off like a decent enough writer. If it caught on, I could see you doing interviews and things with it. edit: JT Jag posted:Two: You should write a book or something. Welp. Anyway. Seconded. What's your relationship like with your parents these days? Meaning, are you angry with them? Are they disappointed in you? That sort of thing. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 19:47
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BiggerBoat posted:
Not much of one to speak of really. They lvie in Ohio, and I live in Texas. My last few exchanges with my parents have gone rather poorly so I try to keep it at a "saying hi on birthdays" level and not go beyond that.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:47
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I just posted these in the DnD pictures thread. I can't believe this is something that is actually in print and looking at them makes your story all the more horrible.     because this stuff might be triggering. 
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Sep 25, 2014 22:51
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Let him see your disappointment and grief in your eyes and mannerisms.
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Sep 26, 2014 00:02
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I can't help but notice how those pages only mention the child's father.
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Sep 26, 2014 03:47
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My A.C.E. school also encouraged us to thank the spanker for correcting our sinful behavior.
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Sep 26, 2014 04:03
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Save me jeebus posted:My A.C.E. school also encouraged us to thank the spanker for correcting our sinful behavior. That's incredibly hosed up.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:01
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It's all part of the indoctrination into authoritarianism, and is, indeed, incredibly hosed up and abusive.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:02
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My reaction: Step 1: React calmly and prevent an incident. Sounds OK. Step 2: Don't humiliate the kid. Sounds OK. Step 3: OK, talk to the kid and try to understand them, so that you could help... Wait, what? You have got to be kidding me. Everything after that: Jesus Christ...
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Sep 26, 2014 05:10
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I also love the "don't pass corporal punishment records to the next school" line. These monsters knew what they were doing was wrong and legitimate society would want to stop them, so they tried to whitewash it away at every step.
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Sep 26, 2014 13:01
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rkajdi posted:I also love the "don't pass corporal punishment records to the next school" line. These monsters knew what they were doing was wrong and legitimate society would want to stop them, so they tried to whitewash it away at every step. I imagine all the emphasis on secrecy and blind obedience made it extra easy for teachers to rape kids too.
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Sep 26, 2014 13:22
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Jack Gladney posted:I imagine all the emphasis on secrecy and blind obedience made it extra easy for teachers to rape kids too. Ugh. Thanks for putting that thought into my head. You're absolutely right of course. The whole inversion of roles (i.e. the person held responsible for protecting a child is the one that active hurts them) is so awful and teaches children the exact wrong message. I do wonder if this corporal punishment stuff is partially what leads to the whole "can't trust the state" mentality among lots of conservatives.
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Sep 26, 2014 13:26
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