#or wrongly used words that may have been included | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mariacallous · 2 months ago

Text

Before watching “April,” the new movie from the Georgian director and screenwriter Dea Kulumbegashvili, I had seen only one other fictional film that featured a real childbirth. It was “Staying Vertical” (2016), from the French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie, and although the movie was thoroughly steeped in the absurd, the birth was filmed in a single take that left no doubt about its authenticity. I had also seen a few movies with graphic but clearly simulated scenes of abortion, including another French film, Audrey Diwan’s “Happening” (2022), and a Ukrainian drama, “The Tribe” (2015), from the director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. My research is admittedly spotty, but the cinema of in-your-face obstetrics has always felt like a primarily European art-film phenomenon. Rightly or wrongly, I can’t think of an American movie—not even “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Eliza Hittman’s rigorously observed abortion-themed drama, from 2020—that has subjected either the fulfillment or the termination of a pregnancy to such audience-discomfiting scrutiny.

Even in this squirmily confrontational company, “April” is something else. This extraordinarily bleak and devastating work, set in a damp-looking stretch of eastern Georgia, shows us a simulated abortion, two unsimulated births—one vaginal, one C-section—and, for good measure, the administration of an epidural. Each of these scenes is shot in a single, static take—composed, by the cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, in a nearly square aspect ratio—that refuses to look away until the procedure is finished. You’re reminded that the key to realism isn’t necessarily a convincing prosthetic or a well-timed spurt of blood; it’s the weight of time itself. By granting these medical interventions their proper duration and respect, Kulumbegashvili infuses them with an element of the sacred. That’s true even of the abortion scene: a petrified young woman, who has been raped by a relative, undergoes the procedure on her family’s dining table. (Abortion is legal in the Republic of Georgia for pregnancies under twelve weeks, but it may as well not be: the Georgian Orthodox Church’s strong condemnation of abortion dominates public opinion.) The scene is a horrifying tableau, but one somehow transmuted, by the camera’s unwavering focus and the doctor’s calm, soothing ministrations, into an incongruous vision of grace.

The doctor is Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), a highly skilled and dedicated ob-gyn specialist in her forties, who has particular expertise overseeing complicated pregnancies and difficult deliveries. The film, which unfolds over a few chilly weeks in April, 2023, is set in motion by a rare tragic outcome: Nina delivers a baby who, after a few minutes, is pronounced dead. The father (Sandro Kalandadze), grieving and enraged, accuses her of having killed the child deliberately, an accusation born of a monstrous conflation; word has spread of the abortions Nina performs in the village. A close medical colleague, David (Kakha Kintsurashvili), hearing of the abortions, warns Nina to stop, for the sake of her career: “No one will thank you, and no one will defend you.”

David, as it happens, has been asked to oversee a hospital investigation into the stillbirth, although Nina has already calmly and correctly identified the reason it happened: the pregnancy was never disclosed, and so the mother (Tosia Doloiani) received no prenatal care, leaving any potential distress signals to be discovered, too late, during labor. Unreported pregnancies, the film suggests, are not exceptional in this part of the country, where young women are pressured into marriage and procreation early on. Contraception is scarcely less frowned upon than abortion. In one remarkable scene, Nina meets with a teen-age newlywed who’s terrified to even admit that she isn’t ready for motherhood; Nina slips her a packet of birth-control pills, warning her to tell no one. Neither woman’s voice rises above a whisper, and yet we hang on their every word, and on the conspiratorial intimacy forged by the camera. Its silent watchfulness feels like a promise, as if the film itself were imposing the seal of the confessional.

Kulumbegashvili made her feature début with the aptly titled “Beginning” (2020), a drama set in a remote community of Jehovah’s Witnesses who are experiencing violent attacks by extremists in the surrounding Orthodox majority. Sukhitashvili starred in that film, too; she plays Yana, a preacher’s wife, who gradually comprehends—and begins to push back against—the religious and patriarchal prison that has been constructed around her and the other women in her midst. It would be difficult to imagine two films more fastidiously designed to function as companion pieces than “Beginning” and “April,” both of which draw on the same deliberate, contemplative stylistic well and are built on extreme contrasts of human experience. In each of these films, cruelty commingles with tenderness, and hideous acts take place against backdrops of often stunning natural beauty. Sukhitashvili magnetizes the camera with a fierce if soft-spoken intelligence—a quality of reserve that nonetheless propels her protagonists boldly forward, into personal odysseys rife with spiritual torment and sexual violence.

On at least one occasion in “April,” Nina seems to invite such violence, with a fearless knowledge of what it might entail. On nights when she isn’t at home or at the hospital, she ventures out in her car and picks up strangers for sex, for reasons that seem to extend beyond the quick gratification of a physical urge. At times, I wondered if Nina were trying, on some level, to achieve an ever more radical empathy with her least fortunate patients, to subject herself to the rough, loveless, and altogether wretched excuses for physical intimacy that brought some of these women to her exam room in the first place. The need to strengthen one’s compassion, and cast aside all fear, appears to be of crucial significance. Early on, driving around with a potential hookup, Nina recounts a haunting memory from childhood, when she was too young—and too paralyzed by fright—to intervene in a matter of life and death. It’s the one moment when Kulumbegashvili comes close to laying Nina’s psychological cards on the table.

Fittingly, “April” itself has been structured as a kind of examination—an investigation into stark realities and regressive attitudes that are neither new nor, of course, unique to any one part of the world. Kulumbegashvili’s gaze is by turns coolly diagnostic and furiously exploratory, a dichotomy that manifests itself in the compositional extremes of Khachaturan’s cinematography. Interior spaces, like an empty hospital corridor where Nina awaits bad news, tend to be statically and symmetrically framed, an aesthetic decision that, in this environment, might evoke a sterile, clinical detachment. But Nina’s manner with her patients isn’t sterile, and her concern for their well-being is the opposite of detached. Again and again, Kulumbegashvili yanks us abruptly in and out of her protagonist’s consciousness: whenever the camera heads outdoors, it suddenly sweeps us up in a wild, rough-hewn subjectivity, taking in the beauty of spring flowers, or the chill of a rainy evening, from Nina’s vantage. These point-of-view shots are accompanied by the sound of steady susurrations, which we recognize as her breathing; it’s as if Kulumbegashvili were pressing a stethoscope against Nina’s chest, one that perceives not only her inhalations and exhalations but also the very flow of her feelings and thoughts.

Indeed, the true subject of the film’s examination turns out to be Nina herself, a doctor whose steady, unfailingly professional surface barely conceals self-lacerating anguish. But that anguish, in turn, is inextricable from—and may even give rise to—a deep and unshakable moral imperative: to do the best that she can for the women under her care. These include hopeful, expectant mothers-to-be; reluctant, terrified ones; and women who have decided that, for now, they will not be mothers at all. The film’s insistent focus on the moral determination of an abortion provider, rather than the boxed-in desperation of an abortion seeker, differentiates it, in a subtle but important way, from dramas like “Happening,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007). Although Mungiu’s concentrated intensity feels like one of several detectable influences on Kulumbegashvili’s work, it cannot account for a few startling moments when she abandons realism entirely.

“Beginning” ends with the sight of a man’s body disintegrating into dust—an Old Testament allusion (“to dust you shall return”), as well as a haunting leap into abstraction. “April,” methodical though it may be, brazenly pursues the inexplicable throughout. The first and last shots we see are of a naked, hulking figure, recognizably a woman but never identified, with drooping breasts, wrinkled skin, and a featureless void of a face. Early on, she shuffles mournfully through what appears to be another dimension, a zone of utter darkness. She says nothing; she doesn’t seem to have a mouth, though that doesn’t keep her from breathing and wheezing as heavily as Nina does. Could this stooped, deformed phantasm in fact be Nina—or is she a scarred vestige of her, a manifestation of Nina’s fear, her lust, or her rage? By the end, Kulumbegashvili, drawing now on New Testament imagery, has offered up still another possibility: this creature, for all her fearsome unloveliness, might be a kind of redemptive miracle, a woman’s worst fears mobilized into meaningful action. No longer suspended in darkness, she presses slowly onward, into the light.

3 notes · View notes

sheinsidemymindvro · 10 months ago

Note

okay, i have questions if you dont mind, feel free to ignore otherwise:

i believe you mentioned psychics are born as such; assuming this to be correct, would you agree that it would likely be common the majority of them don’t understand themselves to be as such? & if so, how do you think they develop or discover the as you call it “intuitive” process of engaging in the disposition? or do you think the majority of predisposed individuals never knowingly engage in the practice?

are you aware of any of the minutia of the practice beyond the “picturing the face of someone” to place thoughts into said persons conscious? essentially are you aware of any of the modalities or practices wielded by a ‘psychic’ beyond the little bit youve expanded upon in response to previous asks? is the breadth of a ‘psychics’ abilities confined to this idea of speaking thoughts either into, or as the persons conscious?

you mention the ability of this psychic bothering you, to be able to manipulate muscular contractions? but the extent of this control seems rather minor? as i assume she isnt able to control your body into full on involuntary actions? or is she?

you mention the ability for the psychic to be able to mimic ones inner voice; but also mimic essentially any voice of which they physic can imagine, firstly i assume this process functions much in the same way the targeting itself does?; imaging the face of the individual you want to speak into, then imaging the words you wish to speak, as being spoken by the person of which you wish to mimic? this would assume the psychic would not be able to mimic voices of which they cannot imagine? for example the psychic could not mimic say your mother’s voice, assuming the psychic had never heard your mother speak? if this is true, my followup question would be, would hearing a recording of a voice be sufficient? or would one have to have heard the voice in person to mimic it? what if the psychic is wrongly remembering the voice in question, would their mimicry reflect the discrepancy of the voice?

lastly (at least for this moment, i may come up with further questions) in your experience, are these psychics actively working with deities/entities? or are they purely secular folks who are born with the predisposition? i fear that was sort of vague, in example, is it akin to say an individual being born with an extra extremity & simply learning how to use it? or do they actively work with deities/entities to hone the skill?

thank you! what an interesting concept, i would love to know more! also please feel free to include any knowledge or understanding of this ability you have yet to post about, you feel might be interesting for someone with no previous acquaintance to the concept/ability, as im interested in p much anything you have to share related.

this is an excellent ask thank you, i would love to elaborate further in my findings.

psychics are born with this ability, they talk to me and don't have issues with letting me know (i was intrigued af) they didn't think i would be so open about what I'm going through.

to clarify - they realise they can go into someone's mind at a young age by just being. such as breathing.

its safe to say that if one is psychic, they will know, imagine being a child and suddenly your reading peoples thoughts, memories and reality. also either their mother or father will be a psychic as its passed down through dna, my guess, its their brain. I think all psychics engage in the practice , some observe and learn, others seek to harm as they think they are gods when they are just human. i think the longer they engage and experiment, the more they learn of what they can and cant do, they are all different and some have stronger abilities than others (three of them have been bothering me) example: if one is 26 and has been abusing people since a young age, they would figure out all sorts of things they can do to someone, if one can control ones electrical pulses from the brain, well that's what controls the whole human body. they don't have the ability to make me have full on involuntary reactions such as lifting my hand up (there might be someone out there who could) but they aim to make me as uncomfortable as possible, so when I'm having a good time, almost anywhere on my body they can contract muscles almost like a electrical pulse machine people use for exercise and stimulation which is intended to make me scared but i just ignore it, that stacked with feeding me with fake emotions. I've learnt the difference between my thoughts and emotions and fake ones intended to influence me into anxiety. example: i stop engaging and thinking which they really don't like because they seek constant entertainment, i will have my chest feel tight and pulses throughout my body along with a heavy feeling similar to anxiety and increased heart rate but their tricks are the same every time and I've learnt the difference, the psychics in question are just some dumb girls who cant think of anything new to do, so it becomes very repetitive on a daily basis and she admits she's a retard at least a few times a day. it feels like my body and mind are not in sync, calm in mind, body is anxious and with the pulses it just gives it away. they get mad at me for being "cool" such as finding new artists and songs pisses them off because they are lame and cant find these things on their own. their words not mine. its real petty shit. basically elusins goal is to learn internet culture through me, she thinks it will help her blow up, as I've gotten to know her, she's such a boring fake bitch. I'm not worried. it feels like they force their consciousness onto me, to have such a connection (unwanted) our emotions are intertwined, i know when shes sad when i shit on her etc, if she laughs it makes me laugh which is annoying and vice versa. she doesn't seem to be able to control this with precision, if she could stop me from feeling her emotions when it looks bad for her, i think she would. i can feel her tears without crying myself. it has been a year now. i tried contacting Elusins mother a couple times, (camilla ralkov) she didn't want to engage with me and couldn't believe her angel daughter would abuse me for a year. her mother seems to have decided to not engage in the practice in her maturity. i asked her to look into my mind but she refused, i think she was scared cause a stranger suddenly talked about her ability to her and it probably freaked her out. (elusin explained how her mother had to cover for her and her friends in elementary and pay people to keep silent as the kids abused another child)

the easiest way to describe it is imagine the way you see and look at the world through your eyes, and your thoughts being streamed into the psychics mind and its overlayed over what they see. (it doesn't blind them its subtle but they can see every single detail and hear any whisper of a thought you have) and there is no lag, our consciousness is nearing the speed of light and faster than the speed of sound. did the maths based on our distance, were on opposite sides of the world and this shit is live faster than any internet connection. i could think of anything and they say back to me instantly (they play a childish game of acting like they can guess what i will say)

2. beyond the psychic abilities i have mentioned so far, this an esp and this suggests other esp exists, i have only experienced what these particular individuals are capable of. through this experience i am convinced other esp such a telekinesis exist out there. it may not be spoon bending but more like, what if they can control electrical currents outside the limits of a human body "a more powerful psychic" concept which i think is very likely. they might be able to control a cell phone for example. its not more complicated than a brain. New info:

they amplify my imagination to become crystal clear in sight in my mind (compared to me not being connected) this connection does drain more energy from my brain as it takes up a greater amount to be able to do this shit.

we can talk without the use of language, talk in head + images, sounds, memes, anything visually moving such as a scene with characters doing anything at almost any scale that is comprehensible (eg cant comprehend 1000 individual people doing things), backgrounds, sets, shapes, colours, anything, and it can morph from one scene to another infinitely so long as we want the story to keep going, we can all pitch in. at first they acted like friends just to turn around and fuck me over with psychological abuse until i realised they were not friends.

another form of communication is feelings, without the use of words i can understand what they want to say before it is thought out loud and vice versa.

another limit is it depends what I'm able to comprehend, i can only understand them with the vocabulary that i possess, but I'm able to translate what they say into my own understanding. this shows language is not a limit. they could go into a foreigners mind and still communicate. i have stopped engaging in imagination times with them as to them its like watching a t.v show and entertains them. it only happens if i chose to engage. they can stream things into my mind which they do to annoy me but i just ignore it at this point.

Dreams :

just as they can stream images and sounds in my head when I'm awake, they can do so while I'm asleep. They have been controlling my dreams for a while now and seek to fuck with me in my sleep.

i can confirm these individuals do not have a degree in psychology so they waste their time trying to fuck with me in my dreams and i just wake up being like wtf is this the best thing u could think of. they try to get me to talk about things that make me look bad and or awkward, such as putting me in a scene that is hectic with lots of people running all around and then will ask me a question, my subconscious ignores them funnily enough. i wake up being like wtf have u ever thought of just sitting down and having a conversation instead of all this extra shit you do. these retards are still retards even if they are psychic.

what is it like? its just like the imagination games we played but now there is no reality but just my dream, so it becomes as vivid as reality and i do wake up remembering my dreams. they can do just about anything. they are limited by their IQ. recent example they know I'm scared of heights, i ended up pissing from a really high place hanging to a pole with them trying to mess with my grip and cause i was dreaming i just didn't gaf and i didn't piss myself irl as I'm not a child.

another dream i had recently, she wanted to do an experiment with my inner child so to speak, she projected herself in some traditional Victorian style pyjamas while i was in a bed, she went to another bed across me and asked me to come to her, i actually didn't care and stayed in my bed. she quickly changed the scene into us standing up with me looking her, she looks only through my perspective so in her view she was just viewing herself. she called out to me to temp me to go towards her, once again i didn't do that. I think she imagined i would skip towards her like a child, i didn't care and suddenly my pc setup showed up and i was more interested in producing music ( she tested to see if i was capable of engaging in anything in this dream, and yes i was ) she was mad and started choking me, and i choked her back and i woke up. because they are able to make my muscles twitch, they can wake me up whenever they like which is annoying, i have countered this by sleeping more often. they can also control my brain in such a way that if they want me to stay up all night, they can. they have in fact done this and i countered it by boring them, if i cant sleep all night, then i will take the day off and sleep all day, all i need to do is go completely silent and if my eyes are closed they get no input of any entertainment of my life and just let me sleep cause that's more entertaining. Muscle contractions: new info i haven't shared as well, when I masturbate, Elusin and her friends are still here, and they can amplify the rate that my hand junks my trunk. they are idiots and get horny when I wank. and suddenly the psychic attack gets weird and horny. it feels like i have to put less effort into yanking it while it going faster. i just dgaf anymore and I'm like sweet, some psychic attack this is... they get mad and are like "fuck you, you cant be having a good time" and then i continue and they just get into it, its odd. they like it i guess, they feel like they are invading my privacy and they get a kick out of it.

voice mimic: your assumption of them not being able to project voices that they cannot imagine is correct. and is exactly the same as imagining anything such as faces or places.

the process breakdown is correct - they imagine me and are in my mind, and once it connected they don't need to worry about it, then for example i could imagine anyone such as a rapper lets say lil john, if i think in his voice "OKAY!" they will amplify this and make it sound genuinely like lil john saying it, its like a soundboard. truth is we all as individuals can imagine sounds, as mentioned before they just amplify the imagination for entertainment purposes. if the psychic for example has never heard my mothers voice, they cannot mimic my mothers voice. hearing a voice recording would be enough. if the psychic wrongly mimics the voice you would 100% hear the discrepancy in the voice, and i would comment on it and make them feel embarrassed.

except for one thing, i have memories of my mothers voice. they pull up things i haven't thought about in years and have mimicked my mum yelling at me when i was a child (trying their third rate psychological experiments) but yes the mimic is limited by the references they have. they can see and hear every detail that i can (included with my thoughts and memories).

they scan my memories, one thing i can confirm is that they view only from my perspective and cannot accurately perceive time in my memory, its like they skim though them instead of having an accurate account of when things happened, i imagine it as a reel that they can scan though rather being able to chose an exact age to look though. no glossary section for them. they bring shit up and I'm like yea that was like ten years ago idgaf u cant embarrass me. 4.

They do not work with any entities/deities and are purely secular. an individual can be interested in such things and practice such things but the psychic ability itself is just something they are born with. in my words i believe they are a shoot in the human evolution and have some sort of gene that lets them access an ability which i believe is located in the brain. the truth is there are more psychics out there than you might imagine, i believe there are plenty that are kind people, and many that are shitty people, just like us ordinary folk. these ones in particular have abused a lot of people since childhood and have tried all sorts of things to "hone their craft" such as learning the confines of their ability by trail and error.

Thank you for the ask, I'm happy to receive any questions regarding what I'm going through. I can 100% confirm psychic abilities are real and they have always been around. its definitely known but is not mainstream knowledge yet. unfortunately my experience has been with abusers. I am here to shed a light on the new information i have acquired since my psychic attack. before this I would have never believed this could exist. this is such a complicated subject and there's a lot to unpack, it helps having another person to help break it down with me.

#elusin

12 notes · View notes

captainmartinisblog · 1 month ago

Text

Regent Seven Seas Voyager – A Review.

March 2025

This was our first time with Regent Seven Seas and our first time in the South Pacific (not counting our New Zealand and Australia cruise) and I had much trepidation in regard to both my choice of line and choice of geographical area.

After all, it meant 3 weeks away as well as long haul business-class flights but I also wanted to try out Regent Seven Seas. We had recently been on a number of ‘high-end’ lines, not least being Holland America, Azamara, Silver Seas, Viking and Sea Cloud and all the market hype was claiming that Regent are the best. But are they? They’re certainly one of the most expensive.

To begin with, everything is inclusive; tours, gratuities, laundry, speciality dining, drinks, pretty much everything. But the drink selection on board isn’t that great. You can get most ‘standard’ drinks and mixers and the wines offered are decent but one of our preferred white wines offered at the beginning of the cruise ran out of stock after a few days, which was disappointing and there were hardly any flavoured vodkas or gins available. There was only limited variety in the cocktail lists in the bars – they were the same throughout the ship and not all that inspiring. If you wanted a specific cocktail not on the list, you could ask for it (eg an Apple Martini or Chocolate Martini) and they could do it but it was the inspiration that seemed to be missing.

There was a wide selection of complimentary tours though, unlike on Viking, who only guarantee one, usually a basic one, per port and none ‘free’ on Azamara or Holland America.

The tours we chose, aside from the weather, were mostly excellent ones that other lines would have charged hundreds of dollars for, so that was a real plus. It was just a pity that 3 of our ports were missed because of bad weather, so we didn’t perhaps get the best value there! But on other lines, we would at least have got our money back if a tour was cancelled! On Regent, you get nothing.

Gratuities, yes well it’s all very well saying they’re included and ‘no tipping is expected’ but we all know how poorly ship crews and staff are paid and they always hope for more. So is that really ‘all inclusive’? Who are they kidding?

Which brings me on to service standards. Being in a Penthouse, we had the benefit if a butler and while we did not take as much advantage if his service as we might have done, he was excellent at his job. It was perhaps a sad reflection on Regent Cruises that we learned from him that he intended to leave the hospitality industry altogether! Elsewhere about the ship, we found the standard competent but mixed when it came to those little nuances we all enjoy. Like remembering your name or your favourite tipple or that you always ask for Soya milk at breakfast. There wasn’t much of that on Voyager, if at all really – until we told our butler and ‘word got back to base’ that we were not ecstatically happy! Even then, it remained spotty.

There were some very good staff, no doubt about that, but we had the impression, rightly or wrongly, that many of the ‘minions’ were stressed or distracted, overworked perhaps. Either that, or there was a large number of new or inexperienced staff. Our suite cabin stewards were certainly ‘old hands’ but seemed to have an awful lot of suites to service and we noticed they often worked well beyond their stated hours.

The complimentary laundry service was phenomenal, however. Put it out by 8.30am and it would be back the same day – beautifully crisp, clean and pressed. Only on Sea Cloud II and Sea Cloud Spirit did I ever get that!

But speciality dining was a bit of a let-down. Included it may be but availability was a problem; we had pre-booked one visit to both Chartreuse and Prime 7 but when we tried to get another booking on board, we were told there was nothing available. It was only the realisation that crossing the International Date Line gave them two February 20ths that enabled us to get another booking and even then it had to be at 8pm, which meant we had to miss the evening’s entertainment or rush our meal!

Both restaurants were too small, with tables too crowded together and the décor felt rather dated. The third ‘speciality’ restaurant, Sette Mari, was better in some respects because no booking was required and being set in what was the self-service buffet during the day, it was altogether lighter and more spacious. However, while the food offering there was good, the extensiveness of the menu did not compare to that of Manfredi’s on Viking for instance.

But it was the quality and presentation of the cuisine that were just way below that of most other lines we’ve been on.

There was no table-side service, for instance, and the presentation of dishes lacked finesse. Indeed, most main dishes were served in a kind of bowl, rather than on a plate, with accompaniments all served in separate dishes. This may have been done to speed up delivery and avoid time spent plating-up dishes but food was often still only lukewarm or on cold plates (until we raised a complaint with a maitre d’ about that and from then on, somehow in every restaurant our food came on hot plates!)

Service in all the restaurants was spotty. Some staff were very good but all too often, they seemed to be easily distracted and not paying attention. On more than one occasion, for instance, my partner and I were addressed as ‘sir and madam’ without them even looking at us (otherwise they would have seen that we were ‘sir and sir’!) When by chance we were seated with two waiters who it seemed had been trained somewhere completely different from all the rest, it was a breath of fresh air and as a result, we asked for them on three more occasions! Evidently, the best is there but not everywhere; you just have to persist to find it.

Overall, I would say the dining experience was adequate, sometimes even good, but is that really good enough for a line that claims in its advertising to be “Unrivalled at Sea”? My late father was good with his witty one-liners and would have delighted in that one! “Unravelled, more likely” he would have said!

“The most luxurious fleet at sea” is another of Regent’s claims. But the décor, though superficially ‘grand’ in the some of the communal areas, is actually rather bland overall and a little worn and tired in places, especially in the suites where shower doors leak because they don’t fit and bathroom cupboard doors are odd colours or wonky.

Our mid-range Penthouse was comfortable and spacious enough, with a walk-in closet and a full size bath in the bathroom. But the television was the equivalent of a 30-inch tv and at the distance it was placed from the beds, it was far too small and I could barely read any titles on the screen.

Our penthouse balcony too was only 50 sq ft and the net curtains looked drab and had tears in them. Look closer in the common areas too and you’ll see frayed or unrepaired damaged carpets too. The outer teak decking in many places is uneven – because the metal deck underneath is probably corroded. The excuse that, “the ship is going in for a $20m refit next year” isn’t really good enough when you have already sold a product based on the best and the newest ships you have elsewhere in the fleet.

As to “Upgrade Your Horizon” on their latest brochures – well I know that’s really about their “free two category upgrade” promotion but the obvious double-meaning of the phrase is no coincidence; it is deliberate. And this practice, a few weeks before your cruise, of sending you an ‘offer’ to upgrade your accommodation – but only by bidding in a kind of ‘Dutch Auction’ above a substantial minimum bid – I find frankly quite distasteful.

Finally, the internet service. Prior to the cruise, we received a letter proudly saying that the ship now had ‘Starlink’ and that in a Penthouse, we could now have two devices per person instead of one. However, once on board, I quickly discovered that the infrastructure of the ship wasn’t capable of supporting the demand on the service and as a consequence, it was pretty poor everywhere. After three or four days, I complained at Reception, telling them that this simply was not good enough. Strangely, after that, the signal strength and upload availability improved, though there were still a number of exasperating times when I simply had to give up what I was trying to do. Listening to other passengers’ comments too, it would seem that few were satisfied with the internet service most of the time.

So, was Regent worth it? My answer would be “no”; you could get at least the same standard on other lines, even a better standard on some, for the same or even less money, in my opinion. In booking Regent, maybe we fell for the ‘hype’; all the superlatives flowing in choice circles on the internet and in glossy brochures but rightly or wrongly, we expected more from Regent. We expected to pampered, made to feel special, but we found ourselves trying hard always to be positive, instead of it all happening naturally. On balance, I don’t think we will book again with Regent; there are too many alternatives that are less or no more expensive than Regent – and much more reliable.

#south pacific #regent seven seas #seven seas voyager #cruise review

1 note · View note

wat3rm370n · 4 months ago

Text

Childhood milestone pandemic misinformation zombie.

There’s a need to resist tantalizing stories that are not factual and may actually be harmful, no matter how relatable and true the narrative may seem initially.

Some misinformation just keeps circulating because information zombies flourish, especially in a chaotic discourse of a mashed up information landscape. I recommend not following popular anonymous shit-posting accounts on social media. Not just because they may be questionable and you have no idea who they are. But because they’re a common source of the kind of outrage theatre that proves to be, at minimum a diversion, but also traffics in repurposed trendy viral anti-vax content that gets repackaged in a way to appeal to people avoiding covid to get viral mileage.

The truth is that the CDC started the childhood milestone changes based on new research BEFORE the pandemic. But a claim that started out as a right-wing covid contrarian conspiracy theory made the jump to people often on the left who are actually concerned about covid. The rumour being circulated from time to time started out as a claim that the CDC changed the childhood milestones in order to “hide” or “compensate” for childhood development wrongly asserted as being stymied by children wearing masks in schools and daycares, “lockdowns”, closures, remote schooling, and of course blaming vaccination.

SALON - No, the CDC didn't "lower standards" for childhood development because of the pandemic Right-wing figures seize on the false claim that the pandemic has widely stunted normal childhood development By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer Published February 23, 2022 "The CDC has lowered the standards for childhood speech (they set that too?). Now children have until 30 months instead of 24 months to know 50 words," Swank wrote. "So, lower the standard and everything will be 'normal', and never admit masks damaged our children. #KeeptheRepublicSafe," he continued. Indeed, misinformation propagated widely on Twitter that connected the changes to mask mandates in schools, suggesting that masks are causing developmental delays and the CDC now is responding by lowering their developmental standards for young children. In an email to Salon, Dr. Jennifer Zubler, pediatrician and consultant with CDC's "Learn the Signs. Act Early" program, told Salon the work to revise the milestones had been underway for a couple of years, and had long predated the coronavirus pandemic.

This claim is of course just the sort of intriguing narrative that appeals to people rightly frustrated with the agency so obviously corrupted and co-opted by corporate interests. Leadership in the CDC has routinely catered to business interests at least for decades, even while rank and file scientists and workers at public agencies often put out good solid trustworthy scientific work when given the chance - it’s often directors and executives stuck in “the revolving door” saying things that actually contradict their own agency’s materials.

This rumour can be dated to early 2022 shortly after the CDC changed the milestone guidance right during that big omicron wave in the winter of 2021-2022. There was no way, chronologically and temporally, that the research being used then would have included pandemic era research of childhood development, and it didn’t. Science is a slow gradual thing. It took decades for surgeons to accept hand washing and using surgical gloves and whatnot. Look at the continued resistance to masks in healthcare. A study has to be done, and then it has to be peer reviewed, lots of times the data is collected and by the time anyone can use that research a couple years have passed. And by the time a huge government agency reacts, there’s been a whole lot of water under the bridge by that point. Things were sped up when it came to covid, but as a result, there's been a huge amount of retractions of covid research, years later.

Disability Scoop - Changes To CDC’s Developmental Milestone Checklists Met With Skepticism by Blythe Bernhard | April 22, 2022 Other critics of the revised checklists voiced concern that the changes may have been made in response to the pandemic, to lower standards for development because of the potential impact of masking or isolation among children and caregivers. But the changes were initiated and reviewed before the start of the pandemic in response to concerns of parents and pediatricians, Lipkin said, “to provide a clearer, up to date, and more accurate set of milestones rooted in good research.”

You would have to assume it's a truly vast and complex conspiracy... that the CDC was actually predicting childhood development problems from the pandemic (or pandemic mitigations) and then nefariously decided to update these milestones ahead of time. And not only is this way out there (because it seems to require a time machine) – it also doesn't have any logical motivation. This wouldn’t change anything as far as covid anyhow. There's no more mitigations to lift. So why cover up any more ill effects, when they’re not covering up all the other ones. They report dire consequences. Society’s leadership, bought by big money and fossil fuel, have made it clear to everyone that we just have to put up with the terrible consequences. There are no “lockdowns”, there are no broad mask mandates for public spaces, there are no travel restrictions. Even the CDC and municipal safety guidelines that still exist are not enforced, not even by Democratic Party leadership, after all. People go to work sick, test positive for covid, and continue to work in public facing jobs maskless these days - many of us hear stories about this all the time from friends and family.

A conspiracy theory, at least based on more internal logic regarding these guidelines, is to suspect they’re trying to save money in shirking early intervention for developmental disabilities. I'm not saying that's actually what they're doing, just that it might make more sense than trying to get rid of the reason for… non-existent pandemic mitigations. But there is actually a danger that this misinformation can detract from the real criticism about these arbitrary "milestone checklists" in terms of early intervention. Some people criticize the guidelines because they are concerned that it could lead to people not seeking evaluation based on concerns they're having. And also there’s concern that parents might be needlessly overly worried about normal variations in development.

Conspiracy theories with unsubstantiated and proven false claims will of course only undermine the already long known serious risks with covid, and the scientific research on outcomes currently ongoing. It’s still rather early days with a novel pandemic virus, and there is already plenty of evidence of the potential harms of covid known from early on.

There’s no need to make anything up. What we already know is bad news!

There are ongoing concerns and research looking to quantify the additional risks people suspect there may be, and as it should be, scientists and journalists are reporting on it, and at least the responsible ones, are stipulating when things are still unsettled.

Bloomberg - Covid Pregnancies May Have Boosted Autism Risk, Study Shows Exposure to the virus in utero may have affected children’s development, according to a UCLA study, adding to a list of health problems emerging in the wake of the global pandemic. By Jason Gale December 26, 2024 The connection between the virus and autism remains inconclusive: some studies align with Nielsen’s findings, while others report little to no increased risk of developmental or behavioral issues. A limitation of Nielsen’s study is its relatively small sample size, with fewer than 250 mother-baby pairs. A robust understanding of the virus’ impact would likely require research involving more than 10,000 children, says Andrea Edlow, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Such large-scale research has been difficult, particularly during the most deadly waves of the pandemic when clinic restrictions and medical emergencies obstructed consistent testing.

People who got covid complications from getting sick during the big Omicron wave during winter 2021-2022 have probably only been starting to apply for and getting approved for disability within the past year and going forward, because they’ve been hoping to recover, waiting on medical determinations, and or otherwise navigating medical and legal bureaucracies.

Many of us have been cautioning people since 2020 that it could take many years before we know the full extent of risk from covid infections. Some diseases come with serious long-term risks, such as polio or measles. We already know about Long Covid, which effects, yes, children too, even while the media all over the place still focuses on lockdown fear mongering instead. The knowns and the unknowns are why the precautionary principle still makes sense.

But what doesn’t make sense is spreading easily proven false rumours that can be used by people to claim there’s little risk - that it’s all just conspiracy theory, even though there is substantial risk already proven. Beware the anti-vax to covid-cautious pipeline, and vice versa.

My shorthand rule for avoiding resharing something questionable is to pause, consider, and check before resharing anything that pokes a strong emotion. We’ve all been there, but it’s possible to develop better online habits.

(crosspost)

0 notes

johnhardinsawyer · 10 months ago

Text

Communion Bread

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

8 / 18 / 24 – Year B, Proper 15

John 6:51-58

Ephesians 5:15-20

“Communion Bread”

(Capital Letters and Community Life)

Some of you may have noticed that – each week in worship this summer – we have been invited to join together in saying the Apostle’s Creed as our Affirmation of Faith. For some people, who grew up in certain Christian traditions, saying the Apostle’s Creed is like slipping into some comfortable Sunday clothes. I, myself, grew up in the United Methodist Church and remember reciting the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday. It was almost as much a part of worship as saying the Lord’s Prayer.

For life-long Presbyterians, saying the Apostle’s Creed might come across as simply one statement of faith among many that the Presbyterian Church has adopted over the centuries. In our Book of Confessions, there are eleven different confessions of faith – including the Apostle’s Creed – spanning 2,000 years of church history. Each one of these historic confessions seeks to speak to the truth of who God was and is to the people in the time in which they were written. Just so you know, our denomination has put a working group together to seek to write a new statement of faith, or confession, that speaks to the world that the church encounters in the 21st Century.

So, some of us grew up saying the Apostle’s Creed, and love it. Some of us are just fine with saying the Apostle’s Creed. But I know that some of us have some questions about the Apostle’s Creed. And usually, there are two main questions that are asked about the Apostle’s Creed: 1) what does the part about Jesus descending into hell mean? And 2) what’s with that “c” word – as in, “Why do we say, ‘catholic Church’ when, clearly, we are Protestant?”

Just briefly, with regard to the first question, the part about Jesus descending into hell – which comes from Ephesians 4:9 and 1 Peter 4:6, among other places[1] – the idea is that when Jesus dies on the cross, he experiences hell-on-earth, on behalf of humanity and then he goes on a spiritual mission into the depths of suffering to set the souls of everyone who had ever died free – bringing salvation to those held captive in death (or hell or Sheol, in the Hebrew language).[2] Why does Jesus do this? Well, because God’s mercy extends beyond our own limited scope of understanding – even beyond death, itself. And how does Jesus do this? Well, because he can. God’s love is stronger than death.

Now, there’s a lot more that can be said about this question about hell from the Apostle’s Creed, and maybe we’ll revisit this sometime, but for today – in light of our reading from the Gospel of John – it would be good for us to focus on the second question – the one about that word: catholic. Today’s passage – rightly or wrongly – has a particular confusing connection with the “c” word that we say as part of the Apostle’s Creed and I feel like we need to untangle a little bit of it, especially as we give thanks for our particular congregation’s legacy of 275 years and the celebration of community that we’ll be helping to host this afternoon at the Bedford Community Picnic.

So, do you think we can do all of this in the next 7 to 10 minutes? Let’s give it a shot!

First, it would be good for us to define the word “catholic” that is used in the Apostle’s Creed, because people have questions about this. We should note that the word used in the Creed begins with a lower-case letter “c.” This “small-c” catholic is a word that means “universal” or “general” or “whole,” as in “. . . I believe in. . . the ‘ancient, undivided, whole Christian church’[3] – from which all of us Christians are descended and – despite the many divisions and denominations within the church over the centuries – the whole and undivided church that God still calls us to become and is leading us toward.” This is what the “small-c” catholic means in the Apostle’s Creed.

Now, if the Apostle’s Creed used a “Capital-letter C,” we would be saying that we Presbyterians believe in the “Roman Catholic Church” – the church from which our spiritual forebears split over 500 years ago. Some of our Roman Catholic siblings in the faith might love it if we said that we believe in them and their Church, but since we are using a “lower-case c,” we are saying that the church – though currently split in thousands of ways – didn’t used to be and won’t always be divided. Jesus’ great hope for the church, as expressed later in John’s Gospel, is that we may be one.[4] It was kind of funny and kind of ironic that, earlier this summer, when someone asked me about the word “catholic” in the Apostle’s Creed, I wrote them an e-mail explaining the difference between the “lower-case c” (the universal and whole church) and the “Upper-case C” (the Roman Catholic Church). And then, wouldn’t you know it, the next week, there was a typo in the bulletin using an “Upper-case C.” A few of you keen-eyed folks caught this error and definitely let me know about it. What can I say? Sometimes auto-correct can provide an opportunity for learning.

With regard to learning, one of the big differences between our own Reformed Tradition – the tradition that is descended from the church reformers of 500 years ago, like Martin Luther and John Calvin – and our siblings in the Roman Catholic Church is the question of what on earth – or what in heaven’s name – Jesus is talking about in today’s passage when he talks about his own flesh and blood.

At first glance, Jesus’ words about eating flesh and drinking blood are almost offensive – cannibalistic. The Judeans in today’s passage are openly questioning this idea: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they ask. (John 6:52). When Jesus tells the people, “. . . those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day. . .” (John 6:54), our “Capital-C” Roman Catholic siblings take this to mean that whenever they celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine are “transubstantiated.” The bread and wine literally and miraculously, become the flesh and blood of Jesus and people eat and drink this.

As Presbyterian Protestants who are not Roman Catholic, we tend to take a different view of this phenomenon, in that, when we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we believe in the “real presence of Jesus Christ.” It might not be Jesus’ literal flesh and blood, but Jesus is spiritually real and present in the meal, by the power of the Holy Spirit. How does this happen, exactly? We are not the only ones to wonder about this. One commentator on this passage, Dale Bruner, writes,

[Martin] Luther was once asked how in the world the bread and wine could be the true (and not just the symbolic) body and blood of Christ when, at his original institution of the supper, Jesus’ [physical] body was there beside the table and the bread and the wine were there upon the table, apart from him. Luther replied, “Jesus is good at miracles.” If Jesus says of the bread and wine that “this is” (and not “this represents” or, as in the parables, “the kingdom of heaven is like this”), then is it not? . . . I believe it will be well for the Church’s . . . unity when as many churches as possible simply take Jesus at his word in the eucharistic texts.[5]

In other words, when it comes down to one of the main differences between us and our “Capital-C” Roman Catholic siblings, both sides have dug our theological and scriptural trenches over the centuries and have been casting aspersions on each other ever since – never to sit together at the Lord’s Supper again. . . or so we might think to ourselves. But, as Martin Luther once said, “Jesus is good at miracles. . .” – even the miracle of breaking down the walls that divide us and making us one.

There are many libraries of books that could be gathered together, collecting all of the many things that have been written about the holy and mysterious meaning of the Lord’s Supper over the years. In today’s passage, though, Jesus is talking about sharing himself with those who believe in him – thereby making himself easier for us to receive – and then. . . share. As Dale Bruner writes,

[Jesus] not only wants to talk to us, but to touch us. He not only wants to make an impression on our hearts and minds, but he wants to reach our bodies. . . He wants to make himself even more accessible. . . to make our comings to him in our Communions as earthly and as physical as his historical coming was to us in his Incarnation, so that our trust remains not just a soul matter but becomes a body matter as well. . . . The sacraments. . . are simply Jesus’. . . way of salvation scaled down, physicalized, individualized, simplified, and concretized, from heart to hands, from soul to body, from group to individual.[6]

So, all of the “this is my body. . . this is my blood. . . eat my flesh. . . drink my blood” language is far more than a big metaphor. It is not really symbolic at all. It is the real presence of Jesus, internalized – a real presence that strengthens, and heals, and forgives, and calls, and commissions, and sends all who receive God’s grace out into the world to carry and share God’s grace in the world.

This is something that our congregation has been seeking to do for 275 years. You should know that back in May of this year, we held our big 275th birthday for the church a few months early. Our congregation was actually chartered in August of 1749 – right about this time of year – becoming a very real physical presence in this particular place. And, over the centuries, as we have gathered – again and again – around this Table to receive the Lord’s Supper, we have joined with the “small-c” catholic church (which includes – whether they (or we) want to admit it or not, our Roman Catholic siblings) to welcome Jesus Christ into our hearts and souls but also into our bodies, so that Christ may abide in us. As Jesus tells us, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (6:56) Jesus offers himself to us so that we may become the embodiment – the incarnational real presence – of himself, embodying Christ with and for our community, wherever we go, and whoever we meet.

This is a tremendous gift and a tremendous responsibility – that just as Jesus becomes the Bread (with a “Capital B”), we might play even some small part in being the Bread of Christ’s Body in the world. Would you join with me in being this Bread – this life, this grace – to our community and beyond? Do you feel up to the task? If not, remember and trust that Jesus is good at miracles – even the miracle of working in and through you and me – bringing faith, and hope, and love, and life to the world.

So, whether we are at a community picnic or a polling place, whether we are out in a garden or at the grocery, whether we are sitting at this Table or at any other table in our community, remember that Jesus is working a miracle in and through you and me: the miracle of “Communion” with a “Capital-C” – sharing the unity of body and spirit, flesh and blood, goodness and grace, Bread and blessing for the world.

Jesus is good at miracles. May we embody his miracle.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

------

[1]Matthew 12:40, 27:50-54; Acts 2:24, 2:31; Ephesians 4:9; Colossians 1:18; 1 Peter 3:18-19, 4:6.

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell#:~:text=His%20descent%20to%20the%20underworld,as%20also%20supporting%20this%20interpretation.

[3] Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, Inc., Publishers, 1988) 216. “catholic.”

[4] See John 17:21-23.

[5] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co., 2012) 435.

[6] Bruner, 433.

0 notes

ablogtopost · 1 year ago

Text

Uma Israel para Deus e outra para o diabo

Ou como a distinção dispensacionalista entre Israel e Igreja representa um desvio sério da teologia exegética sólida, resultando em uma negação das principais Doutrinas do Cristianismo, e como as ações dos Protestantes Dispensacionalistas para o cumprimento de sua interpretação das Profecias pode na verdade trazer o advento de uma iniquidade mais tenebrosa do que possamos imaginar.

(Motivos que me levam a isso)

Some might question the necessity for a Biblical evaluation of Dispensationalism, because a vast amount has already been written about this subject, or because of the seeming futility of continuing to challenge a system that is so widely accepted by believers today. However, I feel this critique is fully justified in the light of so much evidence that demonstrates that Dispensationalism rests on a questionable use of Scripture. In his book entitled, "Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism", Gerstner (1991:150) emphasizes the seriousness of the theological error of Dispensationalism:

"What is indisputably, absolutely, and uncompromisingly essential to the Christian religion is its doctrine of salvation.... If Dispensationalism has actually departed from the only way of salvation which the Christian religion teaches, then we must say it has departed from Christianity. No matter how many other important truths it proclaims, it cannot be called Christian if it empties Christianity of its essential message."

Another factor, which has given urgency to a biblical evaluation of Dispensationalism, is the fact that during the course of the last four decades, many denominations and ecumenical groups have taken a position against Jewish evangelism as a result of the prevalent confusion amongst church leaders and Bible scholars regarding the Biblical relationship between Israel and the Church. This is evident from the following news items:

"In September 2002, the ecumenical Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations issued a statement condemning 'missionary efforts at converting Jews.' Joseph Tyson, chairman of the group, said that attempts to convert Jews to Christianity are 'theologically invalid'

- Jews no longer objects of evangelism 2001.

In April 1998, representatives of 50 churches and Christian organizations in Israel said they would refrain from conducting missionary campaigns aimed at Jews. The statement was endorsed by a wide range of churches, including Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican, and Roman Catholic"

- Jews no longer objects of evangelism 2001).

Supersessionismo

Há duas maneiras principais de se ver a relação entre o Cristianismo e o Judaísmo; Supersessionismo e Dupla-Aliança. O Supersessionismo (também chamado de "Teologia da Substituição") é a visão de que o Judaísmo foi substituído pelo Cristianismo. O supersessionismo Abrogacionista vê o judaísmo como completamente encerrado. Assim, o Cristianismo é uma Fé inteiramente nova, sem continuidade entre os dois. O Supersessionismo de Cumprimento vê o Cristianismo como um suplemento ao Judaísmo. Ele substituiu alguns aspectos do judaísmo Mosaico, como o Sacrifício animal. Mas há, no entanto, uma continuidade valorizada entre as Fés, como a Revelação compartilhada do Antigo Testamento. A teologia da Dupla-Aliança é o oposto do Supersessionismo. É a visão de que o pacto judaico continua salvífico para os judeus. Ela afirma que há duas rotas para a Salvação: o Judaísmo da Antiga Aliança para os povos judeus e o Cristianismo da Nova Aliança para os outros. O Supersessionismo e a Dupla-Aliança são mutuamente exclusivos. Ou há um Único Caminho de Fé (Cristo) para a Salvação, como o Supersessionismo afirma; ou há múltiplos caminhos, como a teologia da Dupla-Aliança afirma.

Nos Escritos do Novo Testamento, as Profecias do Antigo Testamento foram interpretadas como referentes à pessoa de Jesus de Nazaré e Sua Nova Aliança. O Cristianismo desde o princípio começa a estabelecer que sua Nova Comunidade, a Igreja, formava uma Aliança de Deus com a Humanidade, destinada agora à todos os Povos. A Igreja portanto seria vista como o Novo Israel. A Doutrina Cristã - de que a Igreja substituiu o povo judeu, assumindo seu papel como povo da Aliança de Deus, [2] e afirmando assim que a Nova Aliança por meio de Jesus Cristo substituiu a Aliança Mosaica - denominada "Supersessionismo" ou "Teologia da Substituição", formou um princípio fundamental do Catolicismo, Ortodoxia Oriental e do próprio Protestantismo durante a maior parte de sua história.

Os primeiros comentadores Cristãos ensinaram que a Antiga Aliança foi Cumprida e substituída pela Nova Aliança em Cristo. São Justino Mártir escreveu que o "verdadeiro Israel espiritual" se referia àqueles que tinham "sido conduzidos a Deus por meio deste Cristo crucificado".[21] Considerando que Tertuliano acreditava que a Nova Aliança trouxe consigo uma nova Lei, escrevendo: "Quem mais, portanto, é compreendido senão nós, que, totalmente ensinados pela nova Lei, observamos essas práticas, a antiga Lei sendo obliterada, a vinda de cuja abolição a própria ação demonstra. ... Portanto, como mostramos acima que a cessação vindoura da Antiga Lei e da circuncisão carnal foi declarada, assim também a observância da Nova Lei e da circuncisão espiritual brilhou nas observâncias voluntárias da paz." [23]

Orígenes, como outros estudiosos baseados em Alexandria, Egito, foi fortemente influenciado pela filosofia grega. Como observa Paul Benware, Orígenes tentou integrar ideias filosóficas gregas com a Teologia, incluindo a idéia de que coisas materiais e físicas são inerentemente más. Essa ideia levou Orígenes e outros estudiosos alexandrinos a "concluir que um reino terreno de Cristo com suas muitas bênçãos físicas seria algo maligno".[*]

(Texto de Orígenes)

Além disso, Orígenes acreditava que, com a vinda de Jesus, todas as Profecias relativas à era Messiânica haviam sido cumpridas. Isso significava que as Profecias relacionadas a Israel deveriam ser interpretadas "espiritualmente" em vez de literalmente.[*] Em outras palavras, as Profecias deveriam ser entendidas à luz de seus significados simbólicos e alegóricos em vez de seus significados literais.

Santo Agostinho utilizou o método de interpretação de Orígenes, desenvolvendo e sistematizando o amilenismo, a crença de que o milênio descrito é espiritual, não terreno. Os amilenistas negam um Milênio físico e literal de Cristo nesta terra atual.[*] Um milênio espiritual, então, significa nenhuma restauração do povo judeu à terra de Israel.

Agostinho enfatizou ainda a importância para o Cristianismo da existência contínua da fé judaica rabínica separada, pois a própria Maldição Divina que caiu sobre eles era uma prova da Verdade Cristã: "Os judeus ... são, portanto, por suas próprias Escrituras um testemunho para nós de que não forjamos as profecias sobre Cristo."[24]

A igreja aceitou a visão de Agostinho, e ela continua proeminente até hoje. Por isso que (como demonstrou São Jerônimo anteriormente) aqueles que entendem as Profecias acerca da "Vitória de Israel sobre as Nações" como sendo de outro modo que não referentes à Igreja, mas sim a uma literal batalha sangrenta envolvendo o povo judeu, estão contra a Verdadeira Fé, e a Serviço do Anticristo (literalmente, como veremos adiante).

São Tomás de Aquino forneceu o resumo medieval clássico da relação entre o judaísmo e o Cristianismo:

"O mistério da redenção da raça humana foi cumprido na Paixão de Cristo : por isso Nosso Senhor disse então: "Está consumado" (Jo 19,30). Consequentemente, as prescrições da Lei devem ter cessado então completamente através de sua realidade sendo Cumprida. Como um sinal disso, lemos que na Paixão de Cristo 'o véu do Templo foi rasgado' (Mt 27,51). Portanto, antes da Paixão de Cristo, enquanto Cristo estava pregando e operando Milagres, a Lei e o Evangelho eram concorrentes, uma vez que o Mistério de Cristo já havia começado, mas ainda não estava consumado. E por esta razão Nosso Senhor, antes de Sua Paixão, ordenou ao leproso que observasse as cerimônias legais."

- S.T., Prima Secunda, Q. 103, Art. 3, R. 2.

Aquino levanta dois pontos. Primeiro, a Dupla-Aliança ocorreu durante a Vida de Jesus, quando a "Lei e o Evangelho eram concorrentes". Mas, uma vez que Jesus morreu, Sua Morte substituiu os Sacrifícios rituais do judaísmo. Agora, as pessoas só podem ser Salvas pelo único caminho Salvífico da Fé em Jesus Cristo e do Batismo.

"Terceiro, Ele mostra a maneira da Salvação quando diz: e esta é para eles a Minha Aliança, uma Nova Aliança minha, quando eu tirar os seus pecados. Pois a Antiga Aliança não removeu pecados, porque é impossível que o sangue de touros e bodes tire pecados (Hb 10,4). Portanto, porque o Antigo Testamento era imperfeito, um Novo Testamento é prometido a eles: 'Farei uma Nova Aliança com a casa de Israel e a casa de Judá' (Jr 31,31) e terá o poder de remir o Pecado através do Sangue de Cristo: 'este é o Meu Sangue da Nova Aliança, que é derramado por muitos para o perdão dos Pecados' (Mt 26,28); Ele lançará todos os nossos pecados nas profundezas do mar (Mq 7,19)."

(Comentário sobre Romanos, Cap. 11, #920).

A visão de Santo Tomás foi repetida pela Igreja por séculos, e reiterada na Encíclica de 1943 do Papa Pio XII, "Mystici Corporis Christi".

"E antes de tudo, pela Morte de Nosso Redentor, o Novo Testamento tomou o lugar da Antiga Lei que havia sido abolida; então a Lei de Cristo, juntamente com seus Mistérios, decretos, instituições e Ritos Sagrados, foi ratificada para o Mundo Inteiro no Sangue de Jesus Cristo. Pois, enquanto Nosso Divino Salvador estava pregando em uma área restrita - Ele não foi enviado senão às ovelhas que estavam perdidas da Casa de Israel - a Lei e o Evangelho estavam juntos em vigor; mas no topo de Sua Morte, Jesus anulou a Lei com seus decretos e fixou a escrita do Antigo Testamento na Cruz, estabelecendo o Novo Testamento em Seu Sangue derramado por toda a raça humana. 'A tal ponto, então', diz São Leão Magno, falando da Cruz de Nosso Senhor, 'foi efetuada uma transferência da Lei para o Evangelho, da Sinagoga para a Igreja, dos muitos Sacrifícios para uma Vítima, que, quando Nosso Senhor expirou, aquele véu místico que fechava a parte mais interna do Templo e seu Segredo Sagrado foi violentamente rasgado de cima a baixo.'"

(#29)

A visão da Igreja é um modelo de Cumprimento Supersessionista. A herança do judaísmo é valorizada, então o Antigo Testamento possui sua Autoridade. Mas o Judaísmo não é mais Salvífico sem o cumprimento do Cristianismo, que modificou a Aliança original. Então os judeus devem se converter a Verdadeira Fé para serem salvos.

Essa Teologia foi exemplificada na bula Papal do Papa Eugênio IV, publicada no Concílio de Florença em 1441:

"A Santa Igreja Romana... firmemente crê, professa e ensina que a questão pertinente à Lei do Antigo Testamento, da Lei Mosaica, que se divide em Cerimônias, Ritos Sagrados, Sacrifícios e Sacramentos, porque foram estabelecidas para significar algo no futuro, embora fossem adequadas ao Culto Divino naquele tempo, depois que a vinda de Nosso Senhor foi significada por elas, Cessou, e os Sacramentos do Novo Testamento começaram; e que todo aquele que, mesmo depois da Paixão, depositou esperança nessas questões da Lei e se submeteu a elas como necessárias para a Salvação, como se a Fé em Cristo não pudesse Salvar sem elas, pecou mortalmente. Contudo, não nega que, depois da Paixão de Cristo até a promulgação do Evangelho, elas poderiam ter sido observadas até que se acreditasse que não eram de forma alguma necessárias para a Salvação; mas, depois da promulgação do Evangelho, afirma que elas não podem ser observadas sem a perda da Salvação Eterna. Portanto, todos aqueles que depois desse tempo observam a Circuncisão, o Sábado e os outros requisitos da Lei, são declarados estranhos à Fé Cristã e nem um pouco aptos a participar da Salvação Eterna, a menos que um dia se recuperem desses erros. Portanto, ordena a todos os que se gloriam no nome de cristãos, em qualquer momento, antes ou depois do Batismo, que cessem completamente a Circuncisão, uma vez que, quer se deposite ou não esperança nela, ela não pode ser observada de forma alguma sem a perda da Salvação Eterna (...)

Ela Firmemente Crê, Professa e proclama que 'toda criatura de Deus é boa, e nada deve ser rejeitado se for recebido com ações de Graças' (1Tm 4,4), pois, segundo a palavra do Senhor (Mt 15,11), 'não é o que entra pela boca que contamina o homem', e afirma que a indiferença entre alimentos limpos e imundos da Lei Mosaica diz respeito aos Cerimoniais que, com o surgimento do Evangelho, deixaram de existir e deixaram de ser eficazes. E diz também que a proibição dos Apóstolos 'das coisas sacrificadas aos ídolos, e do sangue e das coisas estranguladas' (Atos 15,29) convinha àquele tempo em que uma Igreja surgiu dos judeus e dos gentios, que antes viviam de acordo com diferentes cerimônias e costumes, de modo que até mesmo os gentios observavam algumas coisas em comum com os judeus, e a ocasião foi fornecida para se unirem em um culto a Deus e uma fé, e o terreno para dissensão foi removido; uma vez que para os judeus, em razão de um antigo costume, o sangue e as coisas estranguladas pareciam abomináveis, e eles podiam pensar que os gentios retornariam à idolatria por causa do consumo de coisas sacrificadas. Mas quando a Religião Cristã é tão propagada que nenhum judeu carnal aparece nela, mas todos que passam para a Igreja, unem-se aos mesmos Ritos e Cerimônias do Evangelho, crendo que 'todas as coisas são limpas para os limpos' (Tt 1,15), com o fim da causa desta Proibição Apostólica, o efeito também terminou. Assim, declara que a natureza de nenhum alimento, que a sociedade admite, deve ser condenada, e nenhuma distinção deve ser feita por ninguém, seja homem ou mulher, entre animais, e por qualquer tipo de morte que eles encontrem seu fim; embora para a saúde do corpo, para o exercício da virtude, para a disciplina regular e eclesiástica, muitas coisas não negadas devem ser abandonadas, pois, de acordo com o Apóstolo, 'todas as coisas são lícitas, mas nem todas as coisas são convenientes' (1Cor 6,12; 10,22).

Ela Firmemente Crê, Professa e Proclama que aqueles que não vivem dentro da Igreja Católica, não apenas pagãos, mas também judeus, hereges e cismáticos não podem se tornar participantes da Vida Eterna, mas irão "para o fogo eterno que foi preparado para o diabo e seus anjos" (Mt 25,41), a menos que antes do fim da vida os mesmos tenham sido adicionados ao rebanho; e que a Unidade do Corpo Eclesiástico é tão forte que somente para aqueles que permanecem nele os Sacramentos da Igreja são benéficos para a Salvação, e os jejuns, as esmolas e outras funções de piedade e exercícios de serviço Cristão produzem Recompensa Eterna, e que ninguém, qualquer que seja a esmola que tenha praticado, mesmo que tenha derramado sangue pelo nome de Cristo, pode ser Salvo, a menos que tenha permanecido no seio e na Unidade da Igreja Católica."[16]

Assim, para o Verdadeira Religião, não faz sentido esperar ou agir por uma restauração de um reino terreno judaico, mas buscar a Conversão dos Judeus, e sua incorporação ao Corpo da Igreja, agora Universal.

Teologia da Dupla Aliança

Com as Reformas Protestantes nos séculos XVI e XVII, alguns novos grupos cristãos no Ocidente formularam novas interpretações das Escrituras. A Teologia Restauracionista, surgida nesse meio, relacionava o retorno dos judeus à Palestina, como um elemento importante para o Fim dos Tempos (entretanto, os restauracionistas nunca defenderam a formação de um Estado-Nação judeu; a sua associação do retorno do Povo Judeu à Terra Santa, visava a facilitação da Conversão dos Judeus ao Cristianismo, como sinal da proximidade da Segunda Vinda de Cristo).

Entre as décadas de 1830 e 1840, Darby formula a teologia Dispensacionalista. A interpretação de Darby dizia que Deus havia criado duas Alianças separadamente, com Cristãos e Judeus. Para ele, as Profecias Messiânicas se cumpriam na Pessoa de Jesus, mas as promessas materiais do Antigo Testamento para os judeus ainda seriam vistas como válidas para as épocas seguintes.

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), after beginning in the field of law, became interested in the gospel. By 1825 he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He later joined the “Plymouth Brethren,” a group of believers who had also recently separated from the established church. In 1827 he developed and popularised the view that God had two different purposes for His people: an earthly purpose for Israel and a heavenly purpose for the church.

The question arises: why did this teaching appear at this time? Zens (1978:3) explains:

"It appears that there are two basic undercurrents that made the season ripe for a blossoming of prophetic and millennial interest. The first is the influence of the Jesuit thinking concerning Christ’s second coming, and the second is the general outlook that certain recent political events had great implications for the fulfilment of prophecy."

During the period 1862-1877, as a result of several visits by Darby to America and Canada, Dispensationalism spread rapidly in these countries. If Dispensationalism had been confined to the Plymouth Brethren assemblies, its influence would have been negligible. However, it “came to have its proponents in virtually all Protestant denominations,” and thus “it became a major factor in American evangelism” (Zens 1978:9).

Another factor in the spread of Dispensationalism in America was the printed page. In 1909 the Scofield Reference Bible appeared under the auspices of the Oxford University Press. This work “has probably done more to extend premillennialism in the last half century than any other volume” (Zens 1978:10).

Dispensationalism was also popularised as a result of the Bible School Movement. Zens (1978:11-12) elaborates:

"These institutions were founded primarily because the main-line denominational schools had departed from the evangelical position…. A host of Fundamental Bible schools sprang up all over America, the doctrinal foundation was 'predominantly' Dispensational and premillennial 'from the start.' The Scofield Bible was, practically speaking, the accepted 'doctrinal touchstone' of these schools."

Zens (2005a) summarises the position of Dispensationalism in America after it had spread for a hundred years (1827-1927):

"Within a century from when John Nelson Darby started the idea of God's two separate purposes in history (1827), it had arisen to a place of common acceptance among the Bible-believing movement in America, which then centered in Fundamentalism."

3. The Essential Characteristics of Dispensationalism

Dispensationlism revolves around the use of the Biblical concept dispensation.

The term dispensation is derived from the Greek word oikonomia, which is used in the New Testament to describe the management of a household. Jones (2005) elaborates:

"Dispensational theology centers upon the concept of God’s dealings with mankind being divided into (usually) seven distinct economies or “dispensations,” in which man is tested as to his obedience to the will of God as revealed under each dispensation. (The Greek word oikonomia, which is translated in the scriptures as “dispensation,” actually refers to a dwelling or house and means management of a household/stewardship in Luke 16,2-4)."

Ryrie (1995:29) defines Dispensationalism in terms of various economies in the outworking of God’s overall purpose:

"To summarize: Dispensationalism views the world as a household run by God. In His household-world God is dispensing or administering its affairs according to His own will and in various stages of revelation in the passage of time. These various stages mark off the distinguishably different economies in the outworking of His total purpose, and these different economies constitute the dispensations. The understanding of God's differing economies is essential to a proper interpretation of His revelation within those various economies."

Grenz et al. (1999:39-40) define Dispensationalism as a system of theology with essential characteristics:

"God works with humans in distinct ways (dispensations) through history; that God has a distinct plan for Israel over against the church; that the Bible, especially predictive prophecy, needs to be interpreted literally; that the church will be secretly raptured from earth seven years prior to Christ’s second coming; that Christ will rule with Israel during a literal thousand-year earthly reign."

Most traditional Dispensationalists recognise seven specific dispensations, divisions of time or ages throughout history, in which man responds to a specific revelation of the will of God. According to Smith (2005), the seven traditionally recognisable dispensations are:

1) Innocence – Adam

2) Conscience – after man sinned, the flood

3) Government – after the flood, man allowed to eat meat, death penalty instituted

4) Promise – Abraham up to Moses and the giving of the law

5) Law – Moses to the cross

6) Grace – the cross to the Millennium Kingdom

7) Millennial Kingdom – a 1000-year reign of Christ on earth centred in Jerusalem

It appears that there is a strong continuity of thought among Dispensationalists. It is not difficult to ascertain the guiding presuppositions of this system. Dr Charles Ryrie in Zens (2005a) has pointedly faced the question, "What is the sine qua non of dispensationalism?" His answer has three parts.

1) “A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct … a man who fails to distinguish Israel and the Church will inevitably not hold to dispensational distinctions.”

2) Dispensationalists employ “a consistently literal principle of interpretation.” This principle “is at the heart of dispensational eschatology.”

3) Dispensationalists assert that God's purposes center in His glory, rather than in the “single purpose of salvation.”

4. The two-fold theory of Dispensationalism: the distinction between Israel and the Church

The two-fold theory of Dispensationalism is derived from their hermeneutical approach that emphasises a literal fulfilment of Old Testament promises to the nation of Israel. Although the issue of “literal interpretation” is heavily debated today, many Dispensationalists still claim that “a consistent literal interpretation” applied to all areas of the Bible, including the Old Testament promises to Israel, is a distinguishing mark of Dispensationalism (Vlach 2005).

In terms of the “consistently literal principles of interpretation,” Dispensationalists argue that since the prophecies of Christ’s birth, death and resurrection were literally fulfilled, what they consider to be promises to the Jews will also be literally fulfilled. Their reasoning is based on the presupposition that Israel and the church have separate destinies.

Dispensationalists, therefore, believe that the promises made to Israel in the Old Testament (especially regarding physical blessings, such as land), apply only to Israel unless God has stated otherwise. They believe that these promises were not intended as prophecies about what God would do spiritually for the church, but will literally be fulfilled by Israel itself (largely in the millennium). For example, the promise of the land is interpreted to mean that God will one day fully restore Israel to Palestine. Dispensationalists thus believe in a distinct future for national Israel—a future that includes the restoration of the nation with a distinct identity and function (Vlach 2005). This is confirmed by Feinberg (1988:83) when he says, “Only Dispensationalism clearly sees a distinctive future for ethnic Israel as a nation.”

According to Dispensationalists, Jesus made an offer of a literal Kingdom to Israel. Since Israel rejected it, it was postponed. Gane (1997) explains the Dispensationalist’s concept of parenthesis as follows:

"… when Jesus was on earth He offered the earthly kingdom to the Jews. Because they rejected it, the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies in regard to their rulership of Palestine and predominance over the nations could not be immediately put into effect. Of necessity there came a gap of centuries during which the Christian Church has played a separate and distinctive role designed by God. But this role is not a spiritual fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel. The period of Christian Church history is a parenthesis, not foreseen by the Old Testament prophets and not designed to fulfill their forecasts. This period of the Church will come to an end when the Christian saints are secretly raptured seven years before the glorious appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven."

Since Dispensational theology grows out of “a consistently literal principle of interpretation,” applying this hermeneutical principle leads Dispensationalism “to distinguish God’s program for Israel from his program for the church. Thus the church did not begin in the OT but on the day of Pentecost, and the church is not presently fulfilling promises made to Israel in the OT that have not yet been fulfilled” (Ryrie 1984:322).

Vlach (2005) summarises the position of the Dispensationalism as follows:

"The church does not replace or continue Israel, and is never referred to as Israel. According to dispensationalists, the church did not exist in the Old Testament and did not begin until the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Old Testament promises to Israel, then, cannot be entirely fulfilled with the church."

In order to demonstrate the continuity of agreement among the proponents of Dispensationalism, Zens (2005a) provides a chronological list of quotations concerning the dual purposes theory is given below:

Darby: “The Church is in relationship with the Father, and the Jews with Jehovah…. The Jewish nation is never to enter the Church…. The Church is … a kind of heavenly economy, during the rejection of the earthly people'' (The Hopes of the Church of God, pp. 11, 106, 156).

L. S. Chafer: “The dispensationalist believes that throughout the ages, God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the earth with earthly people and earthly objectives involved, while the other is related to heaven with heavenly people and heavenly objectives involved" (Dispensationalism, p. 448).

Charles Ryrie: “A dispensationalist keeps Israel and the Church distinct…. The Church is a distinct body in this age having promises and a destiny different from Israel's" (The Basis of the Premillennial Faith, p. l 2).

John Walwoord: “Of prime importance to the premillennial interpretation of Scripture is the distinction provided in the New Testament between God's purpose for the Church and His purpose for the nation Israel” (The Millennial Kingdom, p. vii).

The dividing of redemptive history into several economies has been done throughout church history. However, the idea that God has “separate” purposes for Israel and the church is indeed novel, since it cannot to be found in the works of writers in the post-apostolic period. Yet this is the teaching on which Dispensationalism stands or falls. It is the presupposition that guides their Biblical interpretation. If this presupposition proves to be false, then their whole theological system collapses.

5. A Biblical evaluation of the two-separate-purposes theory of Dispensationalism using key passages from the New Testament

In this section, the essential principles of Dispensationalism will be challenged in the light of clear statements from selected Scriptures, especially those principles relating to the two-fold theory: the distinction between Israel and the Church. Since this evaluation is by no means comprehensive, certain crucial representative passages will be selected in an attempt to expose the faulty foundations of Dispensationalism.

5.1 The kingdom of God has come and is given to a people who will produce its fruit.

"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit"

Mt 21,43

Ryrie asserts that this passage “conclusively” demonstrates that Israel is to be restored. The word “nation,” he says, “in its strict interpretation…refers to the nation of Israel when she shall turn to the Lord and be saved before entering the millennial kingdom” (Zens 2005a). However, Smith (1989:254) shows that in terms of the context, verse 43 describes a situation in which a privilege is taken from one group and given to another:

"The death and resurrection of Jesus lurk in the background of the parable (vv. 33-41) and the prophecy (v. 42), but the foreground is occupied by the drama of privilege taken from one group and given to another: The kingdom of God (v. 31) will be taken away from you and given to others, to new tenants, described as a nation (ethnos), and that nation is defined by a single phrase, producing the fruits of it."

Yet the context, especially in verse 41 at the conclusion of the parable, suggests that the householder (God) punishes the wicked husbandman (Israel), and gives out the vineyard (the kingdom) to others (Gentiles). This indeed occurred when the Jews killed their heir (v. 38). Thus after rejecting their Messiah who came first in lowliness, the gospel of their exalted Messiah goes to them first, and this also they reject.

Paul summarises the fulfilment of verse 43 where the Scripture says, “Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: ‘We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles’” (Acts 13,46).

The parable clearly a portrays the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews, only for Him to become the cornerstone of the Church by the act of God raising Him from the dead. Because of unbelief and disobedience, the Jews are rejected and their privileges of the kingdom of God given to a people (the Gentiles) who will produce its fruit (v. 43)

(see also 1 Peter 2,4-10)(Atkinson 1963:798).

The parable also pictures the rejection of Jesus Christ (by the Jews) as the True Temple of God. Jesus Himself declared, “One greater than the Temple is here” (Mt 12,6). Since Christ is the true temple, one need not look elsewhere for the prophetic fulfillment of various Old Testament scriptures, such as Isaiah 66,21 and Zechariah 14,16-19, in the building of a new temple on the rock in Jerusalem at some future date. The New Testament Church (The kingdom of God) is also described in terms of a temple built with of living stones (including Jews and Gentiles). Strimple (1999:99) explains: “No other temple can be erected, in which all the saints of God, Jew and Gentile, are being built as living stones (Eph. 2,19-22; 1 Peter 2,5).”

5.2 The hope of the Jews has already been accomplished in Christ’s resurrection; they are called upon to repent and believe the gospel (Acts 13,32-34).

"We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: 'You are my Son; today I have become your Father.' The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay, is stated in these words: “I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David"

Acts 13,32-34

According to their two-fold theory, Dispensationalists assert that Israel’s real fulfilment lies in the future, when the alleged unfulfilled promises are confirmed in the millennium after the rapture of the Church.

However, verse 32 points out that the “hope of Israel” has already been accomplished in the Resurrection. Further, the Resurrection is said to be a fulfillment of the “sure mercies of David.” It is on the basis of this recently accomplished promise that the Jews are to repent and believe the gospel. God’s dealings with Israel have not been “postponed.” He has at this time fulfilled the promise “to the fathers for us their children.

The context of Acts 13,32-34 is Paul’s address at Antioch is as follows: After giving a summary of the life of Christ (Acts 13,23-31), with an emphasis on His resurrection, Paul uses the Old Testament texts to prove that Jesus is indeed the Messiah (Acts 13,32-37). Paul thus argues that Christ’s resurrection proves Him to be the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. He then calls upon his audience (mainly Jews) to hear the message, to repent and believe the gospel (Acts 13,38-41).

Keddie (1993:156-157) argues that in terms of the context of Acts 13,32-34, the very rejection of Israel’s promised Saviour was transformed by God into the actual fulfilment of various prophecies, and Jesus’ accomplishment of Salvation for His people:

"Jesus is Israel’s promised Saviour (Psa. 2:7; Isa. 55,3; Psa. 16,10; Acts13,32-37). But what had happened? Firstly, the people rejected the only one they ought to have recognized and received! (13,27;John 1: 11). Secondly, in doing so, they actually fulfilled the very prophecies read in their hearing every Sabbath day! (13,27). They killed Jesus on ‘the tree’ (13,29; Deut. 21,23). God ‘raised him from the dead’ and so transformed their very rejection of him into the occasion of Jesus’ accomplishment of salvation for his people. This is the ‘good news’ which God had promised the fathers of Israel and has now fulfilled ‘for us’ – namely, ‘raising up Jesus,’ not only from the dead, but as the Son, who is exalted a Prince and Saviour (13,32-33; 5,31)."

It is only in utter disregard for a clear text like Acts 13:32 that Ironside, in Zens (2005b), blindly asserts: “The moment Messiah died on the cross, the prophetic clock stopped. There has not been a tick upon that clock for nineteen centuries. It will not begin again until the entire present age has come to an end” (The Great Parenthesis, p. 23).

5.3 The Gospel is universal; both Jews and Gentiles are called upon to respond to the proclamation of the Gospel (Rom 10,12-14).

"For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Rom 10,12-14

According to Dispensationalists, God is pursuing two distinct purposes: one related to the Jews with earthly objectives and the other related to the Church with heavenly objectives. In this view, there is no continuity or connection with what went before or comes after; all of Israel’s future, including her future turning to the Lord, must be separate from the Church. However, in contrast to the Dispensationalist’s view of the Church as being separate from Israel, Paul uses the word everyone in Romans 10:13 to indicate that the way of salvation is open to all, Jew and Gentile alike. This universality of the gospel is emphasized by a quotation from Joel 2,32, which leads one to the inevitable conclusion that, if they do not “call on the name of the Lord” (v.13), the Jews are themselves responsible for their fate (Thomson and Davidson 1963:958). Edwards (1992:255) elaborates as follows on Paul’s use of the word “Everyone” in Romans 10:13 and its implications for the universality of the Gospel:

"By prefacing the quotation with Everyone emphasizes that salvation is available to Jews and Gentiles without distinction. He continues in verse 12, For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. Paul made this same assertion in 3,23 with reference to sins: 'There is no difference, for all have sinned.' But neither is there any difference with reference to grace (cf. 11,32)! Jesus is the same Lord to both Jews and Gentiles. 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved' (v. 13, see Joel 2,32). This Gospel is not the possession of a privileged few – not even the chosen people. The Gospel is salvation without limits, a universal promise for everyone who believes."

Paul’s argument in Romans 10,11-15 clearly indicates that, “The gospel is universal and its application demands a universal proclamation” (Spirit Filled Life Bible 1991:1704), including Jews and Gentiles. They are without excuse in their unbelief. Wiersbe (1991:124) summarises the meaning of Romans 10,14-17 as follows:

"The missionary heart of Paul comes out in verses 14-17. Salvation is by Faith, and that faith comes 'by hearing … the word of God' (v. 17). But unbelieving sinners (including Israel) cannot hear unless we tell them. God needs people with beautiful feet (Is 52,7) to carry the Gospel to the lost."

Furthermore, in Romans 10,19, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 32,21 to indicate how Moses had issued a warning that Israel would reject God’s message. Life Application study Bible (1997:2039) summarises the message of Romans 10,18-20 as follows:

"Many Jews who looked for the Messiah refused to believe in him when he came. God offered his salvation to the Gentiles (“those who are not a nation” and “a nation that has no understanding”); thus many Gentiles who didn’t even know about a Messiah found and believed in him."

Finally, in Romans 11, Paul argues that there is an intense unity between the “times of the Gentiles” and both the Israel’s past economy and her future “ingrafting.” His analogy of the olive tree indicates “that there is but one people of God throughout redemptive history” (Fuller, in Zens 2005b).

The only hope for Israel, as portrayed in Romans 10-11, is the same Gospel of salvation by faith in Christ proclaimed to both Jews and Gentiles. There is no hope for Israel apart from the Gospel of grace which is proclaimed by local churches, to whom alone, as the pillar and ground of the truth, Christ has entrusted “the faith” until the end of this present evil age. Thus there may well be an ingathering of Jews after “the times of the Gentiles.” But when and if this happens, Israel will be “saved” and joined to the body of Christ by believing the same gospel as Paul preached to his brethren in the flesh.

5.4. God’s never intended that the Jews should have a separate earthly purpose, but an intensely spiritual (heavenly) purpose.

"For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God…. All these people … admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth…. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one"

Hb 11,10-16

Ever since Darby claimed that Israel had an “earthly religion,” Dispensationalists have always maintained that Israel is an earthly people related to the earth and the Church is a heavenly people related to heaven. For example, Pickering claims that “God’s main purpose with Abraham was not to take him to heaven,” but to give him a land” (Zens 2005b).

However, is this actually true? From the above passage from Hebrews it will be become clear that the people themselves (the Old Testament heroes of Faith) are essentially related to heaven and not earth. From the very beginning, the Jewish religion was intensely spiritual. “In verse 10, we are told that Abraham’s real goal was not a portion here on earth, but a (spiritual) ‘city whose builder and maker is God’” (Zens 2005b). Guthrie (1983:232) agrees that the writer of Hebrews (11,10) emphasizes the spiritual nature of the future city:

"There is certainly a striking contrast between the tents in Canaan and the city which has no foundations to which the faith of Abraham looked forward… The writer thinks in spiritual terms of the city which God is building. We may compare this idea with the vision of the new Jerusalem which is described in Revelation 21 and 22, where again the spiritual aspects are without question the most important. Abraham had a wide and noble horizon which could look behind the immediate environment."

In verses 13-16, the writer of Hebrews indicates that Old Testament believers, in embracing God’s promises, were not led to confess a hope in a great earthly kingdom. On the contrary, they regarded themselves as pilgrims and strangers on the earth (Zens 2005b). Guthrie (1983:234) also points out that in verses 13 and 16 the writer emphasizes the importance of the heavenly things rather than the earthly things:

13. The patriarchs had acknowledged (homologesantes) their true status as strangers and exiles. Abraham used the same description of himself in Genesis 23:4. In 1 Peter 1:1; 2:11 a similar description is applied to Christians. In Hebrews the idea fits in with the earlier allusion to the Israelites’ wanderings in the wilderness (chapter 3) and the writer’s aim is clearly to use this as a pattern. It is all of a piece with the underlying principle of the epistle that it is the heavenly and not the earthly things which are most important…. 16. The better country is at once identified as a heavenly one. The identification of the two adjectives (kreittonos, epouraniou) is particularly characteristic of this epistle. It places the emphasis on spiritual rather than material inheritance."

(O Sionismo Cristão)

(A ideologia Sionista é perversa e contrária a Fé)

0 notes

lindsaystravelblogs3 · 2 years ago

Text

Day 83 – Wednesday, 16 August Off to Warsaw

We were off to Warsaw, in Poland, today so we ate breakfast at the Hotel, settled our bill, and waited in our room for an hour until it was time to trudge across the dog-park to our waiting taxi. One of the hotel staff helped us to get all our gear along the canal and across the kilometre to the Cruise Ship terminal. We really appreciated that because they knew where the cab was waiting – as well as dragging one of our big cases all the way to the terminal car-park.

The airport was no more horrific than other recent airports and we were soon up, up and away and heading for a whole new country for both of us. As we left Venice, we could see the wetland we had passed on the Waterbus and it was quite astonishing how big it is – probably almost as big as the Werribee Treatment Plant wetland. I hope it continues to be protected to give the birds a better chance of survival as they migrate back and forth across this busy heavily-populated part of the globe.

In Warsaw, we were a bit slow getting through all the administrative processes, but our driver was waiting for us and off we went. He had very little English and we didn’t have a word of Polish, but after we had driven a very long way, passing the city on the way, we asked him where he was taking us. We were on a motorway and thought there may only have been occasional places to turn off back to the city, but we were close to ten kilometres beyond the town when he finally understood that he wasn’t going where we needed to go. He found a place to turn back toward the city and then got lost in the maze of one-way streets and closed roads in the centre of town. He finally dropped us a couple of hundred metres from the hotel because we had reached a dead-end - an area where no vehicles were allowed in. (We eventually had some correspondence with the taxi company to explain the situation and they gave us an unsolicited partial refund for the confusion – not at all required because the ride had shown us parts of the city we wouldn’t otherwise have seen.)

We lugged all our bags to the front door of the hotel and found that it was locked. We eventually figured out how to get them to open the door for us and Heather went up a couple of flights of stairs (32 steps each way) while I guarded our luggage in the passageway at ground level. Then they told us that we weren’t booked in at that hotel – they had another section a kilometre away across the city and we had agreed to stay there. We hadn’t, but the booking agent had apparently made that decision (wrongly) for us. Things got quite complicated pretty quickly, including because the hotel couldn’t explain how to get to their other property and in the end, one of their porters went with us, dragging our poor cases across a kilometre of crowded cobbled streets. Then it was through an alarmed and coded door, to an alarmed and coded gate, up 47 steps to our room's foyer to another alarmed and coded door, and eventually to the coded door to our room. Alas, the code didn’t work! Fortunately, the porter who was there had a phone and after close to an hour, the code was reset and we were able to get in. (This happened three more times while we were there – we think the cleaning staff assumed that nobody stayed more than one day so they reset the code each time they visited the building – that was not often though, because I reckon it was about a year since the floor had been swept.)

Our wonderful travel agent (Bev) went to work on our behalf and we were offered a room (at about twice the price) in the original hotel we had expected to be in, but the thought of dragging everything back across town was pretty daunting so we decided to stay put without air conditioning and a few other desirables, given it was only for a few days. We didn’t bargain on climbing all those stairs in the almost dark as many times as we did, but que sera! We had a double room with a shared fridge, stove, toaster, jug, microwave and sink just outside our door.

A feature of Warsaw that really struck us was the trees – there are thousands of trees everywhere, many very big ones, giving the whole city a lovely greenish feeling – and of course, a few extra birds although not a huge number.

We went out for a walk to find a supermarket and bought a few bits and pieces, and we had a drink while we were out. We went out again a little later to a restaurant right below our window and had dinner there. It was supposed to be traditional Polish fare, but if so, we were less than inspired by it and certainly had better local food on other occasions.

In the middle of the night, there was a huge thunderstorm with violent lightning, mighty thunderclaps and a lot of rain – but by morning, apart from some wet patches on the road, it was completely gone.

0 notes

morlock-holmes · 1 year ago

Text

Thanks for the context.

Please don't get me wrong: Google is being real stupid here and I'm mad at them too.

"If you ask for a picture of football players, or someone walking a dog, you may want to receive a range of people. You probably don't just want to only receive images of people of just one type of ethnicity (or any other characteristic)," wrote Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan.

But, as Raghavan wrote, the effort backfired. The AI service "failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range. And second, over time, the model became way more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely — wrongly interpreting some very anodyne prompts as sensitive."

Researchers have pointed out that Google was trying to counter images that perpetuate bias and stereotype, since many large datasets of images have been found to contain mostly white people, or are replete with one type of image, like, for example, depicting most doctors as male.

In attempting to avoid a public relations crisis about gender and race, Google managed to run headlong into another controversy over accuracy and history."

This entire framing of the story, from both Raghavan and NPR, feels profoundly infantilizing to me.

Suppose I ask an image generator for "a boy riding his bicycle down the streets of a city."

What race should that boy be in the outputs produced by the generator?

Almost everybody is acting like there is a correct answer to that question, and, even more crazily, like getting the answer wrong would be so catastrophicly offensive that any product that gets it wrong should be taken off the market entirely.

You don't know if a user who types that prompt wants "only one type of ethnicity" and there's a good chance they don't know themselves.

How diverse should the outputs be? Should Chinese and Indian kids be more likely to appear in the results than anybody else? What should the ratios be? Should the fact that I typed the prompt in English change the ratios compared to a prompt typed in Chines? Users are not necessarily likely to generate thousands of images for a certain prompts so how often should less populace racial groups appear in the results? If people with broadly Inuit features are included in proportion to their percentage of the global populace they'll probably never show up so do we juice the results?

The idea that there is a correct set of answers to these questions at all seems incredibly unlikely to me, and the idea that getting those questions wrong would be catastrophic just strikes me as depressingly infantilizing.

You know what I can do if the output of the image generator is four white boys on bikes? I can just type another word in my prompt and say "an African American boy riding a bike down the streets of a city".

From a user perspective, what you'd actually want is controls for this kind of thing! Some kind of slider or even better, sets of sliders you could use to manipulate how widely afield the images move from central examples of the prompt.

Instead, both Google and the mass of Google's opponents seem to agree that there *is* a universal right answer, and that Google's primary job is to ensure that nothing the machine outputs will ever be controversial or range too far away from that right answer, and that the problem here is that Google has done a bad job at protecting us from controversy, and needs to be even better at ensuring the machine doesn't provide controversial outputs in the future.

It's fucking depressing.

PS - Also the idea that image generation outputs should be "historically accurate" is semi-baffling. I'll just say I didn't see anybody talking about whether those uniforms were actually standard issue for Nazis in 1943.

So apparently a Google image generator made some black Nazis or something.

The fact that people care about this, that they think there is some skin color that a fake Nazi, or a fake founding father, or whatever, *ought* to have in the absence of explicit user prompting is strong evidence that large portions of society have gone insane.

I can't even begin to tell you how infuriating it is to me that people care about this. It's a batshit set of priorities.

The correct race for a character in an image generator output is whatever the user asks for, period.

PS - This is a big reason I don't like the closed source generators, they feel that anything they generate reflects on the company so they're constantly working to make sure you don't have enough input into the image to do naughty things.

100 notes · View notes

mymelodyisme · 5 years ago

Text

A friend and I were driving out late at night. It was dark and our only company was the music that was blaring from the car radio. We were a reasonable distance from our home out on surprisingly open land, but circled the area at least 8 times because a suspicious vehicle was following behind very closely, but never advanced close enough to determine a driver. When we least expected it, the car was gone and we were finally able to go home. We drove into the garage belonging to a large polished wooden modern home. My friend got out of the car and was setting stuff aside that she must have gotten from a trip. I felt watched, and paranoid. I looked towards the house door and found a void of darkness keeping my gaze. I called out to my oblivious friend insisting that someone or something was watching us from beyond the door, but as she turned to meet my worries, the door was shut as if it hadn’t been opened since we’d left. She dismissed my worries and continued to adjust the area reminding me that I can’t lounge in the car forever. So I got out, and immediately turned to face the door, afraid that those few seconds without a thought might have let something slip by. Half right, I noticed the door was open again and the darkness watched once more. Finding myself scared, and confused, I pleaded with my friend to face the door again just to ease my worry. One again, she did and it was as it had been the first time she looked.

After settling down inside, excusing the previous moments for a delirious fear of exhaustion, my friend and I made our way into the kitchen to make a light snack before greeting our beds. Tomorrow was to be an important day that family would be coming over and we would have to wake early. As my friend made our snack, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A woman and an unidentifiable body, fighting, coming closer and closer to us. I jumped to my feet and looked to my friend, who seemed unbothered by the spectacle. Frantic, I asked her if she is seeing what is happening before our eyes. Before I could hear her reply the woman tosses the other’s body to the floor and pulls out a syringe quickly injecting it into the body. I rush towards them taking the syringe out with my bare hands, unable to properly comprehend the situation. Suddenly I’m startled again by the gentle hand of my friend who asks if I am alright, and, perhaps, I should just go to bed then. I look back at my hands, no one lies before me. The body, the strange woman, and the syringe vanished as though they were never there at all.

The next day my friend was no where to be found. My family had come over for a visit. The first to arrive was my aunt who sat me down alongside my sisters at a picnic table resting in the backyard. She pointed up to a building located atop the hill that overlooked our home and began to tell the story of how she and my mom had joined the local scouting group as kids. She reminisced about one special day in particular that was especially fond. As she began to explain that they attended the welcoming ceremony, a sudden change in atmosphere was brought to my attention. The building that sat on the hill no longer looked worn and aged, but new and lively displaying a long painted welcome sign. My aunts words echoed softly in the distance as children began to exit the building bustling with laughter and joy. Exiting joined by a crowd of your girls was the exact copy of my aunt when she was younger. There was no denying that it was her, but how could she be beside me, a middle-aged woman, and there, a child no older than 14. I turn to my aunt, the crowds growing larger with children and proud parents alike atop the hill, she begins to laugh as she describes that my mother was a victim of a horrible joke of fate that day. My mother, the younger sister, walked out of the building that day wearing large circular frames and glops of purple paint all over her person after having been in a quick incident before the ceremony began and way to late to fix the damage that had been done. Quickly, I look back to the hill to see the exact moment my mother walks out with the other children, covered in purple paint and quite unhappy with her predicament, all while my aunt’s laughter rung in the background of my thoughts.

I sat up that night watching television on the air mattress situated in the living room. Cartoons, both realistic and firmly animated merged into one show, similar to The Amazing World of Gumball, I figured. My sister sat up from the couch she had been resting on and look at the television then at me. She asked what I was laughing at and stares back at the television. I apologize for disturbing her and point that the show I was watching was unusual and yet very funny and invite her to watch with me. She looks back to me incredibly confused and insists that there’s nothing happening on the television because it’s not on. I look at it and see from my point of view that it is very much on, in fact, it illuminated her face each time she turned. She shakes her head and insists that I must be half asleep or something because it is definitely not on. And, as if almost instantly, the room darkens, and the television is shut off without so much as a movement from either of us, not that she was aware of it.

My two other sisters and I drove up to a large campus. It was clean and had a very dull look about it. Nearly everything was white, gray, or black with very few hints of blue shining through on the metal railings that led up to the campus cafeteria. My sisters were beginning their first day of high school and their first day within this new school respectively. I, on the other hand, was beginning my first day as a new staff member on the campus. Because the three of us had never set foot on this campus before, we were reasonably confused on where it was we were supposed to be headed. Situated around the cafeteria were large circular stone tables crowded by students who seemed to know exactly where they where and why. We chose to question the smallest group in the vicinity. A taller young man sat in the center of one of the tables leaning back having a conversation with a crowd of 5 other students. As if they sensed our arrival, the students parted creating a clear path towards the one who sat above them. Not very impressive up close but surprisingly confident, the young man tells us exactly where we need to go and how to get there. We thank him and go about getting prepared for the first class. Within no time at all, we are all ushered to a large amphitheater at the center of the school. It’s made clear that this is some sort of welcoming assembly for new students and staff. While listening to the principal lecture on about the pride and accomplishments of the school, I get this strong depressive feeling that not is all that it seems. Before I could understand what is happening, right behind the principal, as he speaks highly of the institute, flames roar high as night begins to set. Cloaked figures stand tall illuminated by the flames before them revealing them to be various staff members of the school. At the center of their affair stands the principal himself donning the same black robes mirroring the same self that speaks to the crowded room of students and staff. As the active version of the man speaks glories, his alternative self commits heinous crimes, screams fill the room almost loud enough to drown out his real voice. It is then I finally understand what it is that I am seeing. This plague that had bewitched my very senses disallowing my brain to decipher vision from reality is no longer a nonsensical misfortune. I realize that I have somehow acquired the ability to view both past and present simultaneously as they occur within the same liminal space. For whatever reason I was blessed with this curse, it is my burden and my reason of being that I must now put an end to what occurs in the darkness and flames of this school and its organization. I repeat to myself this very thought as the principal confides that I, unexplainably special, was chosen for a greater purpose and introduces me to the Society of Shadows.

#dreams as i wrote them #writing #AM SO EXCITED TO TURN THIS DREAM INTO A NEW OC OR IDEA OR STORY OR TO JUST ADD THE ABILITY TO ANOTHER OC #AAAAAAA #LOVED THIS DREAM #ONE OF MY BETTER ONES TBH #oh yeah uh let me tag this as long #long post #GUYS I KNOW IT MAY NOT SEEM LIKE IT BUT THIS IS LITERALLY MY WHOLE DREAM I JUST WROTE IT IN A NICER WAY #MY DREAMS ARE SUPER DETAILED SO I INCLUDED AS MUCH AS I COULD REMEMber #please ignore any spelling mistakes #wrong grammer #or wrongly used words that may have been included #too tired to edit

1 note · View note

townofcrosshollow · 3 years ago

Text

A quick(ish) history lesson about transgender terminology in English

I'm deeply passionate about the words of the past and promoting trans history literacy, so I've been itching for so long to write this- a whole timeline of major trans terminology from the 1900s to the present! If that's something that might interest you, read on.

Whenever I say "trans people" in this, please imagine I said "people who most modern people would identify as being transgender." The people at the time, obviously, did not know that word or use it.

Disclaimer: some of these words are offensive when used by a cisgender person. I will not discuss agreed upon slurs or words that are offensive to other minority groups such as Native Americans.

Pre-1910

Lack of recognition and illegality of dressing in opposite-sex clothing led to fragmented communities and few cohesive terms. Most words used by both the in group and out group were derived from words for gay people, as the two weren't distinguished at the time.

Medical/scientific researchers would typically use the word "invert," a reference to sexual inversion theory. They might distinguish trans people as "true inverts." Some may also have used the word "uranian" or "urning," derived from the German field of research into sexuality (more on that later).

In the community itself, "androgyne" or "bisexual" were used to describe having both male and female aspects (not to be conflated with non binary identity), while "female impersonator" might refer to a man who does drag or a person who lives full time as a woman. Other terms for effeminate gay men were used for trans people, including "fairie" and "queen."

1910-1922

In English, most still used the previous vocabulary. However, in 1910 in Germany, sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term "transvestit." Contrary to our current understanding, the word was meant to describe trans people- Hirschfeld believed that clothes were a reflection of people's deeper contra-sexual feelings, and gave his patients certificates diagnosing them as transvestites to exempt them from cross-dressing laws.

The term was slow to catch on in English, however, and was introduced as "transvestite" around 1922.

1923-1948

In English, the term transvestite caught on during this period and became the dominant word used by both researchers and the community. Older words still existed, and words relating to sexuality were also used.

In Germany, Magnus Hirschfeld was not satisfied with this term, as he believed it wrongly focused on outward signifiers of gender rather than internal cross-sex identity. In 1923 he coined the word "transsexualismus" to replace it. This word did not catch on in English until much later.

1949-1964

Sexologist David Oliver Cauldwell translated the word transsexualismus into English as "transsexual" and "transsexualism," in our modern definitions. The word became increasingly common by people in the know in this time period.

However, it's important to note that popular culture is rarely up to date with terms used by trans people and sex researchers. Perusing news articles about famous trans women from the 1950s, none of them ever use the terms "transsexual" or "transvestite," implying that such words weren't familiar to the general public at the time.

1965-1969

The period right before Stonewall is notable for the introduction of early forms of the word "transgender." "Transgenderism" was coined by psychiatrist John F. Oliven in 1965, and "transgenderal" or "transgenderist" by trans activist Virginia Price in 1969. In my opinion, this was just simultaneous invention. I see no reason to think that Virginia Price had read Oliven's work, and Price's use of the word was almost certainly more impactful overall.

Despite both being essentially the same word, they had two very different intentions in using the word "gender."

Oliven's transgenderism was based on a distinction between sexuality and gender identity. He wished to uncouple the idea that a transsexual person identifies that way due to their sexuality. Instead, he believed it was an innate and separate psychological phenomenon.

Price's transgenderist was imagined as a person who changed their gender identity, but had no desire to change their sex through medical intervention. This doesn't match our modern definition, but it's still extremely important, because it demonstrates that a distinction between sex and gender was being made in the trans community even before Stonewall.

At this point, cutting edge terminology was finally separating gender and sexuality. Both Oliven and Price were opening up the discussion about gay (or at the time considered "heterosexual) trans people.

1970-1989

There honestly doesn't seem to be any landmark changes in terminology during this time period, unless I'm missing something. Primarily, it's shifts in public understanding. The word transvestite slowly becomes less popular, especially among trans people, around the 1980s, although it is still widely used. Transsexual starts out as a distinguisher of a person who has undergone sex reassignment surgery, but transitions into a more common term used by most trans people. Transgender is rarely used.

The 80s also marks the early adoption of neopronouns in online spaces. So called "spivak pronouns" (e/em), after Michael Spivak, became used in early online communities such as chatrooms and MUDs to describe people without gendered terms.

1990s

In 1990, two significant new coinings happened.

First, activist Riki Wilchins coined the term "genderqueer" to describe anyone whose gender or gender expression is queer/falls outside of expected societal norms. This term became popular in queer zines, and exploded in popularity into the early 2000s.

Second, Elder Myra Laramee coined the term "two spirit" to refer to Native American people who fulfill a "third-gender" (this is an antrhopological term for a non binary gender, not literal) role in their traditional communities. It was intended to make a distinction between Native and colonial concepts of gender, though different cultures have vastly different genders and gender roles that all have their own terminology.

In trans culture, something else was happening. Many trans people who did not or could not have surgeries, or who didn't align with the binary, percieved terms like transsexual as discriminatory or elitist. The implication that a person needed to have surgery to be a "true transsexual" and not a "transvestite" was leading to a rejection of earlier terminology. Instead, a new movement rallied under the word "transgender" as being an umbrella for all trans people, including genderqueers and people who didn't need surgery.

When you see quotes from the late 80s or 90s of famous trans people saying they're not transgender, this new movement towards inclusivity and a new framework is generally what they're referring to. They identified as transsexual or transvestites, not as cisgender.

Oh, and the word "cisgender" was coined in 1994, with "neutrois" being coined in 1995.

2000s

The main change in terminology in this time period is the shift from genderqueer to non binary. By the 2010s, they were about equally used, with non binary quickly surpassing genderqueer. However, no matter how hard I look, I can't seem to find any date or name associated with the word non binary. Similarly to agender, which also rose in the 2000s, it seems to be simply a quirk of language in activism spaces. Discussion of "people outside of the binary" turned into "non binary people," and the rest is history.

By this point, the word transvestite was rarely in use and generally considered old fashioned.

2010s

This is where shit seriously hits the fan, so we're going to skip over specifics and talk about the general trends.

The word "MOGAI" was first used in 2014, the same year that the word "xenogender" was coined by tumblr user Baaphomett. Although this suggests that the "MOGAI movement" started in the mid 2010s, I would argue it started around the beginning of the decade. By MOGAI movement, I mean the popularization of genderfuckery and microlabels among internet folks, responsible for most of the holy-shit-too-many-words phenomena preventing me from going in depth.

Around the latter half of the decade, the rise of transmedicalism and the use of transsexual among them and by other conservative trans people led to its already waning usage to turn into outright disdain. Although few would describe it as a slur by the end of the 2010s, most outside of those groups would not use it to describe themselves and would bristle at its usage.

In conclusion

Phew! That was way too long and nobody is ever going to read it, but I've finally fulfilled my constant desire to write an overview of the history trans language. Hell yeah.

If you did reach the end by some miracle, I hope this was enlightening.

Much of this was compiled from my previous knowledge with dates and names sprinkled in from google searches, so I don't have many specific sources to link, but if you need any for anything I mentioned here don't hesitate to ask.

#can you tell this is one of my special interests #just gonna drop this here #for myself and presumably nobody else #lgbtq #lgbtq history #queer history #transgender #trans history

145 notes · View notes

mimzalot · 2 years ago

Text

we never really needed the Zelda Timeline

from twitter • 7th July 2019

sharing my thoughts on the Zelda Timeline, oral tradition, gamer intellectualism and one of the best characters in Breath of the Wild. I may wrongly use 'oral history' and 'oral tradition' interchangeably but you get the gist of it.

hadn’t put this into words until recently but I think part of the reason the Zelda timeline never mattered to me was because Zelda has always been a bit more like oral history, rather than written history. it’s the Legend of Zelda, not the Cross-Referenced Facts of Zelda.

makes sense, too, why all the Zelda games have vastly different tones, but the same underlying themes and plot - Link is the archetypal hero (like Jack and Jill, Jack and the Beanstalk), and all the different ‘styles’ of game are the different voices they’re recounted by.

you got one person that tells the story with a light-hearted comedy tone! Wind Waker. you got that aunty that’s a fan of ghost stories and plans to terrify you! Majora’s Mask. you know that cousin who’s a big fan of birds? Skyward Sword! each legend embellished in its own way.

and not to be Me about it but it makes me wonder how much of this desire for Zelda’s timeline to be a written, coherent, step-by-step factual recount of events is tied in with the idea that historical, written fact is seen as intellectualism, whereas oral tradition is... not.

I’m used to oral tradition. as a Samoan, much of my knowledge of history has been told to me by family, and while there is value in finding the ‘truth’ of the matter, a lot of times, you just enjoy the story. there’s nothing to prove with it, you just listen and learn.

as a Samoan I’m also used to the fact that this isn’t really seen as a valid or intellectual form of academia. and as a member of the gaming and Zelda community, I know that there’s a pervasive obsession with academia, intellectualism, and proving video games are ‘smart’.

if you’ve been part of the Zelda community for longer than a minute you’ve probably at some point become aware that some Zelda fans - and Nintendorks overall - have suffered with an inferiority complex. the definition of ‘real games’ did not include games about fairy forest boys.

when ‘real games’ had to have the most realistic graphics, dark themes, competitive modes and, well, guns, Zelda fans were chuckled at by ‘real gamers’. it was a good game, but it was a kids’ game. Zelda fans scrambled for legitimacy in the gaming community.

evidence: when Wind Waker was first announced, the great source of fan despair? it was too cartoony, it wasn’t dark enough. how was Zelda going to be taken seriously when, while the rest of gaming was boasting realistic graphics, Nintendo had veered off-course into toon town!?

similarly when Twilight Princess was released, the great source of fan rejoicing was that it looked serious, dark and gritty. Link looked more realistic, and this looked like a game that wouldn’t have the Halo nerds laughing at you when you said it was the best series ever.

so what does the disenfranchised nerd with the inferiority complex do to intellectualise their media? how does the Zeldweeb prove their lore should be taken seriously? you take every piece of it and try to put it down on paper, in sensical order, as evidence. it’s history, baby!

you could probably skip the inferiority complex bit and jump straight to the fact that white audiences will naturally attempt to intellectualise through written history, because historically speaking, that’s what white history is all about. if it ain’t written, it ain’t legitten.

whether it’s because of an inferiority complex, or the cultural context within which media is consumed, or the nature of academia being steeped in white concepts of ‘truth’, we’ve been left with Zelda fans that are DESPERATE for the timeline to make sense. DEMANDING that it does.

and all I’m saying to my fellow fans is - it doesn’t HAVE to. it never had to! firstly because that’s an inherently flawed method of justifying the merit of something, but also because gaming elitism is dumb and there’s no need to force this game to be historically accurate.

because without this urgent demand for a Confirmed Zelda timeline, Hylian lore would be just like my ‘Fierce Deity Link is Sheikah’ headcanon, and numerous other Zelda fan theories - good, regardless of canonisation. speculative, like legends oft are. oral tradition, not written.

... but it’s 2019 now. the Historia was released, and you can tell the games are being made with other games and The Timeline in mind. and this isn’t bad! in fact it’s a pretty interesting progression from oral tradition into written that mirrors real world civilisations. sweet.

Breath of the Wild is the ‘convergence’ game, where all the haphazard timelines come together. to me this is a turning point in the Legend of Zelda, because from here on, games have a unified starting point. The Timeline can, from this point forward, be strictly abided by.

... but speaking of oral tradition and Breath of the Wild, I find it really charming that as Nintendo officially creates a ‘logical’ new-start for the written Zelda timeline, they also introduced an in-game personification of oral lore itself. or a birdification, rather. Kass!

was this thread just an excuse for me to gush about my favourite bird bard, Kass? I mean, no, but while I’m here, let’s talk about Kass! bc I love him, and also because there’s something very meta about a Legend of Zelda character whose sole purpose is to tell the Legend of Zelda

TLOZ as a whole operates mostly on oral lore. more often than not you are told of your history by others - from a great tree, a dead King, a Happy Mask Salesman. your sidequests are primarily word-of-mouth. music is integral in how you connect to Hyrule, past, present and future.

this has become a fundamental and seamlessly integrated part of how the series functions. just like you know that when you hit a crystal something will happen, you also know that in order to understand your surroundings you need to listen to people, stories and songs. NOT read.

... which brings us back to Kass! while the rest of the series (deliberately or not) makes gameplay out of oral tradition, Kass personifies that tradition. at the turning point of The Timeline, Kass both explains and demonstrates how Legend works, in-game and in-general.

and I find it extremely effective and maybe a little sentimental that while we can expect everything henceforth about The Timeline to be indisputable fact, there’s a character which exists purely to represent the legitimacy, excitement and cultural function of oral tradition.

(that the Rito seem coded as a tribal unit that live in a village and operate within a chiefly system not unlike my own culture probably adds to how quickly this comparison occurred to me, too, buuut culture-coding in Zelda is a topic for another day)

Breath of the Wild marks a junction. a new slate - ha ha. gameplay includes more elements of written history (filling a compendium, reading journals, visiting memories based on photos), throwbacks take full advantage of a chronological timeline (location names, weapon lore, plot)

Link is usually our bard, through which we create and share the Legend of Zelda. now, as Link, BOTW and maybe even the series overall develops in another direction, Kass is our bard, and he behaves as a testament to the original point of the thread - the oral history of TLOZ

and it’s just nice to think that this history is being fondly represented in the form of a big bird accordionist that gets bummed out when you don’t want to hear him talk about Zelda. I can relate to that. I think a lot of us can. especially the bird bit. huh? what? I DIGRESS.

ultimately, I didn’t need the timeline. I don’t really think anyone needed it as badly as they thought they did. but! I don’t reject The Timeline. a solid foundation opens up new avenues of storytelling - a direct BOTW sequel with reference to past lore, for example! EXCITING!

I just hope that while the franchise evolves with The Timeline in mind, we can still appreciate that, even untethered, in all its tonally diverse and time-insensitive glory, The Legend of Zelda was never ‘broken’, it was just a history unwritten - and no less enjoyable that way.

feel free to celebrate reaching the end of this thread by listening to this lovely song cover and joining me in prayer that Kass returns with more tunes for BOTW2. MAY THE LIGHT ILLUMINATE YOUR PATH!

additional notes: playing Tears of the Kingdom now and feeling INCREDIBLY vindicated rn. please no spoilers in the tags if you reblog but also SCREAMS AND RATTLES I LOVE ZELDAAA

#legend of zelda #breath of the wild #FEELING VERY VINDICATED IN THE CLUB TONIGHT FELLAS #kass #mimzameta

18 notes · View notes

cindylouwho-2 · 2 years ago

Text

Etsy’s 2022 Transparency Report: Murky Stats and Non-Facts

Etsy claims its mission is to “Keep Commerce Human”, and unironically uses that tagline at the start of its 2022 Transparency Report - a report that details how the site’s automation is attacking legitimate Etsy shop owners with ever-increasing frequency. The deeper you dig, the more you can see that acknowledging the humanity of the seller base is not part of the corporation’s game plan.

Policy Enforcement Has Gone to the Bots

The Trust and Safety division is responsible for policing the site in areas involving fraud as well as items prohibited on Etsy, including manufactured items falsely listed as handmade. Etsy admits that automation is responsible for 95% of the listings and shops flagged for rule breaking in 2022. These reports more than doubled over 2021′s total, to around 36 million.

Despite this huge increase in flags, there was only a 16% increase in items removed year over year (a total of 1.9 million), meaning that Etsy automation is not improving in detecting real problems. Over 34 million flags were apparently unfounded; only 5% of the total flags were deactivated. That means that millions of listings were temporarily removed from the site or at least from search, when there was nothing wrong with them. It sometimes takes weeks for Etsy to restore these pages, and often that does not occur unless the shop owner opens a support ticket and complains (even though Etsy claims that every flag is reviewed “within four working days, on average”).

The 36 million flags equal roughly one-third of Etsy’s current site inventory. Clearly, these bad bots have meant a large loss of visibility and sales for shops that comply with Etsy’s rules, and often those shops aren’t even given coherent reasons for the removals. Frequently, there is no public announcement of a new “ban”, such as the removal of amber items that started in February 2022. [I had 2 items removed and then reinstated. They were wrongly removed, despite the fact I had selected the correct material attributes for both - agate and labradorite. The word amber was only used as a colour. I was not selling amber, and both focal beads were larger than the “1.25 inches” Etsy Support cited as the safety threshold.]

Unfortunately, the “Looking Ahead” portion of this report promises even more focus on machine learning to do the job Etsy truly needs real humans involved in. This problem is not going to disappear.

[Please note that I have no issue with using automation for some of these situations, but if it is only 5% accurate, it needs more human oversight.]

It Gets Worse - Meet The “Mature Content Classifier”

Here’s exactly how Etsy describes this “mature content classifier”, a new site feature:

“...in 2022, we developed a mature content classifier which identifies potentially mature listings using text and image recognition. Using this technology, we work to keep these kinds of items from being displayed to users who aren't looking for them, while still allowing those who are to find them. While no technology is perfect and we may sometimes get it wrong, we’ve seen a 17% decrease in flags of mature content from our member community since adding this classifier to our search experience.” [my emphasis]

This comes as no surprise to many sellers of both “mature” and non-mature items, as there have been many reports of items that are no longer searchable for many (if not most) words in their titles. For example, an affected listing will show up for a search that includes the shadow-banned words, but not other searches. Words and phrases that can trigger this issue include:

sex and sexy

pinup

nude

BSDM

harness bra and body harness

pussy

panties

I am sure you can imagine many others! (but these are ones sellers have discovered and discussed publicly). For most of them, it makes no sense for Etsy to remove the item from all searches except those containing the offending word/s, since many of the words can be used innocently. “Nude” can be a colour, for example.

The most bizarre so far is the dog diaper listing, which was affected not only by the words “menstrual” and “panties” but also the lead image of a toy dog wearing the garment. Switching up the photos so the toy was not the lead made the item searchable again.

If your items are not at all mature and should not be classified as such by Etsy, contacting Support may help you get them restored, although many cannot even get a straight explanation from Etsy on this point. For some shops, removing the offending word from the title but keeping it in the tags may restore searchability, as can changing the first photo.

However, it is obvious Etsy is going to refine this “classifier” in the future, meaning that more items will be affected - both mature and not - and the current fixes may not always work. Sellers of items that are mature or even border on mature, or rely on certain search terms that may be affected, should seriously reconsider depending on Etsy for any significant amount of business income. This "solution” Etsy is touting isn’t going to end.

Resolving Order Issues Is Quicker Now Because Sellers Aren’t Involved In Most Cases - And Often Can’t Get Etsy To Help When Things Go Wrong

After a short section on intellectual property infringement, Etsy goes on to brag about the “improving” cases through its Purchase Protection Plan as of August 1 2022. “On average, cases were resolved by our team in just 14 hours in 2022. That’s down from 4.5 days in 2021.”

What they don’t mention is that Etsy’s automation of this area means many cases are closed by bots almost instantly these days, as I detail in my blog post on the topic. Sellers often have great difficulty getting errors corrected, and Etsy is automatically forcing refunds from seller money in almost all cases over $250 USD now. While it is great for buyers that they can instantly get a full refund for the package stolen from their front porch, sellers are left with no protection with these larger orders. Even if they can prove signature confirmation and have photos of the delivered package from the courier company, Etsy still takes any refund over $250 from the shop’s account.

As explained on my blog, there have been many ridiculous refunds issued from seller funds, including the following situations:

the buyer didn’t pick the item up at the post office

Etsy’s automation said the order was shipped late, but the message from Etsy listed the correct date as being “late”

a not-as-described case where the customer used a screenshot from another shop to prove the item wasn’t as described

a buyer returning an order without notifying the seller (which Etsy policy does not allow)

the purchaser promised to return a damaged item, but recalled the package through USPS once Etsy issued the refund (thereby getting both the package and their money back)

In many of these types of examples, it was difficult or actually impossible for the shop owner to get their money back from Etsy, often because they could not reach Etsy or could not get an Etsy employee to understand the problem. Despite this, Etsy is claiming that “Sellers are also getting more access to support”. The corporation then flat-out lies by stating “we expanded our popular Help Center live chat support to be available to all sellers, 24 hours a day, every day.” I know this statement is as false as the day they announced it, as I was one of the sellers who filed [unresolved] Support tickets complaining that we did not have access to Live Chat. Today, I still frequently cannot get more than email options when trying to access chat through the Help Centre, and often have to use a help link generated by another seller to see the chat option.

Furthermore, even if an Etsy shop owner can contact Etsy through live chat, any serious issue must be escalated beyond that first tier of support, and some of those other tiers can now take weeks and even months to get back to sellers. In another example of Etsy’s shoddy automation, I filed a ticket 10 days ago regarding a listing in my shop that displays the “Sorry, this item is unavailable in your region” message when clicked on from the United States, and only received a cut and paste reply that explained some plants and seeds can’t be sold in the US. (It’s not a plant or seed, nor does it contain those substances. I can’t even figure out why they think it does. Plus, I have 4 other listings of the same material that haven’t been affected!) It’s obvious from my stats that this item was removed from US search and was made unpurchaseable there back in August 2022, yet not only did an Etsy employee not review this removal in any way, but 10 days later I still cannot get a real answer from Support.

It’s not just me. I advised 2 different sellers on appealing their shop suspensions back in March, but neither appeal has been decided yet (as of May 9). The Etsy forum is flooded with posts from new merchants who have correctly updated their tax ID numbers but still have suspended shops. Owners of hacked accounts can wait over 10 weeks to get Etsy to act. Most of Etsy’s social media posts get a large number of replies from disgruntled sellers who cannot get help with serious issues (or even sufficient explanations of what is happening). So even when live chat works, some of us may end up with worse “Support” than they did in the past, as the people staffing chat aren’t allowed to do many things on their own.

The Future Isn’t Any Brighter

So why is Etsy harming sellers in these ways? Why can’t the “Keep Commerce Human” company use actual humans to make sure its sellers are treated humanely?

The answer comes in 2 parts:

Staff cost money. Etsy can’t spend cash hiring adequate Support or Trust and Safety staff if it is going to stay profitable. It is becoming evident they are running out of ways to make more money, so they aren’t going to spend any more dollars on helping the human collateral of faulty automation, regardless of how unfair the non-human bots are. Their business model isn’t profitable if they “Keep Commerce Human” by hiring humans to deal with human problems.

In the recent quarterly report, Josh Silverman admits that shoppers have trouble finding the best things on Etsy - with over 100 million listings, there’s just too much stuff to wade through. It’s one of the 3 main points Etsy feels is holding the site back from having broader appeal. So when Etsy removes my keychain and pendants for spurious reasons, and puts the full onus on me to get the items relisted, it not only saves them money on staff, but also reduces the number of items in some searches, giving them an instant improvement in the oversaturation area. Or, put another way, Etsy will still get the same sales if my listings and your listings and some dog diapers modelled on a stuffed toy don’t show up now and again. They’ve learned they can lose a certain number of listings - even best-selling ones - without really losing money overall. They’ve made this clear in the past when discussing “churn” when they do something that forces shops to leave the site permanently. While Etsy’s primary goal isn’t to remove legitimate listings, doing that doesn’t hurt the bottom line, and does help with the “too much stuff” problem. What’s not to like, from an executive's point of view?

The corporation sees nothing to fix here. Sure, we can argue they shouldn’t release bad bots before they work better, but that would also cost money. Building faulty automated “solutions” is really Etsy’s thing, and they aren’t going to stop just because individual human shop owners lose thousands of dollars when their best sellers get deindexed or Etsy refunds an item that the buyer signed for.

You’ve been warned.

#EtsySellerNews #EtsySearchUpdate #Etsy #ecommerce

14 notes · View notes