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1000 results for “less_beauty”

Audrey Winter has moved! @[email protected] · 2025-06-16 · 21:53 UTC

Random #StarWars thoughts after watching a cool video set to Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" from Top Gun:
As the years go by, I am less and less fond of the #XWing fighter. Don't get me wrong: it's a wonderful, beautiful, iconic ship. There's no mistaking it for anything else in the multiverse. It's more than just a ship, it's a symbol.
My problem is...
1/?

#starwars #xwing
Gabriele Svelto @[email protected] · 2026-03-18 · 13:12 UTC

Look at these beauties that have just arrived. I got all of them on Buyee for roughly 20€ each including handling fees, shipping and import taxes. The trick is buying several items over a period of less than 30 days and have them stuff everything into a single package. It saves a lot of money.
#RecordOfLodossWar #BubblegumCrisis #RetroAnime #ClassicAnime

#classicanime #retroanime #bubblegumcrisis #recordoflodosswar
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist @[email protected] · 2025-07-28 · 19:38 UTC

@rscottjones
[Images of a rather unique and flamboyant mixed font layout in a book of unstated vintage] somehow [] got [] approved and actually printed
A certain conservative conformity runs through the industry. It leads to a lack of noticeable beauty, beauty in rendering as distinct to content. Publishers by their actions train readers to expect extreme transparency and react badly if what they find is not "plain." Well, "plain" does cost less: In labor spent, in deep thought expended to achieve something that looks interesting without sacrificing readability or overpowering content. Simply because something like this is rarely done–or rarely done well like this was—does not mean it lacks merit. This was not done by an amateur running wild in a Mac layout program.
I would approve it.
The hint of difference would draw me in if I cracked the book in a store, and, considering the genre, the publisher knew it.
I like the fonts and I like the layout. The choice of title font lends a distinctive1800s pen feel to the whole composition (although, admittedly, the 66 relies on context to be legible). Since the title carries little information, it can afford whimsy. The designer chose the remainder of the fonts to be easy to read; they distinguish themselves from each other while structuring the information together with consistent use of emphasis and chapter layouts. I have no problem with the mountainous grey background. It evokes a sense of place, of a distinctive "skyline", namely that of the badlands of Arizona, at the start of each chapter. I have no problem reading this whatsoever, despite being dyslexic. Were there any plates or inline photos? My guess is the background helps obviate the need, or the lack thereof depending of the perspective of the target buyer, which lowers the cost of printing.
Overall, I find this pleasing. It screams Arizona, the old west, and adventure!
Aesthetics and readability can coexist together without the choice of the bland "same old same old" most publishers deliver like automatons without lack of thought or sense of design. It is unnecessary to follow the same design rules that everybody else follows, especially when they are arbitrary. They are. Arbitrary. Make no mistake. Mind you, conceiving a good design and doing it well requires thought.
#BoostingIsSharing
#design #bookstodon #write #author #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon #publishing #bookdesign #font #fonts #layout #book #books

#publishing #bookdesign #font #fonts #layout #boostingissharing
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-10-24 · 22:45 UTC

Mrs Maciver: the thread about Edinburgh’s first cookery teacher and publisher of the earliest known Haggis recipe

Today’s Auction House Artefact is this old Edinburgh-published cook book, an edition from 1777.
COOKERY,
and
PASTRY.
As taught and practised by
Mrs MACIVER,
Teacher of those Arts in Edinburgh.
Although it is neither the first such book printed in Scotland (that title goes to Mrs McLintock’s Recepits for Cooking and Pastrywork, Glasgow, 1736) Cookbook, nor even Edinburgh (A New and Easy Method of Cookery, 1755), this remains a very special cookbook. If you were a member of Enlightenment Edinburgh’s genteel classes then this was probably the cookery book; instructing you and your domestic staff in all the latest food and dining trends.
The Georgian kitchen in Edinburgh.James Boswell (feathered hat) and his kitchen staff preparing a meal of grouse for Dr Johnson (in the background in the tricorn hat) “Wit and Wisdom. Picturesque Beauties of Boswell. Part the First, 1786, Thomas Rowlandson after Samuel Collings. National Galleries of Scotland collection.
Mrs Maciver (or Mciver) was Susanna Maciver, born circa 1709. In her own words prefacing the first (1774) edition of her book and written in 1773, she stated “her situation in life hath led her to be very much conversant in Cookery, Pastry etc. and afforded her ample opportunity of knowing the most approved methods practiced by others“. She “opened a school in this city for instructing young Ladies in this necessary branch of female education, and she hath the satisfaction to find that success hath accompanied her labours“. Running a school for other women would have been one of the few business opportunities open to an enterprising lady in Georgian Edinburgh. And clearly she was both enterprising and successful in her chosen career path.
Etching by John Kay, 1786, entitled “Mr Robert Johnston and Miss Sibilla Hutton“, no. 158.
Her 238-page book was laid out in a format that would be recognisable to modern home cooks; starting with soups and then going through fish, flesh (meat), pies and pasties etc. – mixing savoury pies with sweet desert dishes – and finishing on preserves and pickles etc. It is full, cover-to-cover, of Georgian recipes, from Imperial White Soup to Roast Cod’s Head to Beef a-la-Mode to Carrot Pudding. But my personal favourite is the Syrup of Turnip:
A recipe for Syrup of Turnip, Page 222 of the first edition.
Despite the Syrup of Turnip it proved to sell well and was republished over a number of years. The advert to announce the initial publication was placed in the Caledonian Mercury newspaper on December 4th 1773 and was repeated in The Scots Magazine that month. From this we can also glean that she also sold her own preserved fruits, cakes and pastries.
Caledonian Mercury advert announcing the publication of Mrs Maciver’s book. December 4th 1773. The books are dated 1774 on the inside cover
Her house and cookery school was in Stephenlaw’s Close (also spelled Stevenlaw, Stanelaw and Stonelaw’s) off the High Street – it is number 74 on Edgar’s town plan below of 1765. You can handily located for the city’s produce markets centred on the Tron Kirk. The structure in the middle of the High Street marked M is the City Guard referred to in the above advert, the old guardhouse of the Toun Rats.
Edgar’s Town Plan of Edinburgh, 1765. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
From her preface to the first edition, we know that the school had been established some time when her book was first printed and is listed in Edinburgh’s first postal directories (those of the similarly enterprising “Indian Peter” Williamson).
Williamson’s Postal Directory of 1784.
In October 1786 a “New Edition, With Additions“, described as “Greatly Improved” was released, now running to 264 pages. Those who had recently purchased the previous edition were offered the additional pages gratis per an advert in the Caledonian Mercury. Susanna Maciver would have been almost 80 at this time, a very good age for the 18th century.
It was suggested by some friends, that the addition of some figures of courses for dinners and suppers should be subjoined; accordingly, I have made out several courses from five to fifteen dishes.
This took the book from being just a collection of recipes to a complete guide to entertaining in Georgian polite society, keeping you right in such important matters of etiquette as how to lay the table correctly. Wealthy people still dined service à la Française at this time where a whole range of sweet, savoury and side dishes were put on the table at the same time and would be replaced as they were finished. This is opposed to the more modern style of service à la Russe where you are served in separate courses. So at this time any host or hostess had to know where to place the Soup and when to remove it, where the Roast Tongue went relative to the Artichoke Bottom Fricasee, how to stew Peas and Lettuce etc.
“Bill of Fare” diagram for family dinners of twelve or fifteen dishes, from the 1789 edition.
The prospect of serving orange pudding and apricot tart alongside the roast pig and Boiled turkey with oyster sauce may seem odd to us these days, but it was the height of gastronomic sophistication in its own time! This second edition was also reprinted both in Edinburgh and London, being advertised in the London Morning Post for sale at 2 shillings and sixpence. One of the more unusually named recipes was Robert Walpole Dumplings, a stodgy, fatty, rotund pudding served soaked in alcohol. Whether or not this was a homage to, or a clever mocking of Cock Robin is a secret that only she will know. But undoubtedly Susanna Maciver’s greatest contribution to both the Edinburgh and Scottish culinary arts, and culture in general, was that in her books she published the first ever “standard” Haggis recipe (north of the border)!
Susannah MacIver’s first recipe for Scottish Haggis, 1774
But note the bit in parenthesis at the end of the last paragraph. Yes, shockingly, Haggis has a rather longer history on record in English printed cuisine than Scottish! A dish very similar to haggis called Afronchemoyle is contained in the first known English cookbook, The Form of Cury, from way, way back in 1390 by the cooks of King Richard II of England. As a Scottish dish, it does not have quite such a long recorded history. The word itself is Old Scots, with a root from Middle English hagas, hagese etc., probably from the noun hag, to chop. The Gaelic for haggis, taigeis, is imported from the Scots. The earliest printed mention seems to be it used in an insult, in an early 16th century poem by William Dunbar:
The gallows gapes after thy graceless gruntill,
As thou wouldst for a haggis, hungry
The Flyting of Dunbar and Kenndie, c. 1500-1520
The poet Alexander Pennecuik uses it as a pejorative (haggis-headed) in 1715, Alan Ramsay refers to it as haggies in 1725 in The Gentle Shepherd and surviving household ledgers from Ochtertyre House for instance record it as haggise, being served for the servants’ meal in 1737 (alongside puddings and mutton). The haggis of course has been immortalised in Scottish culture by its association with the poet Robert Burns and the annual Suppers held in his memory. In 1786 Burns was newly arrived in Edinburgh and wrote the Address to a Haggice (sic). It was first published in the pages of the Caledonian Mercury newspaper on December 19th that year (n.b. most internet sources will tell you December 20th, but the newspaper did not publish that day, it was thrice weekly). Its book publication was the next year in an Edinburgh edition of his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. It is noteworthy that the last verse of the newspaper version is different from the Edinburgh edition version which is that used to this day.
Front page of the Caledonian Mercury, 19th December 1786, highlighting the date and the “Address to a Haggice”.
Ye Pow’rs wha gie us a’ that’s gude,
Still bless auld Caledonia’s brood
Wi’ great John Barleycorn’s heart’s blade,
In stowps or luggies;
And on our board that king o’food,
A glorious Haggice!”
Last verse of the 1786 Caledonian Mercury version of “To A Haggice”.
When Robert Burns immortalised the Haggis in Scottish culture as the “Great Chieftain o the puddin race” with his eponymous address of 1787, there is every chance he was referring to something made to Mrs Maciver’s recipe. And if it was served in the manner she prescribed, it may well have been on the same table as the blancmange, cheesecake and trifle! And speaking of trifles, it was her book that give us one of the earliest recipes for what we would recognise as a “modern” trifle.
“The Cottar’s Saturday Night”, an illustration of Burns’ 1786 work by David Allan. Burns thought Allan “a man of very great genius” and that it was “one of the highest compliments I have ever received” to have Allan illustrating a book of his works. A cooking pot simmers over the ifre on the left. A man on a stool to the right eats from a bowl while a hungry dog waits patiently for a tid-bit. National Galleries of Scotland collection.
The Scottish food historian Florence Marian McNeill and the food writer Clarissa Dickson Wright both favour the theory that the practice of cooking the contents of an animal in its own stomach point to a Scandinavian origin of the dish. A haggis is fundamentally an offal sausage, and offal was an important source of food for the poorer classes; it spoils quickly and is not easy to transport without a modern cold chain, so it would be eaten quickly at the source; people could just not afford to waste it and it was also still perfectly nourishing. Chopping up the less palatable and digestible parts of the “pluck” of an animal and mixing it in with oatmeal as a binder and to make it go a bit further was a perfectly logical way to make a slaughtered animal feed more people for longer. Some pepper, spice or herbs – as available – would make the contents more palatable. At a time when many people would have possessed only a fire on which to cook and probably only a pot and a griddle to cook on or in, the boiled haggis is just a logical sort of dish for the ordinary folk to be cooking and eating. The cooked final product could then be smoked to preserve it.
“The Haggis Feast”, Alexander George Fraser, 1840, National Trust for Scotland
As evidenced by its inclusion in Maciver’s book, by the time of Burns haggis had moved on from being purely a peasant and servants’ dish of necessity to something popular amongst the enlightenment classes on their dinner tables. It also became increasingly popular with the men of letters on their drinking tables. Perhaps the earliest known illustration of haggis, from c. 1810, shows two enlightenment worthies of Glasgow supping on a giant haggis, washed down with copious quantities of claret.
“Dr Balfour of Glasgow having taken lodgings in a questionable house” a caricature by John Gibson Lockhart c. 1810, National Library of Scotland Acc.11480, f.5
In the 1826 book The Cook and Housewife’s Manual etc. by Margaret Dods, a recipe is given fora genuine Scotch haggis at the head of the chapter entitled Scotch National Dishes (introduced by quoting Burns). Margaret – Meg – Dods was actually a character from a Walter Scott novel and the book itself was by the writer Isobel Christian Johnston, the publisher’s wife. Scott himself contributed the book’s introduction.
This elusive but important Susanna Maciver died on August 23rd 1790 at Jamieson’s in the Canongate, aged 81 years, of “decay” (registrars’ speak for dying of old age of otherwise unknown specific reasons.) There is a plaque to mark the approximate location of her house and cookery school at Stevenlaw’s Close, appropriately featuring her recipe for “A Good Scotch Haggis”.
The plaque to “A Good Scotch Haggis” at Stevenlaw’s Close. Picture credit Historic Environment Scotland
But that is not the end of the story, because she had a protégé, Mrs Frazer, who took on the school and the book, updating and expanding it and issuing subsequent editions. She describer herself as the “sole teacher of these arts in Edinburgh” and “several years colleague and afterwards successor” to Mrs Maciver. Of Mrs Frazer (later rendered as Fraser), I can find nothing concrete and the surname is much too common to get lucky on Scotland’s People without any dates or a forename.
Mrs Frazer’s version of the cook book
Frazer’s book moved on from purely recipes, to describing general principles and techniques of both cooking and also buying and choosing ingredients (an important skill in a time of no real food controls and produce that would easily spoil or potentially have been doctored). An interesting addition are the illustrations of table setting plans. More calf feet jelly with your small tarts?
A diagram on how to arrange dishes on the table from Mrs Maciver’s recipe book, from the 2nd edition. Notice that pork cutlets, blancmange, cut beetroot, orange cheesecake and macaroni pie are all placed adjacent!
As well as this guide to laying your table, other helpful information such as foods listed by their season, a one-page ready reckoner of suggested “Things for Supper Dishes” and “General Observations” were also included such as the correct order of serving your boiled, baked and roasted meats.
General Observations as to serving up Dishes.
By 1806 she had moved the cook school, now described as a “pastry school“, to Milne’s Square; opposite the Tron Kirk, still handy for the markets. The school is listed in the post office directories under her name until 1831-32, after which it disappears for a few years then a school under Miss Fraser appears at 69 Northumberland Street. I have made the assumption this was a daughter perhaps.
You can read a digital version of Mrs Maciver’s cookbook for free online and it is still published in a modern facsmilie edition. If you want to get a bit closer to the wacky dining habits of Enlightenment Edinburgh, I recommend a trip to the National Trust for Scotland’s Georgian House, who have a great display and description of the eating, drinking and cooking habits in the 18th century New Town’s dining room and kitchens.So if you want to pay homage to the great, great, great, great, grandmother of Scottish cuisine, why not do as the Georgians might have done and serve yourself up a tasty supper of haggis and trifle this weekend?
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#burns #cookery #enlightenment #food #scott #women
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2025-11-15 · 22:28 UTC

#Tallow And #Beeswax For #Leather Recipe
May 23, 2025
"Leather has been a trusted material for centuries, and keeping it in top condition requires a little care. That’s where our tallow and beeswax recipe comes in—a natural, time-tested solution for nourishing and protecting leather. This blend not only restores shine but also adds a layer of durability, extending the life of your favorite leather goods.
We love this recipe because it’s simple, effective, and free of harsh chemicals. Both tallow and beeswax have been used for generations to condition and waterproof leather. Together, they create a rich, creamy balm that works wonders on everything from boots to belts. Whether you’re a leather enthusiast or just looking to revive an old bag, this DIY recipe is a must-try.
Ingredients
To create this natural leather care recipe, we need just a few key ingredients. These come together to form a nourishing product perfect for maintaining and restoring leather items. Below, we outline the specific items required for this blend and their respective use.
What You’ll Need
3 oz of Tallow (preferably grass-fed for its purity and superior conditioning properties)
1 oz of Beeswax (use natural, yellow beeswax for the best protective barrier)
2-3 drops of Essential Oil (optional, adds a subtle fragrance and extra conditioning – choose scent-free if preserving natural leather aroma)
Small Heatproof Container or Bowl (for easy mixing)
Double Boiler Setup (ensures controlled heating and prevents burning)
Clean Cloth or Applicator Sponge (for applying the finished mixture to leather)
Ingredient Notes
Tallow: Acts as a natural emollient, deep-conditioning leather to prevent cracking while replenishing oils.
Beeswax: Provides a water-resistant barrier, protecting leather from moisture and enhancing flexibility.
Why?
1. Deep Conditioning and Moisturization
Tallow acts as a rich, natural conditioner that penetrates leather fibers deeply. Unlike synthetic alternatives, it replenishes lost oils effectively, preventing cracking and drying. Leather treated with tallow regains its softness and flexibility, making it look and feel brand new.
2. Enhanced Water Resistance
Beeswax creates a protective barrier on the leather surface, shielding it from moisture and water damage. This is especially useful for items like boots and bags exposed to the elements. The wax seals the pores of the leather while still allowing it to breathe, ensuring longevity and resilience.
3. Restoration of Shine
Combining tallow and beeswax restores the natural luster of leather. When applied, the blend gives a polished, glossy finish that enhances the leather’s visual appeal without making it look overly synthetic or plastic-like.
4. Protection Against Wear and Tear
Both tallow and beeswax add a layer of protection that minimizes wear over time. Scratches, scuffs, and stains are less likely to penetrate the leather, keeping it in excellent shape. With regular use, this blend ensures that your leather maintains its strength and beauty for years.
5. Eco-Friendly and Chemical-Free
One of the biggest advantages is the all-natural composition of tallow and beeswax. They are free from harsh chemicals that can weaken leather over time. This makes them a safer, more sustainable choice for maintaining our leather treasures."
Learn more:
https://gluttonlv.com/recipes/tallow-and-beeswax-for-leather-recipe/
#AnimalProducts #NoPFAS #NoChemicals #NaturalWaterproofing #SolarPunkSunday #LeatherConditioner

#tallow #beeswax #leather #animalproducts #nopfas #nochemicals
Palm Oil Detectives @[email protected] · 2024-10-19 · 14:23 UTC
How We End Gold Mining’s Ecocide For Good

Gold mining is unparalleled in its environmental destruction and human rights toll. Frustratingly, 93% of gold is used for non-essential purposes like jewellery and investments.
A recent study suggests that transitioning to a fully circular gold economy, relying entirely on recycled gold, is achievable. Recycling gold eliminates mercury use, reduces carbon and water footprints, and still supports industries like technology and jewellery. Human rights groups have long called for the end of this destructive industry. To end gold mining, investors should focus on existing reserves. Governments must ensure justice and ‘land back’ for displaced indigenous peoples; along with a just transition for miners. Make sure you #BoycottGold #BoycottGold4Yanomami and demand the end to gold mining right now!

New #study finds that recycling #gold would eliminate the mercury pollution and #deforestation of #goldmining. It would also mean an end to violent #indigenous landgrabbing for #gold in #SouthAmerica #BoycottGold4Yanomami @BarbaraNavarro @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-90d
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#Gold 🥇🚫 is a controversial commodity because it is unmatched in destruction to #indigenous peoples and #forests. A new study shows how we can end the #ecocide of gold #mining for good! #BoycottGold #BoycottGold4Yanomami @BarbaraNavarro @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-90d
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https://youtu.be/RLsqyADpgn0?si=0as7dS8JN6v2mWr3
Written by Stephen Lezak, Research Manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Two trucks transport gold ore from Barrick Cowal Gold Mine in New South Wales, Australia. Jason Benz Bennee/Shutterstock
The 16th-century King Ferdinand of Spain sent his subjects abroad with the command: “Get gold, humanely if possible, but at all hazards, get gold.” His statement rings true today. Gold remains one of the world’s most expensive substances, but mining it is one of the most environmentally and socially destructive processes on the planet.
Around 7% of the gold purchased globally each year is used for industry, technology or medicine. The rest winds up in bank vaults and jewellery shops.
Beautiful objects and stable investments are worthwhile things to create and own, and often have significant cultural value. But neither can justify gold mining’s staggering human and ecological toll. In a recent study, my colleagues and I showed how it might be possible to end mining and instead rely entirely on recycled gold.
Despite improvements in gold mining practices over the past century and new regulations designed to limit mining’s impacts, this industry continues to wreak havoc upon landscapes across every continent except Antarctica.
In a given year, gold mines emit more greenhouse gases than all passenger flights between European nations combined. Gold mining also accounts for 38% of annual global mercury emissions, which cause millions of small-scale miners to suffer from chronic mercury poisoning, which can cause debilitating illness, especially in children.
Our research involved modelling hypothetical scenarios in which gold consumption could decline to more sustainable levels. Using current recycling rates, we examined a fully circular gold economy in which the world’s entire supply of gold came from recycled sources.
Even today, nearly one-quarter of annual gold demand is supplied through recycling, making it one of the world’s most recycled materials. The recycling process uses no mercury and has less than 1% of the water and carbon footprint of mined gold.
We found that a global decline in gold mining would not necessarily derail any of gold’s three central functions in jewellery, technology or as an investment.
Towards circularity
Gold stocks and three scenarios of gold flows. Lezak et al. (2022), CC BY-NC-ND
Our model showed that the gold used for industrial purposes (mainly in dentistry and smartphones) could be supplied for centuries even if all gold mining stopped tomorrow.
We also found that jewellery could still be produced with recycled gold in a fully circular gold industry. There would just be about 55% less to go around, which would still leave more than enough for essential uses.
In order to make this future a reality, investors would have to limit their trading to existing reserves, without adding newly mined gold to their coffers.
A world with a shrinking supply of gold would likely mean that consumers would pay more for the same 24-karat pure gold ring. But more likely, jewellery purchases would shift to cheaper (and more durable) alloys of gold that are already popular. And in the future, demand for gold may decline as consumers become more concerned with making sustainable choices.
The role that invested gold plays in the global economy would likely continue to function regardless of extraction. Like Renaissance art, gold is valuable precisely because it is scarce. Ending gold mining would not put an end to the buying and selling of gold for bank vaults. Instead, it would make existing stocks of gold more valuable.
Irrespective of whether the world needs gold, our research suggests that the world does not need gold mining.
Private investors and central banks may balk at this idea. The US government, for example, is the world’s single largest owner of gold, holding US$11 (9.1) billion in reserves. But transitions to sustainability are always hard-won and the gold industry is no exception.
Inspired by other transitions
Like gold, the extraction of fossil fuels is also environmentally damaging. But unlike gold, fossil fuels provide warmth and electricity to homes and businesses, power to vehicles and fertiliser to farms. Transitioning away from this resource required decades of research and investment into clean energy technologies.
By contrast, finding substitutes for gold does not require any research. Jewellery can be made more sustainable by blending gold with other metals. Investors can rely on existing gold stocks and diversify to other stable assets. And technology can continue to use recycled gold when appropriate.
Closing gold mines is the first step. But many regions have grown dependent on gold mining, and artisanal mining alone supports as many as 19 million miners and their families worldwide, mostly in developing economies.
These miners deserve a just transition that ensures they do not become collateral damage in the shift to sustainability. Governments must provide a robust safety net for former gold miners and their families. That includes offering low-cost training and reskilling to ensure that miners can find employment in more sustainable industries.
Steps toward sustainability
Responsibly drawing down gold extraction will take time. But several measures are available to begin the transition today.
On the demand side of the industry, major jewellery brands, including Pandora, have already committed to using only recycled gold by 2025. Global technology firm Apple has also recently set a goal to use exclusively recycled materials by 2030.
On the supply side, mining companies should begin retiring mines that extract only gold. Many copper mines produce gold as a byproduct, which will likely continue into the future.
Meanwhile, institutional investors should stop investing in new gold mines. That includes groups like the World Bank, which has invested US$800 (£660) million in gold mines in Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific Islands since 2010.
Justice-minded fund managers, such as those overseeing endowments, should add gold mining firms alongside coal producers to their divestment lists. And central banks should redirect their future investments toward other stable stores of value, or at least source exclusively recycled gold.
The world is filled with difficult sustainability trade-offs. Gold mining is not one of them. Drawing down this industry stands out as a relatively easy way to reduce humanity’s footprint on a fragile planet.

Written by Stephen Lezak, Research Manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
ENDS

Read more about human rights abuses and greenwashing in the gold mining industry. Make sure that you #BoycottGold4Yanomami!

Did you know that gold kills indigenous people and rare animals?
Gold mining kills indigenous peoples throughout the world like the Yanomami people of Brazil and Papuans in West Papua. The bloody, violent and greedy landgrabbing that goes on for gold forces indigenous women…
Read more

Artist and Indigenous Rights Advocate Barbara Crane Navarro
Artist Barbara Crane Navarro merges art and activism to defend the Amazon and Yanomami from destructive gold mining. Support #BoycottGold4Yanomami.
Read more

13 Reasons To Boycott Gold for Yanomami
Hunger for Gold in the Global North is fueling a living hell in the Global South. Here are 20 reasons why you should #BoycottGold4Yanomami
Read more

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#BarbaraCraneNavarro #BoycottGold #BoycottGold4Yanomami #corruption #deforestation #ecocide #forests #gold #goldMining #goldmining #humanRights #indigenous #indigenousRights #mining #SouthAmerica #study #workersRights #WorkersRights #Yanomami
#barbaracranenavarro #boycottgold #boycottgold4yanomami #corruption #deforestation #ecocide
The Craggus @[email protected] · 2024-09-23 · 16:07 UTC

Ironically, The Critic needed a little less beauty and a little more beast.... click link to read more.
#2024 #alfredenoch #anandtucker #benbarnes #blogging #drama #gemmaarterton #ianmckellen #lesleymanville #markstrong #movieblog #romolagarai #thecritic #thecriticreview #thecraggus
https://thecraggus.com/2024/09/20/the-critic-2024-review/

#alfredenoch #anandtucker #benbarnes #blogging #drama #gemmaarterton
Belgian Ecclesia Brussel - Leuven @[email protected] · 2015-12-01 · 14:30 UTC
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
After or in-between our series on finding a church, we would like to share an exhortation given a few weeks back by brother Simon Peel at the Newbury ecclesia which we could follow thanks to the Google Hangouts.
It referred back to the second part of the two Books of Chronicles (or the ‎ Diḇrê Hayyāmîm, “The Matters of the Days” or the Paraleipoménōn) which are the final books of the Hebrew Bible in the order followed by modern Judaism; in that generally followed in Christianity, they follow the two Books of Kings and precede Ezra–Nehemiah, concluding the history-oriented books of the Old Testament. That 2° book of the Solomon Chronicles or 2° Paralipomenon comprises the reign of Solomon (chapters 1-9), and the reigns of the kings of Juda (10-36) and covers the same period as the last three Books of Kings.
The objects of Solomon his interest are the temple and its worship, not to supplement the omissions of Books of Kings but to write the religious history of Juda with the temple as its centre, and, as intimately connected with it, the history of the house of David.
Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, describes her journey to Jerusalem to meet with him.
According to the book of Kings in the Bible, the queen arrived in Jerusalem and asked King Solomon a series of difficult questions. He responded wisely to each one. The queen presented Solomon with many gifts and returned to her home.
Solomon is the one who gave us some more insight of God (in Proverbs a.o.) and let us know that God loves justice and wants us to work with integrity and refrain from offering or accepting bribes or giving in at worldly matters which are not justifiable for God. He also show the dangers of the rich, which are typically powerful, plus the tendency of the heart to abuse and overindulge.
He might have been a very busy person and therefore got the nickname “ant” or “An-Naml” (The Ant), who was a friend of God, but by his want or his lust for more, got sidetracked. In the Qu’ran it is the ant which looks at him and says things about him, which Solomon could hear and did not mid of. He knew Who he had to ask for teaching him how to do things and how to get more knowledge. He could thank for the great bounties that God had granted him and his parents to be able to use them in the way that He had commanded and was the cause of His pleasure so that he would not deviate from the right path, since being thankful for those abundant favours is not possible save with His succour and aid.
There is so much in this world we can gain, but there are more important things we can loose. The writers of the Book of books did not hide their faults and this way we also come to see how it went with Solomon who could come closer than anyone else in saying that he gained the whole world. We can see that h must have had the best and was articulate and very well-known. all luck seem to come like nothing but in the end, he died a man who had lost it. He got also to know that he lost the nation God had entrusted him with. This should be a good warning for us, even when we do have much less than Solomon.
We should check ourselves and be careful not to be not be over-righteous, neither to be over-wise, bringing ourselves in danger to destroy ourselves.
Solomon tells us not to be fools, but to use discernment. We are to trust in God and follow him, but never once to believe our goodness or our wisdom comes from our own effort.
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
2 Chronicles 9
Steven Gerrard with his explosive new book, My Story
I saw an advert for Steven Gerrard’s autobiography* the other day. It is entitled ‘My Story’.
Do you know how many autobiographies are called ‘My Story’? Gazza – ‘My Story’, Aled Jones – ‘My Story’, Sarah Ferguson – ‘My Story’, Julia Gillard – ‘My Story’, Cheryl Cole – ‘Cheryl, My Story’ (she’s just left her first name to seem more approachable I guess), Ryan Giggs – ‘My Life, My Story’ (he’s stepped it up a gear), and a ton of others.
I don’t read autobiographies, the only one I’ve read is Nelson Mandela’s. They strike me as a last ditch attempts for celebrities to bleed out some cash from us before they fade from our memories.
So why does Steven and all these other’s want to tell us their stories? There are hundreds of pages where they get to paint a picture of themselves so that when you finish that last page you come away thinking the best possible thoughts about that person. They can play up their achievements, they can deal with their mistakes, they can downplay their faults, they can give us perspective on that time they got arrested for the nightclub brawl – you can view that part of their life through their eyes and see that the other guy totally deserved to be hit in the face four times.
I am exactly the same, I spend a large majority of my time trying to make you think that I’m better than I am. My whole life is spent trying to perfect a charade. I spend the majority of my time trying to convince anyone I meet that I am someone slightly different than I am. I am still myself but I don’t show everything. I reign in my temper, I reign in my sarcasm. I play up the niceties, I play up the jokes. I feign interest. I’m not quite the man you might think I am.
My Facebook and my Instagram accounts show a side of me that I want you to see.
I trick myself a lot of the time. It’s only when you have a wife with a very good memory that you realise how often you contradict yourself without realising.
I even did it a few sentences ago when I have tried to make you think that I am more intellectual than I am because I have poured scorn on those Z-list celebrities (there you go I’ve done it again) whilst also casually dropping in that I only read accounts of respectable and influential political figures.
Chronicles paints a very positive picture of Solomon. There is not a bad word said about him. If Solomon was to commission a biography, then this is the text that he would want to be used. From Chapter 1 to Chapter 9 we have a wonderful account of a king who could do no wrong.
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Queen of Sheba** is in awe. There is peace, there is wisdom, there is wealth, there is spirituality and there is this man in the centre of it all who is faultless.
“How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!”
Solomon could put on a show. He has skill and talent and charisma and he can make a queen exclaim how wonderful he is.
We are with the Queen of Sheba. We see everything and we read Chapter 9 and we are wowed by it.
“The palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, the cupbearers in their robes and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD”
and we are overwhelmed!
Of course, the Queen of Sheba doesn’t know the whole story. If Chronicles is the autobiography, then Kings is the sensationalist scoop. We get a hint of it in Chapter 10 of Chronicles and verse 4,
“Your father (Solomon) put a heavy yoke on us.”
1 Kings 11: 4-6
1 Kings 11:4–6 (ESV): 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
Solomon is a man of contradictions. He is wise and yet foolish. His wisdom turned from godly to worldly. It was a talent that Solomon had to choose how to use. He used it to govern well but he also knew all the right words to say and the right things to do to get any woman he wanted. But on the flip side of that he then allowed those women to rule over him and get him to do whatever they wanted. He not only built them their gods and temples but actively worshipped there with them.
Solomon is not quite the man we thought he was. Which means he is more like you and me than maybe we first thought.
For all Solomon’s wisdom and success as a King, the overall account of his life leaves a sour taste in our mouths. There is such high hopes for this man to be a great and godly man and yet he has a major flaw that throws him completely off the godly track.
This sour taste is true for a lot of things in life, whether it’s Rolf Harris or capitalism, we can be easily mislead, disappointed, appalled and disillusioned. I don’t think there has ever been a government in existence which hasn’t lived up to expectation.
You also don’t have to look too hard to find that the food we eat and the clothes we wear are tainted by the blood, sweat and tears of underpaid and exploited workers in the third world. Our wealth exists because other people are poor. Someone goes hungry because I eat too much, someone goes naked because I don’t want to spend the extra money and buy ethical clothing.
If a Chronicles account was written about our country today it would marvel at the technology we use, the fine apparel we wear, the cities we have built, the science we have discovered but if a Kings account were written it would show at what expense and pain and suffering all these things were done.
So what do we do about this? How do we live our lives and think our thoughts knowing this? Do we take the Chronicles approach and forget all about the negatives and focus on just the good things or do we take the Kings approach and acknowledge the evil that is there?
Practically there is very little we can do apart from buy things more ethically but even then that is a lifestyle that is above and beyond what I get paid. Even if I could afford to do it, there is not enough people doing it to make the world sit up and do things differently.
The world and its injustices are too big for our actions to change them, even if you were a leader of a powerful country and you tried to change the way wealth is distributed you’d be booted out at the next election. The only way this can be fixed is for the Kingdom to come. Our very clothes and our very food can be reminder of the unfairness of this world and the real need for Jesus to come and sort it out.
You may think I’m being a bit harsh on Solomon and I’m giving the impression that he was hiding the poor people away and only allowing the Queen of Sheba to see the freshly painted parts of his Kingdom. Scripture makes it clear that the whole Kingdom was unprecedentedly wealthy and that
“all the kings of the earth sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart”.
This is not a charlatan, Solomon genuinely was a very wise man.
King Solomon, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We know that Solomon’s downfall happened at the end of his life so there is good reason to expect that up until that point he was the godly, wise king that Chronicles makes him out to be. When the Queen of Sheba came to visit, Solomon and his Kingdom truly were at their spiritual pinnacle and yet how subtly welcomed was the evil that led the LORD to become angry with Solomon in verse 9 of chapter 11.
1 Chron 28: 9
1 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV): David’s Charge to Solomon
9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
Basically, don’t pretend. Don’t try and fool God because he knows you. The Chronicles account is what human beings would have seen of Solomon whereas Kings is what God would have seen and it ends by saying that ‘Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD’. Although we can try to impress others with our autobiography or charade of our life…God is never fooled. He knows our every desire and our every thought.
So what’s our relationship with God? Are we honest with Him? There’s a strange relationship between us isn’t there? He knows everything about us and we know everything about us yet we sometimes still try to hide it. It’s a similar relationship we had with our parents when we were young.
“Simon, did you take the money that was on the table?”
“No”
“Simon, I know you took it. I just want you to apologise.”
“You can’t assume I took it, that’s unfair. What proof do you have?”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes, but it’s unfair for you to assume that was true.”
All my parents wanted me to do was to own up, but I was afraid of the punishment and then I was angry at the assumed guilt even though my parents knew me well enough to know I was guilty.
It’s the same with God, maybe we don’t confess our faults or acknowledge the reality because we’re scared of what God will do to us? But all He wants is a confession, an acknowledgement that we need his forgiveness. Our pride should have no place in God’s biography of us.
There is a clue to Solomon’s pride in his prayer of dedication in 2 Chronicles 6. If you scan through from verse 21-40 you will see that Solomon always refers to the people being the one who will be the sinners not himself. Verse 24 as an example
“When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you”.
Verse 26,
“When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you.”
Verse 27,
“Teach them the right way to live.”
It maybe that this is the way the English translation renders it and it maybe that, again, I am being unfair on Solomon especially because I am already viewing him in a negative light but it seems to me that Solomon knows the people are more than capable of sinning and needing redemption but he doesn’t consider the same for himself.
Compare this to his father’s prayer in Psalm 51 after David is confronted by the prophet Nathan:
Verse 3 – “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
Verse 7 – “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Verse 17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise”.
The Queen of Sheba Kneeling before King Solomon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Admittedly, it is a completely different scenario and the mood of the Solomon and David would have been polar opposites but we don’t have anything we can turn to that says that Solomon felt the same about his failings.
Where ever you are at this morning, whether you feel you could entertain the Queen of Sheba and she would be waxing lyrical about your godly wisdom or whether you feel like a prophet has come and exposed your sin there are lessons to be learned.
Whatever our situation we need to echo the words of Psalm 139 and verses 23-24 –
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
I like this because it admits that we probably don’t know ourselves as well as God does. If I knew about an offensive part of me, I would like to think that I would do my utmost to get rid of it, but maybe there are things that I am too blind to see and I want God to remove them if they are a blocker to my entrance to the Kingdom.
If we cannot be completely honest with ourselves and God then we aren’t the sort of people God wants in his Kingdom. We know how vehemently Jesus reacts to the Pharisees, he practically spits his tirade at them.
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Solomon was human. Like us, he had his strong points and his weak points. He had his ups and his downs. Solomon tried to present his most admirable parts to the Queen of Sheba but only God knew the reality. We all have different aspects we struggle with, for Solomon, it was his wives. There is no point trying to hide it because God knows it all- including the secret/hidden things. At the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon came to realise this for himself:
Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14
Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 (ESV): 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 7:23-25
Romans 7:23–25 (ESV): 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There are always going to be two sides to our autobiography. There is no way to hide the fact that we have two sides to us. There will always be this constant war in our bodies. Thanks be to God, that delivers us through Jesus.
Jesus himself understands this temptation to present ourselves in a certain way.
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
– Simon Peel
*
Notes
* Steven Gerrard – legendary captain of Liverpool and England – tells the story of the highs and lows of a twenty-year career at the top of English and world football.
** Josephus clearly identifies the queen who visited Solomon as “the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia,” and tells us that her name was Nikaulis.
+
Preceding articles:
Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
Believing in the send one and understanding that one does not live by bread alone
++
Additional reading
+++
Further reading
+++
Related articles
- The Canaanites and Us: Whom Shall We Worship? (blackchristiannews.com)
- Bible Daily Devotional – The end of the Assyrians: Nahum (ptl2010.com)
- People are not Taking Care of the World (halsmith.wordpress.com)
- A Maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (1956msbess.wordpress.com)
- Reflective Summary of ‘Israel’s Wisdom Tradition: The Place of Local Wisdom in Theological Discourse.’ (roninsjourney.com)
- Here’s the Good News. (shirley-mclain.net)
- King James Bible Study (brakeman1.com)
- Old Testament Christians (lewrockwell.com)
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Belgian Ecclesia Brussel - Leuven @[email protected] · 2015-12-01 · 14:30 UTC
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
After or in-between our series on finding a church, we would like to share an exhortation given a few weeks back by brother Simon Peel at the Newbury ecclesia which we could follow thanks to the Google Hangouts.
It referred back to the second part of the two Books of Chronicles (or the ‎ Diḇrê Hayyāmîm, “The Matters of the Days” or the Paraleipoménōn) which are the final books of the Hebrew Bible in the order followed by modern Judaism; in that generally followed in Christianity, they follow the two Books of Kings and precede Ezra–Nehemiah, concluding the history-oriented books of the Old Testament. That 2° book of the Solomon Chronicles or 2° Paralipomenon comprises the reign of Solomon (chapters 1-9), and the reigns of the kings of Juda (10-36) and covers the same period as the last three Books of Kings.
The objects of Solomon his interest are the temple and its worship, not to supplement the omissions of Books of Kings but to write the religious history of Juda with the temple as its centre, and, as intimately connected with it, the history of the house of David.
Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, describes her journey to Jerusalem to meet with him.
According to the book of Kings in the Bible, the queen arrived in Jerusalem and asked King Solomon a series of difficult questions. He responded wisely to each one. The queen presented Solomon with many gifts and returned to her home.
Solomon is the one who gave us some more insight of God (in Proverbs a.o.) and let us know that God loves justice and wants us to work with integrity and refrain from offering or accepting bribes or giving in at worldly matters which are not justifiable for God. He also show the dangers of the rich, which are typically powerful, plus the tendency of the heart to abuse and overindulge.
He might have been a very busy person and therefore got the nickname “ant” or “An-Naml” (The Ant), who was a friend of God, but by his want or his lust for more, got sidetracked. In the Qu’ran it is the ant which looks at him and says things about him, which Solomon could hear and did not mid of. He knew Who he had to ask for teaching him how to do things and how to get more knowledge. He could thank for the great bounties that God had granted him and his parents to be able to use them in the way that He had commanded and was the cause of His pleasure so that he would not deviate from the right path, since being thankful for those abundant favours is not possible save with His succour and aid.
There is so much in this world we can gain, but there are more important things we can loose. The writers of the Book of books did not hide their faults and this way we also come to see how it went with Solomon who could come closer than anyone else in saying that he gained the whole world. We can see that h must have had the best and was articulate and very well-known. all luck seem to come like nothing but in the end, he died a man who had lost it. He got also to know that he lost the nation God had entrusted him with. This should be a good warning for us, even when we do have much less than Solomon.
We should check ourselves and be careful not to be not be over-righteous, neither to be over-wise, bringing ourselves in danger to destroy ourselves.
Solomon tells us not to be fools, but to use discernment. We are to trust in God and follow him, but never once to believe our goodness or our wisdom comes from our own effort.
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
2 Chronicles 9
Steven Gerrard with his explosive new book, My Story
I saw an advert for Steven Gerrard’s autobiography* the other day. It is entitled ‘My Story’.
Do you know how many autobiographies are called ‘My Story’? Gazza – ‘My Story’, Aled Jones – ‘My Story’, Sarah Ferguson – ‘My Story’, Julia Gillard – ‘My Story’, Cheryl Cole – ‘Cheryl, My Story’ (she’s just left her first name to seem more approachable I guess), Ryan Giggs – ‘My Life, My Story’ (he’s stepped it up a gear), and a ton of others.
I don’t read autobiographies, the only one I’ve read is Nelson Mandela’s. They strike me as a last ditch attempts for celebrities to bleed out some cash from us before they fade from our memories.
So why does Steven and all these other’s want to tell us their stories? There are hundreds of pages where they get to paint a picture of themselves so that when you finish that last page you come away thinking the best possible thoughts about that person. They can play up their achievements, they can deal with their mistakes, they can downplay their faults, they can give us perspective on that time they got arrested for the nightclub brawl – you can view that part of their life through their eyes and see that the other guy totally deserved to be hit in the face four times.
I am exactly the same, I spend a large majority of my time trying to make you think that I’m better than I am. My whole life is spent trying to perfect a charade. I spend the majority of my time trying to convince anyone I meet that I am someone slightly different than I am. I am still myself but I don’t show everything. I reign in my temper, I reign in my sarcasm. I play up the niceties, I play up the jokes. I feign interest. I’m not quite the man you might think I am.
My Facebook and my Instagram accounts show a side of me that I want you to see.
I trick myself a lot of the time. It’s only when you have a wife with a very good memory that you realise how often you contradict yourself without realising.
I even did it a few sentences ago when I have tried to make you think that I am more intellectual than I am because I have poured scorn on those Z-list celebrities (there you go I’ve done it again) whilst also casually dropping in that I only read accounts of respectable and influential political figures.
Chronicles paints a very positive picture of Solomon. There is not a bad word said about him. If Solomon was to commission a biography, then this is the text that he would want to be used. From Chapter 1 to Chapter 9 we have a wonderful account of a king who could do no wrong.
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Queen of Sheba** is in awe. There is peace, there is wisdom, there is wealth, there is spirituality and there is this man in the centre of it all who is faultless.
“How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!”
Solomon could put on a show. He has skill and talent and charisma and he can make a queen exclaim how wonderful he is.
We are with the Queen of Sheba. We see everything and we read Chapter 9 and we are wowed by it.
“The palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, the cupbearers in their robes and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD”
and we are overwhelmed!
Of course, the Queen of Sheba doesn’t know the whole story. If Chronicles is the autobiography, then Kings is the sensationalist scoop. We get a hint of it in Chapter 10 of Chronicles and verse 4,
“Your father (Solomon) put a heavy yoke on us.”
1 Kings 11: 4-6
1 Kings 11:4–6 (ESV): 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
Solomon is a man of contradictions. He is wise and yet foolish. His wisdom turned from godly to worldly. It was a talent that Solomon had to choose how to use. He used it to govern well but he also knew all the right words to say and the right things to do to get any woman he wanted. But on the flip side of that he then allowed those women to rule over him and get him to do whatever they wanted. He not only built them their gods and temples but actively worshipped there with them.
Solomon is not quite the man we thought he was. Which means he is more like you and me than maybe we first thought.
For all Solomon’s wisdom and success as a King, the overall account of his life leaves a sour taste in our mouths. There is such high hopes for this man to be a great and godly man and yet he has a major flaw that throws him completely off the godly track.
This sour taste is true for a lot of things in life, whether it’s Rolf Harris or capitalism, we can be easily mislead, disappointed, appalled and disillusioned. I don’t think there has ever been a government in existence which hasn’t lived up to expectation.
You also don’t have to look too hard to find that the food we eat and the clothes we wear are tainted by the blood, sweat and tears of underpaid and exploited workers in the third world. Our wealth exists because other people are poor. Someone goes hungry because I eat too much, someone goes naked because I don’t want to spend the extra money and buy ethical clothing.
If a Chronicles account was written about our country today it would marvel at the technology we use, the fine apparel we wear, the cities we have built, the science we have discovered but if a Kings account were written it would show at what expense and pain and suffering all these things were done.
So what do we do about this? How do we live our lives and think our thoughts knowing this? Do we take the Chronicles approach and forget all about the negatives and focus on just the good things or do we take the Kings approach and acknowledge the evil that is there?
Practically there is very little we can do apart from buy things more ethically but even then that is a lifestyle that is above and beyond what I get paid. Even if I could afford to do it, there is not enough people doing it to make the world sit up and do things differently.
The world and its injustices are too big for our actions to change them, even if you were a leader of a powerful country and you tried to change the way wealth is distributed you’d be booted out at the next election. The only way this can be fixed is for the Kingdom to come. Our very clothes and our very food can be reminder of the unfairness of this world and the real need for Jesus to come and sort it out.
You may think I’m being a bit harsh on Solomon and I’m giving the impression that he was hiding the poor people away and only allowing the Queen of Sheba to see the freshly painted parts of his Kingdom. Scripture makes it clear that the whole Kingdom was unprecedentedly wealthy and that
“all the kings of the earth sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart”.
This is not a charlatan, Solomon genuinely was a very wise man.
King Solomon, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We know that Solomon’s downfall happened at the end of his life so there is good reason to expect that up until that point he was the godly, wise king that Chronicles makes him out to be. When the Queen of Sheba came to visit, Solomon and his Kingdom truly were at their spiritual pinnacle and yet how subtly welcomed was the evil that led the LORD to become angry with Solomon in verse 9 of chapter 11.
1 Chron 28: 9
1 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV): David’s Charge to Solomon
9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
Basically, don’t pretend. Don’t try and fool God because he knows you. The Chronicles account is what human beings would have seen of Solomon whereas Kings is what God would have seen and it ends by saying that ‘Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD’. Although we can try to impress others with our autobiography or charade of our life…God is never fooled. He knows our every desire and our every thought.
So what’s our relationship with God? Are we honest with Him? There’s a strange relationship between us isn’t there? He knows everything about us and we know everything about us yet we sometimes still try to hide it. It’s a similar relationship we had with our parents when we were young.
“Simon, did you take the money that was on the table?”
“No”
“Simon, I know you took it. I just want you to apologise.”
“You can’t assume I took it, that’s unfair. What proof do you have?”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes, but it’s unfair for you to assume that was true.”
All my parents wanted me to do was to own up, but I was afraid of the punishment and then I was angry at the assumed guilt even though my parents knew me well enough to know I was guilty.
It’s the same with God, maybe we don’t confess our faults or acknowledge the reality because we’re scared of what God will do to us? But all He wants is a confession, an acknowledgement that we need his forgiveness. Our pride should have no place in God’s biography of us.
There is a clue to Solomon’s pride in his prayer of dedication in 2 Chronicles 6. If you scan through from verse 21-40 you will see that Solomon always refers to the people being the one who will be the sinners not himself. Verse 24 as an example
“When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you”.
Verse 26,
“When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you.”
Verse 27,
“Teach them the right way to live.”
It maybe that this is the way the English translation renders it and it maybe that, again, I am being unfair on Solomon especially because I am already viewing him in a negative light but it seems to me that Solomon knows the people are more than capable of sinning and needing redemption but he doesn’t consider the same for himself.
Compare this to his father’s prayer in Psalm 51 after David is confronted by the prophet Nathan:
Verse 3 – “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
Verse 7 – “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Verse 17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise”.
The Queen of Sheba Kneeling before King Solomon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Admittedly, it is a completely different scenario and the mood of the Solomon and David would have been polar opposites but we don’t have anything we can turn to that says that Solomon felt the same about his failings.
Where ever you are at this morning, whether you feel you could entertain the Queen of Sheba and she would be waxing lyrical about your godly wisdom or whether you feel like a prophet has come and exposed your sin there are lessons to be learned.
Whatever our situation we need to echo the words of Psalm 139 and verses 23-24 –
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
I like this because it admits that we probably don’t know ourselves as well as God does. If I knew about an offensive part of me, I would like to think that I would do my utmost to get rid of it, but maybe there are things that I am too blind to see and I want God to remove them if they are a blocker to my entrance to the Kingdom.
If we cannot be completely honest with ourselves and God then we aren’t the sort of people God wants in his Kingdom. We know how vehemently Jesus reacts to the Pharisees, he practically spits his tirade at them.
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Solomon was human. Like us, he had his strong points and his weak points. He had his ups and his downs. Solomon tried to present his most admirable parts to the Queen of Sheba but only God knew the reality. We all have different aspects we struggle with, for Solomon, it was his wives. There is no point trying to hide it because God knows it all- including the secret/hidden things. At the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon came to realise this for himself:
Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14
Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 (ESV): 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 7:23-25
Romans 7:23–25 (ESV): 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There are always going to be two sides to our autobiography. There is no way to hide the fact that we have two sides to us. There will always be this constant war in our bodies. Thanks be to God, that delivers us through Jesus.
Jesus himself understands this temptation to present ourselves in a certain way.
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
– Simon Peel
*
Notes
* Steven Gerrard – legendary captain of Liverpool and England – tells the story of the highs and lows of a twenty-year career at the top of English and world football.
** Josephus clearly identifies the queen who visited Solomon as “the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia,” and tells us that her name was Nikaulis.
+
Preceding articles:
Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
Believing in the send one and understanding that one does not live by bread alone
++
Additional reading
+++
Further reading
+++
Related articles
- The Canaanites and Us: Whom Shall We Worship? (blackchristiannews.com)
- Bible Daily Devotional – The end of the Assyrians: Nahum (ptl2010.com)
- People are not Taking Care of the World (halsmith.wordpress.com)
- A Maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (1956msbess.wordpress.com)
- Reflective Summary of ‘Israel’s Wisdom Tradition: The Place of Local Wisdom in Theological Discourse.’ (roninsjourney.com)
- Here’s the Good News. (shirley-mclain.net)
- King James Bible Study (brakeman1.com)
- Old Testament Christians (lewrockwell.com)
Rate this:

#AcknowledgingEvil #AllKnowingGod #ApproachingThings #Autobiographies #Autobiography #BookOfKings #BooksOfChronicles #Chronicles #ConfessingOurFaults #David #Desires #Disillusion #Evil #Facebook #GodKnowingTheHeart #InclinationOfTheHeart #Injustice #Instagram #KnowingYourself #PoliticalFigures #Pretending #Pride #QueenOfShebaEgyptAndEthiopia_ #RelationshipWithGod #Solomon #SolomonSWisdom #StevenGerrard #Suffering #Technology #toFoolGod #WayToLive #Wealth #World #WorldlyWisdom
#acknowledgingevil #allknowinggod #approachingthings #autobiographies #autobiography #bookofkings
Belgian Ecclesia Brussel - Leuven @[email protected] · 2015-12-01 · 14:30 UTC
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
After or in-between our series on finding a church, we would like to share an exhortation given a few weeks back by brother Simon Peel at the Newbury ecclesia which we could follow thanks to the Google Hangouts.
It referred back to the second part of the two Books of Chronicles (or the ‎ Diḇrê Hayyāmîm, “The Matters of the Days” or the Paraleipoménōn) which are the final books of the Hebrew Bible in the order followed by modern Judaism; in that generally followed in Christianity, they follow the two Books of Kings and precede Ezra–Nehemiah, concluding the history-oriented books of the Old Testament. That 2° book of the Solomon Chronicles or 2° Paralipomenon comprises the reign of Solomon (chapters 1-9), and the reigns of the kings of Juda (10-36) and covers the same period as the last three Books of Kings.
The objects of Solomon his interest are the temple and its worship, not to supplement the omissions of Books of Kings but to write the religious history of Juda with the temple as its centre, and, as intimately connected with it, the history of the house of David.
Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, describes her journey to Jerusalem to meet with him.
According to the book of Kings in the Bible, the queen arrived in Jerusalem and asked King Solomon a series of difficult questions. He responded wisely to each one. The queen presented Solomon with many gifts and returned to her home.
Solomon is the one who gave us some more insight of God (in Proverbs a.o.) and let us know that God loves justice and wants us to work with integrity and refrain from offering or accepting bribes or giving in at worldly matters which are not justifiable for God. He also show the dangers of the rich, which are typically powerful, plus the tendency of the heart to abuse and overindulge.
He might have been a very busy person and therefore got the nickname “ant” or “An-Naml” (The Ant), who was a friend of God, but by his want or his lust for more, got sidetracked. In the Qu’ran it is the ant which looks at him and says things about him, which Solomon could hear and did not mid of. He knew Who he had to ask for teaching him how to do things and how to get more knowledge. He could thank for the great bounties that God had granted him and his parents to be able to use them in the way that He had commanded and was the cause of His pleasure so that he would not deviate from the right path, since being thankful for those abundant favours is not possible save with His succour and aid.
There is so much in this world we can gain, but there are more important things we can loose. The writers of the Book of books did not hide their faults and this way we also come to see how it went with Solomon who could come closer than anyone else in saying that he gained the whole world. We can see that h must have had the best and was articulate and very well-known. all luck seem to come like nothing but in the end, he died a man who had lost it. He got also to know that he lost the nation God had entrusted him with. This should be a good warning for us, even when we do have much less than Solomon.
We should check ourselves and be careful not to be not be over-righteous, neither to be over-wise, bringing ourselves in danger to destroy ourselves.
Solomon tells us not to be fools, but to use discernment. We are to trust in God and follow him, but never once to believe our goodness or our wisdom comes from our own effort.
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
2 Chronicles 9
Steven Gerrard with his explosive new book, My Story
I saw an advert for Steven Gerrard’s autobiography* the other day. It is entitled ‘My Story’.
Do you know how many autobiographies are called ‘My Story’? Gazza – ‘My Story’, Aled Jones – ‘My Story’, Sarah Ferguson – ‘My Story’, Julia Gillard – ‘My Story’, Cheryl Cole – ‘Cheryl, My Story’ (she’s just left her first name to seem more approachable I guess), Ryan Giggs – ‘My Life, My Story’ (he’s stepped it up a gear), and a ton of others.
I don’t read autobiographies, the only one I’ve read is Nelson Mandela’s. They strike me as a last ditch attempts for celebrities to bleed out some cash from us before they fade from our memories.
So why does Steven and all these other’s want to tell us their stories? There are hundreds of pages where they get to paint a picture of themselves so that when you finish that last page you come away thinking the best possible thoughts about that person. They can play up their achievements, they can deal with their mistakes, they can downplay their faults, they can give us perspective on that time they got arrested for the nightclub brawl – you can view that part of their life through their eyes and see that the other guy totally deserved to be hit in the face four times.
I am exactly the same, I spend a large majority of my time trying to make you think that I’m better than I am. My whole life is spent trying to perfect a charade. I spend the majority of my time trying to convince anyone I meet that I am someone slightly different than I am. I am still myself but I don’t show everything. I reign in my temper, I reign in my sarcasm. I play up the niceties, I play up the jokes. I feign interest. I’m not quite the man you might think I am.
My Facebook and my Instagram accounts show a side of me that I want you to see.
I trick myself a lot of the time. It’s only when you have a wife with a very good memory that you realise how often you contradict yourself without realising.
I even did it a few sentences ago when I have tried to make you think that I am more intellectual than I am because I have poured scorn on those Z-list celebrities (there you go I’ve done it again) whilst also casually dropping in that I only read accounts of respectable and influential political figures.
Chronicles paints a very positive picture of Solomon. There is not a bad word said about him. If Solomon was to commission a biography, then this is the text that he would want to be used. From Chapter 1 to Chapter 9 we have a wonderful account of a king who could do no wrong.
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Queen of Sheba** is in awe. There is peace, there is wisdom, there is wealth, there is spirituality and there is this man in the centre of it all who is faultless.
“How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!”
Solomon could put on a show. He has skill and talent and charisma and he can make a queen exclaim how wonderful he is.
We are with the Queen of Sheba. We see everything and we read Chapter 9 and we are wowed by it.
“The palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, the cupbearers in their robes and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD”
and we are overwhelmed!
Of course, the Queen of Sheba doesn’t know the whole story. If Chronicles is the autobiography, then Kings is the sensationalist scoop. We get a hint of it in Chapter 10 of Chronicles and verse 4,
“Your father (Solomon) put a heavy yoke on us.”
1 Kings 11: 4-6
1 Kings 11:4–6 (ESV): 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
Solomon is a man of contradictions. He is wise and yet foolish. His wisdom turned from godly to worldly. It was a talent that Solomon had to choose how to use. He used it to govern well but he also knew all the right words to say and the right things to do to get any woman he wanted. But on the flip side of that he then allowed those women to rule over him and get him to do whatever they wanted. He not only built them their gods and temples but actively worshipped there with them.
Solomon is not quite the man we thought he was. Which means he is more like you and me than maybe we first thought.
For all Solomon’s wisdom and success as a King, the overall account of his life leaves a sour taste in our mouths. There is such high hopes for this man to be a great and godly man and yet he has a major flaw that throws him completely off the godly track.
This sour taste is true for a lot of things in life, whether it’s Rolf Harris or capitalism, we can be easily mislead, disappointed, appalled and disillusioned. I don’t think there has ever been a government in existence which hasn’t lived up to expectation.
You also don’t have to look too hard to find that the food we eat and the clothes we wear are tainted by the blood, sweat and tears of underpaid and exploited workers in the third world. Our wealth exists because other people are poor. Someone goes hungry because I eat too much, someone goes naked because I don’t want to spend the extra money and buy ethical clothing.
If a Chronicles account was written about our country today it would marvel at the technology we use, the fine apparel we wear, the cities we have built, the science we have discovered but if a Kings account were written it would show at what expense and pain and suffering all these things were done.
So what do we do about this? How do we live our lives and think our thoughts knowing this? Do we take the Chronicles approach and forget all about the negatives and focus on just the good things or do we take the Kings approach and acknowledge the evil that is there?
Practically there is very little we can do apart from buy things more ethically but even then that is a lifestyle that is above and beyond what I get paid. Even if I could afford to do it, there is not enough people doing it to make the world sit up and do things differently.
The world and its injustices are too big for our actions to change them, even if you were a leader of a powerful country and you tried to change the way wealth is distributed you’d be booted out at the next election. The only way this can be fixed is for the Kingdom to come. Our very clothes and our very food can be reminder of the unfairness of this world and the real need for Jesus to come and sort it out.
You may think I’m being a bit harsh on Solomon and I’m giving the impression that he was hiding the poor people away and only allowing the Queen of Sheba to see the freshly painted parts of his Kingdom. Scripture makes it clear that the whole Kingdom was unprecedentedly wealthy and that
“all the kings of the earth sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart”.
This is not a charlatan, Solomon genuinely was a very wise man.
King Solomon, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We know that Solomon’s downfall happened at the end of his life so there is good reason to expect that up until that point he was the godly, wise king that Chronicles makes him out to be. When the Queen of Sheba came to visit, Solomon and his Kingdom truly were at their spiritual pinnacle and yet how subtly welcomed was the evil that led the LORD to become angry with Solomon in verse 9 of chapter 11.
1 Chron 28: 9
1 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV): David’s Charge to Solomon
9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
Basically, don’t pretend. Don’t try and fool God because he knows you. The Chronicles account is what human beings would have seen of Solomon whereas Kings is what God would have seen and it ends by saying that ‘Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD’. Although we can try to impress others with our autobiography or charade of our life…God is never fooled. He knows our every desire and our every thought.
So what’s our relationship with God? Are we honest with Him? There’s a strange relationship between us isn’t there? He knows everything about us and we know everything about us yet we sometimes still try to hide it. It’s a similar relationship we had with our parents when we were young.
“Simon, did you take the money that was on the table?”
“No”
“Simon, I know you took it. I just want you to apologise.”
“You can’t assume I took it, that’s unfair. What proof do you have?”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes, but it’s unfair for you to assume that was true.”
All my parents wanted me to do was to own up, but I was afraid of the punishment and then I was angry at the assumed guilt even though my parents knew me well enough to know I was guilty.
It’s the same with God, maybe we don’t confess our faults or acknowledge the reality because we’re scared of what God will do to us? But all He wants is a confession, an acknowledgement that we need his forgiveness. Our pride should have no place in God’s biography of us.
There is a clue to Solomon’s pride in his prayer of dedication in 2 Chronicles 6. If you scan through from verse 21-40 you will see that Solomon always refers to the people being the one who will be the sinners not himself. Verse 24 as an example
“When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you”.
Verse 26,
“When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you.”
Verse 27,
“Teach them the right way to live.”
It maybe that this is the way the English translation renders it and it maybe that, again, I am being unfair on Solomon especially because I am already viewing him in a negative light but it seems to me that Solomon knows the people are more than capable of sinning and needing redemption but he doesn’t consider the same for himself.
Compare this to his father’s prayer in Psalm 51 after David is confronted by the prophet Nathan:
Verse 3 – “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
Verse 7 – “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Verse 17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise”.
The Queen of Sheba Kneeling before King Solomon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Admittedly, it is a completely different scenario and the mood of the Solomon and David would have been polar opposites but we don’t have anything we can turn to that says that Solomon felt the same about his failings.
Where ever you are at this morning, whether you feel you could entertain the Queen of Sheba and she would be waxing lyrical about your godly wisdom or whether you feel like a prophet has come and exposed your sin there are lessons to be learned.
Whatever our situation we need to echo the words of Psalm 139 and verses 23-24 –
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
I like this because it admits that we probably don’t know ourselves as well as God does. If I knew about an offensive part of me, I would like to think that I would do my utmost to get rid of it, but maybe there are things that I am too blind to see and I want God to remove them if they are a blocker to my entrance to the Kingdom.
If we cannot be completely honest with ourselves and God then we aren’t the sort of people God wants in his Kingdom. We know how vehemently Jesus reacts to the Pharisees, he practically spits his tirade at them.
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Solomon was human. Like us, he had his strong points and his weak points. He had his ups and his downs. Solomon tried to present his most admirable parts to the Queen of Sheba but only God knew the reality. We all have different aspects we struggle with, for Solomon, it was his wives. There is no point trying to hide it because God knows it all- including the secret/hidden things. At the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon came to realise this for himself:
Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14
Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 (ESV): 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 7:23-25
Romans 7:23–25 (ESV): 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There are always going to be two sides to our autobiography. There is no way to hide the fact that we have two sides to us. There will always be this constant war in our bodies. Thanks be to God, that delivers us through Jesus.
Jesus himself understands this temptation to present ourselves in a certain way.
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
– Simon Peel
*
Notes
* Steven Gerrard – legendary captain of Liverpool and England – tells the story of the highs and lows of a twenty-year career at the top of English and world football.
** Josephus clearly identifies the queen who visited Solomon as “the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia,” and tells us that her name was Nikaulis.
+
Preceding articles:
Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
Believing in the send one and understanding that one does not live by bread alone
++
Additional reading
+++
Further reading
+++
Related articles
- The Canaanites and Us: Whom Shall We Worship? (blackchristiannews.com)
- Bible Daily Devotional – The end of the Assyrians: Nahum (ptl2010.com)
- People are not Taking Care of the World (halsmith.wordpress.com)
- A Maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (1956msbess.wordpress.com)
- Reflective Summary of ‘Israel’s Wisdom Tradition: The Place of Local Wisdom in Theological Discourse.’ (roninsjourney.com)
- Here’s the Good News. (shirley-mclain.net)
- King James Bible Study (brakeman1.com)
- Old Testament Christians (lewrockwell.com)
Rate this:

#AcknowledgingEvil #AllKnowingGod #ApproachingThings #Autobiographies #Autobiography #BookOfKings #BooksOfChronicles #Chronicles #ConfessingOurFaults #David #Desires #Disillusion #Evil #Facebook #GodKnowingTheHeart #InclinationOfTheHeart #Injustice #Instagram #KnowingYourself #PoliticalFigures #Pretending #Pride #QueenOfShebaEgyptAndEthiopia_ #RelationshipWithGod #Solomon #SolomonSWisdom #StevenGerrard #Suffering #Technology #toFoolGod #WayToLive #Wealth #World #WorldlyWisdom
#worldlywisdom #world #wealth #waytolive #tofoolgod #technology
Belgian Ecclesia Brussel - Leuven @[email protected] · 2015-12-01 · 14:30 UTC
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
After or in-between our series on finding a church, we would like to share an exhortation given a few weeks back by brother Simon Peel at the Newbury ecclesia which we could follow thanks to the Google Hangouts.
It referred back to the second part of the two Books of Chronicles (or the ‎ Diḇrê Hayyāmîm, “The Matters of the Days” or the Paraleipoménōn) which are the final books of the Hebrew Bible in the order followed by modern Judaism; in that generally followed in Christianity, they follow the two Books of Kings and precede Ezra–Nehemiah, concluding the history-oriented books of the Old Testament. That 2° book of the Solomon Chronicles or 2° Paralipomenon comprises the reign of Solomon (chapters 1-9), and the reigns of the kings of Juda (10-36) and covers the same period as the last three Books of Kings.
The objects of Solomon his interest are the temple and its worship, not to supplement the omissions of Books of Kings but to write the religious history of Juda with the temple as its centre, and, as intimately connected with it, the history of the house of David.
Solomon, renowned for his wisdom, describes her journey to Jerusalem to meet with him.
According to the book of Kings in the Bible, the queen arrived in Jerusalem and asked King Solomon a series of difficult questions. He responded wisely to each one. The queen presented Solomon with many gifts and returned to her home.
Solomon is the one who gave us some more insight of God (in Proverbs a.o.) and let us know that God loves justice and wants us to work with integrity and refrain from offering or accepting bribes or giving in at worldly matters which are not justifiable for God. He also show the dangers of the rich, which are typically powerful, plus the tendency of the heart to abuse and overindulge.
He might have been a very busy person and therefore got the nickname “ant” or “An-Naml” (The Ant), who was a friend of God, but by his want or his lust for more, got sidetracked. In the Qu’ran it is the ant which looks at him and says things about him, which Solomon could hear and did not mid of. He knew Who he had to ask for teaching him how to do things and how to get more knowledge. He could thank for the great bounties that God had granted him and his parents to be able to use them in the way that He had commanded and was the cause of His pleasure so that he would not deviate from the right path, since being thankful for those abundant favours is not possible save with His succour and aid.
There is so much in this world we can gain, but there are more important things we can loose. The writers of the Book of books did not hide their faults and this way we also come to see how it went with Solomon who could come closer than anyone else in saying that he gained the whole world. We can see that h must have had the best and was articulate and very well-known. all luck seem to come like nothing but in the end, he died a man who had lost it. He got also to know that he lost the nation God had entrusted him with. This should be a good warning for us, even when we do have much less than Solomon.
We should check ourselves and be careful not to be not be over-righteous, neither to be over-wise, bringing ourselves in danger to destroy ourselves.
Solomon tells us not to be fools, but to use discernment. We are to trust in God and follow him, but never once to believe our goodness or our wisdom comes from our own effort.
Queen of Sheba visits Solomon
2 Chronicles 9
Steven Gerrard with his explosive new book, My Story
I saw an advert for Steven Gerrard’s autobiography* the other day. It is entitled ‘My Story’.
Do you know how many autobiographies are called ‘My Story’? Gazza – ‘My Story’, Aled Jones – ‘My Story’, Sarah Ferguson – ‘My Story’, Julia Gillard – ‘My Story’, Cheryl Cole – ‘Cheryl, My Story’ (she’s just left her first name to seem more approachable I guess), Ryan Giggs – ‘My Life, My Story’ (he’s stepped it up a gear), and a ton of others.
I don’t read autobiographies, the only one I’ve read is Nelson Mandela’s. They strike me as a last ditch attempts for celebrities to bleed out some cash from us before they fade from our memories.
So why does Steven and all these other’s want to tell us their stories? There are hundreds of pages where they get to paint a picture of themselves so that when you finish that last page you come away thinking the best possible thoughts about that person. They can play up their achievements, they can deal with their mistakes, they can downplay their faults, they can give us perspective on that time they got arrested for the nightclub brawl – you can view that part of their life through their eyes and see that the other guy totally deserved to be hit in the face four times.
I am exactly the same, I spend a large majority of my time trying to make you think that I’m better than I am. My whole life is spent trying to perfect a charade. I spend the majority of my time trying to convince anyone I meet that I am someone slightly different than I am. I am still myself but I don’t show everything. I reign in my temper, I reign in my sarcasm. I play up the niceties, I play up the jokes. I feign interest. I’m not quite the man you might think I am.
My Facebook and my Instagram accounts show a side of me that I want you to see.
I trick myself a lot of the time. It’s only when you have a wife with a very good memory that you realise how often you contradict yourself without realising.
I even did it a few sentences ago when I have tried to make you think that I am more intellectual than I am because I have poured scorn on those Z-list celebrities (there you go I’ve done it again) whilst also casually dropping in that I only read accounts of respectable and influential political figures.
Chronicles paints a very positive picture of Solomon. There is not a bad word said about him. If Solomon was to commission a biography, then this is the text that he would want to be used. From Chapter 1 to Chapter 9 we have a wonderful account of a king who could do no wrong.
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Queen of Sheba** is in awe. There is peace, there is wisdom, there is wealth, there is spirituality and there is this man in the centre of it all who is faultless.
“How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!”
Solomon could put on a show. He has skill and talent and charisma and he can make a queen exclaim how wonderful he is.
We are with the Queen of Sheba. We see everything and we read Chapter 9 and we are wowed by it.
“The palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, the cupbearers in their robes and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD”
and we are overwhelmed!
Of course, the Queen of Sheba doesn’t know the whole story. If Chronicles is the autobiography, then Kings is the sensationalist scoop. We get a hint of it in Chapter 10 of Chronicles and verse 4,
“Your father (Solomon) put a heavy yoke on us.”
1 Kings 11: 4-6
1 Kings 11:4–6 (ESV): 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
Solomon is a man of contradictions. He is wise and yet foolish. His wisdom turned from godly to worldly. It was a talent that Solomon had to choose how to use. He used it to govern well but he also knew all the right words to say and the right things to do to get any woman he wanted. But on the flip side of that he then allowed those women to rule over him and get him to do whatever they wanted. He not only built them their gods and temples but actively worshipped there with them.
Solomon is not quite the man we thought he was. Which means he is more like you and me than maybe we first thought.
For all Solomon’s wisdom and success as a King, the overall account of his life leaves a sour taste in our mouths. There is such high hopes for this man to be a great and godly man and yet he has a major flaw that throws him completely off the godly track.
This sour taste is true for a lot of things in life, whether it’s Rolf Harris or capitalism, we can be easily mislead, disappointed, appalled and disillusioned. I don’t think there has ever been a government in existence which hasn’t lived up to expectation.
You also don’t have to look too hard to find that the food we eat and the clothes we wear are tainted by the blood, sweat and tears of underpaid and exploited workers in the third world. Our wealth exists because other people are poor. Someone goes hungry because I eat too much, someone goes naked because I don’t want to spend the extra money and buy ethical clothing.
If a Chronicles account was written about our country today it would marvel at the technology we use, the fine apparel we wear, the cities we have built, the science we have discovered but if a Kings account were written it would show at what expense and pain and suffering all these things were done.
So what do we do about this? How do we live our lives and think our thoughts knowing this? Do we take the Chronicles approach and forget all about the negatives and focus on just the good things or do we take the Kings approach and acknowledge the evil that is there?
Practically there is very little we can do apart from buy things more ethically but even then that is a lifestyle that is above and beyond what I get paid. Even if I could afford to do it, there is not enough people doing it to make the world sit up and do things differently.
The world and its injustices are too big for our actions to change them, even if you were a leader of a powerful country and you tried to change the way wealth is distributed you’d be booted out at the next election. The only way this can be fixed is for the Kingdom to come. Our very clothes and our very food can be reminder of the unfairness of this world and the real need for Jesus to come and sort it out.
You may think I’m being a bit harsh on Solomon and I’m giving the impression that he was hiding the poor people away and only allowing the Queen of Sheba to see the freshly painted parts of his Kingdom. Scripture makes it clear that the whole Kingdom was unprecedentedly wealthy and that
“all the kings of the earth sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart”.
This is not a charlatan, Solomon genuinely was a very wise man.
King Solomon, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We know that Solomon’s downfall happened at the end of his life so there is good reason to expect that up until that point he was the godly, wise king that Chronicles makes him out to be. When the Queen of Sheba came to visit, Solomon and his Kingdom truly were at their spiritual pinnacle and yet how subtly welcomed was the evil that led the LORD to become angry with Solomon in verse 9 of chapter 11.
1 Chron 28: 9
1 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV): David’s Charge to Solomon
9 “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
Basically, don’t pretend. Don’t try and fool God because he knows you. The Chronicles account is what human beings would have seen of Solomon whereas Kings is what God would have seen and it ends by saying that ‘Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD’. Although we can try to impress others with our autobiography or charade of our life…God is never fooled. He knows our every desire and our every thought.
So what’s our relationship with God? Are we honest with Him? There’s a strange relationship between us isn’t there? He knows everything about us and we know everything about us yet we sometimes still try to hide it. It’s a similar relationship we had with our parents when we were young.
“Simon, did you take the money that was on the table?”
“No”
“Simon, I know you took it. I just want you to apologise.”
“You can’t assume I took it, that’s unfair. What proof do you have?”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes, but it’s unfair for you to assume that was true.”
All my parents wanted me to do was to own up, but I was afraid of the punishment and then I was angry at the assumed guilt even though my parents knew me well enough to know I was guilty.
It’s the same with God, maybe we don’t confess our faults or acknowledge the reality because we’re scared of what God will do to us? But all He wants is a confession, an acknowledgement that we need his forgiveness. Our pride should have no place in God’s biography of us.
There is a clue to Solomon’s pride in his prayer of dedication in 2 Chronicles 6. If you scan through from verse 21-40 you will see that Solomon always refers to the people being the one who will be the sinners not himself. Verse 24 as an example
“When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you”.
Verse 26,
“When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you.”
Verse 27,
“Teach them the right way to live.”
It maybe that this is the way the English translation renders it and it maybe that, again, I am being unfair on Solomon especially because I am already viewing him in a negative light but it seems to me that Solomon knows the people are more than capable of sinning and needing redemption but he doesn’t consider the same for himself.
Compare this to his father’s prayer in Psalm 51 after David is confronted by the prophet Nathan:
Verse 3 – “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
Verse 7 – “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Verse 17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise”.
The Queen of Sheba Kneeling before King Solomon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Admittedly, it is a completely different scenario and the mood of the Solomon and David would have been polar opposites but we don’t have anything we can turn to that says that Solomon felt the same about his failings.
Where ever you are at this morning, whether you feel you could entertain the Queen of Sheba and she would be waxing lyrical about your godly wisdom or whether you feel like a prophet has come and exposed your sin there are lessons to be learned.
Whatever our situation we need to echo the words of Psalm 139 and verses 23-24 –
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
I like this because it admits that we probably don’t know ourselves as well as God does. If I knew about an offensive part of me, I would like to think that I would do my utmost to get rid of it, but maybe there are things that I am too blind to see and I want God to remove them if they are a blocker to my entrance to the Kingdom.
If we cannot be completely honest with ourselves and God then we aren’t the sort of people God wants in his Kingdom. We know how vehemently Jesus reacts to the Pharisees, he practically spits his tirade at them.
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Solomon was human. Like us, he had his strong points and his weak points. He had his ups and his downs. Solomon tried to present his most admirable parts to the Queen of Sheba but only God knew the reality. We all have different aspects we struggle with, for Solomon, it was his wives. There is no point trying to hide it because God knows it all- including the secret/hidden things. At the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon came to realise this for himself:
Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14
Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 (ESV): 13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 7:23-25
Romans 7:23–25 (ESV): 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There are always going to be two sides to our autobiography. There is no way to hide the fact that we have two sides to us. There will always be this constant war in our bodies. Thanks be to God, that delivers us through Jesus.
Jesus himself understands this temptation to present ourselves in a certain way.
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
– Simon Peel
*
Notes
* Steven Gerrard – legendary captain of Liverpool and England – tells the story of the highs and lows of a twenty-year career at the top of English and world football.
** Josephus clearly identifies the queen who visited Solomon as “the woman who ruled Egypt and Ethiopia,” and tells us that her name was Nikaulis.
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Preceding articles:
Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
Believing in the send one and understanding that one does not live by bread alone
++
Additional reading
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Further reading
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Related articles
- The Canaanites and Us: Whom Shall We Worship? (blackchristiannews.com)
- Bible Daily Devotional – The end of the Assyrians: Nahum (ptl2010.com)
- People are not Taking Care of the World (halsmith.wordpress.com)
- A Maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (1956msbess.wordpress.com)
- Reflective Summary of ‘Israel’s Wisdom Tradition: The Place of Local Wisdom in Theological Discourse.’ (roninsjourney.com)
- Here’s the Good News. (shirley-mclain.net)
- King James Bible Study (brakeman1.com)
- Old Testament Christians (lewrockwell.com)
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Sebastian :coffefied: @[email protected] · 2024-05-09 · 09:01 UTC

#GoodMorning #KidsOnBikes and a little bit of #Rusalka #gravel! Beautiful sun even came out! My back still hurts from carrying heavy bags, but #cycling makes it less uncomfortable…🥰 #Bicycle #Bici #Bicicleta #Ciclismo #Velo #Fahrrad #Rower #Wahoo #Wahooligan #Velominati #LifeBehindBars #DadOnBike #LookMomNoHands #SRAM #AXS #Eagle #Fizik #Workout #ASMR #BikeToot #BikeTooter @cycling @rower

#biketooter #biketoot #asmr #workout #fizik #eagle
vgrass @[email protected] · 2025-07-22 · 12:51 UTC

Emergence of governance in open communities
How the Fediverse is growing to meet its challenges
[German language version of this text will be published in FIfF-Kommunikation, the journal of the Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung (FIfF e.V.)]

ToC
The dead live longer
Multi-layered self-regulation
Gab: the Nazis are coming
Threads and Bluesky: Federation Washing?
Conclusio: Small is Beautiful
Literatur

The social media landscape has been undergoing a tectonic shift since Elon Musk took over Twitter and Donald Trump took over the USA. The Fediverse emerged at a time when the previous phase of decentralised social networks – the blogosphere – was being supplanted by globally centralised platforms such as Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005) and Twitter (2006). With them came the problems: surveillance-based advertising, election manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, addictive design, enshittification of previously useful services (Cory Doctorow), techno-feudalism (Yanis Varoufakis).
In contrast, a counter-movement for the recentralisation of the Internet (Kahle 2016, Berners-Lee et al. 2016) is emerging and for sovereignty in Europe, which is becoming painfully aware of its comprehensive technological dependence on the US.
The perception of a crisis is giving rise to a new digital universe, the decentralised and federated Fediverse. For many migrants from toxic environments, it feels like a friendly neighbourhood where reason and civilised conversation prevail. Of course, this is not a genetic trait, hard-coded into Mastodon & Co. But how does an open community oriented towards the common good, a bustling field of players and technologies, organise itself? How does the governance of complex socio-technical systems unfold?
Resilient structures of self-organisation, so the theory goes, are the result of experiences of conflict. Current external or internal conflicts as well as structural problems (onboarding, money, etc.) trigger a collective reflection that challenges open communities to emerge from a lack of structure. The solutions, as I would like to show with examples, can be of technical or social protocols, usually a combination of both.
The dead live longer
Distributed and federated protocols have been around since 1999 with XMPP. According to official historiography, the Fediverse began in 2008 with the decentralised OpenMicroBlogging protocol and the platform Identi.ca, a free version of Twitter based on it, both developed by Evan Prodromou.
In January 2016, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) presented the ActivityPub protocol to improve the interoperability of the various decentralised platforms in the Fediverse. Prodromou is again co-author. Also since 2016, Eugen Rochko has been developing the microblog Mastodon, which is now the star among the decentralised platforms with around ten million users. In addition to Mastodon, the microblog Misskey, the photo platform Pixelfed, the link aggregator Lemmy and the video platform Peertube are also popular in the ActivityPub universe (FediDB: Software, April 2025).
As already mentioned, the development is motivated by criticism of the techno-feudalism of the mega-platforms. The current lead author of ActivityPub, Christine Lemmer-Webber, notes that no companies are involved in the team developing the protocol, which is very unusual for technical committees. In addition, the team identifies predominantly as queer, which leads to functions in the protocol and in the clients that help users and administrators to protect themselves from ‘unwanted interaction’ (Klemens 2023).
Mastodon is run by a non-profit limited company. The community excludes venture capital as well as surveillance advertising, which has made the mega-platforms the richest companies in the world. Mastodon per default does not even include a function for displaying adverts. But how is a global community that is essentially financed by collecting donations supposed to build an alternative to this overwhelming power and lure people out of the lock-in by the mega-companies?
As the Fediverse contradicts all business logic, experts predicted that it would soon come to an end (Woźniak 2025). The opposite is the case. At Berlin Fediday 2024, Prodromou (2024) reported on growth by all criteria: ActivityPub is being implemented by more and more platforms (WordPress, Ghost.org, Flipboard, Threads). The number of users is growing continuously, as are the bridges to other protocols, applications, content, publications and institutions of self-organisation: the SocialCG (Community Group) for ActivityPub at the W3C, the online conference FediForum, the moderator community IFTAS, Mastodon’s non-profit offshoot in the USA. He answers the question of his presentation title ‘Is Bigger Better?’ with a resounding yes.
A week later, Prodromou announced the creation of the Social Web Foundation (SWF), whose mission is a ‘growing, healthy, sustainable and multipolar Fediverse’. Shortly afterwards, the foundation became a member of the W3C as a community front-end for ActivityPub: ‘We collect requirements and design potential extensions to the ActivityPub protocol and guide them through standardisation’ (SWF 2025).
Multi-layered self-regulation
The Fediverse is, of course, also subject to external regulation through laws, etc. The focus here is on the area in which the Fediverse players are free to regulate themselves. The Fediverse project unites them on the basis of a normative conviction: a different, decentralised, federated Internet is possible. Civil society and the public sector can collectively create an online environment in which people treat each other in a civilised and respectful manner. Common values are initially shared tacitly. As the community grows and becomes more diverse, but especially when conflicts challenge these values, they are made explicit in rules of conduct, mission statements, etc. and operationalised with mechanisms for their implementation and enforcement.
Projects usually start with minimal ad hoc organisational structures and move on to more permanent forms as required. Regulation arises in order to solve problems, e.g. a legal form must be established in order to open a bank account and thus collect donations. Internal dynamic lead to the problem of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL). A free software project is started by a man (is there really not a single woman in the Wikipedia list of BDFLs?), becomes popular, grows into a community of co-developers and users, in which the founder remains at the top, respected for his valuable contributions. A meritocracy that, if left unchecked, becomes dysfunctional. The term was coined for Linus Torvalds and his Linux kernel. In the Fediverse, this currently affects Matt Mullenweg from WordPress, Daniel Supernault from Pixelfed and Loops and Eugen Rochko from Mastodon, for example. The latter announced in January 2025 that he would retire from management and concentrate on development. A new non-profit company is to be founded to which he will transfer the Mastodon brand and the copyrights to the code. This means that Mastodon’s independence no longer depends on a single person (Mastodon 2025).
Gab: the Nazis are coming
2016 was a breakthrough year for the Fediverse. It was also the year of Brexit and Trump’s first presidential election. And behind both, the Alt-Right movement emerged onto the research radar from image boards like 4Chan. An Internet-native movement that only half-jokingly boasts of having voted Trump into office and promotes “Fashy”, a “fashionable fascism” (Cramer 2017).
Gab was launched in August 2016 as a social network for radical free speech. Co-founder Andrew Torba cited ‘the total left-wing monopoly of Big Social’ as the motive. Especially during the 2016 election, Facebook and Twitter censored conservative voices. Gab started on its own technology as a mixture of Twitter and Reddit.
Gab was soon banned from the app stores for hate and pornography. In October 2018, a white supremacist killed eleven people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator had posted his anti-Semitism on Gab for almost a year. As a result, payment services, web hosts and cloud providers also blocked Gab. To circumvent this block, the creators decided to migrate Gab to a fork of Mastodon in July 2019, making it accessible with every Mastodon app.
Mastodon founder Rochko spoke out on the same day. He explained that the licence (AGPLv3) does not allow certain uses or users to be excluded as long as it is complied with. At the same time, he expressed his disgust at Gab,
“which uses the pretense of free speech absolutism as an excuse to platform racist and otherwise dehumanizing content. Mastodon has been originally developed by a person of Jewish heritage and first-generation immigrant background, and Mastodon’s userbase includes many people from marginalized communities.
Mastodon’s decentralized approach that allows communities to self-govern according to their needs has enabled those marginalized communities to create safe spaces for themselves where previously they were reliant on big companies like Twitter to stand up for them, which these companies have often failed to do.” (Rochko 2019)
It was precisely decentralisation and federation that brought about a social protocol as a solution. On the one hand, many Mastodon admins had already decided to block Gab, including mastodon.social, which is operated by the Mastodon gGmbH itself. On the other hand, rules have been made explicit for the servers listed on joinmastodon.org, which is also operated by the gGmbH. With the Mastodon Server Covenant, server operators commit to
1. Active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia,
2. Daily backups,
3. At least one other person with emergency access to the server infrastructure,
4. And to give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down. (Mastodon: Covenant)
There is no technical switch against Nazis. Although there have been discussions about inserting code into the clients to prevent them from logging into Gab servers, such changes can be easily reversed. The copyright licence also does not allow Nazis to be excluded from using one’s own software. There is a long debate about banning use for military purposes, for example (Kreutzer 2006). In practice, restrictions on use by licence violate the definition of free software and have not become established.
Nazis can set up their own Fediverse servers. However, the Federation’s code of conduct, the Covenant, ensures that these instances remain isolated, like Gab and Truth Social, and do no harm in the Federation. For newcomers, this level is less visible than the policies of the individual instances. However, it is crucial for the information space as a whole.
Regulations are only as good as their enforcement. Block lists for accounts and instances are maintained as tools for the daily work of admins and moderators (e.g. Oliphant). The moderators have joined forces in the IFTAS (Independent Federated Trust & Safety) forum.
Looking back at research on “alternative social media” (ASM), Robert W. Gehl (2025) notes that the widespread assumption that ASM are progressive had a blind spot: they can just as easily be used by the political right. The deplatforming of right-wing radicals on the mega-platforms increased the pressure to build their own places for radical freedom of speech. Now the research has turned into the opposite and reduced ASM to ‘alt-right social media’. However, Gehl sees an advantage in the fact that an aspect that was largely missing from the earlier literature has since been addressed: governance. ‘Much of the earliest scholarship focused on how technical elements such as free and open source software and decentralized architectures would shift power away from corporate social media to end users, but had less to say about how those users might govern themselves.’ (ibid.)
Threads and Bluesky: Federation Washing?
The next invasion of the Fediverse threatened to come from one of the mega-platforms that the alternative was up against. Meta wanted to capitalise on the Twitter exodus following Musk’s takeover and planned a text-based companion app to Instagram. Threads launches with fanfare on 5 July 2023. Thanks to Instagram’s more than two billion users, the new service gained 100 million users within five days, except in Europe, where a data protection clarification delayed the launch until December. Threads also began integrating the ActivityPub protocol in December 2023 (The Verge 2023).
The bridge from Instagram to the Fediverse has triggered even more heated debates than Gab, including reciprocal death threats. Above all, there were fears about the well-known strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. From this camp, the tried and tested instrument used against Gab was brought up: a campaign for the collective exclusion of threads from the federation, which was followed by many instances.
Conversely, Fediverse stakeholders welcomed threads because they see interoperability between platforms as a major step forward. ‘We’ve been advocating for this for years,’ wrote Rochko (2023) on the day of the threads launch. In his blog post, he addresses accusations (data tracking, advertising, being overwhelmed by huge servers, embrace-extend-extinguish, moderation). However, he describes the lock-in of the social graph as the biggest problem, which prevents users from switching platforms if they do not want to lose all their contacts.
“The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers. Which in turn, puts pressure on such platforms to provide better, less exploitative services. This is a clear victory for our cause, hopefully one of many to come.” (ibid.)
Prodromou also welcomed the mega-platform’s access so that the Fediverse can quickly grow and become a powerful alternative. If there are problems, every site and all users are free not to connect to the newcomers. ‘Choice is part of the strength of the Fediverse.’ (Prodromou 2024)
Another invasion came from Twitter, specifically from its co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. In 2019, he launched an initiative that gave rise to the AT Protocol and Bluesky Social. The platform with the look and feel of the original Twitter was launched in 2023. In January 2025, Bluesky claimed to have 30 million users (BNO News 2025).
Technically, the AT protocol allows decentralisation. In fact, the system is currently neither decentralised nor federated, as Lemmer-Webber (2024) discusses in detail. Furthermore, venture capital financing, not least from blockchain circles, raises doubts about sustainable freedom.
Conclusio: Small is Beautiful
The mega-platforms must continue to be rendered less hazardous through legal regulation. Buying oneself free is not an option. Rather, building alternatives is crucial. Decentralisation from above leads to a Fedi-Washing that only looks like it. The inherently decentralised network of protocol-connected nodes that has grown over the years and organises itself from below is sustainable. Last but not least, the Fediverse offers an opportunity for Europe. Many of the developers and more than twice as many Fediverse servers are in the EU (8,818) than in the USA (4,275) (Fediverse Observer, April 2025).
The non-profit nature and small size of the communities are clearly positive features of the Fediverse. Kissane & Kazemi (2024) have investigated how governance is organised on individual servers and between servers. Their conclusion: ‘Fediverse governance as we encountered it in our research conversations is emergent, unevenly distributed, and often reactive.’ The majority of Fediverse servers are operated by individuals or small groups. Medium-sized servers offer uniquely favourable conditions for community self-governance according to local norms and allow for very direct, context-dependent moderation that is superior to that of centralised platforms. ‘The Fediverse’s combined emphasis on the sovereignty of local norms and a federated form of network diplomacy can offer a real and optimistic challenge to the dead end of centralized content moderation at scale’ (ibid.).
To summarise: local, manageable communities form the basis, create diplomatic networks and grow organically into a fediverse that is more than the sum of its parts. Small is Beautiful as a prerequisite for Bigger is Better.
Literatur
Berners-Lee, Tim et al. (2016). Solid: A Platform for Decentralized Social Applications Based on Linked Data, 2016, http://emansour.com/research/meccano/solid_protocols.pdf.
BNO News (2015). Twitter alternative Bluesky hits 30 million users, 28.01.2025, https://bnonews.com/index.php/2025/01/twitter-alternative-bluesky-hits-30-million-users/.
Cramer, Florian (2017). Meme Wars: Internet culture and the ‘alt right’, at FACT Liverpool, 07.03.2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNYuhLKzi8.
FediDB: Software (o.J.). https://fedidb.org/software.
Fediverse Observer (o.J.). Server nach Land, https://fediverse.observer/stats.
Gehl, Robert W. (2025). A Brief History of Alternative Social Media Scholarship, 07.02.2025, https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2025/02/07/asm-scholarship-history.html.
Kahle, Brewster (2016). Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Decentralized Web, Juni 2016, https://archive.org/details/LockingTheWebOpen_2016.
Kissane, Erin & Darius Kazemi (2024). Findings Report: Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers, https://fediverse-governance.github.io/.
Klemens, Ben (2023). Mastodon – and the pros and cons of moving beyond Big Tech gatekeepers, Ars Technica, 02.01.2023, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/mastodon-highlights-pros-and-cons-of-moving-beyond-big-tech-gatekeepers/.
Kreutzer, Till (2006). Open-Source-Software zwischen Moral und Freiheit, iRights, 15.08.2006, https://irights.info/artikel/open-source-software-zwischen-moral-und-freiheit/6219.
Lemmer-Webber, Christine (2024). How decentralized is Bluesky really?, 22.11.2024, https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/.
Lemmer-Webber, Christine (2025). Toot, 19.01.2025, https://social.coop/@cwebber/113856458328842294.
Mastdon: Covenant (n.d.), https://joinmastodon.org/covenant.
Mastodon (2025). The people should own the town square, 13.01.2025, https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/.
Prodromou, Evan (2024). A Bigger Better Fediverse, presentation at Berlin Fediday 2024, 14.10.2024, https://berlinfedi.day/2024/.
Rochko, Eugen (2019). Gab switches to Mastodon’s code. Our statement, 04.07.2019, https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/.
Rochko, Eugen (2023). What to know about Threads, 05.07.2023, https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/.
SWF (2025). The Social Web Foundation announces its membership in the World Wide Web Consortium, 11.2.2025, https://socialwebfoundation.org/2025/02/11/the-social-web-foundation-announces-its-membership-in-the-world-wide-web-consortium/.
The Verge (2023). Threads is officially starting to test ActivityPub integration, 13.12.2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon.
Woźniak, Michał “rysiek” (2025). Eight years on, Mastodon stubbornly survives, personal blog, 05.04.2025, https://rys.io/en/177.html.
#Fediverse #FreeCulture #Internet #mediaScience #publicSphere

#fediverse #freeculture #internet #mediascience #publicsphere
The Realists @[email protected] · 2023-09-08 · 09:29 UTC

We need to talk about Fiji
It’s 1995. A momentous event is about to rock the lives of the inhabitants of the island of Fiji, in the South Pacific: the arrival of television.
The island has enjoyed the convenience of electricity for only 10 years up to that point. And in the mid 1990s, it is one of the last so-called “media naive” societies in the world.
Things are about to change. Dramatically so.
Why am I turning my attention to Fiji and the profound changes brought by the arrival of television? Because what happened in Fiji – the speed of change and (spoiler alert!) the worsening of mental and physical well being of its inhabitants – is disturbing. It is the quintessential example of the tremendous influence and impact of media on people’s lives.
Let’s frame the story of Fiji through the lens of our present world. Because in hundreds of countries around the world, the arrival of smartphones and social media platforms brought cataclysmic changes – just like in Fiji in 1995.
Let’s think about Fiji first. And then let’s turn our attention to the present world – especially the lives of teenage girls.

The Fiji Study: Mass Media and Beauty Ideals
Dr. Anne Becker, a researcher from Harvard University, has been conducting groundbreaking studies about the body image of Fijians since the early 1980s.
When she first arrives on the island, in 1981, she is struck by how, traditionally, the ultimate beauty ideal in Fiji – for both men and women – is to have a robust body. Being thin is seen as a negative attribute – something to be avoided at all costs.
I interviewed Dr. Becker for my documentary The Illusionists but the footage ended up on the cutting room floor – I couldn’t find a way to organically include her testimony in the film, as I felt she deserved her own documentary. I am now resurfacing the transcripts from our interview for this story.
Dr. Becker:
So for women and men there was definitely an overarching theme that characterized beauty across both genders in Fiji. There was an appreciation of a robust body size. So people would refer to a woman, or a man, or a child as being chumubina which meant robust and having grown very well. And that really connoted a strength to work in physical labor, which is of course demanded in the village. Most of the villagers are farmers they have plantations which they farm every day, and it’s grueling work. It’s very hard work and in order to do it you need to be strong.
Television arrives on the island of Fiji in 1995. Initially, there is only one TV channel that broadcasts shows from 4pm until 11pm. Aside from one locally produced program about current affairs, all the other shows come from abroad: Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, ER and Seinfeld.
Fast-forward to 1998: Dr. Becker returns to the island just three years after the arrival of television and finds that traditional values and aspirations have been completely upended.
The island’s beauty icon is now Heather Locklear.
Teenage girls suddenly aspire to be thin – and many of them develop eating disorders.
Dr Becker:
Probably eating disorders were non-existent or very rare in Fiji prior to the introduction of television. When we did our study between 1995 and 1998 our study found about 11 percent of girls admitted to having purged to lose weight – which really stunned me actually. It didn’t just surprise me, it stunned me. That to me was very similar to what I would expect to see in a secondary school in Massachusetts. We did go back in 2007 and the prevalence of numbers had gotten so high that it was beyond what I would see here in the United States, and it really struck me as that there was this epidemic of symptoms. That was a quiet epidemic… nobody was talking about this. We looked at how frequently the girls themselves viewed TV. We looked at how frequently their parents viewed TV. And of their five best friends how many of them have a TV in their home? And I had this nagging feeling, if this is a direct exposure of TV on body image and behaviors that lead to dieting. If you look at all the scientific literature on the relation of television to eating pathology or body dissatisfaction, in aggregate there’s a undeniable relationship.
The Present-Day Parallel: Social Media, Unattainable Beauty Ideals and Anxiety
Fast-forward to the present day: from Los Angeles passing through London, Mumbai and Sydney, Australia, most teenagers own smartphones and spend up to 7 hours a day consuming digital content. Numerous studies have shown a teen mental illness epidemic, starting around 2012.
Whereas watching television is a passive endeavor, smartphones and social platforms are fully interactive. Algorithms learn about what interests us (via clicks and pauses over the screen) and keep serving us content that will keep us hooked. Paraphrasing the words of Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, there are now thousands of people behind the screen, whose job is to keep us connected and scrolling for as long as possible.
In September 2021 Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, made headlines by leaking internal documents that shed light on how Facebook (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) prioritized user engagement and profit over user well-being.
A Wall Street Journal report – a series called “The Facebook Files” – featured internal documents that showed an awareness by Facebook/Meta that their platform Instagram was “toxic” for teenage girls.
The article is now behind a paywall, but according to this summary by CNBC:
The Journal cited Facebook studies over the past three years that examined how Instagram affects its young user base, with teenage girls being most notably harmed. One internal Facebook presentation said that among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.
“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers reportedly wrote. Facebook also reportedly found that 14% of boys in the U.S. said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.
Haugen’s disclosures indicated that Facebook’s algorithms were designed to prioritize content that garnered more user engagement. The whistleblower’s revelations briefly sparked discussions about the need for increased transparency, regulation, and responsible content promotion on social media platforms – in order to mitigate the adverse effects on users’ mental health and body image.
And yet.
Today, two YEARS later, not much has changed. We are still witnessing lots of resistance establishing a link between the rise of anxiety and depression and screen time (especially time spent on social media).
The Fiji study was a symbol of the immense power of media and media representation.
The negative effects happening today due to unbridled smartphone and social media use go much further. Today we are constantly exposed to unattainable body ideals AND unattainable life ideals. The pressure to be good looking, in a good job, in a good relationship offline – and to constantly share and be seen online. Younger generations feel this pressures more intensely, as they have “grown up online.”
New York Times: Being 13
I invite you to read Jessica Bennett’s superb piece “Being 13” in the New York Times, which followed several 13 year old girls over the span of a year.
An excerpt:
The long-term effects of social media on the teenage brain have not yet been defined, much less proven — which isn’t to say it’s all bad. But adolescent girls have long struggled with depression and anxiety at disproportionate rates compared with their male peers, a reality that metastasized during the pandemic.
What is known is that at age 13, a person is still more than a decade away from having a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and impulse control. In other words, adolescents are moving into this messy digital world at a time when they desire social attention most — and are not yet wired for restraint. “It’s all gas pedal and no brakes,” said Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, who testified before the Senate on the subject earlier this year.
For adults, it’s become common to name the things that make women more likely to face burnout and stress. Many of us talk about this “mental load.” But girls have a mental load, too — in facing the age-old pressure to be good enough, pretty enough, kind enough, popular enough, but now on multiple platforms, too.
I found the article illuminating – the girls featured in it and their parents were thoughtful and mature beyond their years. The comment section also provided a lot of food for thought. I saved the most compelling comments I came across – much in line with the ethos of The Realists. I would like to share them with you here, as they are powerful testimonies of a world that has completely changed in the span of only two decades:
Pandora’s Box
From Natalie in Florida (emphasis mine):
As the mom of a 13 year old, I’d say these examples over-represent tech-involved/concerned parents. At least half of my daughter’s friends have been handed a smart phone with no limits and no parental oversight.
Personally, we’ve told our kids they can’t have social media accounts until they’re 16, but that doesn’t keep them from all the videos their friends show them, and more importantly – the culture that social media is creating around them.
I wish we could take a few steps back from (or just pause) the technology we’ve unleashed into the world. What if there was a process for determining where and how it can be beneficial (similar to the FDA’s evaluation/ approval for new medication)? And building a process for implementing parameters when peer-reviewed literature substantiates harm? Instead we’ve opened Pandora’s box, and the technology is outpacing our ability to apply it healthily. Now, as soon as it’s developed, the public (including children) gains access, and there is no recourse when it causes harm.
Obviously this is a nuanced issue, and I’m not arguing for a nanny state. But as I tell my kids: Until you can show me evidence that the benefit outweighs the harm, we’re not inviting it into our kids’ lives. They have enough challenges to deal with. If having “strict/boring” parents is one of them, that’s a right of passage I can live with.
The Digital Economic Divide
A comment from “X” in New England (emphasis mine):
I have a 13 year old boy who just started 8th grade in a very economically stratified school.
Among the kids of parents in science, tech and higher ed, many of the kids don’t have phones. Apple Watches with a simple cell plan for texting are pretty common. A few kids have phones, but very locked down/no social media.
A lot of other kids have had phones and social media since 4th or 5th grade – well before age 13. In 6th & 7th grade (again, well before age 13), there were a lot of classroom distractions because of phones, like kids posting TikToks in the middle of classes. Amazingly, the school administration did nothing to little to stop it.
The real digital divide in our community seems to be that upper income/education families are opting out, while lower income kids are getting a lot of phone/screen time.
An Impossible Situation
A comment from “JD” in Rhode Island, US (emphasis mine):
My 12 year daughter attends a school where the parents have actively resisted giving kids smartphones. Yet they still often have Apple watches or in my daughter’s case, a Light phone (only texts and calls) so that we can contact her. (Remember many families don’t have landlines any more! Until she got the Light phone, there was no way for her to call 911 while at home alone.) However, when she went to day camp this summer, she said every single kid her age had a smartphone and instead of socializing they looked at their phones. Since she did not have one, she was completely isolated. This is the situation I imagine most middle school girls are in. Without a phone: pure social isolation. With a phone: distraction and anxiety. It’s an impossible situation.

Wrapping Up
The Harvard study by Anne Becker on the impact of Western media on body image and eating disorders in Fiji serves as a powerful reminder of mass media’s profound influence on well-being.
The parallels between this study and the present-day epidemic of social media-induced anxiety highlight the enduring nature of this issue.
Our politicians and business and health leaders still refuse to establish a clear link between the rise of anxiety and depression and the impact of smartphones and social media. At least that’s the case today. We have been wasting so much time creating adequate protections for our young ones online – and raising awareness about the dark side of tech and social media for people young and old. If you are interested in this issue and want to dig deeper into studies about the deleterious effects of social media/tech on young people’s mental health, I highly recommend Jon Haidt’s Substack.
The apathy has to stop here and now.
We need to create a movement, to build awareness and momentum around these issues. This newsletter is my act of resistance and my little contribution.
If you are equally concerned about the unbridled nature of technology and social media, how they are impacting our lives, please share this with people you care about.
#AnneBecker #comparisonAnxiety #Fiji #health #mediaConsumption #mediaLiteracy #mentalHealth #socialMedia
https://therealists.org/?p=8017

#annebecker #comparisonanxiety #fiji #health #mediaconsumption #medialiteracy
The Realists @[email protected] · 2023-03-31 · 12:36 UTC

The real enemy of a Realist isn’t Big Tech… It’s Indifference https://therealists.org/?p=7755
I recently had a powerful epiphany: all the research and the work I had been doing for The Realists had the framing all wrong.
For years, I had been thinking that my “enemy”, my nemesis, adversary – however you want to call it – was Big Tech… the companies that have built systems of surveillance capitalism and are profiting from it. The platforms promoting unattainable beauty and life ideals. The popular apps that are addictive by design.
But no, I now realize I had it all wrong.
The real “enemy” is indifference – people’s indifference to the monumental changes brought on by Big Tech. What they are doing to our humanity. How they are changing what we value. How we see ourselves. Our dreams and aspirations. How we socialize. How we raise our kids.
Big Tech will continue to keep a powerful hold on our lives if we think that “the toothpaste is already out of the tube”, that the changes are inevitable, and that it’s a good thing to jump on all the latest trends, use the most popular apps, under the belief that they will make our lives better.
Media Consumption
I find it astonishing that nowadays people worldwide spend an average of 455 minutes per day consuming media – that’s 7.58 hours a day. And yet, most people have a vague understanding of the effects of media on their lives, self-esteem and worldview.
My interest in the subject? I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication and I still vividly remember concepts from my college classes about “Persuasion and Public Opinion” and “Media Effects.”
For example, are you familiar with any of these media theories? “Agenda setting” and “Gatekeeping”? “Cultivation Theory”? The “Magic Bullet Theory”?
I learned about these theories many years ago and today the media landscape is completely different. There are now powerful communication devices in everyone’s pocket… and they are being used extensively, for most of people’s waking lives, without much thought about it.
I notice indifference… and I also notice – and experience – resistance to tech resistance. What do I mean by that? I have the perfect example from my personal life.
Resistance to (Tech) Resistance
I’m the mom of a two-year-old daughter.
I have been called a “Taliban” “Putin” and an “extremist” for wanting to raise her screen-free, without any visual media except for interactive FaceTime videos with her grandparents who live far away. (Incidentally, that’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, but to some people, it appears to be extreme).
It’s ironic that I’m a filmmaker – but my child has never watched a video in her life. To her, a phone is something that stays in the back pocket; an iPad is a magical portal for video calls with her grandparents. I don’t own a TV and aside from iPad video calls her screen time is exactly 0 minutes a day. She’s 26 months old. And I wouldn’t do things any other way.
Thankfully the colorful nicknames/insults came from one person and they have been toned down since that person watched a documentary on the effects of screen time on young children’s brain development.
These nicknames may sound a bit harsh, but in several situations, with other adults around me and my child, I have noticed similar attitudes. Resistance to my resistance.
I’ve been told that it would be impossible to handle my child on the plane without a tablet or smartphone… and yet she aced her first flights, entertained by her parents, her favorite books and a teddy bear.
I’ve been called “excessive” for voicing my concerns about screen time and reading “too many books” to my child. I was warned I would ruin her eyes with books.
I’ve been advised not to talk about how I raise my child screen-free lest I offend other parents and grandparents who do things differently.
But I think it’s important to share my experiences, to show that there is another way.
Thankfully my husband is on the same page as me, wanting to raise her like we were raised. Think: a childhood like we had in the 1980s – minus television, plus an iPad only for FaceTime calls.
Who’s Raising the Kids?

I have been closely following the work of Dr. Susan Linn for years – a psychologist who founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I have interviewed her for my documentary The Illusionists and I recently read her powerful new book Who’s Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Media, and the Lives of Children.
Dr. Linn writes:
You’re dealing with a culture dominated by multinational corporations spending billions of dollars and using seductive technologies to bypass parents and target children directly with messages designed — sometimes ingeniously — to capture their hearts and minds. And their primary purpose is not to help kids lead healthy lives or to promote positive values or even to make their lives better. It’s to generate profit.
Later in the book, she adds:
Traditionally, for kids having what Winnicott might call “good enough” childhoods, the adults with whom they mostly interacted, and who had the most influence over them, were parents, other caregivers, and teachers. They were all familiar family or community members who were at least supposed to have children’s interests at heart. For better or worse, it’s common to raise children to be wary of strangers. Yet in a digitized, commercialized culture, we blithely turn vast portions of a child’s day over to strangers. We don’t see these people. Our kids never meet them. But these strangers know an enormous amount about our children. They know how to capture their attention, to exploit their vulnerabilities, and to trigger their longings. These are the strangers who own, manufacture, and advertise the apps, toys, and games that occupy children’s time and whose jobs demand that they develop and market products that generate big bucks regardless of their impact on the kids who use them.

Instant Gratification and Continuous Distraction

What worries me the most about the shifts brought on by this brave new technological world is this: the internet, smartphones and apps have created a frictionless world of instant gratification and constant distraction.
Are you bored? Fish your phone out of your pocket and you can scroll social media, listen to any song you may think of courtesy of Spotify or watch a video on YouTube.
Do you feel lonely? A couple of taps on the phone and you could communicate with a friend or see what they have posted on social media. Turn on the TV, keep it on in the background, and feel like you are not home alone.
Hungry? A meal can be delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, courtesy of an app.
Everyday activities that take actual effort are starting to be frowned upon.
Silence and time away from a screen may make certain people uncomfortable.
Technology sweeps in, allowing people to never feel bored and giving them the illusion of connection… and handing them any object they may desire, delivered straight to their doors.
When it comes to spending time with a small child, many adults default to entertaining children with screens… not really thinking about the consequences of screen time and the content they will consume. These devices take away all the effort – but they also take away human connection and the opportunity for a child to develop their curiosity.
I can understand why people do this. Smartphones and tablets have been around for less than 20 years and to hundreds of millions of people they still have a magical aura around them. That’s why it’s so hard for adults to see them in a critical light. Dissenting voices are a minority. Tech giants spend a fortune in marketing their shiny devices and platforms. And – this is key – most people equate technology with progress and modernity – positive things. But media consumption and screen time carry consequences.
Dr. Linn writes in her book:
Today, children’s opportunities for silence — to experience wonder but also to play, dream, and explore — are rare. […] It was a long – ago conversation with Fred Rogers that first got me thinking about the importance of silence in children’s lives. Silence was so important to him that he once used an egg timer to tick off a whole minute of it on his television show. And after listening to cellist Yo-Yo Ma play his cello, Fred commented, “After you’ve heard someone play beautiful music, sometimes you just like to have a quiet time to remember it. Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”

The Universal Need for Media and Digital Literacy
I think media literacy AND digital literacy classes should be mandatory… not just for young people but also for all educators, parents, grandparents and caretakers. For all humans, really.
Because if you are a parent or grandparent and you read this sentence by Dr. Linn, wouldn’t you start to care?
It became clear to me that the problem with the tech-driven, omnipresent marketing that kids experience today isn’t just that they’re being sold stuff. It’s that the values, conventions, and behaviors embraced and engendered by gargantuan, minimally regulated, for-profit conglomerates permeate all aspects of society, including the lives of children.
I think they would. And they may think twice before handing their toddler a tablet or putting them in front of a TV.
The Lumineers’ song “Stubborn Love” goes: “The opposite of love’s indifference. So pay attention now…”
The ways in which technology has invaded the lives of small children – with most people accepting this uncritically – is just an example of indifference to Big Tech. I think it’s a particularly salient example because it powerfully affects a new generation.
How do we counteract indifference to Big Tech?
Through education. Media literacy AND digital literacy.
If you haven’t already, I would highly encourage you to read the late Neil Postman’s book Technopoly and Dr. Linn’s Who’s Raising the Kids? Listen to podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show or Offline with Jon Favreau. And don’t be afraid to be different. To resist.
At the end of Technopoly Neil Postman writes:
A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology—from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer—is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control. In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural.
I encourage you to re-read Postman’s powerful words slowly, carefully.
And then spend a minute thinking about them – à la Fred Rogers.
“Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”
– Elena Rossini

#BigTech #children #digitalLiteracy #DrSusanLinn #FredRogers #indifference #mediaConsumption #mediaLiteracy #mediaTheory #NeilPostman #parenting #screenTime #Technopoly #WhoSRaisingTheKids

#bigtech #children #digitalliteracy #drsusanlinn #fredrogers #indifference
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-04-10 · 15:22 UTC

Yves-Marie André's (1675–1764) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Marie_André] ‘Essay on Beauty’ (‘Essai sur le beau’, 1741) was an important work of 18th-century aesthetics. In the article on beauty in the 2nd volume (1752) of the ‘Encylopédie’, Denis Diderot praised André's system as the best he knew, elevating it above the work of Plato, Augustine, Wolff, Crousaz, Shaftesbury.
In 2010, I released a #CreativeCommons-licensed annotated English translation [https://archive.org/details/EssayOnBeauty]. I have just made an update: the PDF is now an accessible #TaggedPDF.
(The LaTeX tagging system is still under development [https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/], but I have been adapting my LaTeX styles to be tagging-compatible.)
Although I was a much less practised typographer 16 years ago, I have left the overall design of ‘Essay on Beauty’ unchanged, contenting myself with minor improvements offered by an updated version of the Baskervald font, ensuring that line-end hyphenations follow the OUP standard, and a few other localized improvements.
#accessibility #OpenAccess #aesthetics #HistPhil

#histphil #aesthetics #openaccess #accessibility #taggedpdf #creativecommons
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-04-10 · 15:22 UTC

Yves-Marie André's (1675–1764) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Marie_André] ‘Essay on Beauty’ (‘Essai sur le beau’, 1741) was an important work of 18th-century aesthetics. In the article on beauty in the 2nd volume (1752) of the ‘Encylopédie’, Denis Diderot praised André's system as the best he knew, elevating it above the work of Plato, Augustine, Wolff, Crousaz, Shaftesbury.
In 2010, I released a #CreativeCommons-licensed annotated English translation [https://archive.org/details/EssayOnBeauty]. I have just made an update: the PDF is now an accessible #TaggedPDF.
(The LaTeX tagging system is still under development [https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/], but I have been adapting my LaTeX styles to be tagging-compatible.)
Although I was a much less practised typographer 16 years ago, I have left the overall design of ‘Essay on Beauty’ unchanged, contenting myself with minor improvements offered by an updated version of the Baskervald font, ensuring that line-end hyphenations follow the OUP standard, and a few other localized improvements.
#accessibility #OpenAccess #aesthetics #HistPhil

#histphil #aesthetics #openaccess #accessibility #taggedpdf #creativecommons
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-04-10 · 15:22 UTC

Yves-Marie André's (1675–1764) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Marie_André] ‘Essay on Beauty’ (‘Essai sur le beau’, 1741) was an important work of 18th-century aesthetics. In the article on beauty in the 2nd volume (1752) of the ‘Encylopédie’, Denis Diderot praised André's system as the best he knew, elevating it above the work of Plato, Augustine, Wolff, Crousaz, Shaftesbury.
In 2010, I released a #CreativeCommons-licensed annotated English translation [https://archive.org/details/EssayOnBeauty]. I have just made an update: the PDF is now an accessible #TaggedPDF.
(The LaTeX tagging system is still under development [https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/], but I have been adapting my LaTeX styles to be tagging-compatible.)
Although I was a much less practised typographer 16 years ago, I have left the overall design of ‘Essay on Beauty’ unchanged, contenting myself with minor improvements offered by an updated version of the Baskervald font, ensuring that line-end hyphenations follow the OUP standard, and a few other localized improvements.
#accessibility #OpenAccess #aesthetics #HistPhil

#histphil #aesthetics #openaccess #accessibility #taggedpdf #creativecommons
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 12:23 UTC

In retrospect, modern aesthetics is seen to have emerged at the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries, with the term ‘aesthetic’ being coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) in 1735 from the Greek aisthētikos [αἰσθητικός].
Many of the early thinkers considered mathematical beauty to be an archetypical form of beauty and integrated it into their theories.
For example, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) both analysed beauty in terms of ‘unity (or uniformity) amidst variety’. Hutcheson thought that this explained why regular polyhedra were more beautiful than irregular ones, and that Archimedes' celebrated theorem
‘The ratios of volumes of a cylinder, its inscribed sphere, and a cone of equal base and height are 3 ∶ 2 ∶ 1’
was more beautiful than the less precise
‘A cylinder has greater volume than an inscribed sphere, which in turn has greater volume than a cone of equal base and height’
because they had equal variety (since they applied to the same objects), but the first theorem had greater unity.
1/3
#aesthetics #HistPhil #Baumgarten #Crousaz #Hutcheson #UnityAmidstVariety #UniformityAmidstVariety #MathematicalBeauty

#mathematicalbeauty #uniformityamidstvariety #unityamidstvariety #hutcheson #crousaz #baumgarten
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 12:23 UTC

In retrospect, modern aesthetics is seen to have emerged at the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries, with the term ‘aesthetic’ being coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) in 1735 from the Greek aisthētikos [αἰσθητικός].
Many of the early thinkers considered mathematical beauty to be an archetypical form of beauty and integrated it into their theories.
For example, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) both analysed beauty in terms of ‘unity (or uniformity) amidst variety’. Hutcheson thought that this explained why regular polyhedra were more beautiful than irregular ones, and that Archimedes' celebrated theorem
‘The ratios of volumes of a cylinder, its inscribed sphere, and a cone of equal base and height are 3 ∶ 2 ∶ 1’
was more beautiful than the less precise
‘A cylinder has greater volume than an inscribed sphere, which in turn has greater volume than a cone of equal base and height’
because they had equal variety (since they applied to the same objects), but the first theorem had greater unity.
1/3
#aesthetics #HistPhil #Baumgarten #Crousaz #Hutcheson #UnityAmidstVariety #UniformityAmidstVariety #MathematicalBeauty

#mathematicalbeauty #uniformityamidstvariety #unityamidstvariety #hutcheson #crousaz #baumgarten
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 12:23 UTC

In retrospect, modern aesthetics is seen to have emerged at the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries, with the term ‘aesthetic’ being coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) in 1735 from the Greek aisthētikos [αἰσθητικός].
Many of the early thinkers considered mathematical beauty to be an archetypical form of beauty and integrated it into their theories.
For example, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) both analysed beauty in terms of ‘unity (or uniformity) amidst variety’. Hutcheson thought that this explained why regular polyhedra were more beautiful than irregular ones, and that Archimedes' celebrated theorem
‘The ratios of volumes of a cylinder, its inscribed sphere, and a cone of equal base and height are 3 ∶ 2 ∶ 1’
was more beautiful than the less precise
‘A cylinder has greater volume than an inscribed sphere, which in turn has greater volume than a cone of equal base and height’
because they had equal variety (since they applied to the same objects), but the first theorem had greater unity.
1/3
#aesthetics #HistPhil #Baumgarten #Crousaz #Hutcheson #UnityAmidstVariety #UniformityAmidstVariety #MathematicalBeauty

#mathematicalbeauty #uniformityamidstvariety #unityamidstvariety #hutcheson #crousaz #baumgarten
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 12:23 UTC

In retrospect, modern aesthetics is seen to have emerged at the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries, with the term ‘aesthetic’ being coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) in 1735 from the Greek aisthētikos [αἰσθητικός].
Many of the early thinkers considered mathematical beauty to be an archetypical form of beauty and integrated it into their theories.
For example, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) both analysed beauty in terms of ‘unity (or uniformity) amidst variety’. Hutcheson thought that this explained why regular polyhedra were more beautiful than irregular ones, and that Archimedes' celebrated theorem
‘The ratios of volumes of a cylinder, its inscribed sphere, and a cone of equal base and height are 3 ∶ 2 ∶ 1’
was more beautiful than the less precise
‘A cylinder has greater volume than an inscribed sphere, which in turn has greater volume than a cone of equal base and height’
because they had equal variety (since they applied to the same objects), but the first theorem had greater unity.
1/3
#aesthetics #HistPhil #Baumgarten #Crousaz #Hutcheson #UnityAmidstVariety #UniformityAmidstVariety #MathematicalBeauty

#aesthetics #histphil #baumgarten #crousaz #hutcheson #unityamidstvariety
Alan J. Cain @[email protected] · 2026-02-22 · 12:23 UTC

In retrospect, modern aesthetics is seen to have emerged at the end of the 17th and in the 18th centuries, with the term ‘aesthetic’ being coined by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) in 1735 from the Greek aisthētikos [αἰσθητικός].
Many of the early thinkers considered mathematical beauty to be an archetypical form of beauty and integrated it into their theories.
For example, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) both analysed beauty in terms of ‘unity (or uniformity) amidst variety’. Hutcheson thought that this explained why regular polyhedra were more beautiful than irregular ones, and that Archimedes' celebrated theorem
‘The ratios of volumes of a cylinder, its inscribed sphere, and a cone of equal base and height are 3 ∶ 2 ∶ 1’
was more beautiful than the less precise
‘A cylinder has greater volume than an inscribed sphere, which in turn has greater volume than a cone of equal base and height’
because they had equal variety (since they applied to the same objects), but the first theorem had greater unity.
1/3
#aesthetics #HistPhil #Baumgarten #Crousaz #Hutcheson #UnityAmidstVariety #UniformityAmidstVariety #MathematicalBeauty

#mathematicalbeauty #uniformityamidstvariety #unityamidstvariety #hutcheson #crousaz #baumgarten
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2025-02-10 · 00:41 UTC

#Maine: #Grasses, #Sedges and #Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"When most of us step into our gardens or take a walk in the woods and stumble across a patch of plants with long and slender leaves and large seed heads, we assume we’re looking at a type of grass. However, there’s an enormous amount of diversity in the plant world, and plants that we think are grasses may actually be rushes or sedges. Knowing how to differentiate these plants—collectively known as graminoids—can be a fun exercise in plant identification; it’s also helpful for determining what plants will grow best in your native garden.
"Recently, I had the privilege of attending Jill Weber’s workshop on grass identification, which was organized by Native Gardens of Blue Hill. During the workshop, attendees gained hands-on experience identifying an assortment of native grasses, sedges and rushes, and I wanted to share what I learned with you! In the guide below, we’ll cover some of the key points on grass identification. You’ll also find some suggestions for the best native grasses, sedges and rushes to grow in your own garden.
Grasses, Sedges and Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"Grasses, sedges and rushes may look a lot a like at first glance, but there are a few ways to tell these plants apart. The identification tips below can help you determine what plants are growing in your garden. For more detailed information, you may want to explore the grass ID section on the Go Botany website or consult a quality plant identification book.
Grasses (Poaceae)
"True grasses are found throughout Maine, and throughout the world. Many of our most common grasses are not native to Maine and thrive in sunny and warm locations like fields and abandoned pastures; however, many native grasses are very cold hardy, some prefer wet environments and others grow happily in shade. Interestingly, the majority of our food crops actually belong to the grass family and those include wheat, rice, barley, oats, millet and bamboo!
"A clear way to determine if a graminoid is a true grass is by analyzing its stem and leaf formation. Grasses generally have flattened or rounded stems with pronounced joints or nodes (think bamboo!) Grasses also have 'two ranked' leaves, which means the leaves sprout on two sides of the plant. If you peel a grass blade down from the stem and expose the plant’s papery ligule, you’ll find that many grass ligules are easy to see with a hand lens and can be smooth or ragged on the margin, although some grasses don’t have ligules at all.*
* This is much easier to see with a loupe!
"Some of the most attractive species of true grasses that are native to Maine include:
● #PurpleLovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)
● #LittleBluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
● #BigBluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
● #DroopingWoodreed (Cinna latifolia)
● #Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
Sedges (Cyperaceae)
"Sedges can look a lot like true grasses, and they’re likely to be found in moist soils, although some sedges can tolerate dry conditions. Sedge seed heads are very variable, and some sedges have lots of ornamental appeal.
"The easiest way to determine if a plant is a sedge or not is to feel its stem. Sedge stems are generally triangular in shape and they won’t roll easily between your fingers. The leaves of sedges are typically three ranked, encircling the plant’s stem on three vertical planes. If you peel back a sedge leaf, you’ll notice that their papery ligules are triangular in form, often less noticeable than those of the grasses.
"Sedges can be useful in rain or water gardens, but some sedges can be grown in standard ornamental beds, or even used as a no-mow lawn substitute for small areas.
"If you’re interested in trying out sedges in your landscape, look for these native Maine species:
● #Pennsylvaniasedge (Carex pensylvanica)
● #FoxSedge (Carex vulpinoidea)
● #PointedBroomSedge (Carex scoparia)
● #NoddingSedge (Carex gynandra)
● #TussockSedge (Carex stricta)
Rushes (Juncaceae)
"Like sedges, many rushes and woodrushes prefer moist soil, and some rushes are appropriate for garden planting. Water-loving rushes make spectacular additions to rain gardens or small ponds, or they can be grown in poorly draining sections of your yard where other plants won’t thrive.
"Unlike sedges, rushes have rounded stems, but they lack the nodes that are found in true grasses. Rush flowers can be inconspicuous, but many species can hold their own in any flower garden. Rush leaves typically sprout from the base of the plant and encircle the plant’s stems; however, rushes can be varied and particular species may have different leaf formations.
"If you’re on the hunt for rushes to try in water features or in ornamental beds, these Maine natives are a great place to start:
● #SoftRush (Juncus effusus)
● #CommonWoodrush (Luzula multiflora)
● #WireRush (Juncus balticus)
● #CanadaRush (Juncus canadensis)
● #HairyWoodrush (Luzula acuminata)
How to use #graminoids in the landscape
"Grasses, sedges and rushes offer a lot of benefits to the home gardener. Not only are graminoids beautiful, but their seed heads can provide an important food source for wild birds in late summer, autumn and winter. When interplanted with other native #perennials, graminoids provide texture to gardens, as well as movement when their leaves catch in the breeze. Many graminoids also stay upright during winter, providing winter interest and habitat for wildlife. And, not to be overlooked, graminoids are also useful for #basketweaving if you’re interested in crafting!
"On a larger scale, graminoids serve as #CarbonSinks and they help to counter climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some graminoids are useful for erosion control or for #bioremediation projects. In wetland areas, grasses, rushes and sedges can aid with #WaterFiltration, and they provide habitat and food for various #wildlife species.
"When growing graminoids in your garden, make sure you consider the plant’s specific light, water and soil requirements. Some grasses are more suitable for gardens than others and offer a variety of leaf color, stiffness, height and seed characteristics. Rushes and sedges can be essential additions to rain gardens and other water features. Many native graminoids are spectacularly low maintenance, and they need very minimal water once established. Growing them in your garden or replacing some of your turf grass lawn with native ornamental grasses, sedges and rushes can cut down your lawn maintenance needs and also make your garden that much more #EcoFriendly!"
https://www.nativemainegardens.org/single-post/grasses-sedges-and-rushes-what-s-the-difference
#SolarPunkSunday #GardeningForBirds #Rewilding #Grasslands

#maine #grasses #sedges #rushes #purplelovegrass #littlebluestem
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2025-02-10 · 00:41 UTC

#Maine: #Grasses, #Sedges and #Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"When most of us step into our gardens or take a walk in the woods and stumble across a patch of plants with long and slender leaves and large seed heads, we assume we’re looking at a type of grass. However, there’s an enormous amount of diversity in the plant world, and plants that we think are grasses may actually be rushes or sedges. Knowing how to differentiate these plants—collectively known as graminoids—can be a fun exercise in plant identification; it’s also helpful for determining what plants will grow best in your native garden.
"Recently, I had the privilege of attending Jill Weber’s workshop on grass identification, which was organized by Native Gardens of Blue Hill. During the workshop, attendees gained hands-on experience identifying an assortment of native grasses, sedges and rushes, and I wanted to share what I learned with you! In the guide below, we’ll cover some of the key points on grass identification. You’ll also find some suggestions for the best native grasses, sedges and rushes to grow in your own garden.
Grasses, Sedges and Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"Grasses, sedges and rushes may look a lot a like at first glance, but there are a few ways to tell these plants apart. The identification tips below can help you determine what plants are growing in your garden. For more detailed information, you may want to explore the grass ID section on the Go Botany website or consult a quality plant identification book.
Grasses (Poaceae)
"True grasses are found throughout Maine, and throughout the world. Many of our most common grasses are not native to Maine and thrive in sunny and warm locations like fields and abandoned pastures; however, many native grasses are very cold hardy, some prefer wet environments and others grow happily in shade. Interestingly, the majority of our food crops actually belong to the grass family and those include wheat, rice, barley, oats, millet and bamboo!
"A clear way to determine if a graminoid is a true grass is by analyzing its stem and leaf formation. Grasses generally have flattened or rounded stems with pronounced joints or nodes (think bamboo!) Grasses also have 'two ranked' leaves, which means the leaves sprout on two sides of the plant. If you peel a grass blade down from the stem and expose the plant’s papery ligule, you’ll find that many grass ligules are easy to see with a hand lens and can be smooth or ragged on the margin, although some grasses don’t have ligules at all.*
* This is much easier to see with a loupe!
"Some of the most attractive species of true grasses that are native to Maine include:
● #PurpleLovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)
● #LittleBluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
● #BigBluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
● #DroopingWoodreed (Cinna latifolia)
● #Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
Sedges (Cyperaceae)
"Sedges can look a lot like true grasses, and they’re likely to be found in moist soils, although some sedges can tolerate dry conditions. Sedge seed heads are very variable, and some sedges have lots of ornamental appeal.
"The easiest way to determine if a plant is a sedge or not is to feel its stem. Sedge stems are generally triangular in shape and they won’t roll easily between your fingers. The leaves of sedges are typically three ranked, encircling the plant’s stem on three vertical planes. If you peel back a sedge leaf, you’ll notice that their papery ligules are triangular in form, often less noticeable than those of the grasses.
"Sedges can be useful in rain or water gardens, but some sedges can be grown in standard ornamental beds, or even used as a no-mow lawn substitute for small areas.
"If you’re interested in trying out sedges in your landscape, look for these native Maine species:
● #Pennsylvaniasedge (Carex pensylvanica)
● #FoxSedge (Carex vulpinoidea)
● #PointedBroomSedge (Carex scoparia)
● #NoddingSedge (Carex gynandra)
● #TussockSedge (Carex stricta)
Rushes (Juncaceae)
"Like sedges, many rushes and woodrushes prefer moist soil, and some rushes are appropriate for garden planting. Water-loving rushes make spectacular additions to rain gardens or small ponds, or they can be grown in poorly draining sections of your yard where other plants won’t thrive.
"Unlike sedges, rushes have rounded stems, but they lack the nodes that are found in true grasses. Rush flowers can be inconspicuous, but many species can hold their own in any flower garden. Rush leaves typically sprout from the base of the plant and encircle the plant’s stems; however, rushes can be varied and particular species may have different leaf formations.
"If you’re on the hunt for rushes to try in water features or in ornamental beds, these Maine natives are a great place to start:
● #SoftRush (Juncus effusus)
● #CommonWoodrush (Luzula multiflora)
● #WireRush (Juncus balticus)
● #CanadaRush (Juncus canadensis)
● #HairyWoodrush (Luzula acuminata)
How to use #graminoids in the landscape
"Grasses, sedges and rushes offer a lot of benefits to the home gardener. Not only are graminoids beautiful, but their seed heads can provide an important food source for wild birds in late summer, autumn and winter. When interplanted with other native #perennials, graminoids provide texture to gardens, as well as movement when their leaves catch in the breeze. Many graminoids also stay upright during winter, providing winter interest and habitat for wildlife. And, not to be overlooked, graminoids are also useful for #basketweaving if you’re interested in crafting!
"On a larger scale, graminoids serve as #CarbonSinks and they help to counter climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some graminoids are useful for erosion control or for #bioremediation projects. In wetland areas, grasses, rushes and sedges can aid with #WaterFiltration, and they provide habitat and food for various #wildlife species.
"When growing graminoids in your garden, make sure you consider the plant’s specific light, water and soil requirements. Some grasses are more suitable for gardens than others and offer a variety of leaf color, stiffness, height and seed characteristics. Rushes and sedges can be essential additions to rain gardens and other water features. Many native graminoids are spectacularly low maintenance, and they need very minimal water once established. Growing them in your garden or replacing some of your turf grass lawn with native ornamental grasses, sedges and rushes can cut down your lawn maintenance needs and also make your garden that much more #EcoFriendly!"
https://www.nativemainegardens.org/single-post/grasses-sedges-and-rushes-what-s-the-difference
#SolarPunkSunday #GardeningForBirds #Rewilding #Grasslands

#maine #grasses #sedges #rushes #purplelovegrass #littlebluestem
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2025-02-10 · 00:41 UTC

#Maine: #Grasses, #Sedges and #Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"When most of us step into our gardens or take a walk in the woods and stumble across a patch of plants with long and slender leaves and large seed heads, we assume we’re looking at a type of grass. However, there’s an enormous amount of diversity in the plant world, and plants that we think are grasses may actually be rushes or sedges. Knowing how to differentiate these plants—collectively known as graminoids—can be a fun exercise in plant identification; it’s also helpful for determining what plants will grow best in your native garden.
"Recently, I had the privilege of attending Jill Weber’s workshop on grass identification, which was organized by Native Gardens of Blue Hill. During the workshop, attendees gained hands-on experience identifying an assortment of native grasses, sedges and rushes, and I wanted to share what I learned with you! In the guide below, we’ll cover some of the key points on grass identification. You’ll also find some suggestions for the best native grasses, sedges and rushes to grow in your own garden.
Grasses, Sedges and Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"Grasses, sedges and rushes may look a lot a like at first glance, but there are a few ways to tell these plants apart. The identification tips below can help you determine what plants are growing in your garden. For more detailed information, you may want to explore the grass ID section on the Go Botany website or consult a quality plant identification book.
Grasses (Poaceae)
"True grasses are found throughout Maine, and throughout the world. Many of our most common grasses are not native to Maine and thrive in sunny and warm locations like fields and abandoned pastures; however, many native grasses are very cold hardy, some prefer wet environments and others grow happily in shade. Interestingly, the majority of our food crops actually belong to the grass family and those include wheat, rice, barley, oats, millet and bamboo!
"A clear way to determine if a graminoid is a true grass is by analyzing its stem and leaf formation. Grasses generally have flattened or rounded stems with pronounced joints or nodes (think bamboo!) Grasses also have 'two ranked' leaves, which means the leaves sprout on two sides of the plant. If you peel a grass blade down from the stem and expose the plant’s papery ligule, you’ll find that many grass ligules are easy to see with a hand lens and can be smooth or ragged on the margin, although some grasses don’t have ligules at all.*
* This is much easier to see with a loupe!
"Some of the most attractive species of true grasses that are native to Maine include:
● #PurpleLovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)
● #LittleBluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
● #BigBluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
● #DroopingWoodreed (Cinna latifolia)
● #Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
Sedges (Cyperaceae)
"Sedges can look a lot like true grasses, and they’re likely to be found in moist soils, although some sedges can tolerate dry conditions. Sedge seed heads are very variable, and some sedges have lots of ornamental appeal.
"The easiest way to determine if a plant is a sedge or not is to feel its stem. Sedge stems are generally triangular in shape and they won’t roll easily between your fingers. The leaves of sedges are typically three ranked, encircling the plant’s stem on three vertical planes. If you peel back a sedge leaf, you’ll notice that their papery ligules are triangular in form, often less noticeable than those of the grasses.
"Sedges can be useful in rain or water gardens, but some sedges can be grown in standard ornamental beds, or even used as a no-mow lawn substitute for small areas.
"If you’re interested in trying out sedges in your landscape, look for these native Maine species:
● #Pennsylvaniasedge (Carex pensylvanica)
● #FoxSedge (Carex vulpinoidea)
● #PointedBroomSedge (Carex scoparia)
● #NoddingSedge (Carex gynandra)
● #TussockSedge (Carex stricta)
Rushes (Juncaceae)
"Like sedges, many rushes and woodrushes prefer moist soil, and some rushes are appropriate for garden planting. Water-loving rushes make spectacular additions to rain gardens or small ponds, or they can be grown in poorly draining sections of your yard where other plants won’t thrive.
"Unlike sedges, rushes have rounded stems, but they lack the nodes that are found in true grasses. Rush flowers can be inconspicuous, but many species can hold their own in any flower garden. Rush leaves typically sprout from the base of the plant and encircle the plant’s stems; however, rushes can be varied and particular species may have different leaf formations.
"If you’re on the hunt for rushes to try in water features or in ornamental beds, these Maine natives are a great place to start:
● #SoftRush (Juncus effusus)
● #CommonWoodrush (Luzula multiflora)
● #WireRush (Juncus balticus)
● #CanadaRush (Juncus canadensis)
● #HairyWoodrush (Luzula acuminata)
How to use #graminoids in the landscape
"Grasses, sedges and rushes offer a lot of benefits to the home gardener. Not only are graminoids beautiful, but their seed heads can provide an important food source for wild birds in late summer, autumn and winter. When interplanted with other native #perennials, graminoids provide texture to gardens, as well as movement when their leaves catch in the breeze. Many graminoids also stay upright during winter, providing winter interest and habitat for wildlife. And, not to be overlooked, graminoids are also useful for #basketweaving if you’re interested in crafting!
"On a larger scale, graminoids serve as #CarbonSinks and they help to counter climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some graminoids are useful for erosion control or for #bioremediation projects. In wetland areas, grasses, rushes and sedges can aid with #WaterFiltration, and they provide habitat and food for various #wildlife species.
"When growing graminoids in your garden, make sure you consider the plant’s specific light, water and soil requirements. Some grasses are more suitable for gardens than others and offer a variety of leaf color, stiffness, height and seed characteristics. Rushes and sedges can be essential additions to rain gardens and other water features. Many native graminoids are spectacularly low maintenance, and they need very minimal water once established. Growing them in your garden or replacing some of your turf grass lawn with native ornamental grasses, sedges and rushes can cut down your lawn maintenance needs and also make your garden that much more #EcoFriendly!"
https://www.nativemainegardens.org/single-post/grasses-sedges-and-rushes-what-s-the-difference
#SolarPunkSunday #GardeningForBirds #Rewilding #Grasslands

#grasslands #rewilding #gardeningforbirds #solarpunksunday #ecofriendly #wildlife
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2025-02-10 · 00:41 UTC

#Maine: #Grasses, #Sedges and #Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"When most of us step into our gardens or take a walk in the woods and stumble across a patch of plants with long and slender leaves and large seed heads, we assume we’re looking at a type of grass. However, there’s an enormous amount of diversity in the plant world, and plants that we think are grasses may actually be rushes or sedges. Knowing how to differentiate these plants—collectively known as graminoids—can be a fun exercise in plant identification; it’s also helpful for determining what plants will grow best in your native garden.
"Recently, I had the privilege of attending Jill Weber’s workshop on grass identification, which was organized by Native Gardens of Blue Hill. During the workshop, attendees gained hands-on experience identifying an assortment of native grasses, sedges and rushes, and I wanted to share what I learned with you! In the guide below, we’ll cover some of the key points on grass identification. You’ll also find some suggestions for the best native grasses, sedges and rushes to grow in your own garden.
Grasses, Sedges and Rushes: What’s the Difference?
"Grasses, sedges and rushes may look a lot a like at first glance, but there are a few ways to tell these plants apart. The identification tips below can help you determine what plants are growing in your garden. For more detailed information, you may want to explore the grass ID section on the Go Botany website or consult a quality plant identification book.
Grasses (Poaceae)
"True grasses are found throughout Maine, and throughout the world. Many of our most common grasses are not native to Maine and thrive in sunny and warm locations like fields and abandoned pastures; however, many native grasses are very cold hardy, some prefer wet environments and others grow happily in shade. Interestingly, the majority of our food crops actually belong to the grass family and those include wheat, rice, barley, oats, millet and bamboo!
"A clear way to determine if a graminoid is a true grass is by analyzing its stem and leaf formation. Grasses generally have flattened or rounded stems with pronounced joints or nodes (think bamboo!) Grasses also have 'two ranked' leaves, which means the leaves sprout on two sides of the plant. If you peel a grass blade down from the stem and expose the plant’s papery ligule, you’ll find that many grass ligules are easy to see with a hand lens and can be smooth or ragged on the margin, although some grasses don’t have ligules at all.*
* This is much easier to see with a loupe!
"Some of the most attractive species of true grasses that are native to Maine include:
● #PurpleLovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)
● #LittleBluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
● #BigBluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
● #DroopingWoodreed (Cinna latifolia)
● #Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
Sedges (Cyperaceae)
"Sedges can look a lot like true grasses, and they’re likely to be found in moist soils, although some sedges can tolerate dry conditions. Sedge seed heads are very variable, and some sedges have lots of ornamental appeal.
"The easiest way to determine if a plant is a sedge or not is to feel its stem. Sedge stems are generally triangular in shape and they won’t roll easily between your fingers. The leaves of sedges are typically three ranked, encircling the plant’s stem on three vertical planes. If you peel back a sedge leaf, you’ll notice that their papery ligules are triangular in form, often less noticeable than those of the grasses.
"Sedges can be useful in rain or water gardens, but some sedges can be grown in standard ornamental beds, or even used as a no-mow lawn substitute for small areas.
"If you’re interested in trying out sedges in your landscape, look for these native Maine species:
● #Pennsylvaniasedge (Carex pensylvanica)
● #FoxSedge (Carex vulpinoidea)
● #PointedBroomSedge (Carex scoparia)
● #NoddingSedge (Carex gynandra)
● #TussockSedge (Carex stricta)
Rushes (Juncaceae)
"Like sedges, many rushes and woodrushes prefer moist soil, and some rushes are appropriate for garden planting. Water-loving rushes make spectacular additions to rain gardens or small ponds, or they can be grown in poorly draining sections of your yard where other plants won’t thrive.
"Unlike sedges, rushes have rounded stems, but they lack the nodes that are found in true grasses. Rush flowers can be inconspicuous, but many species can hold their own in any flower garden. Rush leaves typically sprout from the base of the plant and encircle the plant’s stems; however, rushes can be varied and particular species may have different leaf formations.
"If you’re on the hunt for rushes to try in water features or in ornamental beds, these Maine natives are a great place to start:
● #SoftRush (Juncus effusus)
● #CommonWoodrush (Luzula multiflora)
● #WireRush (Juncus balticus)
● #CanadaRush (Juncus canadensis)
● #HairyWoodrush (Luzula acuminata)
How to use #graminoids in the landscape
"Grasses, sedges and rushes offer a lot of benefits to the home gardener. Not only are graminoids beautiful, but their seed heads can provide an important food source for wild birds in late summer, autumn and winter. When interplanted with other native #perennials, graminoids provide texture to gardens, as well as movement when their leaves catch in the breeze. Many graminoids also stay upright during winter, providing winter interest and habitat for wildlife. And, not to be overlooked, graminoids are also useful for #basketweaving if you’re interested in crafting!
"On a larger scale, graminoids serve as #CarbonSinks and they help to counter climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some graminoids are useful for erosion control or for #bioremediation projects. In wetland areas, grasses, rushes and sedges can aid with #WaterFiltration, and they provide habitat and food for various #wildlife species.
"When growing graminoids in your garden, make sure you consider the plant’s specific light, water and soil requirements. Some grasses are more suitable for gardens than others and offer a variety of leaf color, stiffness, height and seed characteristics. Rushes and sedges can be essential additions to rain gardens and other water features. Many native graminoids are spectacularly low maintenance, and they need very minimal water once established. Growing them in your garden or replacing some of your turf grass lawn with native ornamental grasses, sedges and rushes can cut down your lawn maintenance needs and also make your garden that much more #EcoFriendly!"
https://www.nativemainegardens.org/single-post/grasses-sedges-and-rushes-what-s-the-difference
#SolarPunkSunday #GardeningForBirds #Rewilding #Grasslands

#maine #grasses #sedges #rushes #purplelovegrass #littlebluestem
All for Gardening @[email protected] · 2026-05-01 · 23:50 UTC

Walmart’s ‘Beautiful’ $44 Outdoor Solar Garden Lights Are Now Less Than $2 Each https://www.allforgardening.com/1744309/walmarts-beautiful-44-outdoor-solar-garden-lights-are-now-less-than-2-each/ #AthlonSports #garden #GardenLights #OutdoorSolarLights #SolarLights #Walmart

#athlonsports #garden #gardenlights #outdoorsolarlights #solarlights #walmart
Patrick W. Marsh @patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com@patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com · 2026-02-04 · 15:00 UTC

A Streetlight Requiem

It had lived in them for years.
It was in their dreams, fantasies, and nightmares. It followed them during the day, night, and everywhere else. It watched from rooftops, sewers, roads, and alleys. When it truly learned about them, long before the Drum woke, the world was different. There was less technology, fewer people, and less complexity. Their society was splintered by conflict and economic instability. Sometimes, the Puppeteer wished it could have studied different eras and times, but it did not possess that level of individuality when the Drum existed. It simply listened to the voices in the dark. It had no direction other than them.
The monster was sent out before the Drum had fully awakened. Something in the currents of shadow and reality stirred it. A disturbance from another time and place. The humans who survived, and who later learned of the future’s interference in their world, understood that the Unnamed were present before the Drum played its demon song. They did not know exactly when the Unnamed began to monitor them, but by their understanding of time it would have been around the nineteen fifties. It was through that familiar stretch of americana that the Puppeteer learned about their culture. Those images imprinted themselves into its phantom arms and through the various wires linked to the plants that would overtake the world when the Drum arrived.
The Puppeteer’s role in the apocalypse was to be the flame to the moths.
It was the dream weaver, the illusion maker, the painter of the old world the Unnamed had so violently destroyed. The Puppeteer knew that humans would eventually learn to avoid the monsters once they recognized their patterns. It needed to draw them back out into shadows and blades. So it forged the images. Cars, people, laughter, music, planes, entire cities gleaming with phantom energy became its nightly tapestry.
Out of all the spectral stories it told through its long arms, gray body, and hidden wires threaded through the unchecked bloom of vine and flower, it loved the streetlights the most. There was something about their glow. Their amber sheen bled through time and memory. That luminescence seemed unchanged no matter what else shifted or collapsed. The Puppeteer spent countless days and nights hidden in the apocalyptic underbrush and in plain sight. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years passed after its activation. Yet the streetlights were always the same.
Until now.
The Drum was gone. It vanished silently one evening after turquoise thunder lit the northern sky. The moment it disappeared, the Puppeteer felt no urge to create illusions or lure humans and Reanimated to their grisly fate at the edge of its family’s claws. It was free, a sensation entirely new to it. At first, the Puppeteer did not know what to do with the excess of time.
It wandered the city, walking between houses and treetops. Though faceless, the Puppeteer was more humanoid than most of the other Unnamed. It had gray, leathery skin, broad shoulders, and long, gangly arms. Its height and face were what made it truly monstrous. The Puppeteer stood nearly thirty feet tall, and its face lacked any real features except for a black hole that seemed to fold inward if stared at for too long. It once hid constantly, camouflaging itself day and night among rubble using mirages and spells. Its massive body was flexible enough to twist into impossible positions, allowing it to vanish into the ruined landscape.
Hiding was no longer necessary.
Now it roamed freely through rubble and green growth in the open daylight. Occasionally, human survivors fled at the sight of it, or fired their weapons in panic. More often than not, nothing interacted with the Puppeteer at all.
At night, the monster found itself unable to do anything but feel nostalgic.
It would settle somewhere in the wasteland, blending into the darkness as its skin adapted to its surroundings, like a cuttlefish drifting across a deepwater reef. From there, it would connect the green threads beneath its wrists into the surrounding vegetation. Long, wormlike strands crept outward, weaving through soil, asphalt, and ruin. Once they reached their chosen points, they ignited the darkness with illusions of the old world.
The Puppeteer was focused on only one image now.
Streetlights.
Dozens of them lining empty roads. The Drum no longer demanded lures for the living. Those days ended beneath the teal lightning that destroyed it. These visions were not meant to hunt. They were made purely for entertainment. The Puppeteer did not care if humans were drawn to them, though most survivors no longer trusted the glow of streetlights. It only wanted to see the old world again, the warmth and simplicity of amber rings stretching across quiet streets.
There was something calm and beautiful about them. The monster did not know why.
It only knew that it needed to see them.

If you haven’t encountered a Puppeteer from the mainline series of the Greenland Diaries, you might be a little confused. You can read about that right here. The Puppeteer is responsible for the various illusions and mirages that appear once the Drum takes hold in this apocalyptic environment. They’re sort of like the angler fish of this wasteland. Thank you for reading my flash fiction from this series.
#apocalyptic #author #blogging #books #bookseries #fantasy #fiction #flashfiction #horror #monsters #novels #patrickWMarsh #reading #shortstory #theGreenlandDiaries #writing

#apocalyptic #author #blogging #books #bookseries #fantasy
Karsten Schmidt @[email protected] · 2024-01-29 · 09:36 UTC

Warm fuzzy monday morning feeling after someone sent you a link to a blog post describing your project (https://thi.ng/umbrella) as "the most beautiful open source project I've ever seen" and "it's bloody fantastic"... 🤩🥹
https://polar.sh/emilwidlund/posts/alma-an-experimental-playground-for-generative-graphics
Btw. Related to https://alma.sh (the main topic of the above blog post), here's my own older (less flashy) interactive shader playground here (the basics of which were developed in a YT live stream):
https://shadergraph.thi.ng/
#ThingUmbrella #OpenSource #ShaderAST #ShaderGraph #WebGL #ScreenRecording

#thingumbrella #opensource #shaderast #shadergraph #webgl #screenrecording