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CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What's the most supernatural thing you've experienced that has no rational explanation?English291·2 years agoGrowing up, I was Mormon (though I no longer am), and I served my mission in Russia. I was serving in a little town outside Moscow called Lobyna (meaning “the place of the skull”), and it was mid-winter and my companion (that’s what the other missionary in a pair is called) and I were sign-boarding, handing out free Books of Mormon. I noticed that there was a man who had walked by our station a couple of times, dressed kinda bedraggled – I noticed him because he wasn’t wearing any shoes – who seemed interested in talking but shy about starting a conversation. I offered him a copy of the book, and struck up a reasonably pleasant conversation that resulted in my inviting him to take the discussions by meeting with us in the church building.
Our companionship lived on the second floor of the church building, which was a converted dacha (a Russian summer home), and then the first floor and half of the second floor was reserved for church activities. We scheduled our meeting with this investigator (I don’t remember his name, it’s been a few years) to be right after morning study, so we didn’t have to leave the house and come back.
Come the day of, and I go downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast, and lo and behold, our new investigator is sitting in the middle of the biggest room (the chapel/former living room) on a folding chair just waiting. I called down my companion, and we did our discussion earlier than expected, which was fine, and then did morning study afterwards. I don’t remember a lot of that first meeting, other than he seemed like a reasonable Russian Orthodox member who was chatting with American missionaries. What I do remember is that when I went to let the investigator out, I had to unbolt both front doors to do it.
After he’d left, I asked my companion if next time he’d please tell me when he lets people into our house, to which he replied that he didn’t let the investigator in, he just assumed I’d done it. This was when I started to get concerned. You see, Russian doors aren’t like American doors. Generally speaking, there are two doors – a wooden door with a lock like I’m used to, and then a “fire door”, which is like an inch and a half thick steel with five deadbolts into the frame (three into the wall, and one into each of the floor and ceiling). This isn’t a “tee-hee” kinda situation to open up the door to get in, you would have to do major structural damage to enter through a door. And it was mid-winter (like -30 - -40 degrees mid-winter), so it wasn’t like we forgot and left a window open or something. We resolved to be extra certain to lock up the house next time.
Which is why it was so surprising when, a few days later, he was sitting in the middle of the chapel-living-room waiting for our appointment an hour early again. We had checked all the bolts and windows and everything, yet there he was. And this time, the discussion went thoroughly off the rails. He was telling us about how the spirits of the dead congregate behind a comet that circles the solar system, and that they’re awaiting the confluence of some celestial bodies and would get free and so on. We wrapped up the conversation and did not invite him back, and never saw him again.
And sure as shootin’, when we checked the doors and windows when he left, they were all still locked and barred. It’s been 15 years and I still don’t know how he got into our house.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Open Source@lemmy.ml•Looking For Crossword Packs For Use With Shortyz/Forkyz3·2 years agoBritish crosswords are MORE cryptic than American ones? I can’t consistently solve the LA Times or NYT crossword after Wednesday; I probably wouldn’t be able to do any British puzzles.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Open Source@lemmy.ml•Looking For Crossword Packs For Use With Shortyz/Forkyz3·2 years agoI get access to the NYT puzzles app through my library card, which has a very long backlog and lots of packs, so that may be an avenue worth pursuing.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•Why do companies love chrome so much?English41·2 years agoNot really, unfortunately. Firefox has only like 85% of the spec implemented, iirc. It is the browser I develop in most, personally, though, fwiw.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•Why do companies love chrome so much?English74·2 years ago64.7% of all web traffic was from Google Chrome in 12/23. Companies like it because you can develop for one browser and support most people.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto MLS - Major League Soccer@lemmy.world•Where are MLS fans in the fediverse?2·2 years agoI also don’t think Lemmy has that feature, though many clients make it easy to manage multiple accounts, which you could use to approximate that behavior. Mastodon has lists, though, which totally do that, just in case you’re into that format as well. I definitely agree that I want “multi-communities” — I’ll see if I can scare up a GitHub issue to comment on with our use case to see if that encourages the dev team to pick up the feature.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto MLS - Major League Soccer@lemmy.world•Where are MLS fans in the fediverse?1·2 years agoTotally understand. I would absolutely love a “spoilers mode” for mastodon and lemmy, but like, I have no idea how that would even work from a technical standpoint, let alone driving adoption.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Showerthoughts@lemmy.world•If it's not bad for the lungs, we should fluoridate vape juice.2·2 years agoInteresting. Do aerosolized fluoridates adhere to teeth?
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Apple@lemmy.world•Apple Vision Pro Owners Are Struggling to Figure Out What They Just Bought113·2 years agoI feel like Apple could have foreseen this when they marketed a dev kit as a consumer product.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto A Boring Dystopia@lemmy.world•Millions can no longer afford their rent16·2 years agoI think it already is. I think we just need to send a Calendly to see when everyone’s got some free time and we can burn this mother down.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Pokémon@lemmy.ml•Prepare to Face a Mighty Empoleon! (Scarlet/Violet)1·2 years agoWhat’re the best mons to raid with?
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto MLS - Major League Soccer@lemmy.world•Messi misses Al Nassr friendly due to reported hamstring injury2·2 years agoI’m shocked, just absolutely shocked Messi called in sick to the office after he saw Ronaldo was out.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto JavaScript@programming.dev•Help me understand module system in ES3·2 years agoI don’t really understand the first question because you have elided some important details, but for the second question, there’s a “files” key you can set in package.json that specifies which files to include in the package tarball. If you set that to some pattern that excludes your tests, they will not be included. Alternatively, you can create a .npmignore file.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto Movies@lemmy.world•Seems we've already got the plot for Barbie IIEnglish2·2 years agoI use Memmy
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto Movies@lemmy.world•Seems we've already got the plot for Barbie IIEnglish51·2 years agoSorry, I haven’t quite figured out how to set alt text on images when posting from my phone quite yet — the website is easy because the entry box allows markdown, but my mobile client doesn’t seem to have a box for it? I’m working on figuring it out. But my understanding is that, with good alt text, pictures of text are fine for blind folks?
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Football (migrated to football@sopuli.xyz) @lemmy.world•Which match did you watch this weekend? [Discussion]English2·2 years agoI caught up on AFCON this weekend. I’m a Sounders fan, so I watched both of Cameroon’s matches so far, plus a couple of random matches. AFCON is absolute chaos, and so much fun! I’d highly recommend checking it out.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldto Fediverse@lemmy.world•Lemmy Needs to Fix Its Community Separation ProblemEnglish51·2 years agoI honestly don’t see a reason why anybody would want something like that
Famous last words.
CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.worldOPto A Boring Dystopia@lemmy.world•Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles2·2 years agoNot yet, but I’ll give it a go!
Not “millionaires”, it’s “millions” like “lots of people”.