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#KindlingCollective - Winter Walk Fore River
February 7, 2026, 10:00am - 2:00pm, #PortlandME
About this trip:
Build confidence in hiking in the wintertime with Daene on the trails at the Fore River Sanctuary/Jewel Falls in Portland. This is a great event for folks looking to get more accustomed to the challenges and joys of safe hiking in the snow & ice.
Expect ice-covered trails & wooden bridges, stairs, inclined walking ranging from mostly flat to steeper inclines, and the sharing/swapping of techniques, skills & stories.
Gear/accessibility aids will be available to borrow from the gear library: micro-spikes for shoes, hiking poles, base layers, etc.
This event is a #QueerSafe event! "Queer events are designed as an affinity spaces for queer and trans people of all racial identities. If you think you might be queer or trans, you are queer enough. While we love our allies and advocates, if you’re not queer, don’t come to these events."
Experience Required: None
Cost: $5-$20FMI:
https://www.kindlingcollective.org/events/queer-intro-to-winter-hikingTo register:
https://activitymessenger.com/p/ukBpUGYx#SolarPunkSunday #QueerSafeEvents #MaineEvents #SpendTimeInNature
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#KindlingCollective - Winter Walk Fore River
February 7, 2026, 10:00am - 2:00pm, #PortlandME
About this trip:
Build confidence in hiking in the wintertime with Daene on the trails at the Fore River Sanctuary/Jewel Falls in Portland. This is a great event for folks looking to get more accustomed to the challenges and joys of safe hiking in the snow & ice.
Expect ice-covered trails & wooden bridges, stairs, inclined walking ranging from mostly flat to steeper inclines, and the sharing/swapping of techniques, skills & stories.
Gear/accessibility aids will be available to borrow from the gear library: micro-spikes for shoes, hiking poles, base layers, etc.
This event is a #QueerSafe event! "Queer events are designed as an affinity spaces for queer and trans people of all racial identities. If you think you might be queer or trans, you are queer enough. While we love our allies and advocates, if you’re not queer, don’t come to these events."
Experience Required: None
Cost: $5-$20FMI:
https://www.kindlingcollective.org/events/queer-intro-to-winter-hikingTo register:
https://activitymessenger.com/p/ukBpUGYx#SolarPunkSunday #QueerSafeEvents #MaineEvents #SpendTimeInNature
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#KindlingCollective - Winter Walk Fore River
February 7, 2026, 10:00am - 2:00pm, #PortlandME
About this trip:
Build confidence in hiking in the wintertime with Daene on the trails at the Fore River Sanctuary/Jewel Falls in Portland. This is a great event for folks looking to get more accustomed to the challenges and joys of safe hiking in the snow & ice.
Expect ice-covered trails & wooden bridges, stairs, inclined walking ranging from mostly flat to steeper inclines, and the sharing/swapping of techniques, skills & stories.
Gear/accessibility aids will be available to borrow from the gear library: micro-spikes for shoes, hiking poles, base layers, etc.
This event is a #QueerSafe event! "Queer events are designed as an affinity spaces for queer and trans people of all racial identities. If you think you might be queer or trans, you are queer enough. While we love our allies and advocates, if you’re not queer, don’t come to these events."
Experience Required: None
Cost: $5-$20FMI:
https://www.kindlingcollective.org/events/queer-intro-to-winter-hikingTo register:
https://activitymessenger.com/p/ukBpUGYx#SolarPunkSunday #QueerSafeEvents #MaineEvents #SpendTimeInNature
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Shoebill Balaeniceps rex
Shoebill Balaeniceps rex
Vulnerable
Extant (resident)
Central African Republic; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Rwanda; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania; Uganda; Zambia
Known for their unnerving and intense stare and imposing, prehistoric appearance – shoebills are magnificent birds. There are less than 8000 individual birds left alive. They are vulnerable from #palmoil, #cocoa and #meat #deforestation, agricultural run-off, #pollution, #mining, #hunting and human persecution. Help them every time you shop and be #vegan, #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife
The #Shoebill is a magnificent and gentle big bird 🕊️🦤 with an unnerving stare 👀 There are only 8000 left alive in #DRC, #Uganda #Africa. Vulnerable from #palmoil #deforestation, #hunting and more. Fight for them! #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/09/10/shoebill-balaeniceps-rex/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterKnown for their menacing stare 👀😸 gentle #shoebills are iconic in #Uganda 🇺🇬 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Tanzania 🇹🇿 They are vulnerable from #hunting, #palmoil #deforestation. Help them and be #vegan 🥕🍆 and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🪔☠️🔥⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/09/10/shoebill-balaeniceps-rex/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterThere are less than 8,000 birds left alive and they are increasingly threatened by agricultural run-off from palm oil and cocoa deforestation across their range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V7t28Fim34
The shoebill Balaeniceps rex is also known by the common names: the whale-headed stork, shoebill stork and whalehead. Their eponymous feature is their enormous bill They have the third largest bills after pelicans and large storks.
Fast Facts
- When shoebills soar they make around 150 flaps per minute which makes them one of the slowest of any bird, with the exception of the larger stork species.
- They stand stock-still and waiting, all alone giving them an eerie and unnerving appearance. Once they notice fish appearing on the surface of swamps they quickly snap them up into their large bills.
- The shoebill’s chattering large bill makes a sound akin to machine gun fire. This combined with their silent creeping gait can make them seem rather menacing!
- Shoebills are attracted to poorly oxygenated waters, as this means fish must come to the surface to breathe – where they are efficiently captured.
- They are mostly silent except for elaborate bill-clattering communication that happens during their breeding. Chicks make a human-like hiccup sound when signalling hunger.
- Although they have a similar appearance to storks, shoebills are more closely related to pelicans and herons in the order Pelecaniformes.
Appearance & Behaviour
They possess extraordinarily large feet with their middle toe extending up to 18.5 cm in length. This helps them with balance while standing on uneven swamps and on aquatic vegetation while they hunt.
Adults have feathers that range from blue-grey to slate-grey. Juveniles possess similar plumage but in a tawny blue-brown hue.
Shoebills have a modestly sized bill at birth, which grows much larger once chicks reach between 23-43 days old.
Their unusual beauty makes them a must-see for birdwatchers in Africa. Despite their slightly unnerving appearance, these birds are placid and will allow birdwatchers to snap their photo at a range of two metres.
Shoebills are known for staying statue-still and silent in the muddy waters while hunting. These birds stalk their prey in a solitary way, patiently lurking and hunting entirely with their vision. Once prey is spotted they launch a rapid strike. They will sometimes use their big beaks to pry deep into the pond mud and extirpate lung fish with a violent strike.
They are normally silent but will get noisy during nesting season with elaborate bill clattering displays. Adults birds will make a ‘moo’ sound and high pitched whine while clattering their bills in order to communicate with each other. Chicks call out to their mothers with a ‘hiccup’ sound.
Shoebills typically hunt for lungfish and other fish in poorly oxygenated marshlands, bogs, peatland and swamps. Fish frequently break to the surface to breathe – it is then that shoebills rapidly strike. Their large feet enable them to balance on floating vegetation. The movement of hippos can aid the hunting of shoebills, as they rustle up fish from bottom of swamps, pushing them to surface for the shoebills’ easy capture.
Threats
There is estimated to be below 8,000 individual shoebills left and they are classified as vulnerable. Shoebills face a range of anthropogenic threats:
- Palm oil and cocoa deforestation: The mass removal of virgin rainforest for palm oil and cocoa results in mass deaths of shoebills.
- Infrastructure building: roads, dams and powerlines pose a risk to shoebills.
- Meat deforestation: cattle and other animals are known to trample shoebill nests.
- Pollution run-off: from palm oil agrochemicals and mining effluent.
- Hunting: In some cultures shoebills are thought of as a bad omen, in others they are hunted for food.
- Capture for the pet trade: Shoebill eggs and chicks are captured for consumption or sold to zoos.
- Armed human conflict: Armed groups moving through the rainforest has facilitated hunting of shoebills.
- Climate change: Increased extreme weather events like fires and droughts brought on by climate change lowers their numbers.
Habitat
Shoebills are found in central tropical Africa. Including South Sudan, eastern Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, western Tanzania, and northern Zambia. They are non-migratory birds who make limited seasonal movements.
They live in dense freshwater swamps and marshes including undisturbed papyrus and reed beds. They are attracted to areas of mixed vegetation and have been seen on occasion in rice fields and flooded plantations.
Diet
Shoebills mainly consume fish but will also eat a range of wetland vertebrates. Their preferred food is marbled lungfish, tilapia and catfish. When this is not available they are known to consume frogs, nile monitors, baby crocodiles, water snakes, turtles, snails, rodents and other small waterfowl.
Mating and breeding
Shoebills form monogamous pair bonds for the breeding season. They fiercely defend their nests from other birds during their nesting period, which begins either during the monsoon season or after this ends.
Both parents build the nest on a floating and flat platform made up of swamp vegetation and around three metres wide and three metres deep.
Typically the female will lay between one to three eggs, with only one being reared and cared for until maturity. The other eggs are back-ups in case the eldest chick is weak or dies.
In the hot weather, shoebill parents will fill their bills with water to shower their nests to cool their eggs.
Chicks take about 105 days to fledge and juveniles typically fly well by 112 days. Juvenile birds will continue to feed with their mother for another month after this and reach sexual maturity at about three years old.
Support Shoebills by going vegan and boycotting palm oil in the supermarket, it’s the #Boycott4Wildlife
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
BirdLife International. 2018. Balaeniceps rex. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018: e.T22697583A133840708. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T22697583A133840708.en. Accessed on 16 February 2023.
Shoebill on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoebill
Shoebill on Animalia.bio – https://animalia.bio/shoebill
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
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Read more3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
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Pledge your support #Africa #animals #Bird #birds #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #CentralAfricanRepublic #cocoa #Congo #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #DRC #hunting #meat #mining #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #poaching #pollution #Rwanda #Shoebill #ShoebillBalaenicepsRex #shoebills #SouthSudan #stork #Tanzania #Uganda #vegan #VulnerableSpecies #Zambia -
I was at a work conference, and they did a land acknowledgement telling us we were on the land of Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people.
I want to do more than just acknowledge this. I'm looking for something to donate to, which is of particular interest to Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people. This could be mutual aid, or any sort of nonprofit, or whatever.
I'll donate what I can and pass the suggestion along to coworkers.
Any suggestions?
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Blog: “Lord of the Rings is Pagan…” is One of the Dumbest Takes I’ve Ever Heard.
I know, I know…everybody is jumping on Jack Posobiec for this comment, but as a Tolkien fan and writing nerd, I’m jumping on the bandwagon of defending what is one of the greatest Christian works of fiction to have ever graced God’s green Earth.
But first, some backstory. On a recent episode of his podcast, Human Events Daily, Posobiec made the comment that LOTR is not overtly Christian, (which to some extent is true; I’ll get to that in a sec) and went so far as to say that it’s overtly pagan. He said: “There’s nothing overtly Christian about ‘Lord of the Rings.’ […] there’s no church in it, there’s no faith in it, there’s no Christ figure — there’s none of these things. And honestly, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ if it’s anything, […] is overtly pagan.” He also cited as further evidence of LOTR not being Christian that Tolkien notoriously didn’t like C.S. Lewis’ use of allegory in The Chronicles of Narnia series.
However, to begin our analysis of if Lord of the Rings (and the surrounding books such as The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The History of Middle Earth, etc.) is Christian or not, we must define what necessarily constitutes a “Christian” story. Is it the values of the story and the intent of the author that make it Christian, or is it the use of often painfully obvious allegory or messaging that makes it Christian?
Personally, I do believe that it’s a mix of both, but I lean more towards the intent of the Christian author to show Christ and the Gospel in some way, be it subtle or overt, and the values of the story that make it Christian. To quote Martin Luther: “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes.” A similar thing goes for Christian storytelling. If you can find a way to put in Christianity without making so painfully obvious that Dora the Explorer could find it, and people can find the Christian themes, then you’ve done your job. But if you make it so obvious that the story eventually feels less like a story and more like Christian propaganda, then you’ve lost not only the point of the story, but you also lose the non-Christian readers who may have otherwise been interested.
In the case of Tolkien and Lewis, while Lewis leaned towards overt allegory for his books, Tolkien – who was not a fan of allegory – leaned towards weaving Christianity into the fabric of the story subtly. According to Tolkien himself in Letter 142, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” And while, yes, while The Lord of the Rings does take from Norse myths, and much of the subtlety of the Christian themes have been lost on people who wish to make it more pagan than it was intended to be (something that Tolkien worried about happening), Christ is still there.
Take, for instance, the characters of Gandalf and Aragorn. An argument can be made that these characters intentionally represent Jesus in different ways. Starting with Gandalf, according to The Silmarillion (which provides the background lore for The Lord of the Rings) he is of the Maiar, or the angelic beings that serve under the Valar (which you can think of as the archangels.) Because of Sauron’s following in the footsteps of Melkor (Morgoth), Gandalf was sent to Middle Earth to help the people fight against Sauron. While not a perfect representation of Christ, the image of a divine being living in the body of a mere mortal (very much like the hypostatic union) is stark. Even more like Christ is Gandalf’s death fighting the Balrog in the Mines of Moria and resurrection as “Gandalf the White,” an image of Christ’s death, resurrection, and glorification. Heck, one could even say that Gandalf the White is a sort of allegory for Christ’s second coming, when He will finally defeat Satan once and for all.
As for Aragorn, he is another Christ figure. At first, he’s a ranger, a seemingly random dude from the Dunedain (the descendants of the Numenorians who fled to Middle Earth after Numenor was destroyed). Bilbo’s description of him of, “All that is gold does not glitter,” is a parallel to Isaiah 53:2’s description of Jesus’ humble state. Further, his journey in the Path of the Dead and his dual role of healer and warrior is similar to Christ’s role of redeemer and conquering king that we see in Revelation, especially when he returns to the throne as a glorious king.
Further, one could also argue that Frodo and Sam are representative of Christ and the everyday Christian. As Frodo struggles on his mission to destroy the Ring, Sam is there helping him along the way. This is similar to how, as Christians we struggle to live godly lives, but Christ is there helping us through the Holy Spirit to stay on the straight-and-narrow.
Thus, while Tolkien never overtly named these characters as Christ figures, it is still obvious if you are willing to look at it through a Christian lens.
Further, to say that there is no faith in The Lord of the Rings is untrue. While faith is never fully defined or developed in LOTR, within the larger context of Tolkien’s legendarium, there absolutely is a faith – especially amongst the elves – that is deeply reflective of Tolkien’s belief in Catholicism.
The best example of this that I can think of is the Elves’ hymn to Elbereth Gilthoniel. This isn’t a song about some random person. In the larger legendarium, Elbereth is essentially a Mary-like figure to the elves, making this hymn very much like “Ave Maria.” When Sam calls out to her in Shelob’s cave, it’s essentially like saying a Hail Mary.
Even more damning for Posobiec’s statement are the allusions to Eru Iluvatar, the God of Tolkien’s legendarium, within The Lord of the Rings. According to The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, etc. Eru was seldom worshipped by the Elves because his name was considered to holy too utter. As Finrod says in “The Athrabeth” (which I will get to) in the book The History of Middle Earth: Morgoth’s Ring, “For that name we do not utter ever in jest or without full intent.” However, despite this, both the elves and men understood that Eru was the only one deserving of praise and believed the worship of any other to be evil. In fact, the men of Numenor had the mountain of Meneltarma dedicated to the worship of Eru in the Three Prayers that were held around the year.
Most interestingly, however, when thinking about faith in the world of Middle-Earth is that, Tolkien, in writing “The Athrabeth,” a lengthy dialogue between Finrod Felagund (Galadriel’s brother) and the human woman, Andreth, incorporated the idea that Eru Illuvatar would one day enter the world to save the Edain (mankind.) Though it’s better if you read the entire dialogue, I’ll include this excerpt from The History of Middle Earth: Morgoth’s Ring pages 318-323:
“This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers, but the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the Marring of Arda [the world of Middle-Earth], already foreshadowed before their devising; and to do more, as agents of the magnificence of Eru: to enlarge the Music and surpass the Vision of the World!
“For that Arda Healed shall not be Arda Unmarred, but a third thing and a greater, and yet the same. I have conversed with the Valar who were present at the making of the Music ere the being of the World began. And now I wonder: Did they hear the end of the Music? Was there not something in or beyond the final chords of Eru which, being overwhelmed thereby, they did got perceive?
“Or again, since Eru is forever free, maybe he made no Music and showed no Vision beyond a certain point. Beyond that point we cannot see or know, until by our own roads we come there, Valar or Eldar [Elves] or Men.
“As may a master in the telling of tales keep hidden the greatest moment until it comes in due course. It may be guessed at indeed, in some measure, by those of us who have listened with full heart and mind; but so the teller would wish. In no wise is the surprise and wonder of his art thus diminished, for thus we share, as it were, in his authorship. But not so, if all were told us in a preface before we entered in!”“What then would you say is the supreme moment that Eru has reserved?” Andreth asked.
“Ah, wise lady!” said Finrod. “I am an Elda [elf], and again I was thinking of my own people. But nay, of all the Children of Eru. I was thinking that by the Second Children we might have been delivered from death. For ever as we spoke of death being a division of the united, I thought in my heart of a death that is not so: but the ending together of both. For that is what lies before us, so far as our reason could see: the completion of Arda and its end, and therefore also of us children of Arda; the end when all the long lives of the Elves shall be wholly in the past.
“And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and there walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps.”Then Andreth looked under her brows at Finrod: “And what, when ye were not singing, would ye say to us?’ she asked.
Finrod laughed. “I can only guess,” he said. “Why, wise lady, I think that we should tell you tales of the Past and of Arda that was Before, of the perils and great deeds and the making of the Silmarils! We were the lordly ones then! But ye, ye would then be at home, looking at all things intently, as your own. Ye would be the lordly ones. ‘The eyes of Elves are always thinking of something else,’ ye would say. But ye would know then of what we were reminded: of the days when we first met, and our hands touched in the dark. Beyond the End of the World we shall not change; for in memory is our great talent, as shall be seen ever more clearly as the ages of this Arda pass: a heavy burden to be, I fear; but in the Days of which we now speak a great wealth.” And then he paused, for he saw that Andreth was weeping silently.
“Alas, lord!” she said. “What then is to be done now? For we speak as if these things are, or as if they will assuredly be. But Men have been diminished and their power is taken away. We look for no Arda Remade: darkness lies before us, into which we stare in vain. If by our aid your everlasting mansions were to be prepared, they will not be builded now.“
“Have ye then no hope?” said Finrod.“What is hope?” she said. “An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.”
“That is one thing that Men call ‘hope’,” said Finrod. “‘Amdir’ we call it, ‘looking up’. But there is another which is founded deeper. ‘Estel’ we call it, that is ‘trust’. It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children’s joy. Amdir you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?“
“Maybe,” she said. “But no! Do you not perceive that it is part of our wound that Estel should falter and its foundations be shaken? Are we the Children of the One? Are we not cast off finally? Or were we ever so? Is not the Nameless the Lord of the World?“
“Say it not even in question!” said Finrod.
“It cannot be unsaid,” answered Andreth, “if you would understand the despair in which we walk. Or in which most Men walk. Among the Atani, as you call us, or the Seekers as we say: those who left the lands of despair and the Men of darkness and journeyed west in vain hope: it is believed that healing may yet be found, or that there is some way of escape. But is this indeed Estel? Is it not Amdir rather; but without reason: mere flight in a dream from what waking they know: that there is no escape from darkness and death?“
“Mere flight in a dream you say,’ answered Finrod. ‘In dream many desires are revealed; and desire may be the last flicker of Estel. But you do not mean dream, Andreth. You confound dream and waking with hope and belief, to make the one more doubtful and the other more sure. Are they asleep when they speak of escape and healing?”“Asleep or awake, they say nothing clearly,” answered Andreth. ‘How or when shall healing come? To what manner of being shall those who see that time be re-made? And what of us who before it go out into darkness unhealed? To such questions only those of the (as they call themselves) have any guess of an answer.”
“Those of the Old Hope?” said Finrod. “Who are they?”
“A few,” she said; “but their number has grown since we came to this land, and they see that the Nameless can (as they think) be defied. Yet that is no good reason. To defy him does not undo his work of old. And if the valour of the Eldar fails here, then their despair will be deeper. For it was not on the might of Men, or of any of the peoples of Arda, that the old hope was grounded.““What then was this hope, if you know?” Finrod asked.
“They say,” answered Andreth: “they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end. This they say also, or they feign, is a rumor that has come down through years uncounted, even from the days of our undoing.”“They say, they feign?” said Finrod. “Are you then nor one of them?”
“How can I be, lord? All wisdom is against them. Who is the One, whom ye call Eru? If we put aside the Men who serve the Nameless, as do many in Middle-earth, still many Men perceive the world only as a war between Light and Dark equipotent. But you will say: nay, that is Manwe and Melkor; Eru is above them. Is then Eru only the greatest of the Valar, a great god among gods, as most Men will say, even among the Atani: a king who dwells far from his kingdom and leaves lesser princes to do here much as they will? Again you say: nay, Eru is One, alone without peer, and He made Ea, and is beyond it; and the Valar are greater than we, but yet no nearer to His majesty. Is this not so?”
“Yes,” said Finrod. “We say this, and the Valar we know, and they say the same, all save one. But which, think you, is more likely to lie: those who make themselves humble, or he that exalts himself?”
“I do not doubt,” said Andreth. “And for that reason the saying of Hope passes my understanding. How could Eru enter into the thing that He has made, and than which He is beyond measure greater? Can the singer enter into his tale or the designer into his picture?““He is already in it, as well as outside,” said Finrod. “But indeed the “in-dwelling” and the “out-living” are not in the same mode.”
“Truly,” said Andreth. “So may Eru in that mode be present in Ea that proceeded from Him. But they speak of Eru Himself entering into Arda, and that is a thing wholly different. How could He the greater do this? Would it not shatter Arda, or indeed all Ea?”
“Ask me not,” said Finrod. “These things are beyond the compass of the wisdom of the Eldar, or of the Valar maybe. But I doubt that our words may mislead us, and that when you say ‘greater’ you think of the dimensions of Arda, in which the greater vessel may not be contained in the less.“But such words may not be used of the Measureless. If Eru wished to do this, I do not doubt that He would find a way, though I cannot foresee it. For, as it seems to me, even if He in Himself were to enter in, He must still remain also as He is: the Author without. And yet, Andreth, to speak with humility, I cannot conceive how else this healing could be achieved. Since Eru will surely not suffer Melkor to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end. Yet there is no power conceivable greater than Melkor save Eru only. Therefore Eru, if He will not relinquish His work to Melkor, who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him.
“More: even if Melkor (or the Morgoth that he has become) could in any way be thrown down or thrust from Arda, still his Shadow would remain, and the evil that he has wrought and sown as a seed would wax and multiply. And if any remedy for this is to be found, ere all is ended, any new light to oppose the shadow, or any medicine for the wounds: then it must, I deem, come from without.“
“Then, lord,” said Andreth, and she looked up in wonder, “you believe in this Hope?“
“Ask me not yet,” he answered. “For it is still to me but strange news that comes from afar. No such hope was ever spoken to the Quendi. To you only it was sent. And yet through you we may hear it and lift up our hearts.” He paused a while, and then looking gravely at Andreth he said: “Yes, Wise-woman, maybe it was ordained that we Quendi, and ye Atani, ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news one to another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you: ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds, so that while the Shadow still broods in the North we should not be wholly afraid.”
This should be of interest to any who wish to say that The Lord of the Rings is pagan as Tolkien wrote LOTR as a mythology for Britian and some very devoted Tolkien fans have even tried to line up where the events of Tolkien’s lore would’ve lined up with our real-world history. As such, what Finrod says in this lengthy excerpt is – if we are to treat Tolkien’s work as a mythological history of Europe – a sort of prophecy about the coming of Jesus. It’s also interesting to note that in Tolkien’s idea of what the end of Middle Earth would look like, it was very much like what we see in Revelation. A battle called the Dagor Dagorath would happen, Melkor would be slain, and it would all culminate in the world being remade.
From this, we can see that by its own merits – without even taking into account what Tolkien himself said about the faith woven into his work – that The Lord of the Rings and the larger legendarium, as a mythology for Britian, is a Christian work, or, at the very least, a Catholic one. It has a faith that, even if it is not shown overtly, is shown throughout the story in various forms. Though it is true that Tolkien was influenced by the Greek and Norse myths when creating his secondary world, The Lord of the Rings and its history is still a fundamentally Christian work.
Until next time,
M.J.
#Blog #Books #Catholicism #Christianity #ChristopherTolkien #faith #Fantasy #god #JRRTolkien #JackPosobiec #jesus #LordOfTheRings #LOTR #OpinionPeice #Paganism #Response #Review #TheHobbit #TheSilmarillion #Theology #Tolkien #Writing -
FR - Le jury “Bédélys international” (l’un des prix du Festival de BD de Montréal, jury dont je suis membre) arrive au bout de son travail pour l’année 2025. Cette fin de semaine, réunion pour désigner notre lauréat.e 2025 ! Nous avons déjà notre liste de 10 nominé.e.s (pas encore officielle… ça ne saurait tarder à être annoncé), choisis parmi les 1071 titres admissibles.
Comment évaluer une œuvre, comment choisir et donc aussi écarter, parmi ces créations dont beaucoup plus que 10 mériteraient une place dans la liste finale ? Nous avons des critères communs. Personnellement, je me suis également créée une grille constituée de 7 familles de critères : graphiques (dessin, couleurs, narration visuelle, représentation de l’indicible) ; scénaristiques (structure, personnage, dialogues, thèmes) ; capacité émotionnelle ; accessibilité et expérience de lecture ; cohérence interne (fond/forme ; originalité ; identité…) ; documentaire (ou, pour la fiction : cohérence et “force” de l’univers inventé) ; contextuel.
C’est très aidant de se doter d’une telle grille. Mais reste qu’au final, c’est aussi une histoire de “coup de cœur”, d’émotion, d’une histoire racontée qui touche, bouleverse, rencontre des inquiétudes ou des espoirs… Quelle aventure !ENG - The “Bédélys International” jury (one of the awards at the Montreal Comic Book Festival, of which I am a member) is wrapping up its work for 2025. This weekend, we’ll be meeting to select our 2025 winner! We already have our list of 10 nominees (not yet official… it won’t be long before it’s announced), chosen from among the 1,071 eligible titles.
How do we evaluate a work, how do we choose—and therefore also eliminate—from among these creations, many more than 10 of which deserve a spot on the final list? We have common criteria. Personally, I’ve also created a grid consisting of 7 categories of criteria: visual (artwork, colors, visual storytelling, representation of the unspeakable); narrative (structure, characters, dialogue, themes); emotional impact; accessibility and reading experience; internal coherence (content/form; originality; visual identity…); documentary (or, for fiction: coherence and “strength” of the invented universe); contextual.
It’s very helpful to have such a grid. But the fact remains that, in the end, it’s also a matter of “love at first sight,” of emotion, of a story that touches, moves, and resonates with anxieties or hopes… What.A.Journey !
#comics #BD #FBDM #MCAF #BandeDessinee #Prix #Jury #quebec #Montreal #award
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Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026
The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.
I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.
So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!
Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!
TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate
A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”
Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.
All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.
My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.
Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!
Jump to:
- Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
- Long Form: Films
- Long Form: Non-Film/TV
- Short Form: TV Episodes
- Short Form: Non-TV
Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.
Andor, Season 2+
This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.
I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.
I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.
Severance, Season 2+
Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.
Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.
But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.
Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:
- A job is a job, not a family.
- The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
- Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
- You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
- Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.
This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.
Pluribus, Season 1+
God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.
The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.
The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?
Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?
I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.
My Hero Academia: The Final Season+
I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:
Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.
This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻♀️
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
- Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
- Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
- Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.
Long Form: Films
Sinners+
This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.
All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.
The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.
One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.
There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.
Frankenstein+
©️ Netflix 2025I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.
To quote myself:
Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.
What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.
My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.
It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.
I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.
Thunderbolts*+
I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.
(c) Disney/Marvel Studios, 2025I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:
- Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
- Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
- John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
- The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
- Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅
And then, there’s Bob.
(c) Disney/Marvel, 2025Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.
There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.
I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.
Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ
Superman+
A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!
I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.
The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.
This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:
All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.
Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!
Honourable mentions/near misses+
- Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
- Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
- Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.
The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+
- K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
- Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
- Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!
Long Form: Non-Film/TV
B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*
This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.
* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.
Short Form: TV Episodes
A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.
Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?
This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.
Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+
‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’
I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.
‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’
Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.
Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+
S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’
I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.
I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.
S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’
People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.
It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.
I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.
S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’
There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.
Some spoilery thoughts here.While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?
There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.
Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.
Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+
Episode 1: “We is Us”
It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7
Well, this episode does none of that.
Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.
Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!
Episode 7: “The Gap”
The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.
Some spoilery thoughts here.At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),
Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.
It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.
This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.
Short Form: Non-TV
‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)
I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:
The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.
We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.
While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.
I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!
Footnotes
- Per the WSFS Constitution, clauses 3.8.2 and 3.8.3. ↩︎
- In addition to the more fannish post I linked above, I found another really cool essay about the Barbican as Coruscant from an architect who works in film and TV. ↩︎
- A special shoutout to Joshua James, who played the doctor who tortured Bix Caleen with the sounds of distant massacres; I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since I saw him in Treasure Island at the National Theatre back in 2015 or so, and make a point to see him in every play he’s in when I can. He had a stint as Dr Brenner in Stranger Things: The First Shadow recently which I unfortunately missed, but I bet he was perfect! ↩︎
- I’d like to thank Octothorpe’s Alison Scott for her recommendation to see the film in an IMAX theatre, as the experience was truly spectacular. ↩︎
- There is another Black Widow character played by Olga Kurilenko who turns up for literally five minutes, but she is so not present in the rest of the film that I’m not even going to go into it. If it weren’t for Yelena and Alexei, I’d say that movie had zero lasting impact on the MCU, given how late into Natasha’s journey we got it (literally after she was canonically killed off), lol (sarcastic). ↩︎
- I still don’t know how to feel about the plot twist around Krypton and Clark’s biological parents, brief as it was. I think it is intended to maximise the contrast between where Clark hails from and where he grew up and how that affected his identity, and the discomfort it creates is probably very intentional from Gunn. ↩︎
- I call this “pilot syndrome”, and it’s one of my least favourite phenomena in media. ↩︎
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It seems like everyday there's a new reality to accept. Why bring movies to life? Why?
Now, we can add Phantasm to the list. Great.
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Donald #Trump threatened on Friday 💥to come to the aid of protesters in #Iran if security forces fire on them, days into unrest that has left several dead and posed the biggest internal threat to Iranian authorities in years.
"We are locked and loaded and ready to go," he said in a social media post.
The United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June, joining an Israeli air campaign that targeted Tehran's atomic programme and military leadership.
Responding to Trump's comments, top Iranian official Ali Larijani warned that U.S. interference in domestic Iranian issues would amount to a #destabilisation of the entire Middle East.
Iran backs proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
The comments came as a local official in western Iran where several deaths were reported was cited by state media as warning that any unrest or illegal gatherings would be met "decisively and without leniency", raising the likelihood of escalation.
This week's protests over soaring #inflation are so far smaller than some previous bouts of unrest in Iran -- but have spread across the country, with #deadly confrontations between demonstrators and security forces focused in western provinces.
State-affiliated media and rights groups have reported 💥at least six deaths since Wednesday, including one man who authorities said was a member of the Basij paramilitary affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guards.
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Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
KØPI 137, Monday, May 18 at 09:00 PM GMT+2
INFO TALK - DRINKS - FOOD
" The Experiences of an Autonomous/ Anti-authoritarian space in the so-called Philippines"
In Kopi137, the info talk will start at 21uhr. free entrance
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
Germany/Czech Republic
May 6-19, 2026
"The intersection of language, culture, and identity, particularly within the context of the so-called Philippines.
The influence of Western powers on various aspects of life in the Philippines is undeniable, and the way this has impacted music, lifestyle, and the overall sense of community is profound. Yet, there's an opportunity to reshape how we embrace this reality.
The so-called Philippines are heavily bombarded by Western rhetoric and ideas that are forced onto us through our educational systems, the Constitution, Religion/Spiritual belief, the western kind of development, the style of government
Sub-topics to be presented:
*Against War on Drugs during the Duterte regime
* Anti-mining campaign
* Presentation of Decolonization in the context of so-called Philippines
* Decentralised/self-managed renewable energy
* Culture of sharing and Mutual Aid during Pandemic days
* Insights from the recent September 2025 riots against Corruption
https://berlin.askapunk.de/event/etniko-bandido-infoshop-europe-tour
-
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
KØPI 137, Monday, May 18 at 09:00 PM GMT+2
INFO TALK - DRINKS - FOOD
" The Experiences of an Autonomous/ Anti-authoritarian space in the so-called Philippines"
In Kopi137, the info talk will start at 21uhr. free entrance
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
Germany/Czech Republic
May 6-19, 2026
"The intersection of language, culture, and identity, particularly within the context of the so-called Philippines.
The influence of Western powers on various aspects of life in the Philippines is undeniable, and the way this has impacted music, lifestyle, and the overall sense of community is profound. Yet, there's an opportunity to reshape how we embrace this reality.
The so-called Philippines are heavily bombarded by Western rhetoric and ideas that are forced onto us through our educational systems, the Constitution, Religion/Spiritual belief, the western kind of development, the style of government
Sub-topics to be presented:
*Against War on Drugs during the Duterte regime
* Anti-mining campaign
* Presentation of Decolonization in the context of so-called Philippines
* Decentralised/self-managed renewable energy
* Culture of sharing and Mutual Aid during Pandemic days
* Insights from the recent September 2025 riots against Corruption
https://berlin.askapunk.de/event/etniko-bandido-infoshop-europe-tour
-
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
KØPI 137, Monday, May 18 at 09:00 PM GMT+2
INFO TALK - DRINKS - FOOD
" The Experiences of an Autonomous/ Anti-authoritarian space in the so-called Philippines"
In Kopi137, the info talk will start at 21uhr. free entrance
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
Germany/Czech Republic
May 6-19, 2026
"The intersection of language, culture, and identity, particularly within the context of the so-called Philippines.
The influence of Western powers on various aspects of life in the Philippines is undeniable, and the way this has impacted music, lifestyle, and the overall sense of community is profound. Yet, there's an opportunity to reshape how we embrace this reality.
The so-called Philippines are heavily bombarded by Western rhetoric and ideas that are forced onto us through our educational systems, the Constitution, Religion/Spiritual belief, the western kind of development, the style of government
Sub-topics to be presented:
*Against War on Drugs during the Duterte regime
* Anti-mining campaign
* Presentation of Decolonization in the context of so-called Philippines
* Decentralised/self-managed renewable energy
* Culture of sharing and Mutual Aid during Pandemic days
* Insights from the recent September 2025 riots against Corruption
https://berlin.askapunk.de/event/etniko-bandido-infoshop-europe-tour
-
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
KØPI 137, Monday, May 18 at 09:00 PM GMT+2
INFO TALK - DRINKS - FOOD
" The Experiences of an Autonomous/ Anti-authoritarian space in the so-called Philippines"
In Kopi137, the info talk will start at 21uhr. free entrance
Etniko Bandido Infoshop Europe Tour
Germany/Czech Republic
May 6-19, 2026
"The intersection of language, culture, and identity, particularly within the context of the so-called Philippines.
The influence of Western powers on various aspects of life in the Philippines is undeniable, and the way this has impacted music, lifestyle, and the overall sense of community is profound. Yet, there's an opportunity to reshape how we embrace this reality.
The so-called Philippines are heavily bombarded by Western rhetoric and ideas that are forced onto us through our educational systems, the Constitution, Religion/Spiritual belief, the western kind of development, the style of government
Sub-topics to be presented:
*Against War on Drugs during the Duterte regime
* Anti-mining campaign
* Presentation of Decolonization in the context of so-called Philippines
* Decentralised/self-managed renewable energy
* Culture of sharing and Mutual Aid during Pandemic days
* Insights from the recent September 2025 riots against Corruption
https://berlin.askapunk.de/event/etniko-bandido-infoshop-europe-tour
-
“Check your ego at the door”
28 DE ENERO DE 2025 “Check your ego at the door”POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ
¿Recuerdas cómo era tu vida hace 40 años?, ¿Recuerdas qué hacías en 1985?, ¿Puedes recordar lo que era vivir en un mundo mucho más aislado que en el que transitamos hoy en día?, ¿Cómo te enterabas de lo que sucedía en el mundo?, bueno pues hoy intentaré llevarlos a un momento específico que, en lo personal, me pone la piel chinita debido a una gran acción, donde afloró la sensibilidad, la humanidad, la cooperación y sobre todo la empatía de los mayores artistas musicales del género pop, es decir, la crema y nata de los grandes hits de la música de los 80’s que, se dieron cita para que juntos, lograran crear la maravillosa canción de “We are the world”, la cual, fue grabada en el A&M Recording Studios en Los Ángeles, California un 28 de enero pero de 1985.
Para llegar a este punto debemos retroceder al menos un año más, situarnos en 1984 y debemos recordar que en aquella incipiente década de los 80’s, todavía se veía lejano, por una parte, la culminación del periodo denominado como “Guerra Fría” (1947-1989), también entre los años 1981 y 1983 se presentaron sucesos que sacudieron al mundo entre los que podemos encontrar los atentados contra el presidente Ronald Reagan y el papa Juan Pablo II o el asesinato de la Primer Ministra Indira Gandhi, el descubrimiento del “Síndrome de Inmunodeficiencia Adquirida” (SIDA), la muerte del legendario cantante y rey del reggae Bob Marley, o la invasión de Argentina en las Islas Malvinas que lo confrontó con las fuerzas armadas de Gran Bretaña y que, de hecho, gracias a dicha derrota fue posible la caída de la dictadura encabezada por Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri y la nación tuvo de nuevo elecciones abiertas; por si todo esto no fuera suficiente alrededor del mundo, en el continente africano se presentaba una de las mayores crisis alimentarias que lo ha azotado durante décadas y especialmente afectaba a los países de Etiopía y Somalia, por lo que en el mes de noviembre del mencionado 1984, el activista político, actor, cantante y compositor irlandés Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof mejor conocido simplemente como Bob Geldof, encontró una manera de ayudar, de involucrarse en ser una solución para dejar de pertenecer al problema mismo, y su aportación, además de novedosa, francamente impactante, fue reunir a los mayores solistas y algunas bandas de rock británicas para grabar un sencillo intitulado “Do they know it´s christmas”, con la finalidad de que cada “penny” recaudado fuera destinado a llevar alimentos a estos dos países que tanto lo necesitaban.
Este enorme proyecto que encabezó Bob Geldof, además de ser innovador, generoso, solidario, empático y sobre todo humano, nos ubicó en el ánimo de preocuparnos, pero por encima de todo, a ocuparnos de los problemas que se encuentran todos los días en las diferentes latitudes y hacernos consientes que siempre habrá quienes la estén pasando peor que nosotros, por ello, es indispensable sumarse a causas de este tipo para intentar, en la medida de lo posible, contrarrestar las causas que originan esa desigualdad, y es así que este proyecto culminó con la conformación de la banda “Band Aid” que consiguió reunir a 42 artistas británicos, lo más destacado del momento, entre los que se resaltan las participaciones de genios como Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Phil Collins, Sting, Bono, George Michael, entre muchos otros y juntos grabaron, en sus tiempos libres, la canción que se convirtió en un himno para Europa; empero, si ese proyecto fue grandioso, debemos darle una mención y reconocimiento especial a lo hecho “del otro lado del charco” gracias al interés genuino de Harry Belafonte.
Muy bien es momento de regresar a nuestro tema original. Probablemente en muchos de nosotros cuando escuchamos el nombre de Harry Belafonte, nuestra mente en automático comienza a tararear la música de la canción “Day-O” que generalmente la conocemos como “The banana boat song”, e incluso, una canción que es utilizada en el famosísimo largometraje “Beetlejuice” que nuevamente nos remonta a la década de los 80´s pues su lanzamiento fue en 1988; empero, este icónico personaje traspasó las fronteras de la música para posicionarse no solo como actor, cantante y político sino en un asesor y gran amigo de Martin Luther King Jr., a quien apoyó fuertemente. Contestatario, entregado a la causa de los derechos civiles de las personas de color, pero sobre todo un gran ser humano, que peleaba por conseguir una igualdad en todos los estratos sociales en todos los rubros y eso incluyó el enorme problema del hambre en África, y dicho esto, resulta que el artífice de lo que hoy conocemos como el movimiento “USA for Africa” es gracias a este maravilloso ser humano, quien contactó a Ken Kragen, un influyente representante artístico de los Estados Unidos, y le propuso replicar lo hecho por Bob Geldof pero con las voces más reconocidas de la nación de las barras y las estrellas.
Debemos recordar que para aquellos años existían nombres de muchísimo peso en la escena musical; empero, al menos tres de los primeros involucrados era una verdadera bomba, me refiero a Lionel Richie quien recibió la primer llamada para la realización de tan ambicioso proyecto, Stevie Wonder, en quien Richie pensó para la creación de la canción; sin embargo, no tuvo una respuesta a tiempo, y Michael Jackson, quien además de ser un enorme músico, se encontraba en la, tal vez, cima de su carrera y por consiguiente al contar con estos monstruos de la música bajo la dirección de otro grande como Quincy Jones, se pensó que sería más que suficiente para convocar a 43 personalidades entre las que se encontraban artistas de la talla de Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, entre muchos otros; sin embargo, el reto fue mayúsculo no solo para coordinar que tantas estrellas estuvieran en el mismo lugar al mismo tiempo, sino porque adicionalmente a ello, se realizó en un lapso de poco más de diez horas, y esas dos condicionantes, únicamente son una pequeña muestra de la complejidad que se tuvo que sortear, porque toda la logística fue perfecta y se cubrieron todos los detalles comenzando por la secrecía; nada más me gustaría adicionar otro “pequeño” detalle, la canción fue realizada en una semana, si, en solo siete días se contaba ya, con la música y la letra, una verdadera locura.
El resultado y desarrollo de todo este proyecto lo pueden disfrutar en la plataforma de streaming Netflix bajo el título “The greatest night in pop”, que es un documental que vio la luz en el 2024, y que muestra lo complejo, pero a la vez satisfactorio que fue llevar a cabo este maravilloso acontecimiento que reunió a lo mejor de la música de la inolvidable década de los 80´s, y que, en palabras de otro pilar indiscutible del proyecto, Lionel Richie nos dice: “There was nothing more chaotic than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together” (No había nada más caótico que intentar unificar esa masa de energía creativa); empero, quizás lo más extraordinario fue una enorme acción que hizo Quincy Jones antes de la llegada de todo el elenco, y fue el colocar un pequeño letrero sobre la puerta de entrada que decía “Check your ego at the door” (Deja tu ego en la puerta), una frase sumamente potente, directa, clara, certera, porque reunir a tanta estrella por supuesto que podría convertirse en una competencia, así que darles a entender que lo importante no eran las personas sino el resultado del proyecto me parece la forma más sabia de preparar el terreno para conseguir el resultado deseado; no pueden ni deben dejar de verlo.
Con base en este tipo de proyectos, la música siempre ha sido un canal perfecto para tocar el alma de las personas y guiarnos para ayudar, para empatizar con los que menos tienen, para unirnos aunque sea por momentos breves pero bastante profundos y para muestras tenemos muchísimas empezando por el concierto “Live Aid” que fue precisamente Geldof quien lo hizo posible en julio de 1985 y nuevamente, en 2005, se lanzó a replicarlo, pero esta vez con una serie de 11 conciertos en 8 ciudades que se desarrolló del 2 al 6 de julio y lo llamó “Live 8”, los cuales, fueron completos éxitos, el resultado no solo fue el de grandes conciertos que miles de almas disfrutaron, sino la recaudación fue enorme, se cumplió con el único objetivo bajo el que fueron concebidos estos espectáculos masivos y muchas personas en Etiopía y Somalia recibieron la ayuda alimentaria que se necesitaba y aunque no sería posible erradicar la hambruna que los aquejaba, el simple hecho de dedicar esfuerzos de tantos meses valió la pena.
Hoy en día, Etiopía y Somalia se encuentran respectivamente en los lugares 61 y 152 en el ranking de la economía con base en su PIB, asimismo, en los puestos 159 y 190 en el ranking Doing Business de un total de 190 países participantes, también cuentan con 38 y 12 puntos bajo el índice de percepción de la corrupción, de tal suerte que la situación no ha mejorado para los poco más de 147 millones de habitantes de ambas naciones, lo que significa solamente el 1,83% de la población mundial, por lo que me es inevitable pensar ¿entre el resto de la población mundial, no existe una manera de sacar de la pobreza extrema y hambruna si nos decidimos a hacerlo?, y me parece que la respuesta es obvia, SÍ, entonces ¿no deberíamos exigirles a los múltiples organismos internacionales como el Banco Mundial, Organización Mundial del Comercio, la Organización de Cooperación y Desarrollo Económico, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, entre muchos otros, el involucrar no a los estados sino a la población a que aporten recursos para encontrar una equidad?, ¿de qué nos sirven ese tipo de organismos sino para proteger a los desfavorecidos?.
Finalmente, dentro de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas existen organismos que se enfocan específicamente a combatir el hambre como lo es la FAO, o el Programa Mundial de Alimentos (WFP) y parece que no han resultado lo suficientemente eficientes por lo que como personas físicas o morales, podemos optar por apoyar ONG´s que hayan demostrado su eficiencia y eficacia como lo son “Food Yoga International” que es una organización sin fines de lucro que sirve 1 millón de comidas diarias y todo su enfoque es vegano procurando gestionar e implementar proyectos agropecuarios en las diferentes comunidades y aunque en mi punto de vista, la utilización de alimentos de origen animal debe ser necesario, seguramente ellos cuentan con mayor información y por algo continúan haciendo su enorme labor; así que si queremos mejorar nuestro planeta, comencemos por ocuparnos de los problemas de los demás que terminan siendo de todos.
Recordemos lo que dice esta hermosa canción:
“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…”DATO CULTURAL.
Un día como hoy en 1225 nacía en Roccasecca, Italia, el catedrático, escritor, filósofo, teólogo y presbítero católico Tommaso d’Aquino, mejor conocido como Santo Tomás de Aquino y quien dejó como legado entre muchas otras obras, sus tres síntesis teológicas “Summa Theologiae”, “Summa contra Gentiles” y “Scriptum super Sententias”; en 1813 en Londres, Inglaterra, la escritora Jane Austen publica por primera ocasión la novela que posiblemente marcará su carrera “Pride & Prejudice” (Orgullo y Prejuicio) y en cuyas páginas se puede advertir gran comicidad para tratar temas tan arraigados y añejos como el que nos mantiene aquejando hoy en día como lo es la falta de equidad en las oportunidades de las mujeres; en 1887 en París, Francia, se comienza la construcción de la que en aquel entonces se preveía como la entrada a la “Exposición Universal de París” que se celebraría dos años después para conmemorar el Centenario de la Revolución Francesa y lo que posiblemente no se vislumbró en ningún momento es que esta icónica edificación se convertiría en el corazón de la ciudad, nos referimos a la “Tour Eiffel” (Torre Eiffel).
Espero tus comentarios en el correo [email protected] y recuerda que, en este espacio, las críticas no sólo son bienvenidas, SON NECESARIAS.
Sígueme en mis redes:
Sigue Apertura Intelectual en todas nuestras redes:
Te invitamos a que califiques esta información.
ENTRADAS RELACIONADAS
#AperturaIntelectual #Vmrfaintelectual #Vicmanrf #VictorMReyesFerriz #Victormanrf #Victormrferriz #AMRecordingStudios #BandAid_ #TheGreatestNightInPop_ #BillyJoel #BobDylan #BobGeldof #Bono #BruceSpringsteen #CanciónDayO_ #CanciónDoTheyKnowItSChristmas_ #CanciónWeAreTheWorld_ #CheckYourEgoAtTheDoor #Cine #ConciertoLive8_ #ConciertoLiveAid_ #Cultura #CyndiLauper #DavidBowie #DianaRoss #GeorgeMichael #HambrunaEnEtiopíaYSomalia #HarryBelafonte #LionelRichie #MichaelJackson #MovimientoUSAForAfrica #Opinión #PaulMcCartney #PensamientoCrítico #PhilCollins #Política #RayCharles #RobertFrederickZenonGeldof #SteveWonder #Sting #TinaTurner #Turismo #Valores #VíctorManuelReyesFerriz #Viajes #VMRF
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“Check your ego at the door”
28 DE ENERO DE 2025 “Check your ego at the door”POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ
¿Recuerdas cómo era tu vida hace 40 años?, ¿Recuerdas qué hacías en 1985?, ¿Puedes recordar lo que era vivir en un mundo mucho más aislado que en el que transitamos hoy en día?, ¿Cómo te enterabas de lo que sucedía en el mundo?, bueno pues hoy intentaré llevarlos a un momento específico que, en lo personal, me pone la piel chinita debido a una gran acción, donde afloró la sensibilidad, la humanidad, la cooperación y sobre todo la empatía de los mayores artistas musicales del género pop, es decir, la crema y nata de los grandes hits de la música de los 80’s que, se dieron cita para que juntos, lograran crear la maravillosa canción de “We are the world”, la cual, fue grabada en el A&M Recording Studios en Los Ángeles, California un 28 de enero pero de 1985.
Para llegar a este punto debemos retroceder al menos un año más, situarnos en 1984 y debemos recordar que en aquella incipiente década de los 80’s, todavía se veía lejano, por una parte, la culminación del periodo denominado como “Guerra Fría” (1947-1989), también entre los años 1981 y 1983 se presentaron sucesos que sacudieron al mundo entre los que podemos encontrar los atentados contra el presidente Ronald Reagan y el papa Juan Pablo II o el asesinato de la Primer Ministra Indira Gandhi, el descubrimiento del “Síndrome de Inmunodeficiencia Adquirida” (SIDA), la muerte del legendario cantante y rey del reggae Bob Marley, o la invasión de Argentina en las Islas Malvinas que lo confrontó con las fuerzas armadas de Gran Bretaña y que, de hecho, gracias a dicha derrota fue posible la caída de la dictadura encabezada por Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri y la nación tuvo de nuevo elecciones abiertas; por si todo esto no fuera suficiente alrededor del mundo, en el continente africano se presentaba una de las mayores crisis alimentarias que lo ha azotado durante décadas y especialmente afectaba a los países de Etiopía y Somalia, por lo que en el mes de noviembre del mencionado 1984, el activista político, actor, cantante y compositor irlandés Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof mejor conocido simplemente como Bob Geldof, encontró una manera de ayudar, de involucrarse en ser una solución para dejar de pertenecer al problema mismo, y su aportación, además de novedosa, francamente impactante, fue reunir a los mayores solistas y algunas bandas de rock británicas para grabar un sencillo intitulado “Do they know it´s christmas”, con la finalidad de que cada “penny” recaudado fuera destinado a llevar alimentos a estos dos países que tanto lo necesitaban.
Este enorme proyecto que encabezó Bob Geldof, además de ser innovador, generoso, solidario, empático y sobre todo humano, nos ubicó en el ánimo de preocuparnos, pero por encima de todo, a ocuparnos de los problemas que se encuentran todos los días en las diferentes latitudes y hacernos consientes que siempre habrá quienes la estén pasando peor que nosotros, por ello, es indispensable sumarse a causas de este tipo para intentar, en la medida de lo posible, contrarrestar las causas que originan esa desigualdad, y es así que este proyecto culminó con la conformación de la banda “Band Aid” que consiguió reunir a 42 artistas británicos, lo más destacado del momento, entre los que se resaltan las participaciones de genios como Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Phil Collins, Sting, Bono, George Michael, entre muchos otros y juntos grabaron, en sus tiempos libres, la canción que se convirtió en un himno para Europa; empero, si ese proyecto fue grandioso, debemos darle una mención y reconocimiento especial a lo hecho “del otro lado del charco” gracias al interés genuino de Harry Belafonte.
Muy bien es momento de regresar a nuestro tema original. Probablemente en muchos de nosotros cuando escuchamos el nombre de Harry Belafonte, nuestra mente en automático comienza a tararear la música de la canción “Day-O” que generalmente la conocemos como “The banana boat song”, e incluso, una canción que es utilizada en el famosísimo largometraje “Beetlejuice” que nuevamente nos remonta a la década de los 80´s pues su lanzamiento fue en 1988; empero, este icónico personaje traspasó las fronteras de la música para posicionarse no solo como actor, cantante y político sino en un asesor y gran amigo de Martin Luther King Jr., a quien apoyó fuertemente. Contestatario, entregado a la causa de los derechos civiles de las personas de color, pero sobre todo un gran ser humano, que peleaba por conseguir una igualdad en todos los estratos sociales en todos los rubros y eso incluyó el enorme problema del hambre en África, y dicho esto, resulta que el artífice de lo que hoy conocemos como el movimiento “USA for Africa” es gracias a este maravilloso ser humano, quien contactó a Ken Kragen, un influyente representante artístico de los Estados Unidos, y le propuso replicar lo hecho por Bob Geldof pero con las voces más reconocidas de la nación de las barras y las estrellas.
Debemos recordar que para aquellos años existían nombres de muchísimo peso en la escena musical; empero, al menos tres de los primeros involucrados era una verdadera bomba, me refiero a Lionel Richie quien recibió la primer llamada para la realización de tan ambicioso proyecto, Stevie Wonder, en quien Richie pensó para la creación de la canción; sin embargo, no tuvo una respuesta a tiempo, y Michael Jackson, quien además de ser un enorme músico, se encontraba en la, tal vez, cima de su carrera y por consiguiente al contar con estos monstruos de la música bajo la dirección de otro grande como Quincy Jones, se pensó que sería más que suficiente para convocar a 43 personalidades entre las que se encontraban artistas de la talla de Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, entre muchos otros; sin embargo, el reto fue mayúsculo no solo para coordinar que tantas estrellas estuvieran en el mismo lugar al mismo tiempo, sino porque adicionalmente a ello, se realizó en un lapso de poco más de diez horas, y esas dos condicionantes, únicamente son una pequeña muestra de la complejidad que se tuvo que sortear, porque toda la logística fue perfecta y se cubrieron todos los detalles comenzando por la secrecía; nada más me gustaría adicionar otro “pequeño” detalle, la canción fue realizada en una semana, si, en solo siete días se contaba ya, con la música y la letra, una verdadera locura.
El resultado y desarrollo de todo este proyecto lo pueden disfrutar en la plataforma de streaming Netflix bajo el título “The greatest night in pop”, que es un documental que vio la luz en el 2024, y que muestra lo complejo, pero a la vez satisfactorio que fue llevar a cabo este maravilloso acontecimiento que reunió a lo mejor de la música de la inolvidable década de los 80´s, y que, en palabras de otro pilar indiscutible del proyecto, Lionel Richie nos dice: “There was nothing more chaotic than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together” (No había nada más caótico que intentar unificar esa masa de energía creativa); empero, quizás lo más extraordinario fue una enorme acción que hizo Quincy Jones antes de la llegada de todo el elenco, y fue el colocar un pequeño letrero sobre la puerta de entrada que decía “Check your ego at the door” (Deja tu ego en la puerta), una frase sumamente potente, directa, clara, certera, porque reunir a tanta estrella por supuesto que podría convertirse en una competencia, así que darles a entender que lo importante no eran las personas sino el resultado del proyecto me parece la forma más sabia de preparar el terreno para conseguir el resultado deseado; no pueden ni deben dejar de verlo.
Con base en este tipo de proyectos, la música siempre ha sido un canal perfecto para tocar el alma de las personas y guiarnos para ayudar, para empatizar con los que menos tienen, para unirnos aunque sea por momentos breves pero bastante profundos y para muestras tenemos muchísimas empezando por el concierto “Live Aid” que fue precisamente Geldof quien lo hizo posible en julio de 1985 y nuevamente, en 2005, se lanzó a replicarlo, pero esta vez con una serie de 11 conciertos en 8 ciudades que se desarrolló del 2 al 6 de julio y lo llamó “Live 8”, los cuales, fueron completos éxitos, el resultado no solo fue el de grandes conciertos que miles de almas disfrutaron, sino la recaudación fue enorme, se cumplió con el único objetivo bajo el que fueron concebidos estos espectáculos masivos y muchas personas en Etiopía y Somalia recibieron la ayuda alimentaria que se necesitaba y aunque no sería posible erradicar la hambruna que los aquejaba, el simple hecho de dedicar esfuerzos de tantos meses valió la pena.
Hoy en día, Etiopía y Somalia se encuentran respectivamente en los lugares 61 y 152 en el ranking de la economía con base en su PIB, asimismo, en los puestos 159 y 190 en el ranking Doing Business de un total de 190 países participantes, también cuentan con 38 y 12 puntos bajo el índice de percepción de la corrupción, de tal suerte que la situación no ha mejorado para los poco más de 147 millones de habitantes de ambas naciones, lo que significa solamente el 1,83% de la población mundial, por lo que me es inevitable pensar ¿entre el resto de la población mundial, no existe una manera de sacar de la pobreza extrema y hambruna si nos decidimos a hacerlo?, y me parece que la respuesta es obvia, SÍ, entonces ¿no deberíamos exigirles a los múltiples organismos internacionales como el Banco Mundial, Organización Mundial del Comercio, la Organización de Cooperación y Desarrollo Económico, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, entre muchos otros, el involucrar no a los estados sino a la población a que aporten recursos para encontrar una equidad?, ¿de qué nos sirven ese tipo de organismos sino para proteger a los desfavorecidos?.
Finalmente, dentro de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas existen organismos que se enfocan específicamente a combatir el hambre como lo es la FAO, o el Programa Mundial de Alimentos (WFP) y parece que no han resultado lo suficientemente eficientes por lo que como personas físicas o morales, podemos optar por apoyar ONG´s que hayan demostrado su eficiencia y eficacia como lo son “Food Yoga International” que es una organización sin fines de lucro que sirve 1 millón de comidas diarias y todo su enfoque es vegano procurando gestionar e implementar proyectos agropecuarios en las diferentes comunidades y aunque en mi punto de vista, la utilización de alimentos de origen animal debe ser necesario, seguramente ellos cuentan con mayor información y por algo continúan haciendo su enorme labor; así que si queremos mejorar nuestro planeta, comencemos por ocuparnos de los problemas de los demás que terminan siendo de todos.
Recordemos lo que dice esta hermosa canción:
“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…”DATO CULTURAL.
Un día como hoy en 1225 nacía en Roccasecca, Italia, el catedrático, escritor, filósofo, teólogo y presbítero católico Tommaso d’Aquino, mejor conocido como Santo Tomás de Aquino y quien dejó como legado entre muchas otras obras, sus tres síntesis teológicas “Summa Theologiae”, “Summa contra Gentiles” y “Scriptum super Sententias”; en 1813 en Londres, Inglaterra, la escritora Jane Austen publica por primera ocasión la novela que posiblemente marcará su carrera “Pride & Prejudice” (Orgullo y Prejuicio) y en cuyas páginas se puede advertir gran comicidad para tratar temas tan arraigados y añejos como el que nos mantiene aquejando hoy en día como lo es la falta de equidad en las oportunidades de las mujeres; en 1887 en París, Francia, se comienza la construcción de la que en aquel entonces se preveía como la entrada a la “Exposición Universal de París” que se celebraría dos años después para conmemorar el Centenario de la Revolución Francesa y lo que posiblemente no se vislumbró en ningún momento es que esta icónica edificación se convertiría en el corazón de la ciudad, nos referimos a la “Tour Eiffel” (Torre Eiffel).
Espero tus comentarios en el correo [email protected] y recuerda que, en este espacio, las críticas no sólo son bienvenidas, SON NECESARIAS.
Sígueme en mis redes:
Sigue Apertura Intelectual en todas nuestras redes:
Te invitamos a que califiques esta información.
ENTRADAS RELACIONADAS
#AperturaIntelectual #Vmrfaintelectual #Vicmanrf #VictorMReyesFerriz #Victormanrf #Victormrferriz #AMRecordingStudios #BandAid_ #TheGreatestNightInPop_ #BillyJoel #BobDylan #BobGeldof #Bono #BruceSpringsteen #CanciónDayO_ #CanciónDoTheyKnowItSChristmas_ #CanciónWeAreTheWorld_ #CheckYourEgoAtTheDoor #Cine #ConciertoLive8_ #ConciertoLiveAid_ #Cultura #CyndiLauper #DavidBowie #DianaRoss #GeorgeMichael #HambrunaEnEtiopíaYSomalia #HarryBelafonte #LionelRichie #MichaelJackson #MovimientoUSAForAfrica #Opinión #PaulMcCartney #PensamientoCrítico #PhilCollins #Política #RayCharles #RobertFrederickZenonGeldof #SteveWonder #Sting #TinaTurner #Turismo #Valores #VíctorManuelReyesFerriz #Viajes #VMRF
-
“Check your ego at the door”
28 DE ENERO DE 2025 “Check your ego at the door”POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ
¿Recuerdas cómo era tu vida hace 40 años?, ¿Recuerdas qué hacías en 1985?, ¿Puedes recordar lo que era vivir en un mundo mucho más aislado que en el que transitamos hoy en día?, ¿Cómo te enterabas de lo que sucedía en el mundo?, bueno pues hoy intentaré llevarlos a un momento específico que, en lo personal, me pone la piel chinita debido a una gran acción, donde afloró la sensibilidad, la humanidad, la cooperación y sobre todo la empatía de los mayores artistas musicales del género pop, es decir, la crema y nata de los grandes hits de la música de los 80’s que, se dieron cita para que juntos, lograran crear la maravillosa canción de “We are the world”, la cual, fue grabada en el A&M Recording Studios en Los Ángeles, California un 28 de enero pero de 1985.
Para llegar a este punto debemos retroceder al menos un año más, situarnos en 1984 y debemos recordar que en aquella incipiente década de los 80’s, todavía se veía lejano, por una parte, la culminación del periodo denominado como “Guerra Fría” (1947-1989), también entre los años 1981 y 1983 se presentaron sucesos que sacudieron al mundo entre los que podemos encontrar los atentados contra el presidente Ronald Reagan y el papa Juan Pablo II o el asesinato de la Primer Ministra Indira Gandhi, el descubrimiento del “Síndrome de Inmunodeficiencia Adquirida” (SIDA), la muerte del legendario cantante y rey del reggae Bob Marley, o la invasión de Argentina en las Islas Malvinas que lo confrontó con las fuerzas armadas de Gran Bretaña y que, de hecho, gracias a dicha derrota fue posible la caída de la dictadura encabezada por Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri y la nación tuvo de nuevo elecciones abiertas; por si todo esto no fuera suficiente alrededor del mundo, en el continente africano se presentaba una de las mayores crisis alimentarias que lo ha azotado durante décadas y especialmente afectaba a los países de Etiopía y Somalia, por lo que en el mes de noviembre del mencionado 1984, el activista político, actor, cantante y compositor irlandés Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof mejor conocido simplemente como Bob Geldof, encontró una manera de ayudar, de involucrarse en ser una solución para dejar de pertenecer al problema mismo, y su aportación, además de novedosa, francamente impactante, fue reunir a los mayores solistas y algunas bandas de rock británicas para grabar un sencillo intitulado “Do they know it´s christmas”, con la finalidad de que cada “penny” recaudado fuera destinado a llevar alimentos a estos dos países que tanto lo necesitaban.
Este enorme proyecto que encabezó Bob Geldof, además de ser innovador, generoso, solidario, empático y sobre todo humano, nos ubicó en el ánimo de preocuparnos, pero por encima de todo, a ocuparnos de los problemas que se encuentran todos los días en las diferentes latitudes y hacernos consientes que siempre habrá quienes la estén pasando peor que nosotros, por ello, es indispensable sumarse a causas de este tipo para intentar, en la medida de lo posible, contrarrestar las causas que originan esa desigualdad, y es así que este proyecto culminó con la conformación de la banda “Band Aid” que consiguió reunir a 42 artistas británicos, lo más destacado del momento, entre los que se resaltan las participaciones de genios como Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Phil Collins, Sting, Bono, George Michael, entre muchos otros y juntos grabaron, en sus tiempos libres, la canción que se convirtió en un himno para Europa; empero, si ese proyecto fue grandioso, debemos darle una mención y reconocimiento especial a lo hecho “del otro lado del charco” gracias al interés genuino de Harry Belafonte.
Muy bien es momento de regresar a nuestro tema original. Probablemente en muchos de nosotros cuando escuchamos el nombre de Harry Belafonte, nuestra mente en automático comienza a tararear la música de la canción “Day-O” que generalmente la conocemos como “The banana boat song”, e incluso, una canción que es utilizada en el famosísimo largometraje “Beetlejuice” que nuevamente nos remonta a la década de los 80´s pues su lanzamiento fue en 1988; empero, este icónico personaje traspasó las fronteras de la música para posicionarse no solo como actor, cantante y político sino en un asesor y gran amigo de Martin Luther King Jr., a quien apoyó fuertemente. Contestatario, entregado a la causa de los derechos civiles de las personas de color, pero sobre todo un gran ser humano, que peleaba por conseguir una igualdad en todos los estratos sociales en todos los rubros y eso incluyó el enorme problema del hambre en África, y dicho esto, resulta que el artífice de lo que hoy conocemos como el movimiento “USA for Africa” es gracias a este maravilloso ser humano, quien contactó a Ken Kragen, un influyente representante artístico de los Estados Unidos, y le propuso replicar lo hecho por Bob Geldof pero con las voces más reconocidas de la nación de las barras y las estrellas.
Debemos recordar que para aquellos años existían nombres de muchísimo peso en la escena musical; empero, al menos tres de los primeros involucrados era una verdadera bomba, me refiero a Lionel Richie quien recibió la primer llamada para la realización de tan ambicioso proyecto, Stevie Wonder, en quien Richie pensó para la creación de la canción; sin embargo, no tuvo una respuesta a tiempo, y Michael Jackson, quien además de ser un enorme músico, se encontraba en la, tal vez, cima de su carrera y por consiguiente al contar con estos monstruos de la música bajo la dirección de otro grande como Quincy Jones, se pensó que sería más que suficiente para convocar a 43 personalidades entre las que se encontraban artistas de la talla de Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, entre muchos otros; sin embargo, el reto fue mayúsculo no solo para coordinar que tantas estrellas estuvieran en el mismo lugar al mismo tiempo, sino porque adicionalmente a ello, se realizó en un lapso de poco más de diez horas, y esas dos condicionantes, únicamente son una pequeña muestra de la complejidad que se tuvo que sortear, porque toda la logística fue perfecta y se cubrieron todos los detalles comenzando por la secrecía; nada más me gustaría adicionar otro “pequeño” detalle, la canción fue realizada en una semana, si, en solo siete días se contaba ya, con la música y la letra, una verdadera locura.
El resultado y desarrollo de todo este proyecto lo pueden disfrutar en la plataforma de streaming Netflix bajo el título “The greatest night in pop”, que es un documental que vio la luz en el 2024, y que muestra lo complejo, pero a la vez satisfactorio que fue llevar a cabo este maravilloso acontecimiento que reunió a lo mejor de la música de la inolvidable década de los 80´s, y que, en palabras de otro pilar indiscutible del proyecto, Lionel Richie nos dice: “There was nothing more chaotic than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together” (No había nada más caótico que intentar unificar esa masa de energía creativa); empero, quizás lo más extraordinario fue una enorme acción que hizo Quincy Jones antes de la llegada de todo el elenco, y fue el colocar un pequeño letrero sobre la puerta de entrada que decía “Check your ego at the door” (Deja tu ego en la puerta), una frase sumamente potente, directa, clara, certera, porque reunir a tanta estrella por supuesto que podría convertirse en una competencia, así que darles a entender que lo importante no eran las personas sino el resultado del proyecto me parece la forma más sabia de preparar el terreno para conseguir el resultado deseado; no pueden ni deben dejar de verlo.
Con base en este tipo de proyectos, la música siempre ha sido un canal perfecto para tocar el alma de las personas y guiarnos para ayudar, para empatizar con los que menos tienen, para unirnos aunque sea por momentos breves pero bastante profundos y para muestras tenemos muchísimas empezando por el concierto “Live Aid” que fue precisamente Geldof quien lo hizo posible en julio de 1985 y nuevamente, en 2005, se lanzó a replicarlo, pero esta vez con una serie de 11 conciertos en 8 ciudades que se desarrolló del 2 al 6 de julio y lo llamó “Live 8”, los cuales, fueron completos éxitos, el resultado no solo fue el de grandes conciertos que miles de almas disfrutaron, sino la recaudación fue enorme, se cumplió con el único objetivo bajo el que fueron concebidos estos espectáculos masivos y muchas personas en Etiopía y Somalia recibieron la ayuda alimentaria que se necesitaba y aunque no sería posible erradicar la hambruna que los aquejaba, el simple hecho de dedicar esfuerzos de tantos meses valió la pena.
Hoy en día, Etiopía y Somalia se encuentran respectivamente en los lugares 61 y 152 en el ranking de la economía con base en su PIB, asimismo, en los puestos 159 y 190 en el ranking Doing Business de un total de 190 países participantes, también cuentan con 38 y 12 puntos bajo el índice de percepción de la corrupción, de tal suerte que la situación no ha mejorado para los poco más de 147 millones de habitantes de ambas naciones, lo que significa solamente el 1,83% de la población mundial, por lo que me es inevitable pensar ¿entre el resto de la población mundial, no existe una manera de sacar de la pobreza extrema y hambruna si nos decidimos a hacerlo?, y me parece que la respuesta es obvia, SÍ, entonces ¿no deberíamos exigirles a los múltiples organismos internacionales como el Banco Mundial, Organización Mundial del Comercio, la Organización de Cooperación y Desarrollo Económico, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, entre muchos otros, el involucrar no a los estados sino a la población a que aporten recursos para encontrar una equidad?, ¿de qué nos sirven ese tipo de organismos sino para proteger a los desfavorecidos?.
Finalmente, dentro de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas existen organismos que se enfocan específicamente a combatir el hambre como lo es la FAO, o el Programa Mundial de Alimentos (WFP) y parece que no han resultado lo suficientemente eficientes por lo que como personas físicas o morales, podemos optar por apoyar ONG´s que hayan demostrado su eficiencia y eficacia como lo son “Food Yoga International” que es una organización sin fines de lucro que sirve 1 millón de comidas diarias y todo su enfoque es vegano procurando gestionar e implementar proyectos agropecuarios en las diferentes comunidades y aunque en mi punto de vista, la utilización de alimentos de origen animal debe ser necesario, seguramente ellos cuentan con mayor información y por algo continúan haciendo su enorme labor; así que si queremos mejorar nuestro planeta, comencemos por ocuparnos de los problemas de los demás que terminan siendo de todos.
Recordemos lo que dice esta hermosa canción:
“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…”DATO CULTURAL.
Un día como hoy en 1225 nacía en Roccasecca, Italia, el catedrático, escritor, filósofo, teólogo y presbítero católico Tommaso d’Aquino, mejor conocido como Santo Tomás de Aquino y quien dejó como legado entre muchas otras obras, sus tres síntesis teológicas “Summa Theologiae”, “Summa contra Gentiles” y “Scriptum super Sententias”; en 1813 en Londres, Inglaterra, la escritora Jane Austen publica por primera ocasión la novela que posiblemente marcará su carrera “Pride & Prejudice” (Orgullo y Prejuicio) y en cuyas páginas se puede advertir gran comicidad para tratar temas tan arraigados y añejos como el que nos mantiene aquejando hoy en día como lo es la falta de equidad en las oportunidades de las mujeres; en 1887 en París, Francia, se comienza la construcción de la que en aquel entonces se preveía como la entrada a la “Exposición Universal de París” que se celebraría dos años después para conmemorar el Centenario de la Revolución Francesa y lo que posiblemente no se vislumbró en ningún momento es que esta icónica edificación se convertiría en el corazón de la ciudad, nos referimos a la “Tour Eiffel” (Torre Eiffel).
Espero tus comentarios en el correo [email protected] y recuerda que, en este espacio, las críticas no sólo son bienvenidas, SON NECESARIAS.
Sígueme en mis redes:
Sigue Apertura Intelectual en todas nuestras redes:
Te invitamos a que califiques esta información.
ENTRADAS RELACIONADAS
#AperturaIntelectual #Vmrfaintelectual #Vicmanrf #VictorMReyesFerriz #Victormanrf #Victormrferriz #AMRecordingStudios #BandAid_ #TheGreatestNightInPop_ #BillyJoel #BobDylan #BobGeldof #Bono #BruceSpringsteen #CanciónDayO_ #CanciónDoTheyKnowItSChristmas_ #CanciónWeAreTheWorld_ #CheckYourEgoAtTheDoor #Cine #ConciertoLive8_ #ConciertoLiveAid_ #Cultura #CyndiLauper #DavidBowie #DianaRoss #GeorgeMichael #HambrunaEnEtiopíaYSomalia #HarryBelafonte #LionelRichie #MichaelJackson #MovimientoUSAForAfrica #Opinión #PaulMcCartney #PensamientoCrítico #PhilCollins #Política #RayCharles #RobertFrederickZenonGeldof #SteveWonder #Sting #TinaTurner #Turismo #Valores #VíctorManuelReyesFerriz #Viajes #VMRF
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“Check your ego at the door”
28 DE ENERO DE 2025 “Check your ego at the door”POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ
¿Recuerdas cómo era tu vida hace 40 años?, ¿Recuerdas qué hacías en 1985?, ¿Puedes recordar lo que era vivir en un mundo mucho más aislado que en el que transitamos hoy en día?, ¿Cómo te enterabas de lo que sucedía en el mundo?, bueno pues hoy intentaré llevarlos a un momento específico que, en lo personal, me pone la piel chinita debido a una gran acción, donde afloró la sensibilidad, la humanidad, la cooperación y sobre todo la empatía de los mayores artistas musicales del género pop, es decir, la crema y nata de los grandes hits de la música de los 80’s que, se dieron cita para que juntos, lograran crear la maravillosa canción de “We are the world”, la cual, fue grabada en el A&M Recording Studios en Los Ángeles, California un 28 de enero pero de 1985.
Para llegar a este punto debemos retroceder al menos un año más, situarnos en 1984 y debemos recordar que en aquella incipiente década de los 80’s, todavía se veía lejano, por una parte, la culminación del periodo denominado como “Guerra Fría” (1947-1989), también entre los años 1981 y 1983 se presentaron sucesos que sacudieron al mundo entre los que podemos encontrar los atentados contra el presidente Ronald Reagan y el papa Juan Pablo II o el asesinato de la Primer Ministra Indira Gandhi, el descubrimiento del “Síndrome de Inmunodeficiencia Adquirida” (SIDA), la muerte del legendario cantante y rey del reggae Bob Marley, o la invasión de Argentina en las Islas Malvinas que lo confrontó con las fuerzas armadas de Gran Bretaña y que, de hecho, gracias a dicha derrota fue posible la caída de la dictadura encabezada por Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri y la nación tuvo de nuevo elecciones abiertas; por si todo esto no fuera suficiente alrededor del mundo, en el continente africano se presentaba una de las mayores crisis alimentarias que lo ha azotado durante décadas y especialmente afectaba a los países de Etiopía y Somalia, por lo que en el mes de noviembre del mencionado 1984, el activista político, actor, cantante y compositor irlandés Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof mejor conocido simplemente como Bob Geldof, encontró una manera de ayudar, de involucrarse en ser una solución para dejar de pertenecer al problema mismo, y su aportación, además de novedosa, francamente impactante, fue reunir a los mayores solistas y algunas bandas de rock británicas para grabar un sencillo intitulado “Do they know it´s christmas”, con la finalidad de que cada “penny” recaudado fuera destinado a llevar alimentos a estos dos países que tanto lo necesitaban.
Este enorme proyecto que encabezó Bob Geldof, además de ser innovador, generoso, solidario, empático y sobre todo humano, nos ubicó en el ánimo de preocuparnos, pero por encima de todo, a ocuparnos de los problemas que se encuentran todos los días en las diferentes latitudes y hacernos consientes que siempre habrá quienes la estén pasando peor que nosotros, por ello, es indispensable sumarse a causas de este tipo para intentar, en la medida de lo posible, contrarrestar las causas que originan esa desigualdad, y es así que este proyecto culminó con la conformación de la banda “Band Aid” que consiguió reunir a 42 artistas británicos, lo más destacado del momento, entre los que se resaltan las participaciones de genios como Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Phil Collins, Sting, Bono, George Michael, entre muchos otros y juntos grabaron, en sus tiempos libres, la canción que se convirtió en un himno para Europa; empero, si ese proyecto fue grandioso, debemos darle una mención y reconocimiento especial a lo hecho “del otro lado del charco” gracias al interés genuino de Harry Belafonte.
Muy bien es momento de regresar a nuestro tema original. Probablemente en muchos de nosotros cuando escuchamos el nombre de Harry Belafonte, nuestra mente en automático comienza a tararear la música de la canción “Day-O” que generalmente la conocemos como “The banana boat song”, e incluso, una canción que es utilizada en el famosísimo largometraje “Beetlejuice” que nuevamente nos remonta a la década de los 80´s pues su lanzamiento fue en 1988; empero, este icónico personaje traspasó las fronteras de la música para posicionarse no solo como actor, cantante y político sino en un asesor y gran amigo de Martin Luther King Jr., a quien apoyó fuertemente. Contestatario, entregado a la causa de los derechos civiles de las personas de color, pero sobre todo un gran ser humano, que peleaba por conseguir una igualdad en todos los estratos sociales en todos los rubros y eso incluyó el enorme problema del hambre en África, y dicho esto, resulta que el artífice de lo que hoy conocemos como el movimiento “USA for Africa” es gracias a este maravilloso ser humano, quien contactó a Ken Kragen, un influyente representante artístico de los Estados Unidos, y le propuso replicar lo hecho por Bob Geldof pero con las voces más reconocidas de la nación de las barras y las estrellas.
Debemos recordar que para aquellos años existían nombres de muchísimo peso en la escena musical; empero, al menos tres de los primeros involucrados era una verdadera bomba, me refiero a Lionel Richie quien recibió la primer llamada para la realización de tan ambicioso proyecto, Stevie Wonder, en quien Richie pensó para la creación de la canción; sin embargo, no tuvo una respuesta a tiempo, y Michael Jackson, quien además de ser un enorme músico, se encontraba en la, tal vez, cima de su carrera y por consiguiente al contar con estos monstruos de la música bajo la dirección de otro grande como Quincy Jones, se pensó que sería más que suficiente para convocar a 43 personalidades entre las que se encontraban artistas de la talla de Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, entre muchos otros; sin embargo, el reto fue mayúsculo no solo para coordinar que tantas estrellas estuvieran en el mismo lugar al mismo tiempo, sino porque adicionalmente a ello, se realizó en un lapso de poco más de diez horas, y esas dos condicionantes, únicamente son una pequeña muestra de la complejidad que se tuvo que sortear, porque toda la logística fue perfecta y se cubrieron todos los detalles comenzando por la secrecía; nada más me gustaría adicionar otro “pequeño” detalle, la canción fue realizada en una semana, si, en solo siete días se contaba ya, con la música y la letra, una verdadera locura.
El resultado y desarrollo de todo este proyecto lo pueden disfrutar en la plataforma de streaming Netflix bajo el título “The greatest night in pop”, que es un documental que vio la luz en el 2024, y que muestra lo complejo, pero a la vez satisfactorio que fue llevar a cabo este maravilloso acontecimiento que reunió a lo mejor de la música de la inolvidable década de los 80´s, y que, en palabras de otro pilar indiscutible del proyecto, Lionel Richie nos dice: “There was nothing more chaotic than trying to rope this creative ball of energy together” (No había nada más caótico que intentar unificar esa masa de energía creativa); empero, quizás lo más extraordinario fue una enorme acción que hizo Quincy Jones antes de la llegada de todo el elenco, y fue el colocar un pequeño letrero sobre la puerta de entrada que decía “Check your ego at the door” (Deja tu ego en la puerta), una frase sumamente potente, directa, clara, certera, porque reunir a tanta estrella por supuesto que podría convertirse en una competencia, así que darles a entender que lo importante no eran las personas sino el resultado del proyecto me parece la forma más sabia de preparar el terreno para conseguir el resultado deseado; no pueden ni deben dejar de verlo.
Con base en este tipo de proyectos, la música siempre ha sido un canal perfecto para tocar el alma de las personas y guiarnos para ayudar, para empatizar con los que menos tienen, para unirnos aunque sea por momentos breves pero bastante profundos y para muestras tenemos muchísimas empezando por el concierto “Live Aid” que fue precisamente Geldof quien lo hizo posible en julio de 1985 y nuevamente, en 2005, se lanzó a replicarlo, pero esta vez con una serie de 11 conciertos en 8 ciudades que se desarrolló del 2 al 6 de julio y lo llamó “Live 8”, los cuales, fueron completos éxitos, el resultado no solo fue el de grandes conciertos que miles de almas disfrutaron, sino la recaudación fue enorme, se cumplió con el único objetivo bajo el que fueron concebidos estos espectáculos masivos y muchas personas en Etiopía y Somalia recibieron la ayuda alimentaria que se necesitaba y aunque no sería posible erradicar la hambruna que los aquejaba, el simple hecho de dedicar esfuerzos de tantos meses valió la pena.
Hoy en día, Etiopía y Somalia se encuentran respectivamente en los lugares 61 y 152 en el ranking de la economía con base en su PIB, asimismo, en los puestos 159 y 190 en el ranking Doing Business de un total de 190 países participantes, también cuentan con 38 y 12 puntos bajo el índice de percepción de la corrupción, de tal suerte que la situación no ha mejorado para los poco más de 147 millones de habitantes de ambas naciones, lo que significa solamente el 1,83% de la población mundial, por lo que me es inevitable pensar ¿entre el resto de la población mundial, no existe una manera de sacar de la pobreza extrema y hambruna si nos decidimos a hacerlo?, y me parece que la respuesta es obvia, SÍ, entonces ¿no deberíamos exigirles a los múltiples organismos internacionales como el Banco Mundial, Organización Mundial del Comercio, la Organización de Cooperación y Desarrollo Económico, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, entre muchos otros, el involucrar no a los estados sino a la población a que aporten recursos para encontrar una equidad?, ¿de qué nos sirven ese tipo de organismos sino para proteger a los desfavorecidos?.
Finalmente, dentro de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas existen organismos que se enfocan específicamente a combatir el hambre como lo es la FAO, o el Programa Mundial de Alimentos (WFP) y parece que no han resultado lo suficientemente eficientes por lo que como personas físicas o morales, podemos optar por apoyar ONG´s que hayan demostrado su eficiencia y eficacia como lo son “Food Yoga International” que es una organización sin fines de lucro que sirve 1 millón de comidas diarias y todo su enfoque es vegano procurando gestionar e implementar proyectos agropecuarios en las diferentes comunidades y aunque en mi punto de vista, la utilización de alimentos de origen animal debe ser necesario, seguramente ellos cuentan con mayor información y por algo continúan haciendo su enorme labor; así que si queremos mejorar nuestro planeta, comencemos por ocuparnos de los problemas de los demás que terminan siendo de todos.
Recordemos lo que dice esta hermosa canción:
“We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…”DATO CULTURAL.
Un día como hoy en 1225 nacía en Roccasecca, Italia, el catedrático, escritor, filósofo, teólogo y presbítero católico Tommaso d’Aquino, mejor conocido como Santo Tomás de Aquino y quien dejó como legado entre muchas otras obras, sus tres síntesis teológicas “Summa Theologiae”, “Summa contra Gentiles” y “Scriptum super Sententias”; en 1813 en Londres, Inglaterra, la escritora Jane Austen publica por primera ocasión la novela que posiblemente marcará su carrera “Pride & Prejudice” (Orgullo y Prejuicio) y en cuyas páginas se puede advertir gran comicidad para tratar temas tan arraigados y añejos como el que nos mantiene aquejando hoy en día como lo es la falta de equidad en las oportunidades de las mujeres; en 1887 en París, Francia, se comienza la construcción de la que en aquel entonces se preveía como la entrada a la “Exposición Universal de París” que se celebraría dos años después para conmemorar el Centenario de la Revolución Francesa y lo que posiblemente no se vislumbró en ningún momento es que esta icónica edificación se convertiría en el corazón de la ciudad, nos referimos a la “Tour Eiffel” (Torre Eiffel).
Espero tus comentarios en el correo [email protected] y recuerda que, en este espacio, las críticas no sólo son bienvenidas, SON NECESARIAS.
Sígueme en mis redes:
Sigue Apertura Intelectual en todas nuestras redes:
Te invitamos a que califiques esta información.
ENTRADAS RELACIONADAS
#AperturaIntelectual #Vmrfaintelectual #Vicmanrf #VictorMReyesFerriz #Victormanrf #Victormrferriz #AMRecordingStudios #BandAid_ #TheGreatestNightInPop_ #BillyJoel #BobDylan #BobGeldof #Bono #BruceSpringsteen #CanciónDayO_ #CanciónDoTheyKnowItSChristmas_ #CanciónWeAreTheWorld_ #CheckYourEgoAtTheDoor #Cine #ConciertoLive8_ #ConciertoLiveAid_ #Cultura #CyndiLauper #DavidBowie #DianaRoss #GeorgeMichael #HambrunaEnEtiopíaYSomalia #HarryBelafonte #LionelRichie #MichaelJackson #MovimientoUSAForAfrica #Opinión #PaulMcCartney #PensamientoCrítico #PhilCollins #Política #RayCharles #RobertFrederickZenonGeldof #SteveWonder #Sting #TinaTurner #Turismo #Valores #VíctorManuelReyesFerriz #Viajes #VMRF
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Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord – Season 1, Episode 9: Strange Allies (2026) – Review
Chapter 9 continues this series stellar run. Once the setup is establishes and uneasy partnerships are formed, the high-stakes escape begins a non-stop sequence of action scene that doesn’t conclude to the end o the series. Released alongside the finale as part of this year’s “May The Fourth” event, this chapter continues to elevate the show’s quality in animation, character work, action and relentless pacing.
AdvertisementsThe episode opens under the weight of an Imperial lockdown on Janix. Stormtroopers patrol the streets, and gunships hover overhead, creating a tense atmosphere of control and surveillance. Maul and his remaining allies find themselves cornered at dead crime boss Nico Deemis’s headquarters. This is where Dryden Vos, a character introduced in Solo: A Star Wars Story, enters the picture via hologram. Vos, aware of Maul’s siuation, proposes a deal: he extract them from the planet in exchange for Maul taking out the current Crimson Dawn leader, Boss Rintero, and installing him in power. Maul is unsure due to his past betrayals by the syndicate, but logically this is he only way out.
Captain Brander Lawson, his partner Two Boots, son Rylee, and the two jedi, Devon Izara, and Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki are hiding in a warehouse. Devon experiences a Force-induced vision planted by Maul, guiding her toward the Armistice Fountain. Maul knows he needs all the help he can get to aid his escape and is still chasing Devon as an apprentice. Master Daki remains skeptical, as expected from a from an experience Jedi Master, while Lawson weighs the practical risks. They too need any help they can get to flee the Empire.
AdvertisementsThe meeting of the two groups at the fountain marks the start of the Strange Allies dynamic. Maul, accompanied by Rook Kast, nightbrother Icarus, and the remaining Mandalorians mercenaries, offers a way offworld. Maul tempers his usual intensity here, presenting a reasoned case that their survival depends on cooperation. This is a calculated move and even a measure of respect toward Daki as a Jedi Master. This is no longer the purely rage-driven Maul, he now has a purpose and will do whatever he needs to acheive his goal.
It’s now that the non-stop action begins. The group navigates Imperial forces, leading to an underground confrontation involving toxic wastewater and a multi-combatant lightsaber duel to a Phantom Menace level. The animation excels as two Inquisitors, Marrok and The Crow, come speeding around the corner, screaming into the fight. Stylized yet fluid choreography captures multiple blades clashing with clarity and impact. Maul’s combat against the pair demonstrates both his skill and the growing coordination fighting alongside the Jedi. The fighting is brutal and side characters start to fall.
AdvertisementsCharacter moments stand out amid the action. Maul once again shows emotion when his droid gets sliced in half and his decision to hold off pursuers to allow Daki and others to cross the toxic water give you pause to think: can he ever be redeemed? Whether this stems from strategic interest in Devon or a genuine good deed remains ambiguous at this point, and keeps you wondering. The stakes are high and you don’t know who is going to make it out alive.
Strange Allies keeps everything in focus. Layers are added to everything the season has put in play – the pursuit by Inquisitors, Maul’s recruitment of Devon, and the growing Imperial pressure – while introducing the Crimson Dawn alliance as a logical next step. A step that we know is important to future Star Wars lore and the wider galaxy. There is a trust that the audience can follow all of this without being hit over the head with it that makes it all work for the hardcore fan or a first time viewer (although it would be a bit odd if you chose this as the first piece of Star Wars to watch).
Sam Witwer’s work as Maul stands out in particular. He has long since made the character his own, delivering a performance that feels lived-in and authoritative. In this chapter, Witwer balances Maul’s simmering menace with a more measured, strategic calm that suits the episode’s themes of temporary alliances and calculated risks. His line delivery carries weight without needing to dominate every scene, subtle shifts in tone convey both impatience and a growing recognition of the practical realities facing the group. Witwer’s deep familiarity with the role allows him to layer small nuances into the voice work, reinforcing why he remains the definitive voice for the character across multiple Star Wars projects.
AdvertisementsThe cliffhanger, which had been kept secret by Lucasfilm, sets up an encounter that fans have dreamed about and debated since Darth Maul first appeared in 1999, positioning elements in a way that feels deliberate and earned after decades of speculation. This tease sits well with the series’ exploration of revenge, power, and survival in the early Imperial era while raising the stakes for the concluding chapter. Bring on the fight of the century.
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RETURN TO STAR WARS: MAUL – SHADOW LORD REVIEWS #DennisHaysbert #Disney #GideonAdlon #Lucasfilm #RichardAyoade #SamWitwer #StarWars #StarWarsMaulShadowLord #TVReview #WagnerMoura -
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@fromjason
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@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸 -
@touaregtweet While we were waiting for aid to arrive to break the siege on 2 million people dying of hunger before the eyes of the world, what we received was more of the occupation's crimes in perpetuating the siege and controlling our resources🥺🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
🚨 #IDF #warcriminals #Israel #Palestine #flotilla #interception #Gaza #genocide #LiftTheSiege #AidForGazaNow #GlobalSumud
#solidarity #humanity 🇵🇸