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Post by millring on May 1, 2024 15:57:18 GMT -5
Two of my nephews will become doctors this month. Max and Peter.
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Post by millring on May 1, 2024 4:36:52 GMT -5
The ditches are getting very colorful. Sky brought to you by M.C. Escher
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Post by millring on May 1, 2024 4:28:59 GMT -5
I guess the reason it is so hard to distinguish the antisemites from the anti-Israel folks is their steadfast unity. They both believe that Israel is an illegitimate State, and that's why they have joined forces to protest and call for a ceasefire. The anti-Israel folks see duly elected Israeli government under Netanyahu as morally equivalent to Hamas. And they believe they have more in common with Hamas than with Israel. If that were not the case, at least SOMEBODY would be calling for the true villain, Hamas -- they ARE the aggressor -- to unconditionally surrender.
If you don't want them to surrender, by definition you want them to succeed.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 17:26:31 GMT -5
Another tip. Don't use a $10,000 coin in a vending machine.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 17:24:16 GMT -5
I just use *****. That way when a hacker trys to click on that little eye icon to show what it is, he will assume that the eye thing isn't working because the image won't change and he'll give up.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 16:09:31 GMT -5
I'm going to start on my cellar floor. There must be SOME benefit to living in a 150 year old house.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 9:23:25 GMT -5
...on the other hand, don't ignore that by his very standard he is dominating a marginalized victim. By his standard.
It's not like he couldn't have found an articulate male to argue with.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 9:04:43 GMT -5
Disagreement with a woman is not misogyny. Exactly.
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Post by millring on Apr 30, 2024 4:47:51 GMT -5
youtu.be/i9oD6jIe03o?si=I6kexqIiNvcmjZfc If you're not paying attention, you won't notice that he's doing exactly what he is criticizing the (admittedly -- probably intentionally -- poor example of a) critic of the ad of doing. In short, he's begging the question. He says that Jesus' mission was to woke the world, not to die for its sin -- the very question (he's begging) And he carefully culled the verses he wants to use to prove his point from the whole of the message -- exactly what he claims she is doing. And his assertion that there is no unified narrative to the entirety of the canon of scripture is also begging the question. Orthodox Christianity has claimed otherwise since believers started believing in the redemption narrative. If you want to criticize the canon, criticize it on the basis that throughout history people have been collecting a library of books -- the Bible -- on the basis that they confirm that redemption narrative (the bullets were shot into the side of the barn and then the target was painted over the bullet holes, thereby creating a bullseye.). Of course there is a unified narrative to the Bible. That's the reason for its existence. And that narrative contains lots of stories, allegories, symbolism, fiction, fables, history, declarations, inquiries. It isn't even always prescriptive. It is often simply descriptive. (it's even a little humorous that by picking on a hyper-feminine woman to pick apart, he's utilizing the very power structure he claims to be condemning. What a misogynist.)
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Post by millring on Apr 29, 2024 18:03:53 GMT -5
We've had multiple churches close in our community. And we're about as churchy as a community gets. Our local college is a Christian college and at one point we had churches everywhere. Some of the ones that survive are selling off properties and scaling back. Those of a more orthodox theology appear to be doing well-to-okay, The mainline denominations are closed or skeletal.
There's better entertainment than church. There's WAY better music than church. Frankly, there's access to better theological teaching than church (and people are accessing it in large part because the churches abandoned it anyway, assuming that nobody wanted it anyway. That they wanted, instead, stuff to do and pep talks to make them feel good).
If the church isn't anything but a service organization, there's really not much need for it. We're even glutted with ways to give charitably with your time and money.
After the Super Bowl, social media was dotted with comments on the mostly fizzled "He Gets Us" campaign. It appears to have satisfied nobody and pissed off more than it attracted. My anti-Christian friends (of whom I seem to have several who regularly -- and I mean daily -- post anti-Christian screeds and memes mocking everything they think Christianity is) hated it. But to a person, their gripe with the "He Gets Us" campaign was that the millions spent on it could have been spent on the poor. Ironically (or interestingly) that was Judas Iscariot's complaint. When Mary anointed Jesus feet with expensive oil, Judas complained that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Jesus didn't agree. Jesus was pleased that Mary acknowledged that Jesus primary mission was not social -- not caring for the poor -- but rather, to die. That was the very significance of her act of anointing.
We think that the church's central mission is social. Because of that, we're not only failing at it (and we will always "fail" at it because the world will always judge the church on its results, while judging its own institutions on their good intentions), we're emptying our churches. If the goal is to simply be good people and care for the poor and the downtrodden, we don't need the church for that. If there's not truth to the Gospel -- no redemption for the human soul, then the church really doesn't have anything special to offer. No wonder everyone's leaving.
Last one out, turn out the lights.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 15:17:49 GMT -5
An interesting take, because it's aimed at 30-year-old me. 25 years after publication, does it still apply to my generation, the two after it, or all three? More than that, it was prescient. The church, of course, stayed its course (the one she described) and things went from bad to worse (in terms of church attendance). There's a new book out "The Great Dechurching" that is saying that the past decade or so has been the largest demographic/religious shift in our history with millions leaving church, churches closing their doors forever, and the smallest minority in our history still attending church. We are most definitely living in a post-Christian world. And the majority not only don't miss it, they say "good riddance".
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protests
Apr 28, 2024 14:01:11 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 14:01:11 GMT -5
If Israel is equally evil, I'm not on board with that. Our leadership seems to be.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 11:24:10 GMT -5
You'll have to somehow pull humans out of the decision-making process. Religion tried that. It gave us the Middle East.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:31:39 GMT -5
I'm thinking that the word games, in order of difficulty, are:
1. Connections (I'm finally getting the hang of it and learning some tricks, but even though I am more often winning, I do so with the fourth category solved by default).
2. Strands (I even occasionally win without a hint)
3. Waffle
But this morning I was looking at a Waffle board with everything but four unmoved letters -- none of them lit up. I was sure I'd lost. But I got it with 0 to spare.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:19:11 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:16:11 GMT -5
I'm not alone in observing that at times Rob is a Paul McCartney doppelganger. But here he's even channeling him. If Paul McCartney wrote a kid's song, I'm guessing it might sound just like this.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 9:04:33 GMT -5
and that Iran is fighting democracy and spreading tyranny, there is no hypocrisy. Then why the hand-wringing over supporting Israel? Netanyahu's government was democratically elected. And yet, those who are "conflicted" over Israel and therefore are supporting (or sympathetic for) Hamas are certainly NOT concerned about the survival of democracy. They appear to be ideologues who extrapolate American concepts of "conservative" and "progressive" , thereby hate Netanyahu, and don't believe Israel has the right to wage a war that was declared against them by a democratically elected Hamas who represents the very Palestinian people for whom those progressive Americans feel their ONLY sympathies.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 8:06:39 GMT -5
This was before the rain leaked on the exact spot I was sitting….and no where else under that roof. "It rains on the just, the unjust, and the guitar player." -Matthew 5:45
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 7:53:36 GMT -5
The hyacinth held on long enough for the tulips to join in. Red grass foreground, reed fern background, in a ditch on my route. In a month and a half, across the street from this will be 25 linear yards of ditch lilies.
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Post by millring on Apr 28, 2024 7:31:32 GMT -5
I can't believe I find this interesting, but I do. This is the kind of story that makes our local news. I deliver dozens of periodicals aimed specifically at the farms on my route. I watch farm fields all day every day and I'm just getting a glimpse at how things work and, beyond the beauty I see in the seasonally changing landscape, I'm catching on to what is happening. www.inkfreenews.com/2024/04/26/should-manure-be-applied-to-alfalfa/My across-the-street neighbor, Kim, once explained to me (while we were standing together in his hay field observing a late summer cutting) that his alfalfa field looks outrageously good after the Springtime rains. The number of bales per acre is amazing. I watch wagon after wagon loaded down with bales being hauled off after a day's work. But, Kim said, the summer hay is SO much better because it's when the alfalfa outgrows the grass. Then the bales are mostly the good stuff. The alfalfa. Kim explained that alfalfa can have roots up to six feet deep. Grasses, much, much shallower. So, in the heat of the summer when the rains aren't as frequent and the heat of the sun quickly evaporates what does fall, the grasses can't thrive. But alfalfa with its roots down deep does quite well. It makes for a very pretty field too. One even a gardener might admire. As Kim was explaining, I was dreaming. I thought to myself what a beautiful love story/song that would make -- the deeper roots of a healthy relationship thriving through the harder times in life that a shallow infatuation would not. But nobody's going to write a song with "alfalfa" in the lyric. "Alfalfa" is a funny-sounding word like "bumfuzzle" and "cattywampus". I gave my love alfalfa I was thinking, I suppose That she would know I love her But alfalfa isn't a rose
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