Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@futurebird That's pretty dark, but I don't doubt you have knowledge and experience behind it.

I grew up in a church with a strong patriarchal/authoritarian thing going on. The leaders of the church for decades kept the church's records about controversial stuff secret from all but a few at the top (this more or less fell apart with the internet). We were occasionally told they were protecting us from "dangerous knowledge", when they weren't saying "nothing to see here."

One of the church leaders once said, "there are some truths that are not useful" as a defense of anti-transparency.

So I guess it's not that different from the situation you describe.

[Edit: I started writing that comment thinking, "I haven't had any experience with that kind of thing, just something with a vague bit of similarity" and ended up thinking something else at the end.]

@futurebird This is such an idea. Instead, schools invest in "online solutions" and "innovative platforms" that students are required to use and give their personal details to, and about twice a year I get a "so sorry" email from my kid's school about a data breach from one of these things.

@futurebird From a bajillion old testament lessons (so, kinda suspect) I remember ancient Israelite use of numbers was often symbolic, and it's thought that the symbolism was generally shared by people within the time x culture. 40 was sometimes used to indicate "lots" but, as someone else ITT said, probably a specific spin on "lots."

Other stuff I remember (again, no idea if this is legit):

3, 7, and 12 were generally good. They indicated completion and maybe power (?).

6 was (at least sometimes) bad. One explanation was "almost a holy/complete number, but falling short and therefore worse than if it hadn't even tried." I heard it used in parallel with the story of Lucifer challenging God's authority and being cast out of heaven: he was almost-god, which turned out to be far worse than your basic not-god.

The counting system was (at least sometimes?) base 60(ish; hence compasses and clocks), and many of the important or notable numbers were multiples of 20, 12, 3, and/or 60, maybe like we sometimes default to describing things in multiples of 5 or 10.

@futurebird "I never thought the Victrola-eating dog would eat MY Victrola!"