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How about a secular books section: encyclopedia, historical, scientific, and maybe audio for them. I would love to hear Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization". Or audio of Faith on the March.

I didn't realize how many court cases we have in progress. We received favorable decisions in Norway, Sweden, Bulgaria and Italy in the last few months.

A language-learning app called Un-Babel or Fire Tongues

thats very smart to use those filters, I gotta try that

I would get these black areas on screen (the placeholders for the ads) because of my filters. A propos of nothing ... did I advertice NextDNS as a personal recommendation already? 😁😁

and now Isreal and Hezbollah https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy9r022nqz9t?post=asset%3A9dbc889e-5adb-4624-a483-aa4255a4a0b0#post

Shoe polish....

I thought some here might find this article of interest. The article reviews documented hate incidents against Jehovah’s Witnesses across Western Europe during 2025. It argues that violence rarely begins with violence itself. Rather, it often starts with intolerance, stereotypes, and efforts to portray a religious minority as dangerous or undesirable. The author traces this progression from intolerance to discrimination and, in some cases, to acts of vandalism, threats, assaults, and other hate-motivated incidents. Whether one agrees with every conclusion or not, the article raises an important question: What happens when negative labels and public ridicule become socially acceptable? The examples presented from a number of European countries provide a sobering look at how attitudes can influence behavior and why religious freedom deserves continued attention. When media spread intolerance, and authorities promote discrimination, violence is a logical consequence. https://bitterwinter.org/hate-crimes-against-the-jehovahs-witnesses-in-western-europe/

The Mormons do it, I keep getting ads for their church on youtube

We can't trust the wicked. Psalms 37 Chpt

That's awful

Can you imagine if the GB did endorse a product, it would sell out. See brother Herd with a milk mustache, I mean I drink milk. Companies would tailor their products to our beliefs. "Until the new world comes trust Geico" I once had a coworkers husband ask me to find a contact at Bethel because he wanted to sell his companies yogurt. He told his wife how coveted contracts were with Bethel since it was so big and easy to work with. I dont live anywhere near Bethel but he knew all about them

Considering that probably most of the people that go to JW.org are already JW, a tie salesman or a razor blade company would have done well a few years ago...

More ceasefires this time between Israel and Lebanon https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy9r022nqz9t?post=asset%3Ae1d8675e-b880-4e20-879b-5ac4bec968e6#post

do you have time to get a degree in physics before the tournament? I only played once and there were little kids running around the board, so I just aimed for them

I have been trying to learn how to throw the bags, apparently it has to be thrown under hand. Several YT videos suggested spinning it like a Frisbee but that didn't work for me. I tried grabbing a corner of the bag and back spinning it vertically but that didn't work. The best method for me so far is throwing it like a bowling ball.

Seems alot of this happens with cart witnessing. Hopefully the brothers are trained on how to deal with this. A few elderly sisters hurt, that is sooo sad. Its hard to recover at that age. horrible

most seem to throw underhand, you should change the game and throw it like a baseball pitcher. You'll probably get to go home early

This is just a fun thought, not a conversation on why there are no ads anyway. If you had the chance to make a secular commercial for the organization what would be your pitch? We obviously spend alot of money all over the world I was thinking a maybe a Nike commercial for pioneering with "Just Do It" slogan. Or a Dr Scholls insert for preaching in distant lands As you can tell I do not work in advertising. Any other ideas

I checked it out pretty cool work, I have to find my facebook log in to really dive in but looks good

I liked the 49s till they lost to the Chiefs x2 Boooo

Thank-you, brother John. Wow! This part says a lot: "In 2020, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom identified the Jehovah’s Witnesses as the most persecuted religious organization in the world in proportion to their membership size. They serve as the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, a warning sign for religious freedom—or lack thereof."

I think Baruch is, in many ways, the kind of project that doesn't naturally lend itself to "vibe coding." When someone opens the codebase, they might see something as simple as: await mediator.Send(new CreateMeetingCommand(...)); On the surface, that looks straightforward. What they don't see is everything that happens behind that single line: Command ↓ Validation ↓ Aggregate ↓ Domain Events ↓ Event Store ↓ Outbox ↓ Projection ↓ gRPC Synchronization ↓ Offline Replicas ↓ Read Model None of that is obvious from reading the feature code. Those architectural decisions are hidden by design. They represent years of work building the infrastructure that makes Baruch reliable in a distributed, offline-first environment. An AI tool, or even an experienced developer who is new to the project, cannot simply infer those architectural rules by looking at a few files. The code may compile, look clean, and even appear correct, while still violating important architectural principles that only become visible later through synchronization issues, subtle bugs, or maintenance problems.

There is another aspect that is important to me, and it goes beyond Baruch itself. Generating software is only the beginning. Keeping it stable, maintainable, and reliable for thousands of users over many years is a completely different challenge. It's relatively easy today to generate an application with AI. What's much harder is evolving that application over hundreds of releases while preserving a clean architecture, avoiding technical debt, and ensuring that every new feature doesn't introduce subtle regressions. Many software projects start with good intentions but gradually become harder to maintain as the codebase grows. Every shortcut taken today becomes tomorrow's technical debt. One of my long-term goals for Baruch is to avoid ending up in that situation. I want Baruch to remain maintainable not only next year, but also five or ten years from now. That means being very disciplined about architecture and code quality, even if that sometimes slows down development. I believe AI will play an increasingly important role in software development—I certainly use it every day—but I see it as a tool that assists experienced developers rather than something that replaces architectural understanding. My biggest responsibility isn't just delivering new features. It's ensuring that Baruch remains a stable, reliable platform that congregations can depend on for many years to come.

First of all, I want to sincerely thank everyone who has offered to help with Baruch. It really means a lot to me. Seeing brothers willing to invest their own time and energy into this project is incredibly encouraging. Several brothers suggested using AI tools such as Claude Code, Jules or other "vibe coding" tools. These tools are becoming remarkably capable, and I use AI myself every single day. They are fantastic productivity tools. However, I also want to explain why I have been somewhat hesitant to accept AI-generated code contributions at this stage. Baruch is not a typical business application where you simply add a screen, update a database table, and you're done. Under the surface it has a fairly sophisticated architecture built around concepts such as Domain-Driven Design (DDD), CQRS, Event Sourcing, an Outbox pattern, distributed synchronization, gRPC communication, offline-first data replication, and a considerable amount of custom infrastructure that I have built over the past years. Much of this complexity is intentionally hidden from the feature code. That's a good thing for the application—but it also means that someone unfamiliar with the architecture cannot easily see everything that happens behind a seemingly simple change. A screen that appears straightforward may actually trigger domain events, update projections, synchronize with other devices, publish messages through the outbox, and interact with several infrastructure components. Those architectural decisions are often invisible to an AI tool unless it has a deep understanding of the entire codebase. My concern is therefore not that AI writes "bad code." In fact, AI often produces perfectly reasonable C# code. The challenge is that code can still be architecturally incorrect even if it compiles and looks clean. Reviewing those pull requests would require me to carefully verify every architectural decision, every interaction with the infrastructure, and every side effect. In many cases, that would actually take longer than implementing the feature myself. For that reason, I currently have to be very careful about accepting code contributions from people who are not already familiar with the architecture of Baruch. That certainly doesn't mean I don't appreciate the offers—quite the opposite. Your willingness to help is deeply appreciated, and I hope that as Baruch matures I can find more meaningful ways for brothers to contribute without risking the long-term maintainability of the project. For now, my biggest challenge isn't writing code; it's protecting the architecture that makes Baruch reliable, secure, and maintainable in the long run. Thank you again to everyone who has offered to help. Your encouragement and support mean far more to me than you probably realize.