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bookoformon · 1 year

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2 Nephi Chapter 15. "The Vineyard- Taken Away."

The Lord’s vineyard (Israel) will become desolate, and His people will be scattered—Woes will come upon them in their apostate and scattered state—The Lord will lift an ensign and gather Israel—Compare Isaiah 5. About 559–545 B.C.

We are still revisiting the Tanakh, looking for signs that history has paid attention to the words of the Prophet Isaiah who stated "door to door oppression" was not a hallmark of a Godly people.

This was way back in 800 BCE just over 3,000 years ago. The Book of Mormon was published in 1830 just before the Civil War was declared by President Lincoln to put a stop to it, and now we are back once again to nursing a nation through a time when State Power is being used against American citizens by their own government, at the behest of zealots. Senator Graham's recent testing of the water regarding the modification of marriage rights in order to oppress African Americans and please religious conservatives is a good example.

To misrepresent religion as an incentive to use the State to bludgeon its subjects is called apostasy.

The cure? Plant one, of course. That Isaiah...went pretty deep didn't he?

1 aAnd then will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved, touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill.

2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest avine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine-press therein; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

4 What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes it brought forth wild grapes.

5 And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard—I will atake away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and I will break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down;

6 And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor digged; but there shall come up abriers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they brain no rain upon it.

7 For the avineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant; and he looked for bjudgment, and behold, coppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry.

8 Wo unto them that join house to house, till there can be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

9 In mine ears, said the Lord of Hosts, of a truth many houses shall be desolate, and great and fair cities without inhabitant.

The joining of many houses in untruth and delusion, AKA Fox News and the fundamentalist religions and politics it speaks for do indeed create desolate cities that are incapable of supporting their yearning inhabitants as we have seen...

10 Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one abath, and the seed of a homer shall yield an ephah.

=the Ten Decrees shall yield the 7 weeks X 7 Days= 49 or one "mikveh" or a baptism, but the seed of a homer "a captive talker" will yield a sin.

11 Wo unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may afollow strong drink, that continue until night, and bwine inflame them!

In the Torah we read that Noah planted a vineyard after the Flood. He had good intentions, our Sages tell us, for the world was a dismal and sad place after the Flood, and Noah wanted to bring some cheer into the world. Unfortunately, he drank too much wine and came to trouble. King Solomon warned us against overindulgence in wine drinking. Said he, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink enrages; and whoever indulges therein is not wise" (Proverbs 20:1), and again, "Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it gives its color in the cup. ..in the end it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder" (ibid 23:31-32).

12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine are in their feasts; but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.

=Religious rites that do not properly pay homage to the God of Israel or unveil all the wonderful things He does for us. Compliance is not the same as paying homage.

13 Therefore, my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

14 Therefore, hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

15 And the mean man shall be abrought down, and the bmighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the clofty shall be humbled.

16 But the Lord of Hosts shall be exalted in ajudgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.

17 Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the afat ones shall strangers eat.

18 Wo unto them that draw iniquity with cords of avanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope;

19 That say: Let him amake speed, bhasten his work, that we may csee it; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it.

20 Wo unto them that acall bevil good, and good evil, that put cdarkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

21 Wo unto the awise in their own eyes and bprudent in their own sight!

22 Wo unto the mighty to drink awine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink;

23 Who justify the wicked for areward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

24 Therefore, as the afire devoureth the bstubble, and the flame consumeth the cchaff, their droot shall be rottenness, and their blossoms shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and edespised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

25 Therefore, is the aanger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them; and the hills did tremble, and their carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

26 And he will lift up an aensign to the bnations from far, and will hiss unto them from the cend of the earth; and behold, they shall dcome with speed swiftly; none shall be weary nor stumble among them.

27 None shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken;

28 Whose arrows shall be sharp, and all their bows bent, and their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind, their roaring like a lion.

29 They shall roar like young alions; yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry away safe, and none shall deliver.

30 And in that aday they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea; and if they look unto the land, behold, darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.

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yourlocalnews · 2 years

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#YourLocal.Me

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osleyakomwonkru · 3 years

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Octavia as The 100′s Jesus Figure, Part 4: Bardo, The Crucifixion and Second Coming of Octavia Blake

So we’re back for a fourth part of this series, which I started after season 6, because wouldn’t you know it - there’s more to be said.

In Part 1, Origin Story and the Meeting of Two Saviours, I discussed Octavia’s origin story as the Dark Saviour and her relationship with the show’s other Saviour Lincoln, and how with his death he invested her with the mission to save all of their people.

In Part 2, Saving Humanity and the First Passion of Octavia Blake, I talked about Octavia finally accepting and understanding her mission as the Saviour, redeeming the sins of humanity, and her first Passion narrative, which was left incomplete, and thus she lived.

In Part 3, Planet Alpha and the Second Passion of Octavia Blake, I wrote about Octavia’s second Passion narrative on Planet Alpha, which led to her road to Golgotha at the Anomaly, from which she is resurrected (the Crucifixion narrative still remaining a mystery) and then meets those she knew once again, before her ascension as the Anomaly reclaimed her in the last seconds of the S6 finale.

So now, Part 4 - Here we will get into that missing Crucifixion narrative, as well as the events that come to pass with Octavia’s Second Coming, the Judgment of Humanity, and how things may have played out differently had it been Octavia who walked into the glowy ball of light instead of Cadogan, Clarke and Raven.

From Dark to Light

Before we return to that missing Crucifixion narrative, which takes place on Bardo, Octavia, along with Diyoza and Hope, land on a different planet for ten years. This planet also has its purpose in our Saviour narrative, because while the show starts on dark themes, and thus needed Octavia as a Dark Saviour, in season 7 it began to shift to a theme of light and transcendence.

Enter the appropriately named Penance.

Octavia spends ten years on Skyring/Penance/Planet Beta, healing from her pain and darkness, and thus is no longer the Dark Saviour the narrative needed her to be before to bring salvation to her people, now she can be the Light Saviour who will save all of humanity.

Her new demeanour - though I hesitate to say new because it was born of ten years of peace, plenty, family, and healing, it wasn’t new to her, merely to those who used to know her for whom time had been much shorter - is evidence of her new Light. It confuses many, because they hadn’t had the same time and healing as she had, but it is evident in every move she makes. Rather than the tornado of righteous fury that she used to be, now Octavia is the steady and calm voice of reason - to Echo, to Hope, and especially to Clarke.

But back to that crucifixion narrative.

Every Noble Crown will be a Crown of Thorns

Her peaceful world torn asunder, Octavia is taken to Bardo, and thrown into M-Cap at the first opportunity. Others have mentioned how the M-Cap headcap looks like a crown of thorns, and they’re quite right - this is where Octavia’s Crucifixion narrative comes to fruition. No one spends as much time in that crown of thorns as she does.

She fights it, at first, but when acceptance is what will provide salvation to her people (or person, in this case, being Hope), she accepts her fate and faces her past - brutal days of reliving her history as the Dark Saviour, to firmly close that chapter of her life (a symbolic death rather than just her regular baptism-rebirth cycle).

She’s freed from her crown of thorns when Hope comes. Hope, the symbol of her new Light, and the Light that she will carry with her as she returns to Sanctum to be resurrected among those she once knew, those who had believed her to be lost, but who dearly needed the Light she was to bring them.

Revelation and The Second Coming

There are a lot of different moving pieces involved in the apocalyptic scenarios of Revelation, and how these come to play in season 7 of The 100 isn’t any different. So let’s take a look at some of the other key players and how they connect to Octavia’s story.

The False Prophet, The Dragon and The Beast

Now, in my Part 3 of this series (written after the S6 finale), I predicted that Bellamy would have a large part in the revelation of Octavia’s Saviour narrative. Obviously, that part didn’t come to pass, because of Bob’s absence from the show, but you can still see hints within the narrative that suggest he would have been a part of it before Bob pulled out (most notably, the Hesperides flashback in 7x04 - this flashback is pretty pointless in the context of Hope telling Echo and Gabriel that story, but if you imagine Bellamy being there to hear about how his sister raised Hope in much the same way he raised her - then it becomes way more meaningful).

But the narrative as it played out also presents interesting Biblical allusions, by casting Bellamy in the role of false prophet, fighting on the side of the Beast (Cadogan), instead of on the side of Christ (his sister).

The false prophet is said to be the second beast to rise in Revelation 13, who has “two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon” (Revelation 13:11) who is given the authority to speak on behalf of the first Beast (Cadogan), to deceive the people so that they will worship this Beast. The false prophet having the appearance of a lamb is relevant here, because Jesus is often referred to as the Lamb of God - thus, the false prophet (Bellamy) resembles the true Saviour (Octavia), not coincidental since they are in fact siblings and thus do bear some physical resemblances.

So who is The Dragon - that is, Satan? It is easy to say that the Dragon is Sheidheda, for it is the Dragon who is imprisoned, only to be released to deceive and wage war before being finally defeated. But it goes deeper than that - The Dragon is the dark side of the Flame itself, Sheidheda’s only the last prophet of that darkness. It is the Flame that gives Cadogan, the Beast, the power he needs to rule over his people - the glimpse of the idea of Judgment Day as something for the Disciples to work towards - “The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority” (Revelation 13:2) - even when the good side of the Flame, the Humanity that Becca believed so vital, wanted to keep it from him.

The Children of the Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus says “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Octavia’s always been tied to different children throughout The 100 narrative, first as the child herself, and then others such as Gavriel, Ethan, Madi, Rose and Hope. But the important children for the purpose of this post are the three that are the “next generation” so to speak of the leading trio of the show, and their important roles in the final battle.

There’s Jordan, the Head-centered, who takes over Clarke’s role as John the Baptist, the prophet who bore witness to the Light (Jesus) so that others would believe. His testimony shows that the Final War is instead a Test, and he’s instrumental in making sure that Octavia can stop the war and pass the test to grant humanity eternal life instead.

There’s Hope, the Heart-centered, who takes over Bellamy’s role as Saint Peter, the disciple who becomes the leader of the church after Jesus’ ascension. Hope is Octavia’s grounding force, her new rock, and her love gives her strength to continue her journey.

And then there’s Madi, the Soul-centered, who is Octavia’s next generation counterpart. It’s made clear from the start of Madi’s introduction in season 5 that Octavia is her favourite, that Octavia is the one she looked up to, and even in season 7, these parallels are there, as Madi is ready to sacrifice herself to save the others, and in more peaceful ways too, like when she’s hiding in the reactor with her two new friends, reminiscent of season 1 Octavia and her friendship with Monty and Jasper. Madi, too, meets her Crucifixion in the M-Cap chair, in an even crueler and more vicious manner than Octavia did. But when Octavia saves humanity, this liberates Madi’s soul and grants her eternal life as well.

I am the Way, The Truth and the Life

Wonkru falls apart in Octavia’s absence. There’s no other way to say it. Wonkru crumbling in 7x03 is made even more conspicuous by the fact that they don’t even mention Octavia, because they’re still denying her, despite everything she brought them. They don’t realize that she’s the one to save them all, they don’t realize that, as Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 4:16) - something that they will finally come to understand in the climax of the final episode.

But it isn’t time for that story yet. First we must turn to Revelation to see what happens to Wonkru and the others on Sanctum while they’ve chosen to deny her and follow the Dragon and the Beast instead.

Here we see the different plagues that strike the unbelievers - both in Revelation 8-9 and 16.

The first to come are “ugly, festering sores [that] broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast” (Revelation 16:2) - the radiation sickness that is a marker of the broken nuclear reactor in 7x03, which claims as James as one of its first victims. If you don’t remember who he was while watching that episode, look back to 6x02, where he’s one of the people attacking Octavia in the Eligius IV mess hall. He breaks faith with her, and here suffers the consequences of that.

The second and third plagues speak of both the seas and the rivers turning to blood - references to the rivers of blood created by Sheidheda’s massacres, first of the Faithful and then of the Children of Gabriel.

The fourth plague, the sun scorching people with fire, takes us to the eclipse in 7x13, where the sky is red with the eclipse. This leads to the fifth and sixth plagues - the kingdom being plunged into darkness as Emori kills power to the reactor to bring down the shield, which makes it possible for “locusts [to come] down on the earth” (Revelation 9:3) and devour those “who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads” (Revelation 9:5).

It is only the final plague - “rumblings… and a severe earthquake… [where] the great city split into three parts” (Revelation 16:18-19) - that strikes where Octavia is, with “a loud voice from the throne, saying ‘It is done!’” (Revelation 16:17). This line from Revelation calls back to what Octavia says to Hope in 6x13 before her Ascension - “Be brave, tell him it is done” - a sign that Octavia is needed elsewhere again. And soon enough she does depart to Bardo, alongside Clarke. Meanwhile, the survivors remaining on Earth have to reunite the three groups split in the bunker - those in the rotunda (Hope, Jordan, Gaia, Indra, Miller), those in the rec room (Raven, Murphy, Emori, Jackson) and those in the bunkrooms (Echo, Niylah) - to prepare for the final war and judgment.

The Fall of Babylon

Before Octavia can bring light to the world and grant humanity transcendence, there is still one more key part of Revelation that must come to pass, and that is the fall of Babylon: That is, in this ‘verse, Clarke.

Throughout Biblical narrative, Babylon stands in opposition to Jerusalem and its righteousness, just how in The 100 narrative Clarke and Octavia have always been set as foils to each other. Now, Clarke isn’t evil per se, but she’s always been set in her ways and doubles down when questioned about her past deeds - as we see both in how she faces the Primes in 6x03 and the Judge in 7x16. She doesn’t learn, and so she fails. Clarke, like Babylon, is locked out of heaven for not learning the patience and humility that Octavia did: “For her sins are piled up to Heaven, and God has remembered her sins. Give back to her as she has given, pay her back double for what she has done.” (Revelation 18:5-6).

With Clarke fallen, it is now time to begin the Final Judgment.

Final Test and Judgment

After Clarke’s fall, someone must step in to advocate for humanity, to guide the Judge’s gaze to the righteous, to the Saviour - Raven steps through the glowing orb to do so. So which figure in Revelation is most suited here? None other than the writer of Revelation themselves, historically considered to be John of Patmos, who is given these visions by the angels as a warning for humanity.

Raven bore witness to a number of the plagues, and while not always a believer in Octavia - in fact, out of all characters around for all seven seasons, they’ve shared the least screentime with each other - but they’ve still fought on the same side. Also of relevance here is that Raven’s been granted visions in the narrative of the show, like John of Patmos has in Revelation - though hers came as a result of ALIE.

While the Judge takes Raven to the battlefield in Bardo to prove humanity to be unworthy, this battlefield is instead where Octavia proves humanity to be worthy. Indra and Wonkru follow Octavia’s lead, finally recognizing that their only way to salvation was through her (see John 4:16 above), and after the Disciples too laid down their weapons, humanity is deemed worthy and the Judge grants them eternal life in the form of transcendence - rising to the heavens in the manner of the Rapture, “We who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

Where is the Judgment of the Dead?

Now, one thing missing in season 7 compared to the Book of Revelation and Jesus’ Second Coming is the Judgment of the Dead and welcoming those worthy into the domain of Heaven.

A longstanding phrase in The 100 has been “May We Meet Again”. This is part of the Traveler’s Blessing of Skaikru, and one that they use frequently with one another even in non-death contexts. So with that phrase, a lot of people expected that the dead would also be able to be part of transcendence somehow, and that beloved characters would then also be present on the beach in the final scene as they rejected transcendence to live mortal lives.

I believe, given everything in the past posts about Octavia, that had she been the one to go into the ball of light to face the Judge personally, rather than saving humanity on the battlefield, that this would have happened.

While logically I believe the best form for the Judge to take for Octavia would have been Diyoza, since Diyoza was her greatest teacher, her mind would be more likely to choose her greatest love, Lincoln - who, if we go back to Part 1 of this series, we remember is the other Saviour of this show’s narrative.

That would have been a reunion even more epic than the Clarke and Lexa reunion that the show gave us, for Lincoln and Octavia were far closer and together for far longer. And if the Transcendents possessed the powers that they do - instant genocide by crystallization at the wave of an arm, transcendence through the blink of an eye, restoration of healthy and whole bodies if those souls reject transcendence - then surely raising the dead would’ve been a simple task.

The only reason that couldn’t happen was extratextual - there was no way Ricky would work with JRoth again, and so this extra dimension, this aspect of the narrative that could have made things so much sweeter and less bitter, had to be put aside.

Now, that doesn’t diminish Octavia’s Saviour narrative in the least - she did still save humanity. She did still bear the sins of the human race, she was still mocked, cast out and sent to her crucifixion by those who denied her. She did still return from that symbolic death, resurrected, then ascended. When she faced Wonkru again - remember, that battlefield in 7x16 is the first time the bulk of Wonkru has seen her since 5x13 - it was in her Second Coming to bring the Final Judgment to them. The trials they’d faced in Sanctum in her absence showed them the truth - that they had to believe in her again to achieve their salvation.

She was the Way, the Truth and the Life of The 100 universe, and no one would have reached transcendence except through her.

#the 100 #the 100 meta #octavia blake #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #raven reyes #biblical parallels #saving humanity #saviour narrative #bill cadogan #sheidheda #jordan jasper green #hope diyoza #madi griffin

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ireadingbooks · 3 years

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Books I Read in April!

This month really flew by in no time... Bookwise, there have been quite some up and downs, but some of my favourites of the year so far as well!

Writers & Lovers by Lily King. This book follows Casey after she lost her beloved mum and is just coming out of a devastating love affair. While she is struggling to write her novel, make a living and figure herself out, she meets two men who offer her polar opposites. The conversation about authorship and writing as well as the topic surrounding the restaurant industry in this book was really well done and so interesting to read. I know some people were a bit more touched by the book than I was, but I still loved it!

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Evelyn Hugo, a famous actress of the 1960s, is finally willing to speak her truth and offers an unknown journalist, monique grant a once in a lifetime opportunity to write a novel about Evelyn's life, in which her seven husbands might not be the most interesting thing about her life. One of my favourite books of the month. Wow! I loved the insight into 1960s Hollywood, the queer representation and the writing style in general. Impeccable! I devoured this book in no time, it was hard putting it down and I was actually sad when it ended.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. When the great dustbowl era hits texas, this book follows elsa martinelli torn between leaving her land behind to find a better future for her family in california. Another favourite of the month. My heart is still heavy when I think about Elsa and her family. This book has my whole heart and I enjoyed the description of motherly love and the importance of female friendship so so much. I can't wait to check out Kristin Hannah's other books!

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. This is the second part of the 'Kiss Quotient' series and follows Khai and Esmee as they explore their opportunity to get to know each other. I have to say, it couldn't quite reach the level of the first book for me. I think I was a bit thrown off by the initial 'setting up two people to get married' story. That put aside, the book was really well done. Can't wait for Quans' book this year!!!

Fool Me Twice by Carrie Aarons. This one actually surprised me and I loved the dynamic between Henly and Lincoln, the two main characters, a lot. Unfortunately, I really thought the second part of the book was not as well done and I got annoyed with Henly's behaviour and treatment of others. Still enjoyed it!

Ember in the Heart by Samantha Young. This is a novella, and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't anything mind blowing.

Mein Leben basiert auf einer wahren Geschichte by Anne Freytag. This is a German book (one of the few I've ever read) and I enjoyed it so much! The road-trip made me miss Australia so much and I loved the dynamic. However, wasn't quite d'accord with the end.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. This book was really hyped, especially on BookTok, so I tiptoed around it for a while, but wow, wow, wow! So well done, so steamy and so heart-warming. I seriously couldn't stop smiling while reading. Easily one of my favourite romances ever!

The Mothers by Brit Bennet. After loving 'The Vanishing Half' so much, I had quite high expectations for this one. Sadly, they weren't fulfilled. For me, I feel like the narrative of the book always suggested something more mysterious happening, which didn't really happen at all. The writing however was as stunning as ever.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I know I'm going against the grain here, but I am so mad at this book and the hype it's getting. I do not, will never recommend reading this book and don't understand why people consider this their favourite book. Yes, there is no doubt the author can write, but why use it on such a story? It's a big no for me. If you do want to read it, please look up trigger warnings.

The Score by Elle Kennedy. As always, Elle Kennedy has the amazing ability to completely capture me with the off-campus series. What I particularly liked about this one was that the way Allie and Dean's relationship progressed was different than in your usual NA-romance.

The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary. This was a really cute romance and I'm pretty sure I would've enjoyed it more if Leon's pov was written in a 'standard' way - it threw me off at points. Still, cute and deals with much more serious things than I anticipated.

DNF: Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was more confusing than anything else to me. Maybe I'll give it another try sometime.

What were your favourites of the month?

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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Pluralistic: 27 Mar 2020 (Mar-a-Lago Virus, plutes cash in on stimulus, postal voting vs USPS collapse, "civility" and the Confederate playbook, Bojo has covid, reasonable covid food-safety advice, SF cocktail delivery, flu pandemic photos, free hi-rez covid stock art, Warren campaign frees its software)

Today's links

The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic: Trump has murdered millions.

Plutes cash in on stimulus: $170B for real-estate tycoons.

States prep for postal voting: But the GOP has all but murdered the USPS.

"Civility" and the Confederate playbook: The right's call for "civility" has a long, dishonorable history.

Boris Johnson has coronavirus: He greenlit national pox-parties, now he has it.

Reasonable covid food-safety advice: Sanitize your hands and your cart, practice social distancing, and…you're done.

San Francisco cocktail delivery: Courtesy of the DNA Lounge.

Flu pandemic photos: Mask-slackers beware!

Free hi-rez covid stock art: Make your pandemic more visually varied.

Warren campaign frees its software: Free, open and universal campaigning tools.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic (permalink)

The US is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, henceforth known as the Mar-a-Lago Virus. It has the highest number of infections of any country in the world.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

There have "only" been 1,000 US deaths so far. The "only" is there because there are so many more to come, when the vast number of incubating cases start manifesting symptoms and begin to die.

Trump wants the country to go back to work by Easter, because in his version of the Trolley Problem, the most important thing is saving the trolley.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21193670/trump-easter-coronavirus-isolation-relax-rules-economy-social-distancing

We had so much warning. But the president said it wasn't anything to worry about.

Now, a lot of people are going to die.

Most of the dead will be old – from the demographic most likely to have voted for Trump (which isn't to imply that only Trump voters will die, or that they deserve to die – only that Trump chose to put his base at risk).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#turkey-shoot

Many will have contracted their infections by deliberately seeking out crowded public places as the pandemic started spreading, because Fox News told them that doing so was a way to own the libs.

Fox News viewers – who skew elderly, even by the standards of TV watchers – are also disproportionately at risk from coronavirus. Fox News is now a suicide cult.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#fox-cult

But so many people will die because of this. Old people. Young people. People with disabilities. People who just had very bad luck. Kids.

And that's before you get to all the people who have car wrecks or heart attacks or slip-and-falls and can't get treatment in overloaded hospitals.

When Hoover fucked up by giving in to plutes and crashed the economy, he got tent cities, or "Hoovervilles."

Trump's fuckup will end with mass graves. Trump Mausoleums? Mar-a-Plague-Pits?

We will get through this. But Trump will have murdered so many of us before it's over.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21196267/coronavirus-usa-cases-covid-19-pandemic-china-number-positive-trump

Plutes cash in on stimulus (permalink)

The stimulus package that the GOP Senate passed has the largest-ever giveaway for real-estate plutes in US tax history: $170 billion in tax-cuts over 10 years for couples with more than $500K in annual capital gains.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/coronavirus-real-estate-investors-stimulus.html

The President who will sign the bill into law is a real-estate investor who stands to make a fortune from it. His inner circle is packed with similarly situated rentiers.

It's the second-biggest giveaway in the stimulus package, and it will also give windfalls to wealthy oil and gas investors.

The House is expected to vote on it today.

(Image: Rich Brooks, CC BY, modified)

States prep for postal voting (permalink)

States are scrambling to prepare for a postal ballot-based election next November.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/03/23/states-begin-prep-for-mail-in-voting-in-presidential-election

Postal ballots tend to benefit Democrats, whose voters are disproportionately unable to get off work to vote, and who are more likely to live in regions where GOP statehouses have closed polling places, adding long drives and long queues for in-person voting.

That's why Red States often have state laws that prohibit unrestricted postal voting, insisting that voters must provide a "good reason" for their desire to exercise their franchise to a bureaucrat who gets to decide whether or not they can participate in elections.

Of course, if Trump throws hundreds of thousands – or millions – of (disproportionately GOP-voting) seniors into the coronavirus volcano to appease the market-gods, the survivors may be gunshy about voting in person, even if they continue as fully paid-up Trump cultists.

There are serious challenges to reorienting towards a largely postal election, including mobilizing printing resources during a lockdown.

But even more challenging is the post office itself, which is on the verge of collapse.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/23/coronavirus-postal-service-june-145683

The USPS is a miracle of self-funding resilience, a universal, small-d democratic institution that serves the whole nation. But its existence is a thorn in the side of shareholders UPS and Fedex, who donate lavishly to Congressjerks who fuck with the post office.

Requiring the post office to fund pension liabilities for workers who aren't born yet is transparent fuckery. Combine that with a sharp decline in mail usage during the lockdown and the service is now on the brink.

That would be bad news, and not just for elections. The USPS is key to America's emergency preparedness, and has been since the Cold War, when it was projected to serve as a survivor-counting/corpse-hauling service after nuclear armageddon.

It's the only institution that could deliver covid meds to every household in America in a single day.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#going-postal

"Civility" and the Confederate playbook (permalink)

You may have heard conservatives insist that the reason they stick up for eugenicists and other cryptofascists is that they're standing up for "civility" against the "social justice mobs."

This rhetoric isn't new: it's literally the same thing that slavery apologists said in the runup to, and aftermath of, the Civil War: "we're not in favor of slavery, we're just opposed to the shaming and social exclusion of slavery advocates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/29/conservatives-say-weve-abandoned-reason-civility-old-south-said-that-too/

When we learn about the antebellum slavery debate, we hear about slavery's defenders – but the mainstream debate over slavery wasn't about its merits, it was about the incivility of abolitionists, and how that compromised the free speech of enslavers.

Slavery advocates were cast as a disfavored minority, shouted down by mobs who refused to hear them out. But discrimination against slavers was a funny kind of discrimination: half the millionaires in America were slavers in a single southern town.

Likewise, the right-wing figures who today claim that they are censored and cast out by the intolerant left are millionaires who fill arenas and appear regularly on Fox News, the most popular cable network in America.

They publish books with Big Five publishers and go on multicity tours. They're courted by "progressive" news outlets as paid on-air commentators to provide "balance." If that's discrimination, sign me up.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, professed love of Black people, and claimed he was animated by anger at the suppression of honest debate on racial politics, unable to share "my thoughts or sentiments" about slavery in polite society.

Slavers cast anti-slavery rhetoric as "orthodoxy" and cast themselves as realists who were willing to speak truth to power.

Does that sound familiar?

The abolition movement – including Lincoln – focused on these slavery apologists, understanding that they provided the cover for the continuation of slavery.

Lincoln insisted that Douglas go beyond lamenting the angry rhetoric of abolitionists and instead describe what he stood for – beyond his support of slavers' right to "choose how they wanted to live."

He demanded that Douglas go beyond his campaign speeches against "mob rule" and state plainly whether he wanted an America with or without slavery.

In her Washington Post op-ed, Eve Fairbanks suggests that we do the same for the "reasonable right" – pin them down. Sure, you don't like "cancel culture," but what do you stand for? What kind of world do you want?

(Image: Anthony Crider, CC BY)

Boris Johnson has coronavirus (permalink)

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has coronavirus.

https://twitter.com/borisjohnson/status/1243496858095411200

Under Johnson's leadership, the UK pursued a month-long plan to turn the nation into a giant pox-party, hoping to attain quick "herd immunity."

He was following a promising strategy devised for less-lethal, less-contagious flus, which was manifestly unsuited to coronavirus, as experts argued at the time. As a result, infections now rage out of control in the UK.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fnl0n6/im_a_critical_care_doctor_working_in_a_uk_high/#fla1iq6

During the planning of this "herd immunity" strategy, Johnson's chief advisor Dominic Cummings acknowledged that it would likely murder elderly people: "if that means some pensioners die, too bad."

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#death-panels

After Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, Cummings was seen fleeing Number 10 Downing Street at a dead run.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dominic-cummings-seen-running-no-114514496.html

(Image: Think London, CC-BY, modified)

Reasonable covid food-safety advice (permalink)

There's a viral (ugh) video going around in which an MD in scrubs (at home!) shows you what you should do when you come back from the grocery store. It's frankly terrifying. It's also wrong.

As Don Schaffner, a food microbiologist, notes in his thread, not only is this advice wrong, it could make you very sick — either because you ate the soap that you washed your food in, or because you left your groceries on your stoop for 3 days.

https://twitter.com/bugcounter/status/1243319180851580929

There's no evidence that washing your food with soap will kill coronavirus, and even less evidence that you can get the virus from eating. There is, however, millennias' worth of evidence that you can die from food poisoning.

Schaffner's advice for groceries boils down to: wash your hands before and after grocery shopping. Wipe down the cart handle. Shop efficiently. Keep your distance from other shoppers.

You know, common sense.

(Image: Lyza, CC BY-SA, modified)

San Francisco cocktail delivery (permalink)

Hey, San Francisco! Craving a cocktail? The DNA Lounge will deliver a mason jar's worth (~3 servings) of Black Manhattan (w/Slow and Low honey & orange infused rye), Sazerac, brown sugar margarita (w/a little orange) or lavender lemonade gin cooler.

https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2020/03/26.html

The DNA is a San Francisco institution, one that runs on a shoestring and is continuing to pay its employees, even as other SF venues (snapped up by predatory corporate behemoths) shut down.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#help-dna

They've also got a bunch of livestream events coming up, including a benefit for the Gay Gaming Professionals, a Death Guild set, and Hubba Hubba Revue's Burlesquerpiece Theatre.

Flu pandemic photos (permalink)

During the 1918 flu pandemic, California went on lockdown. The governor ordered statewide shutdowns, and "mask slackers" who refused to wear masks faced arrest.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/f/flu/0030flu.0009.300/1

The California Sun has rounded up an amazing set of images of California life during the 1918 flu from libraries, museums, and other sources," in gorgeous hi-rez.

Free hi-rez covid stock art (permalink)

If this image seems familiar, that's because it's one of the only open-licensed images of the novel coronavirus, courtesy of the CDC. It's been used millions of times in just a few weeks.

https://tinyurl.com/u457y2d

An effects house called Covert has stepped in to fill the visual gap with a collection of gorgeous,crazy hi-rez covid renders: "No licensing, royalties or any credit is required for their use."

https://wearecovert.com/free-covid-19-animations-renders-images/

Warren campaign frees its software (permalink)

Elizabeth Warren's campaign has released seven of its sophisticated campaigning tools as free/open software.

https://medium.com/@teamwarren/open-source-tools-from-the-warren-for-president-tech-team-f1f27d2c7551

The Warren campaign had a large cohort of software developers and created a suite of outstanding tools, as well as making improvements to standard tools, including improvements to the texting tool Spoke that reduces the cost of using it by ~97%!

https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-campaign-open-source-tech/

The projects are hosted on Github:

https://github.com/Elizabeth-Warren/

This isn't just an opportunity for campaigns, but also for small shops that provide integration and support to them. Obviously election campaigning is in a mess at the moment, but this is seismic.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Nepali media crackdown thwarted by bloggers https://web.archive.org/web/20050328204722/http://insn.org/

#10yrsago LibDem MPs won't fight for debate on Digital Economy Bill https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/lib-dems-tories-and-labour-pledge-to-ram-disconnection-through

#5yrsago Top homeland security Congressjerk only just heard about crypto, and he doesn't like it https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150327/07312030462/congressional-rep-john-carter-discovers-encryption-worries-it-may-one-day-be-used-computers-to-protect-your-data.shtml

#5yrsago NSA-proof passwords https://theintercept.com/2015/03/26/passphrases-can-memorize-attackers-cant-guess/

#5yrsago Welfare encourages entrepreneurship https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/

#5yrsago Here's the TSA's stupid, secret list of behavioral terrorism tells https://theintercept.com/2015/03/27/revealed-tsas-closely-held-behavior-checklist-spot-terrorists/

#5yrsago San Francisco Sheriff's Deputy ring accused of pit-fighting inmates https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-jail-inmates-forced-to-fight-Adachi-says-6161221.php

#1yrago Elizabeth Warren's latest campaign plank is a national Right-to-Repair law for farm equipment https://medium.com/@teamwarren/leveling-the-playing-field-for-americas-family-farmers-823d1994f067

#1yrago Mystery solved: why has a beach in France been blighted by washed-up parts for toy Garfield phones for more than 30 years? https://www.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2019/03/27/l-affaire-des-echouages-de-telephones-garfield-en-bretagne-enfin-resolue_5442290_4832693.html

#1yrago McDonald's will drop opposition to increases in the federal minimum wage https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/26/mcdonalds-lobbying-minimum-wage-1238284

#1yrago Front-line programmers default to insecure practices unless they are instructed to do otherwise https://net.cs.uni-bonn.de/fileadmin/user_upload/naiakshi/Naiakshina_Password_Study.pdf

#1yrago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez schools Republicans on the true costs and beneficiaries of the Green New Deal https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1110700996282343424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/), Kottke (https://kottke.org), Advertising Pics (https://advertisingpics.tumblr.com/), Fipi Lele.

Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill? https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/

Upcoming appearances:

Quarantine Book Club, April 1, 3PM Pacific https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416

Museums and the Web, April 2, 12PM-3PM Pacific https://mw20.museweb.net/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commerically, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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When live gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

#pluralistic

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calvinistwoman · 4 years

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PREFACE: Unless otherwise stated, all quotes regarding LDS Doctrine will be taken from the following: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics

So in response to a post i saw regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (aka: the Mormon Church), I wanted to make a super quick post about the differences between LDS doctrine and Biblical doctrine. Obviously, I am a Christian and I disagree with a lot of LDS doctrine. I just wanted to outline some major differences since, as you can see in this post, Mormons often refer to themselves as Christians. “Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unequivocally affirm themselves to be Christians.” (Under Topic: Are Mormons Christian?)

This is in no way meant to belittle anyone’s beliefs, and it’s my apologies if I misrepresent anyone.

(also I know this post talks a little about Jehovah’s Witnesses as well... but I really don’t know as much about them so I don’t feel qualified to speak on that.)

Firstly, I want to say that I do not believe Mormons are Christians. I will back up this statement in a moment. I don’t say it because I dislike Mormons or anything. I say it because when you look at the Biblical parameters for what a Christian is, it’s clear that Mormons do not meet the qualifications. While every single Mormon I've ever met has been extremely kind and obviously devoted to their beliefs, I can not count them as brothers and sisters in Christ. And here’s why...

We have different Scriptures. I am starting here because every disagreement stems from this point. The Christian view of scripture is that the Bible is the Word of God. It is complete and infallible. We stand on the authority of the Bible as being perfect and unchanging. This differs from the LDS view. Yes, the LDS church hold to the Bible as one of their scriptures, however they also add the Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, as well as the word of the prophet. All these constitute the words of God. “to claim that the Bible is the sole and final word of God—more specifically, the final written word of God—is to claim more for the Bible than it claims for itself.” (Under Topic: Are Mormons Christian?)

Second, we have different Gods. I know, you’re thinking... “What? No way. They seem so similar.” And they really do when you look at them broadly. Be both believe in God the father, His Son Jesus Christ and His redemptive plan, and the Holy Spirit who indwells us and helps us. So what’s the difference? There are actually a lot of differences. You know how a lot of atheists will say “Yeah Jesus was real, he was just a good teacher.” Well it’s sort of like that. We both believe in the same historical person, but that’s where it ends. It’s a bit like comparing the real Abraham Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. They’re both talking about the same guy....sort of.

So how do we view the Godhead, and how are these views contradictory?

LDS - I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. (King Follett Discourse)

Christian - Isaiah 43:10 I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

LDS - God and Jesus Christ are glorified, physical beings and that each member of the Godhead is a separate being.

Christian - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are one God in three persons. God is also a spirit, not a man. But for our sake, Christ took on flesh and bone to bare our sins.

(Under Topic: God the Father)

LDS - We are all literally children of God, spiritually begotten in the premortal life.

Christian - We are created beings, made by God for His glory.

LDS - His work and glory is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”

Christian - God’s ultimate aim is to put all things under His subjection and to receive all the praise, honor, and glory due Him.

(Under Topic: Holy Ghost.)

LDS - Through His power, we are sanctified as we repent, receive the ordinances of baptism and confirmation, and remain true to our covenants

Christian - Sanctification is a work of the Spirit making us more like Christ.

LDS - All honest seekers of the truth can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost, leading them to Jesus Christ and His gospel.

Christian - The indwelling of the Spirit is a mark of a true believer. It happens as a result of the hearing of the gospel and a faith in Jesus Christ.

(Under Topic: Jesus Christ)

LDS - As Risen Lord, He visited among those He had loved in life. He also ministered among His ‘other sheep’ (John 10:16) in ancient America. In the modern world, He and His Father appeared to the boy Joseph Smith, ushering in the long-promised ‘dispensation of the fulness of times’ (Ephesians 1:10).

Christian - I mean we would just reject this entirely. We also understand the “other sheep” to mean gentiles, not ancient Americans.

Thirdly, we have a different view of the atonement. This makes sense as we have different views of God, and different sources for truth.

(Under Topic: Salvation)

To be cleansed from sin through the Savior’s Atonement, an individual must exercise faith in Jesus Christ, repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (see Acts 2:37–38). Those who have been baptized and have received the Holy Ghost through the proper priesthood authority have been conditionally saved from sin. In this sense, salvation is conditional, depending on an individual’s continuing in faithfulness, or enduring to the end in keeping the commandments of God (see 2 Peter 2:20–22).

(Under Topic: Gospel)

The Prophet Joseph Smith said, “The first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Articles of Faith 1:4).

The Savior has promised that if we endure to the end, faithfully living the gospel, He will hold us guiltless before the Father at the Final Judgment (see 3 Nephi 27:16).

2 Nephi 25:23 “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

Articles of Faith 1:3 - We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

As you can see, this is very different from the Biblical Gospel which is by grace, freely given to all who believe. It’s very man-centered and works-based. It relies on several conditions to get and then maintain salvation.

Fourthly, the LDS church and their scriptures have a different view of the fall.

“Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.

“And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 5:10–11).

This almost makes it sound like the fall was a good thing. As though Adam and Eve were happy, and the sin was a blessing. But the Biblical reality is that the sin brought about pain and death. Yes, the fall is apart of God’s redemptive plan, but we should never view it as good. We should view it the way God did.

Gen. 2:16-19 To the woman he said,“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

God did not view the fall lightly. He cursed mankind, and the world with us.

I could go on, but it’s clear that we hold very different views. To claim that both these views stem from the same religion seems illogical. They contradict each other constantly.

Again... as people, I have no issues with Mormons. They are genuinely some of the kindest people I have ever met. But it is a sad reality that they believe in a false God, a false Gospel, and that they ultimately have no hope in their religion. If you have any questions about anything I’ve said here, go ahead and send me a message.

#mormonism #christianity #theology #jesus christ #bible #book of mormon

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papergy · 4 years

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Quotes From Famous Historical Leaders To Inspire You To Make Your Mark On The World

Here are some quotes from different historical leaders that have made their mark on history to inspire you to make yours as well.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.” — Alexander Hamilton

“I will have here but one mistress and no master.” — Queen Elizabeth I

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” — Benjamin Disraeli

“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.” — John F Kennedy

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” — Benjamin Franklin

“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.” — Mikhail Gorbachev

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” — Nelson Mandela

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt

“I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong.” — Marsha P. Johnson

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Hope will never be silent.” — Harvey Milk

“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” — Joan of Arc

“The first lesson I ever learned was never to wait for a man’s rescue.” — Catherine de Medici

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells

“Better bitch than mouse.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Even the greatest was once a beginner. Don’t be afraid to take that first step.” — Muhammad Ali

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” — Winston Churchill

“I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.” — Rosa Parks

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” — Booker T. Washington

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world?” — Anne Frank

“The best protection any woman can have is courage.” — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

“I cannot do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.” — Helen Keller

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss

“We are what we repeatedly do.” — Aristotle

“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?” — Malala Yousafzai

“Champions keep playing until they get it right.” — Billie Jean King

“Always remember you have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” — Harriet Tubman

“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” — Princess Diana

For more historical content, check out www.papergy.com.

#famous #quotes #history #leaders #trivia #inspiration #books #ebooks

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thevamplelio · 1 year

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Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult. — Anne Rice

Lincoln vs de Lioncourt: @historiavn.

#historiavn #lincoln / truthful thorn #of leeches and liars #aes / de lioncourt #musings / sympathy for the devil #fc / sam reid #lestat / gentleman death #historical verse.#19th century #friend tag

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tacitcantos · 6 years

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That Time The Dresden Files Was Still Accidentally Racist

youtube

Link to Part 1

In my last video I looked out how Jim Butcher’s Changes contains some troubling stereotypes about the maya, painting them as violent and their gods as demon vampires of the red court. I highly suggest going back and checking that out before continuing this video. In this one I’m going to look at why it’s troubling to cast Christianity as a positive and heroic force pitted against mayan vampires.

The Christian god exists in the Dresden Files universe, but has a very hands off presence. He does exert his power through subtle means though, and every Christian character, institution, or item in the series is unambiguously good and lacking in any kind of flaw. In Changes they’re also all positioned directly and explicitly against the red court.

The most blatant example of this comes in the final battle of the book at Chichen Itza. In the Dresden Files universe there are three holy swords that are physically incapable of being used for evil without shattering. One of Harry’s allies wields one in the battle, and at one point becomes possessed by a Christian angel or holy spirit, and shouts up at the red court vampires of outer night:

"False gods! Pretenders! Usurpers of the truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crime against the Mayans, against the people of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgement Almighty!"

--Ch. 46, Changes

It’s important to place Changes’ representation of christianity in the broader context of media. In the last video I talked about how while human sacrifice was a legitimate portion of mesoamerican culture and religion, it’s overrepresented in media to the point where human sacrifice becomes the entirety of pre-columbian mesoamerica's identity and cultural legacy.

To illustrate why this is problematic, imagine for a moment if every representation of christianity focused on it’s obsession with sacrifice and suffering. And christianity does have just as much an obsession with both as the maya or aztec religions: Growing closer to God through suffering is a key aspect of christianity: it’s why martyr’s are so celebrated and turned into saints, why until the modern day mortification of the flesh through wearing a hair coat or fasting or engaging in self flagellation wasn’t unheard of among the clergy, and why even in the modern day mother Teresa believed in the beauty of suffering and may have withheld painkillers from patients in her care because of it.

And while drawing a thorned rope through the foreskin of your penis like mayan kings did for the prosperity of their kingdom rightfully sounds horrific, the ritual mutilation of genitals is one of the core tenets of another Abrahamic faith: circumcision in the jewish religion is not just a custom, but an actual covenant and contract with god.

But Christianity’s obsession with suffering isn’t something that’s reflected or engaged with in popular media. We may see Jesus on the cross in artistic depictions, but obsession with suffering doesn’t permeate and define Christianity in fiction the way human sacrifice permeates and defines mesoamerican culture and religion in fiction. For example, The Dresden Files puts a magical spin on only the positive aspects of Christianity, not the ones obsessed with suffering. As we discussed, christian characters and holy objects are unambiguously good in The Dresden Files.

These are the representations Jim Butcher chose, the side of christianity he decided to legitimize by giving magical weight in the books. In his fictional world we see vampire maya performing human sacrifices to quench their blood thirst, but we don’t see monks with backs bloody from the scourge performing dark rituals for Jesus, don’t see angels who want to cause mass suffering to kindle the light of god in people’s hearts, don’t see vampire conquistadors crossing to the new world so they can slake their thirst in the blood of millions.

That last image of conquistadors crossing to the new world and committing atrocities just so that a few souls could be saved through conversion? It’s not actually as fictitious as you might assume.

To fully understand why it’s problematic to cast christians as good guys against evil mayan gods, we have to look again at context and history. While nowadays we tend to think of the religious aspect of the conquistadors as a flimsy pretext in their true hunt for gold, the conquistadors were actually devoutly religious, and very much saw themselves as instruments of God. Here’s a passage from a book called 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that explains it well:

Famously, the conquistador Bernal Díaz de Castillo ticked off the reasons he and others joined Cortés: “to serve God and His Majesty [the king of Spain], to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do.” In Díaz’s list, spiritual and material motivations were equally important. Cortés was constantly preoccupied by the search for gold, but he also had to be restrained by the priests accompanying him from promulgating the Gospel in circumstances sure to anger native leaders. After the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish court and intellectual elite were convulsed with argument for a century about whether the conversions were worth the suffering inflicted. Many believed that even if Indians died soon after conversion, good could still occur.

--Pg 143

The conquistadors very much considered there to be a moral dimension in their actions, that they could save the souls of the maya from false idols. And in the world of the Dresden Files, they were right: the christian god was good, the maya were ruled by demons, and no matter how many had to die along the way, the conquistadors saved them.

The book never explicitly states this, but it’s the only logical conclusion to draw from the world Jim Butcher’s created. It’s not a leap: it’s all there on the page, validating the atrocities the Spanish committed. It’s the equivalent of writing that there was a cabal of evil jewish wizards that really were manipulating post war Germany, or that africans really were half ape creatures that worshiped dark spirits.

And look, there’s always going to be issues imposing supernatural elements on the real world, on putting a magical spin to real events. Doesn’t it always invalidate real world triumphs and tragedies to say it was really magic at work or some secret society? I don’t think so, but I do think it matters how you do it. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at another fantasy book that has vampires superimposed onto the real world: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, 70% of whose premise is right there in the title.

In the book, ante-bellum plantation owners were in reality vampires who enslaved black africans to use as cattle. So why isn’t that problematic, if making mayan gods vampire is? The answer is history, and what side of the it the story is taking. While it can be argued that it’s problematic for a white writer to be appropriating black suffering for his fantasy novel and that turning the cruelty of real humans into monsters lets them off the moral hook, the underlying thematic message is sound: African chattel slavery was bad, and the people who did it were bad.

And that thematic message about slave owners being bad is a message we still need to hear because it’s not an open and shut case in America today that the south were bad guys or even that slavery was bad.

And it matters that Jim Butcher is essentially putting a magical spin on racist conquistador propaganda, because the Dresden files is a hugely popular book series: as any of the covers are happy to tell you, Jim Butcher is a 1# New York Times best selling author. Changes isn’t an english class short story that will be read by fifteen people, it’s a book in a massively popular series that was read by millions. When a book reaches that popularity level, everything in it has an impact.

And what is the impact of Changes? Obviously it’s impossible to track, but as I mentioned in the last video the maya are by no means a dead people or culture, with around six million living in central America today. What’s the impact on public perception of them from a book like this? Just as it isn’t an open and shut case for some people whether black slavery was bad, it isn’t an open and shut case whether hispanics broadly, and central Americans specifically, are culturally valuable. Not when refugees fleeing violence riddled countries are caged, not when the president repeatedly uses racist dog whistles to refer to them.

Like I said in the last video, I don’t think Jim Butcher did any of this on purpose. I think the air we breath is filled with culturally and racially problematic ideas and he didn’t question them: of course the maya gods were violent, of course the christian god is good, and isn’t the idea of vampire maya just too badass to pass up?

Ironically if he’d stopped to think about his bias’ Butcher could’ve easily written Changes in a way that would’ve sidestepped most of the issue without even having to fundamentally alter the plot. One way to do it would’ve been to shift the red court’s origin to conquistadors who came to the new world for slaughter.

It could even be a plot element that Quetzalcoatl or a proxy of his shows up in the final battle to help Dresden. I mean, it’s not that much of a reach: in the original book Odin shows up to fight in the battle at Chichen Itza.

None of this is to say you can’t like the Dresden Files, or even Changes specifically. Hell, I got caught up in Changes as I was rereading it for this video and forgot just how exciting and well paced the books are. But if fantasy means anything, then we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t when we run into something we don’t like, shouldn’t simultaneously say it can inspire us and that it’s just mindless fun, shouldn’t shy away from the problematic aspects of it. If anything we should engage with it more, expect more from those authors and stories we love and value.

#the dresden files #dresden files #jim butcher #racism #video essay #book #fantasy series #meso american #mayan #aztec #christianity #vampires

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Who is Marvel’s Echo: How the New Hero Fits in with MCU Phase 4

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One of the big new Marvel shows announced for Disney+ is Echo, starring Alaqua Cox. The character will be introduced in Hawkeye later this month and now is the perfect time for her to shine. In the comics, Echo was never truly a top-tier hero. Echo has mostly been portrayed as a supporting character, but she is remembered for her role in an era that goes well with MCU Phase 4. More specifically, she represents the rebirth of the Avengers.

Maya Lopez was introduced in Daredevil #9 in 1999. The storyline was written by David Mack and drawn by Joe Quesada. Through no fault of its own, the story was doomed to be overwhelmed by its placement in the Daredevil series, as it followed Kevin Smith’s high-profile take on the character and came just before Brian Michael Bendis’ lengthy and defining run.

The Origin of Echo

As the story goes, Maya was the deaf daughter of Willie Lincoln, one of the Kingpin’s enforcers. Wilson Fisk had Lincoln murdered and as he died in front of Maya, he placed a bloody hand print over her face. Honoring his henchman’s dying wish, Fisk adopted and raised Maya. Part of it was his interest in her special abilities. Maya could perfectly recreate any human movement she witnessed (hence the name Echo), much like the Taskmaster. Fisk had a deaf ass-kicker to take on the blind ass-kicker that had been a thorn in his side for so long.

Maya never knew the truth about her father’s death outside of remembering the gnarly hand print, which she would recreate in white as part of her look. Fisk set her up by engineering a relationship with Matt Murdock, telling her that Daredevil killed her father, and then hoping her ability to understand movement would help her connect the dots. In the end, she figured out the truth about her father’s death, confronted Fisk, and shot him in the face. Fisk survived, but fittingly ended up blind for a while.

For a little while, that was pretty much it for Echo, outside of a fill-in story David Mack both wrote and painted. In it, Echo went out on her own and did her own Native American vision quest, where she came across and befriended Wolverine. Otherwise, it looked like she was going to just fall into obscurity, especially as Murdock had moved on to another love interest and Fisk’s eyes healed over time.

Avengers Disassembled

Brian Michael Bendis was writing plenty of books at the time and in addition to Daredevil, he was in the beginning of a very long and important run on Avengers. The event Avengers Disassembled did what the title promised and caused the classic lineup on the team to split up. Much like in the MCU, the Avengers as we know it stopped existing and created a void in its aftermath.

As time passed, the team would be reborn as the New Avengers, but with an oddball lineup. Mainstays Captain America and Iron Man returned, joined by beloved mainstream favorites Spider-Man and Wolverine. Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, and the overly powerful enigma the Sentry were brought in. Then there was Ronin, the mysterious martial artist in a black mask. Ronin showed up in promotional material and many, MANY comic covers, but it would take a while for Bendis to get around to introducing the mystery hero.

Who is Ronin?

The original plan was for Ronin to turn out to be Daredevil. He was dealing with the public figuring out his secret identity, so Ronin was going to be a second hero persona. With those plans nixed, there was plenty of speculation on who it was going to be. Luke Cage was on the team, so perhaps this was a new look for his good buddy Iron Fist? The story arc introducing Ronin even played with the reader by heavily implying that Ronin was Elektra, but some figured out who Ronin truly was via a subtle tip-off that suggested she couldn’t hear.

And yes, Ronin turned out to be Echo. This led to two major moments, which also have ties to the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

First, her war with the Hand ninja clan led to her killing their then-leader Elektra, who was revealed to be a Skrull in disguise. This got the ball rolling for Marvel’s Secret Invasion, which is also getting its own Disney+ adaptation. The other was giving up her Ronin identity and handing it over to the recently resurrected Clint Barton. Hawkeye couldn’t be Hawkeye anymore, so he fought as Ronin for a bit.

Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and More: All the MCU Announcements at Disney+ Day

By Alec Bojalad

Does Hawkeye’s Echo Reveal Tease Daredevil and Kingpin?

By Joseph Baxter

Suddenly her role in the Hawkeye series makes sense, doesn’t it? Being Ronin didn’t work out for Clint and it surely isn’t a good fit for Kate Bishop, but maybe Maya can make this work in her own series. At least for a little while.

Marvel’s Current Plans for Echo

Maya had since kept a low profile for the most part. She was Moon Knight’s love interest when Bendis wrote that character’s series (hey, he has a show coming out too!), died, came back, and started showing up in various team-ups.

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Since Marvel obviously wants to get people to be aware of Echo’s existence, they’ve recently given her a major push in the comics. As it is right now, Echo is the host for the Phoenix. So while her history might be linked to Hawkeye, Wilson Fisk, Daredevil, a post-Avengers world, Moon Knight, and invading Skrulls, I don’t exactly see this part of her comic history playing into the MCU any time soon.

Though it would save us from another Dark Phoenix Saga cinematic adaptation, so…yeah, go for it!

The post Who is Marvel’s Echo: How the New Hero Fits in with MCU Phase 4 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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watchmanis216 · 5 years

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House of Mourning, House of Mirth

This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of! But in the end, the Harvest is coming; a reward for all their efforts!

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

Psa 9:15-20

(15) The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

(16) The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.

(17) The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

(18) For the needy shall not alway be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.

(19) Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail: let the heathen be judged in thy sight.

(20) Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.

The rehash of white supremacy, of Nazism, and trashing of Donald Trump is just that. Old news, retired some time ago and brought out for this occasion. Politics and Washington DC all tie together in a myriad of tired worn out phrases. Who cares if the blood of men hollowed the grounds of Charlottesville, Antietam, Gettysburg, Little roundtop, and others. Once before we had division which was bitter. Today, again; the division is there, the lies are there, the stretching of the truth certainly is there, and bigoted leftists in their own right are most certainly there. One thing is certain, Americans have never really learned the lesson of the Civil War. It was not about slavery or state’s rights. It was about division and bitterness. To be sure, this makes for the most disgusting display of ignorance that America has witnessed.

Burn baby burn, House of Mourning, House of Mirth

It’s as if they really think Hitler is in the White House. It’s as if they really think this small group of Nazis are going to take over. But when Obama came on the scene with his socialist ideas, open border policies, and globalist socialist agendas; no one took notice. Like airheads on cocaine, leftists loved the Obama push for world order and the socialist way of life. Let everyone have their own opinion except the right, although today there is no right; just wrong. There are no republicans and democrats, just Trump haters. Today the motion sickness of expedient idiocy floats through DC like a fog bank that rolls in off the Potomac. As I watch this stuff and the stupidity that is America today, I am constantly reassured there is no hope, as long as, division and idiots rule Congress. As long as, Idiots run rampant in the street hating everyone who disagrees with them. As long as, no one has a free voice, nor free vote, or the individual who can continue to stand tall once they have given their opinion. Today, voicing your opinion for Donald Trump, for instance; in the end gets you beaten up!

But today I hear a barrage of ideas, investigations, talking points, articles, and protests. Everyone fighting, everyone mad, everyone pulling in opposite directions, and finally everyone self-absorbed about giving their own point of view. That is what the left wants, to make everyone tired. To make the people give in and say; go ahead and make America as you want. Let me say it for everyone; go ahead and remake America. I disagree with you, but let the consequences fall on your own head! It is for this reason that America today faces the greatest threat of its existence. But of course, the biggest problem we have today is found in three letters, S–I–N!

Tear up the constitution. Burn the bill of rights. Give everyone in America everything free. Let them sit on their asses watching liberal talk show hosts who will reassure them that in their world everything is fine. Who cares if America is great. Afterall, it is the white man’s fault. It is the black man’s fault if that black man doesn’t hate whites like the liberal black fascists who push white hatred do. Let the Indians blame the whites, let the Mexican’s hate the whites, let everyone hate everyone else. If that is all you can do, then go ahead and hate. Why believe in a good God of mercy when you can hate, be vile, and act like a bitch dog in heat. Why turn around and let this nation heal? Why show mercy when you can just as well beat the suckers up. Why listen to anything good, anything moral, and anything just when you follow the globalist agendas of the leftist power dealers of Soros, Obama, black lives matter, and others.

Yes, go ahead and do it, afterall; who cares that America is basically a nation that is purely godless anyway. You want all the statues removed? Go ahead and tear down statues of Gen. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and any others you hate. Tear down the Confederate flag, the American flag, and anything else you want. Go ahead and blame the one in the White house. You might as well paint it black or purple or yellow; because you are a bunch of yellow suckers who are too frightened to admit you are wrong. You are a nation of people for the most part that blames a White billionaire who won the election for President and is now the target of every nut job on the left.

Psa 75:4-8

(4) I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly: and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn:

(5) Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck.

(6) For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.

(7) But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

(8) For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.

If you would listen, really listen to yourself; maybe you would know the vile filth you push. If our politicians would shut up and just stop talking; all of them. Be silent, work as a peacemaker; and look to the Lord. But for the masses, there is no god. There is only purpose and pursuit of your goal, your agenda. That agenda is felt today as you continue to tear down America, to burn her cities, to remove Trump who wants to make America great again. What is more, because you won’t listen; there is little hope left that anything will make this nation truly great again. But for many on the leftist side, the alt-left, the left, and the republicans and democrats who take part in this visible display of stupidity; you will push your own way no matter what. Though the chasm of division grows by leaps and bounds daily, don’t stop now. Allow the fuel of your rebellion to follow through. Burn, baby burn; trash it all, hate everyone except those who will join in your foolhardy expedition of self-destruction. When the ashes then become cold, and you see the cold dead fingers of America lay in a heap; then be proud oh fool!

The leftists are shocked at everyone and everything, all the time! That is, except for the fact they are never shocked by the things they say. They legitimize their threats, violence, and hate; and in the end, it is either Trumps fault or the conservatives. The two groups, Alt-left and Alt-right are merely reflections of what is in the political parties in America. They mirror the hatred we have seen in DC and the nation called America for a very long time now!

The pit you have dug for those who oppose you shall instead be for you. You shall fall into your own misery when the day dawns on the harvest of your shame!

Be proud for you have really shown us what your vision was to become.

Be proud of fool, for in your eyes only are you a hero!

Anathema, cursed; is that nation and that man whose God is not the Lord!

Ecc 7:4-6

(4) The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

(5) It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.

(6) For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.

House of Mourning, House of Mirth

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House of Mourning, House of Mirth

House of Mourning, House of Mirth House of Mourning, House of Mirth This house of mourning is full of Idiocy, Manure Politics, and the stuff that nightmares are made of!

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goldeagleprice · 6 years

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How collectors get started nowadays

by Mike Thorne, Ph.D.

When I started collecting coins in the 1950s, I bought a couple of Lincoln cent albums. They were the blue kind with three pages and a paper backing for the coins. The backing had stripes of some sort of glue to hold coins down that were too worn to stay in the holes. Unfortunately, if you left the coins in the album too long, the glue would impart parallel stripes to the reverses of the coins.

Not long after I got started, I purchased (or my parents bought as a gift) the latest edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins (a.k.a. the Red Book). This I pored over, memorizing mintages, because there wasn’t a great deal of text to study in my 1958 edition.

My impressions about how collectors get started today are mostly gleaned from reading the questions of beginning collectors on the online forum CoinTalk. The questions are almost invariably about some coin, usually a Lincoln cent, the new collector has run across while roll searching.

Here’s an example. “This 1913 D Wheat penny has strange cracks in the planchet. I am wondering if this coin is valuable as a result of this deformity.”

The person goes on to say, “I am new here and just learning as a result of coming into a rather large collection of coins, and I appreciate any help in regards to this particular coin in my collection.”

This posting is accompanied by decent enlargements of the obverse and reverse of a 1913-D cent. The coin would be in VG8 condition except for light scratches on the obverse and deep gouges on the reverse.

When I was roll searching in the 1950s and early 60s, I occasionally came across coins like this one, but I never thought of them as being error coins. Nowadays, that seems to be the go-to tendency of new collectors, to think they’ve found something the Mint made that’s super rare and super valuable.

Replies from the CoinTalk group are swift and generally make the same point: “Those are intentional scratches, PMD (Post Mint Damage), not a mint error. Not valuable. Only worth One Cent. Someone had a box cutter and too much free time. Your coin is damaged and worth face value.”

There are more comments in this vein, but some of the posters are a bit more diplomatic with the new collector, noting that the 1913-D is a slightly better date and the coin might be worth 25 cents or so as a hole filler. At least one poster suggests that the new collector purchase an inexpensive Lincoln cent album and see how many holes can be filled from his/her large collection.

Another frequent finding is what the new collector thinks is a doubled-die coin. Pictures are provided, and the collector asks for verification of his/her valuable find. Here’s an example: “I found this while roll searching and it caught my attention. It almost looks like a DDO that has die deterioration doubling also. When the light hits it just right it looks just like the 1969-S DDO-001.”

Responses are rapidly forthcoming. “Nope. Not even close to 001.” And another: “That’s just the placement of the lighting where you are. I can tell that there is a light to the right and to the left of you, which is what causes the letters to appear to have been doubled.”

A well-known member posts enlargements of a true 1969-S doubled-die Lincoln cent. The shift in images is dramatic, and the poster notes, “If you find a 69-S DDO, you’ll know it. It won’t depend ‘on the light hitting it right.’ In other words, it’ll knock your socks off!”

The 1969-S doubled-die obverse Lincoln cent is often “found” by relatively new collectors because it’s incredibly valuable. In the latest Numismatic News “Coin Market,” it’s worth $32,000 in MS60 and $100,000 in MS65.

One of the first things new collectors ask about their “finds” is whether they should send them to be certified. Here’s an example of that kind of posting, with some answers from forum members. The heading is, “Can anyone tell me if this 2017 Lincoln cent is worth getting graded?” Some badly focused pictures of a damaged 2017 cent follow this heading.

Here’s the first response: “WOW! Send it in immediately. It’s worth at least 500k! Probably more toward 1 mil! (PS this isn’t true. Please don’t send it for grading.)”

After a couple more humorous responses, a well-known member asks, “What makes you think this coin should be graded?” The original poster answers, “I just started collecting coins about 2 weeks ago so I’m not too familiar with all of the errors yet, but I was told that this is a defective die error.”

Several members want to know who gave the new member this erroneous answer, and the new member says, “The person that told me that it was a defective die error was a coin dealer and since trust isn’t one of my strongest qualities I figured that [I should] ask the experts… Thanks again!”

Perhaps the most useful answer comes from another well-known member: “Rule of thumb: Whenever someone tells you that something is valuable and you should slab it have them make an offer to buy it as is and get their name and phone number. Do your due diligence and learn the truth about the coin. If it is rare sell it for the best price you can get. If it is not what the person said it was, ‘make their day’ and sell it to them at their price. No need to rub it in. Let them learn for themselves how wrong they were.”

The point of this essay is that new collectors often start collecting by looking through large numbers of recent coins, generally Lincoln cents. When they find something unusual, they frequently assume it’s a rare mint error, which they will be able to sell for megabucks. A quick question to an online coin forum sets them straight; sometimes gently, sometimes not.

Bottom line: Take the time to learn about coins before jumping to conclusions. There’s tons of great literature available. Take advantage of it.

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The post How collectors get started nowadays appeared first on Numismatic News.

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margarette5178-blog · 7 years

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In the Cryptocurrency World

BTC is an impartial site offering Bitcoins news protection, analysis and speculations around cryptocurrencies including , Ethereum, and Ripple. South Korean news web site Yonhap reported that Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon had instructed a local radio station that the federal government can be developing with a set of measures to clamp down on the "irrational" cryptocurrency funding craze. Bithumb was the most important exchange in the Korean market for many years. There are several other ways Mike Mezack has affected the numismatic market like no one else has. When you find yourself watching television, or are on-line, take discover of the ads which are being proven. The tax notice seen by Reuters additionally asks traders to provide details of their complete cryptocurrency holdings and the supply of their funds. Now in case you visit bitcointalk and take a look at to search out rules in India, you will notice the expert feedback, out of all maximum incorporates the motivation to proceed buying and selling in cryptocurrencies. Day Buying and selling undoubtedly carries its danger and even you probably have two consecutive good days, you will have two dangerous days the place you may lose money.

This account can present entry to the seven modules of software program which may show the profit of better than 800 percentages in real money trading account. Second, anybody with access to the web can entry an account (a public/non-public key pair) at no cost--like money, no permission is needed. One has to make an application for a checking account and, in the method, relinquish a great deal of personal information that one trusts the bank to keep secure. In truth, it is reported that there's a great number of those who resigned from their full-time job to be "traders"! The quantity is clearly rising. These have been hardware and software program primarily based, but Crypto is only software, thus diffusion will happen sooner. As soon as your active order triggers, or when you place a market order, they will seem here in "Positions". To figure out how a lot electricity Bitcoin will consume sooner or later, you've got to interrupt things down into basics.

You haven't any motive to be affected person when things are going towards you. However many of the posts have been in regards to the irrationality of the proponents of the "Bitcoin economy" which is a wholly different set of questions - because economics and pc science are two completely different disciplines. Bitcoin has been around for some time now, and by "a whereas," we imply that it had formally launched nine years ago. Now, farming Sanguine Hibiscus just isn't very troublesome at all. One has to know the way to purchase Bitcoins, how to purchase Bitcoin or how to purchase Bitcoin with credit card to be able to get began. Evaluate both charts from a long term period (e.g. 1d) against one from a shorter interval (e.g. 15m) to get a holistic view of the market. ] have management of the market. The thorn of management. I also have additional thoughts on cryptos that I plan on sharing.

I hope you find my thought processes attention-grabbing and helpful in your exploration of cryptos. Bitcoin is beginning to change into rather more accepted by the mainstream financial establishments. Gold is often credited as being a safe asset due to its provide "coverage." However there should be extra to it than this as a result of, like gold, the provision of actual estate isn't very elastic. It appears like Corda can fall in just one spot, which is the "Ledgerless Crypto Suite", alongside Open-Transactions. Then there are coins, like Ripple, which might be produced by the Billion. What are examples of healthy packed lunches? The governments are waking up and they start to do their obligation. Bitcoin price News has lead the crypto world for so lengthy, and so dominantly that the terms crypto and Bitcoin are often used interchangeably. On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin community was created when the first open supply Bitcoin consumer was launched. The primary responder coins might be made to any specs.

In gentle of this, lots of various businesses are researching into Bitcoin and taking a look at Bitcoin and making an attempt to grasp how it works and what they can do to police it. Unsurprisingly, many such purposes are already in use or improvement. After all, these are solely the primary branches of the event within the house. If somebody ever supplied you only four Washingtons in your 1 Lincoln, you may have the option of approaching the Fed and asking for a 5:1 trade rate--the alternate rate you might be used to. Sellers are getting nervous about gold and silver. I went by way of the stage the place I am single, a contemporary grad trying out for jobs, then getting married, having a child one after another and then pursuing my master diploma and so forth. To create and sign a transaction, it is not obligatory to gather and maintain earlier unspent outputs - one need solely remember the last used sequence ID (for purposes of stopping double spends) and increment it. The country has helped propel the worth of bitcoin to its current heights - and the current options of a ban helped drive it to certainly one of its most dramatic crashes in current months.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Remagining Monuments to Make Them Resonate Locally and Personally

Krzysztof Wodiczko. “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” (2012) a project in Union Square, New York, NY sponsored by More Art (image courtesy of the artist)

This is not an act of vandalism. It is a work of public art and an act of applied art criticism. We have no intent to damage a mere statue. The true damage lies with patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism embodied by the statue.

— October 2017 manifesto issued by the Monument Removal Brigade

Robert E. Lee never asked for them. Harvard-based public artist Krzysztof Wodiczko slyly proposes sending all of them to re-education camps. MRB imagines a day when they are “moldering away as a ruin in the trash-heap of history.” But the current and increasingly heated debate over how to represent our troubled, violently charged past (though hardly actually past) is merely the latest wave of an ongoing confrontation about whose history matters. The question that is still in need of an answer regarding the debate over public memorials that celebrate patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism is not about what part of the nation’s past should be eliminated from view, but how we acknowledge the complex and often conflicted histories — good, bad, and ugly — that actually make up our collective experience. In truth, the current face-off is the culmination of several centuries in which the way history has been memorialized consistently reflected the interests of business leaders, municipal power brokers, wealthy arts patrons and to even main-stream academics. Significantly however, it also bears the marks of another, decades-old set of forces that includes socially engaged artists and community activists who have confronted, reinvented, and in some instances put into practice temporary interventions and performance works that challenge dominant forms of historical representation.

REPOhistory street sign by Susan Schuppli commemorating Brenda Berkman, New York’s first female firefighter, (1998) (image courtesy the author)

Opinions vary about what to do with these objects. They range from a desire to wipe the slate clean by removing all public memories of the Confederacy and white supremacy, to cloaking such monumental works beneath black tarp, much as the group Decolonize This Place — a coalition that includes Native American and Palestinian-rights activists — did last fall (October 14, 2016) with the Theodore Roosevelt monument outside the American Museum of Natural History. No, Roosevelt was not a Southern rebel; nevertheless, his equestrian statue is no less offensive. The 26th US President and former NYC Police Superintendent is depicted by artist James Earle Fraser with masculine vitality astride a horse. Head tilted back and eyes fixed on a distant horizon he wears his signature Rough Rider uniform from the Spanish American War. Flanking Roosevelt’s right side is an American Native chief, while on his left strides an African man in sandals and what appears to be a Maasai warrior’s Shuka robe. According to former Executive Director for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, A. L. Freundlich, these accompanying figures are guides symbolizing Roosevelt’s “interest in the natural world.” According to Decolonize This Place, “New York’s premier scientific museum continues to honor the bogus racial classification that assigned colonized peoples to the domain of Nature, and Europeans to the realm of Culture,” adding that “a monument that appears to glorify racial hierarchies should be retired from public view.”

Still, there are other, equally engaging methods for confronting offensive historical monuments, such as marking the absence of public memorials to the 99% of us who have been forgotten or even erased from most urban spaces. These people include the laborers who built the city, the street urchins whose tears have soaked its pavements, and all generations of common people lacking the political or economic advantages of those who typically lay claim to management of our public memories.

Todd Ayoung, “Spirits of America” (1992) a REPOhistory temporary street sign from the counter-Columbus public installation that used a slot machine to “reinterpret the “sale” of Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626, contrasting European and Native American notions of land ownership, and linking this and other colonial “exchanges” to the ongoing controversy over gambling on the upstate Mohawk reservation (image courtesy of the author)

In 1992, five hundred years after Christopher Columbus came to the so-called new world and twenty five years before the current crisis of historical representation, a group of over thirty metal street signs with images and texts appeared in downtown Manhattan marking the forgotten, or often altogether unknown histories of working women, African Americans, Native peoples, Latinos and Asian Americans among other marginalized groups. The project was created by REPOhistory, a multi-ethnic group of artists, educators and activists whose mission was to “retrieve and relocate absent historical narratives at specific locations in the New York City.” With one-year permits from the Department of Transportation and support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Municipal Art Society and the administration of Mayor David Dinkins, REPOhistory installed, and later de-installed, a suite of what we might call today “alt-historical” public markers attached to lampposts and traffic signs roughly between Chambers and Wall Streets.

REPOhistory street sign by Jenny Polak and David Thorne alerting New Yorkers to police violence against people of color from 1998.

One plaque marked the site of the first meal and slave market at the corner of Wall and Water Streets, another described what was then the very recent discovery of a “Negro Burial Ground” at the construction site for a new federal office building. Still others detailed the first all-women’s strike in the United States by the United Tailoresses Society near Church Street, the first Chinese American community in the city once located at the South Street Seaport, John Jacob Astor’s “problematic exchanges —commercial, ecological and spiritual” with Native Americans at his former headquarters on the north side of Pine between William and Pearl Streets, and still another temporary marker recalled the melting down of a gilded equestrian statue depicting King George III whose metal was molded into bullets later used during the War of Independence. Not all of the signs dwelt exclusively on the past. Outside the NY Stock Exchange REPOhistory installed a plaque that ironically cautioned passersby about the “advantages of an unregulated free-market economy.” It was illustrated with an image of a businessman in free-fall that recalled the Great Crash of 1929.

REPOhistory initially set its sights on creating a public intervention at “The Four Continents” by Daniel Chester French, a quartet of marble statues portraying allegories of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas situated outside the former Alexander Hamilton US Custom House at One Bowling

Daniel Chester French “The Four Continents, Asia” dedicated 1907, marble (ranging from 9.5 to 11 feet), each pedestal about 9 feet; located in front of the United States Customs House, (photo by Eden, Janine and Jim via Flickr)

Green. Asia is presented as a bejeweled woman stoically siting atop a throne supported by human skulls and surrounded by near-naked, emaciated serfs. A glowing cross appears behind her back as if to indicate Christian values will soon replace Asia’s despotic past. Far to the left sits Africa. Though fabric drapes her waist she is characterized as a slumbering nude figure propped-up by an eroded Egyptian sphinx and a male lion. By contrast, Europe is illustrated as a stately, fully clothed woman next to a section of the Parthenon frieze, while America sits holding a torch and an ear of corn with her foot pressing down upon the head of Quetzalcoatl, the flying serpent god of the conquered Aztecs.

Despite being erected in 1907, “The Four Continents” reflects the derogatory racist outlook of 19th Century Manifest Destiny, just as the Roosevelt statue, dedicated in 1940, made its appearance while lynchings were being carried out across the Jim Crow South, and while Northern whites rioted to maintain racially segregated jobs and neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, and Los

Angeles. Less known is the fact that African-American arctic explorer Matthew A. Henson, who is today recognized as having first reached the actual North Pole ahead of Admiral Robert Peary in 1909, later returned to the United States and worked the next thirty years as a customs house clerk. Whereas Peary was credited with the accomplishment, receiving international honors, an official Congressional thank you, and promoted to the rank of rear admiral, no marker or sign indicates Henson’s presence at Bowling Greene, though a modest plaque does mark his gravesite in Arlington Virginia.

In 1989, REPOhistory drew up plans to create inflatable “counter-monuments” that they would install illegally, in guerrilla art fashion, to confront this monument. Ultimately however, REPOhistory abandoned this interventionist historical adjustment to focus on their Lower Manhattan Sign Project scheduled for 1992. So what was the outcome of the counter-Columbus experiment in “people’s history”? It was mixed, unexpected, convoluted — just like the city that produced the project. Still, the point of REPOhistory was not nostalgia for a lost past, but rather an attempt to recognize that some histories disturb the present.

Several years later the group received Department of Transportation (DOT) permission to temporarily memorialize gay, lesbian, and trans-gendered people’s histories, this time in Greenwhich Village, with assistance from the Storefront for Art and Architecture. However, the project entitled “Queer Spaces” would be the last time that obtaining permission from the city would come easily for them. A third street sign project in 1998 was initially blocked by the Giuliani administration. “Civil Disturbances: Battles For Justice in New York City” was produced in partnership with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Its objective was to mark sites where significant legal confrontations led to the extension of civil rights for the politically and economically disfranchised. REPOhistory marked the firehouse at 250 Livingston Street in Brooklyn where Brenda Berkman worked after winning a lawsuit to become the city’s first female fire fighter, and one African-American group member who had been part of a de-segregation court case in New York posted her sign about the case outside the offices of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund on West 40th Street. Meanwhile, several other signs directly decried the NYPD’s history of misconduct and violence towards people of color. Carrying ladders and installation tools the DOT faxed a note informing REPOhistory it was not to carry out the project only moments before its commencement. “Now the signs may end up in the very courthouses that inspired them,” wrote David Gonzalez in the New York Times the next morning.

REPOhistory had its day in court and eventually prevailed, thanks to pro bono assistance from Debevoise & Plimpton. A few months delayed, the group’s “Civil Disturbances” sign project went up for one year, though not without further battles. All of this history may offer one answer to the question of what should replace monuments to racism and Confederate defection. Meanwhile, REPOhistory is not the only example of artists confronting the way the past is depicted.

Alan Michelson. “Earth’s Eye,” (1990) (courtesy of the artist)

In 1990, Mohawk artist Alan Michelson placed forty cast concrete markers near City Hall in Manhattan to indicate the location of Collect Pond, a large source of freshwater for the island’s indigenous population that is now completely paved over. In 2009 African American artist Dread Scott donned a sign with the phrase “I AM NOT A MAN” printed on it, replicating the iconic message placards carried by striking, black Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, except for the addition of the word not. Walking through the streets of Harlem, Scott’s social performance art provoked the largely African American passersby to consider all that has still to be accomplished since the Civil Rights Movement. Most recently an 1870 statue of Abraham Lincoln at the northern end of Union Square Park came to life, though not with the voice of the Republican emancipator, but through the faces and voices of fourteen recent war veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 2012 reanimated monument was the work of artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Krzysztof Wodiczko. “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” (2012) a project in Union Square, New York, NY sponsored by More Art (image courtesy of the artist)

Seeking to defend artworks that buttress racial, sexual, or class domination using the 19th century concept of “art for art’s sake” is not only distasteful, it is also without either historical or aesthetic merit. As Walter Benjamin once powerfully observed, “there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.” In this instance, memorials and statues reflecting undemocratic and biased points of view are these tainted historical documents. Instead of returning to a model of permanently memorializing an illusory and grandiloquent past, why not consider commissioning temporary commemorative works rooted in local community histories and struggles that would reflect the multifaceted history of the United States from the bottom up, rather than from the top down? In any case, the task of representing our nation’s complicated past at this, our (latest) moment of representational crisis, must not fall only to the inventiveness of artists, but needs to be seen as belonging to all engaged citizens, as well as residents, documented or not, who have a stake in reimagining the way history will be represented to future generations.

The post Remagining Monuments to Make Them Resonate Locally and Personally appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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