Search
1000 results for “likewise”
-
Syncthing is awesome; also awkward. A better Syncthing would let me manage the options for all replicas of a folder in a unified view, from any device in the group. (Assuming I grant permission.) Likewise, let me manage multiple folders having mostly the same options across all of them. Right now I have to visit each replica separately, and review each folder. With 2 replicas of 2 folders it's tiresome and error-prone. With 3+ replicas of 3+ folders it's ridiculous. I need only a few options to differ across devices or folders, and I want to see those differences highlighted in the unified view.
#syncthing #awesomeFOSS #FreedomSoftware #wish -
Syncthing is awesome; also awkward. A better Syncthing would let me manage the options for all replicas of a folder in a unified view, from any device in the group. (Assuming I grant permission.) Likewise, let me manage multiple folders having mostly the same options across all of them. Right now I have to visit each replica separately, and review each folder. With 2 replicas of 2 folders it's tiresome and error-prone. With 3+ replicas of 3+ folders it's ridiculous. I need only a few options to differ across devices or folders, and I want to see those differences highlighted in the unified view.
#syncthing #awesomeFOSS #FreedomSoftware #wish -
Syncthing is awesome; also awkward. A better Syncthing would let me manage the options for all replicas of a folder in a unified view, from any device in the group. (Assuming I grant permission.) Likewise, let me manage multiple folders having mostly the same options across all of them. Right now I have to visit each replica separately, and review each folder. With 2 replicas of 2 folders it's tiresome and error-prone. With 3+ replicas of 3+ folders it's ridiculous. I need only a few options to differ across devices or folders, and I want to see those differences highlighted in the unified view.
#syncthing #awesomeFOSS #FreedomSoftware #wish -
The credits do not “come from anywhere”, as, for example, gold coins would have had to come from somewhere. It is accounted for but that is a different issue. Likewise, payments to government reduce reserve balances. Those payments do not “go anywhere” but are merely accounted for. #DiscoverMMT #MMT #LearnMMT
-
The credits do not “come from anywhere”, as, for example, gold coins would have had to come from somewhere. It is accounted for but that is a different issue. Likewise, payments to government reduce reserve balances. Those payments do not “go anywhere” but are merely accounted for. #DiscoverMMT #MMT #LearnMMT
-
The credits do not “come from anywhere”, as, for example, gold coins would have had to come from somewhere. It is accounted for but that is a different issue. Likewise, payments to government reduce reserve balances. Those payments do not “go anywhere” but are merely accounted for. #DiscoverMMT #MMT #LearnMMT
-
The credits do not “come from anywhere”, as, for example, gold coins would have had to come from somewhere. It is accounted for but that is a different issue. Likewise, payments to government reduce reserve balances. Those payments do not “go anywhere” but are merely accounted for. #DiscoverMMT #MMT #LearnMMT
-
I saw Chess on Broadway today. Let's start with the good stuff.
The score remains among my favorite of any musical. Every song is excellent, from the Overture all the way to "You and I." The only downside is there isn't time to include every great song from every past version of Chess, with perhaps the most notable exclusion being "The Russian and Molokov." I was surprised by the placement of several songs, notably placing "Someone Else's Story" anfter "Endgame," but they all worked.
The orchestra and cast were all spectacular, with the lead trio Aaron Tveit, Leah Michele, and Nicholas Christopher pulling me into a trance each time they sang. The picture of Lea Michele I had in my head before today was the girl on Glee, but she embodied Florence in a way that rivaled past stars Elaine Paige, Judy Kuhn, and Cassidy Janson. I'd likewise place Christopher in my top three Anatolys, along with Michael Ball and Tommy Körberg. I was a bit skeptical of him in the opening, but as he gets closer to Florence he opens up his emotions more, and he completely brought down the house during "Anthem" and "Endgame" Tveit, meanwhile, is far and away the best Freddie I have ever seen.
Danny Strong's new book gives Freddie bipolar disorder, showing him with manic episodes at the beginning of the story, and show a positive side to his relationship with Florence. We also see Freddie resent the pressure that comes from being a national champion since age 11. The changes give Freddie depth I have never seen in previous productions, and Tveit brings him to life with a physicality, voice, and movement that pulls me in. During a couple of songs, Tveit swung on bars in a manner reminiscent of what he did in Next to Normal while still singing. I wonder if Tveit talked with Alice Ripely about portraying someone dealing with bipolar disorder. When Florence and Freddie break up, it hits much harder than in any previous production I've seen, due to Freddie having more depth and excellent performances by Michele and Tveit. During "Endgame," Freddie sings some parts of the song that have traditionally been sung by the ensemble, and the difference in his portrayal from earlier productions brings a new energy to a song I've heard hundreds of times.
Strong also establishes that Florence and Anatoly already knew each other and expressed mutual attraction prior to the start of the show. Moreover, we are told four years pass betweet acts, giving much more time for Florence and Anatoly's relationship to develop, further increasing the tension when their relationship is threatened.
Hannah Cruz brings a jaded, cynical attitude to Svetlana that pleasantly surprised me. Also carrying over from the original Broadway cast is the reprise of "Where I Want to Be," sung by Svetlana and Anatoly. New to this production, Strong has Svetlana find Florence's weakness. Florence ultimately tells Anatoly he should go back to the USSR: Not because of her father, but so that his kids can have their father.
Now, let's move on to the stuff that is not as good. Bryce Pinkham's Arbiter is the narrator for the show, and he frequently speaks in a tongue-in-cheek humorous tone, with jokes that are at odds with the solemn authority The Arbiter projects during his epynomous song, as well as "Quartet" and "The Deal." The subject matter of the show is serious, and the main trio all deal with serious issues in a serious tone singing serious songs, only for the narrator to interrupt with jokes. Walter and Molokov also joke with each other, but this feels much more in keeping with their characters.
The creative team made efforts to keep the story relevant to audiences born long after the cold war ended, with mixed effects. One part I really liked was when Walter threatened Florence with deportation to Hungry. Less effective was when The Arbiter sarcastically mentioned politicians from the 2020s by name, which pulled me out of the story and into the present. I believe the story is sufficiently relevant to critique modern politics without needing to explicitly name any real contemperary politicians, and audiences are already going to think about one partuclar person due to Freddie's last name.
There were more scenes than usual of Molokov and Walter negotiating, and so I was surprised we didn't hear them perform "Let's Work Together" from the original Broadway production.
The song that gave me the most mixed feelings was "The Interview." The stronger relationships between the lead trio give a stronger payoff when they reunite on TV. But, as with the original West End production, Freddie only has a pre-recorded video of Svetlana. I believe this is a step down from the 2018 West End production, when Freddie surprises Anatoly by revealing Svetlana and her son are actually in the station in person. We ultimately don't see Anatoly's kids at all during the show, which weakens the ending in which his kids are the reason he returns to Russia.
But all my criticisms vanished from my mind as Florence and Anatoly embraced for the final time during "You and I." The score, cast, and orchestra make up for any faults I may find with the book for one of the most enjoyable Broadway experiences of my adult life.
#Chess #MusicalTheater -
I am writing an open letter to the #fediverse #administration and #moderation community, because you need to keep a few things in mind.
Lately I have started noticing some #fediverse #relays disable this instance in the server logs.
It seems like #censorship is alive and well. Whether it be #language or #geography based.
I will say this once.
I have no issue at all with #international content. In fact I encourage it. And I am working on a #translation enabled client for #Mastodon to release as #open #source #software, so that anyone can interact with any #ActivityPub #server out there, to not exclude entire swaths of #audience reach, that would and currently still is, isolated by regional and not human #diversity as such.
To be clear. I do not want to #expose #racism to the world. I want to move beyond that, to create ways by which #inclusive dialog can transcend #world #borders few want you to never forget.
To do that, we will at some point or other have to talk about some concepts that would otherwise never find common resolution in the mind of the everyday person. And I am open to hosting that.
I simply want to put our humanity first, the way the open #internet prior to any concept of #weaponization, was designed to build conceptually. Before bots, automation and spam ruined the experience of the pre-web 2.0 internet. To the point where marking anything as either or, gets you silenced before you remember you once weren't.
Speaking on a personal level, I make mistakes in my ability to just post before I #think about things. I cannot premoderate everything I say to the point where it comes across as neutral or distant, as if I never bothered to go through the experience. And I admit I am and can be at #fault for that. But what I cannot #apologize for, is why I #feel the way I do. In order to clear my #mind my #head, and my #heart for better #times and #memories I can more clearly #focus on. And this is what #inspires me to keep things moving along such a trajectory.
I can't be #positive or #negative all the time. I will just be #real, and let the #moment pass. In #trust that you're with me for whatever part of that #journey comes our way.
I do'nt want us separated by preventable alternatives that bring us closer together. That is my ultimate #purpose as to why I am making this post.
With this in mind, I myself have a tendency to be the only one posting on this server...but if you want to join us, and speak in your own language or talk about issues that matter to you...then by all means, go for it.
I am doing the same here, not to get attention, but to find #community so we can bond over things held in common, not broken by common disinterest. And I have largely been very #successful at this both on other platforms, and by sticking to topics at hand in more traditional forums.
The truth of the matter, is that we have a critical shortage of relays in the fediverse active at any one time. Until recently we have been fortunate here at #MediaNexus to have over 70 enabled instances, this has dropped since to the late 60's since reports started coming in criticizing just one post about the #war I have made, calling out a commentator for their views.
We can't always #agree on things. But we can ensure that we stand for the principle of an agreement not to break down over the disagreements of a few people, who just can't get along no matter how you approach them.
Guys, we need #decentralized #media now more so than ever before. It is not about monitoring for dangerous opinions. I don't want to live in an echo chamber. IF that's what you want, then I suggest you visit #BlueSky for that.
And so this is not about what I want. I have no #agenda to share. Just a simple message. Layered in #truth and #growth of either #awareness or #news that isn't 100% reliant on one person's understanding to be amplified by 1000000 more as their own, holey so.
In part, while we live in an age of alternate #information being so readily available. Even about the same exact #post generating different #analysis by whoever is looking at it from multiple perspectives. We cannot mix #facts with #fiction where #events count objectively.
Losing access to one #relay especially using platforms like #pleroma and #mastodon, potentially means dozens of your available #updates as your #content gets published, cannot be seen. And, I am asking on behalf of all #sane server owners out there, to stand in solidarity with one another for the sake of our continuity. So that one link in our chain, does not and cannot cripple its #functionality anymore. To the point where nodes are centralized around #ideals not #ideas in turn.
Please, mention me in any #disagreement you may have. We are #humans not #bots at the end of the day. And a lot of us pay really good #money to #hosting companies to be able to critically customize our experience on the deecentralized web. Myself included.
We don't do that because it's cool. We do that, because we trust in all of you to uphold this #principle of our continuity as a whole. At the federation, relay, server instance, and user level.
Media Nexus is very young. And I have only managed to get 5 people to sign up because of the common culture I would otherwise not have been able to share as we explore the world we each live in collectively.
As an #important #introduction to the wider reach of independent blogs and forums, I started this server, not to compete with others, but to ensure that we treat this entire medium of #communication like a single #torrent in great health.
I have no interest by and large, in running a #social #media company for the sake of establishing a #network of random people who otherwise have nothing in common accept liking the interface by which we share are thoughts with one another. Although I will admit that's half the fun in making this possible.
In order for us to #work together, I have to imagine we already are doing so even if we never met in person.
Due to the abundant use of platforms widely available for #engagement of various purposes, all I can offer you, is access to someone who puts humanity first. Not by trend, but by principle. That's not just me, that's all of you that believe we are stronger together. Posting just as you do, for being all that you are, where ever your sense of community feels most comfortable belonging there.
No matter who reads this letter, I #support you in all that you do, even if there are times where we have to talk about why we matter to one another. The fact that it can happen at all, is a #miracle I will always #cherish and #embrace while I am alive on this Earth. Because everyone, even you, play a part in our experience in this way. And I wouldn't trade or exchange that for anything.
I #love you for the #person you are, as you become involved in your journey of #life here. And likewise, appreciate you for caring about your place in our world. And as I said above, I only wish for us to find common ground on things we in turn find interesting enough to boost, favorite, and reply to. Whether that's a poll, a photo, or a news article.
I know this post is getting quite long. But there are #reasons why I have to personally speak up about this. As someone who only started their journey on any kind of federated platform let alone hosting one at the beginning of March of this year, following the #tech news of very unsettling feedback. I cannot in good #faith abandon the #philosophy of things that go #viral, because they're #genuine and #free enough to be #authentic and original. And to me, it absolutely #matters that we remember how to #teach this to our #friends and #family as a whole. Less we forget how to #remember our meaning in a world we can still #save from the #absence of all that brings our #presence into #power in turn.
It starts with the #recognition that to deny anyone based on the #group of a sub culture someone belongs to, is a slippery slope of a #sincere and #honest diversion I cannot support.
Thank you for your #attention to this matter.
If this #resonates with you, or even if it does not, let me know.
Yours with warm #appreciation and #gratitude abounding,
Elshara Silverheart
-
The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.
To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:
The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”
Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”(8/N)
#WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars
-
The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.
To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:
The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”
Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”(8/N)
#WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars
-
The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.
To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:
The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”
Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”(8/N)
#WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars
-
The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.
To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:
The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”
Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”(8/N)
#WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars
-
The links between Russian officials and the American Religious Right,
like those between Kremlin-linked actors and American white nationalists,
are easy to trace.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Duma member #Yelena #Mizulina,
who helped spearhead Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” law,
has been “heavily involved” with the WCF.#Vladimir #Yakunin, former head of Russian Railways
—and a Kremlin insider who has cultivated additional links with the American theocratic “#dominionist” movement
—has also served as a WCF committee member.Likewise, Russia’s 2011 package of anti-abortion legislation saw conspicuous links with the WCF’s efforts.
To wit, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF higher-ups,
including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs,
settled into Moscow for a
“Demographic Summit,”
the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date.As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said,
“It was 100 percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists
and conservative circles of several European countries
where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material:
The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”
Still, the WCF is by no means the lone U.S. Religious Right organization outspoken in its praise of Moscow,
or supporting Kremlin policy.Over the past few years, arch-conservatives in the U.S. have begun espousing something approaching infatuation with Putin,
especially for Moscow’s leading role in both passing and encouraging anti-LGBT legislation.For instance, #Bryan #Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the "American Family Association"
and who still hosts a show broadcast over its radio network,
has called Putin the
“lion of Christianity.”Evangelist #Franklin #Graham
—who visited Russia in 2015 to meet with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill
—has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity.”(8/N)
#WCF #Allan #Carlson #Anatoly #Antonov #Viktor #Medkov #antiLGBT #Alexey #Komov #Brian #Brown #IOF #Religious #Right #American #missionaries #David #Duke #Preston #Wiginton #Harold #Covington #Mike #Cernovich #Matthew #Heimbach #HailPutin #PutinForTsar #Novorossiya #Konstantin #Malofeev #TraditionalistWorkerParty #Richard #Spencer #NPI #antiSemitism #monoracial #statehood #Lügenpresse #Jobbik #Nina #Kouprianova #Byzantina #Richard #Spencer #Matthew #Heimbach #Alexander #Dugin #Eurasianism #Eternal #Rome #Alex #Jones #InfoWars
-
Jotting this down: Flarians, an alien species I am making up
I have been tasked with making up an alien species for a sf/fantasy campaign. This is what I have so far.
Variously called twelfors, flarians, or often called "reefers" due to the creches their youngest and oldest live in. These are all exonyms; most flarians use their state or nation as a demonym, so when speaking of themselves as a species, when necessary they refer to themselves using an exonym.[1]Their homeworld orbits a small, k-class red dwarf star catalogued by humans as 124 Zhou, though the majority of flarians live elsewhere, having colonized multiple other worlds some time ago. 124 "Twelve-Four" Zhou is a flare star, prone to solar storms that bathe the planet in what would nominally be very deadly radiation in not-infrequent bursts. Much of the planet's surface lifeforms have adapted with a strategy not unlike banksia, using the energy and chaos of the flares to flourish at the expense of most of them dying off in the flare and leaving seeds. Life underwater, such as in the seas, is more varied in this regard, depending on the depth it's adapted to.
Flarians generally have two arms and four legs; they are primarily bipedal, using the other two legs only as occasional support or for long periods of standing.
People who have never met flarians, but know of them, almost certainly are aware of their life cycle. The terms "infant," "child," "adult," and "senior" don't apply very well to flarians. If an outsider meets a flarian, they're almost certainly meeting a "youth," somewhat equivalent to adulthood. Infant or larval stage flarians live in creches, and are very much an r-strategy matter; like in sea turtles, most die. Infants who grow to the child/teenage stage and grow limbs for walking on land are cared for to a far, far more significant degree. Most disabilities have their origins either in genetics or from the conditions of the creche. There are differing cultural notions of how to approach this, including augmentation toward a mean level of ability, or simply having an unusually wide cultural expectation of what constitutes able. In the latter case, such societies tend to be very accessible, and not only physically. Such societies are also more easily able to incorporate members of other species, as differences of abilities are already normalized and accounted for as best they can.
The most common cause of disability is various forms of water pollution. The politics of such matters should be familiar to the reader. This is part of why many creches are moved out of the ocean and into other, smaller environments. The quality of these artificial waters and their conditions varies somewhat, depending on means, needs, and motives.
The child stage is a time when they learn the basics of their cultures and is generally when schooling takes place. During that time, flarian hind legs grow bigger and stronger, and the hips and back develop to make them nearly obligate bipeds. Once they have reached full physical maturity, growing in size and usually in lower body strength and endurance, they become what could reasonably be called adults, which is the "youth" stage.
Flarians have a final life stage where they go into a chrysalis, and most of their body turns into a creature that resembles a tunicate. They have a whole set of concepts around the "soul," which is the English word that is closest to how they refer to their blood. ("Internal sea" is pretty clunky, and misses some spiritual nuances.) The final stage is mindless; while flarians may talk to them, and there are beliefs about what happens to the mind, the body has changed shape and hollowed out, and its "soul" has joined the wider seasoul, mingling generally with the souls of other sessiles in the creche. (There is no scientific basis for believing the blood of a flarian carries thoughts and minds, and how a given flarian belief system talks about blood varies as well.)
This sessile stage is also sexual maturity; while younger motile "youths" may engage in play with others, especially with other species, and are functionally what one might call adults in another species, there is no sexual maturity without becoming what amounts to a sea sponge, so the equivalent to teenage years, adulthood, physical maturity and senescence of a sort, and decades-long careers all come before the age when mating and having children occurs.
One result is that flarians are also known for frequently having a rather odd bimboification kink. It's far from universal, but becoming a mindless breeding creature with sufficient intelligence and mindfulness to enjoy it is an appealing fantasy for some.
Youths sometimes put off becoming sessile, perhaps because of their career, the caretaking of a child, or sometimes personal preference. Understandably, some youths also have a fear of sessility, which is also the end of mindfulness in flarians. Most do not fear sessility, and the fear can be symptomatic of mental illness. Illness or not, that fear has driven some social movements toward actions and policies intended to eliminate the death of the mind. A sessile body is too simple to support a nervous system, much less a mind. One such social movement, Consciousers, intends to utterly remove the brain from infant-aged flarians and replace it with a growing, adaptive artificial intelligence, which might be joined with the sessile form in the creche. The research is not far along in this regard, and it is not a commonly high priority, and many flarians are horrified by the idea, and the movement is sometimes allied with technocratic conservative movements in other, extraspecies cultures.
In terms of general beliefs, the mingling of the internal sea with that of all the other flarians of the creche and of history, or at least with an immediate local sea of an artificial environment, is identified with the dissolution of the mind. Making a mind that has no part in that sea is not an entirely popular idea.
Choosing where to go once sessile is not exactly treated like end of life care; it is an advance directive, but is seldom treated as funerary. Sessile flarians in fact may live thousands and thousands of years. Talking to them may be akin to talking to a house plant, and certain things might be mourned, but by many flarian standards they aren't dead.
Some bodily alterations remain a part of sessile flarians. While augments usually cease to even be attached as the body becomes simple and hollow, tattoos and similar body modifications generally remain discernible, and part of flarian body art is planning for the sessile stage.
Flarian marriages vary in number, but if married flarians become sessile, they usually wish to go to the same local creche or family creche. Marriages into other places, moving to other cities or planets or countries, can complicate these plans. Likewise, the sessility chrysalis can have mishaps or strangeness, including (rarely) bifurcation. In some cases, the actual death of a flarian is handled by simply taking some portion of their blood and releasing it into the creche that seems most appropriate, or even multiple creches. In the dominant culture the main character was born into, intermarriage between states or nations was encouraged; theoretically, it was thought to make it harder to go to war or create conflict. In practice, the main effect of this is that damaging a creche in an act of violence is considered a very heinous war crime. It also helps avoid the equivalents of Hapsburg jaws.
Sessile flarians have numerous sexes, not dissimilar to Earthly mushrooms. What a youth's eventual sex will be is often unknown, as it is not as simple a thing to define as simply a set of chromosomes. (Flarians do have genetic material, but it is not DNA per se, and their genes are not encoded on chromosomes quite like Earth creatures' are. The molecules and structure differ meaningfully. I will not explain further, but those genes are only part of what defines a sessile flarian's sex and sexual characteristics.)
One sessile sex translates to "simply extant," and produces no nutrients for others nor takes part in mating. Some sessile sexes only produce nutrients for infants; some only mate; most strike some balance; and some have morphology that's advantageous in some environmental conditions, such as defensibility.
Some cultures like to keep trinkets made from the bodily fluids of ancestors. Some think that's a terrible idea and complicates the soul's transition and metamorphosis. It is common for those who keep trinkets to speak to them when troubled, and to ask for help with specific known strengths the flarians whose material is encapsulated were good at. Often these ancestors are alive as sessiles somewhere. In some cases, sessiles are kept in large tanks in small numbers, to keep a family close with their sessile members, or to facilitate travel, whether on a planet's surface or in space or to other planets.
On the subject of blood, flarians have two vascular systems, one for carrying oxygen and the other for carrying most nutrients. (Some nutrients are in both systems, and some are in the same system as is used for oxygenation.) They have a single, complex heart. Blood transfusions are a thing, and while there are some subcultures that get a little finicky about the idea, and some social movements which believe the internal sea should remain Pure, mostly blood banks exist, are helpful and necessary, and people in that sense mingle souls without hesitation. Bleeding to death is the soul leaving the body improperly and tragically, with a long journey before it has any chance of joining the greater sea.
Pilgrimages are common, both on a planet and to other planets, and are often not religious at all. They're treated a bit like visiting grandparents, even if the grandparents (that is, the community of sessile elders) is long gone. In spiritual peoples, this often accompanies a belief that the memories and mind of the motile stages lives on in some manner on a non-physical plane.[1] Usually, if they aren't talking about the immediate culture they're from, and are referring to a mixed group of individuals, they just call them "people," which can be ambiguous when referring to matters such as medical needs; while generally one's home state or nationality is used in place of that term, it can be necessary to be more specific. (This can vary, and is all true only of the dominant languages spoken by most spacefaring flarians; some languages do have species-level endonyms, but as the languages they study to speak with others all do not have native endonyms for flarians as a whole, flarian has become the commonly accepted term.)
#ARetreadFromMy #Cohost #cohost-migration #worldbuilding #flarian #making-shit-up #I'm-bad-at-naming-conventions-so-a-lot-of-terminology-hasn't-been-given-names-here #yes-they're-psychologically-presently-annoyingly-human #I-may-refine-that-later #but-they're-for-a-tabletop-game-so-it's-gotta-be-something-I-can-actively-portray #I-did-have-an-alien-character-whose-whole-sense-of-humor-revolved-around-secrets-because-what-could-be-more-absurd-than-a-secret-when-your-whole-species-is-telepathic #greyfellow-was-a-weirdo-by-every-standard-and-I-miss-playing-it #original-species #open-species #not-closed #not-that-I-expect-this-to-be-the-next-yinglet-or-something #yinglets-are-cool #flarian #making #i #yes #I #but #I #greyfellow -
Wet Feet
There is something almost comical about it at first. I took the dog to the park because I knew I would be away for pastors’ Bible study. The grass was wet. My sneakers got soaked. I went home, changed my socks, and thought I had solved the problem. Then on the hour drive I realized my feet were getting wet again, because of course the shoes themselves were still wet. So now, during Bible study, my feet have been wet. Damp. Cool. Probably getting more shriveled by the hour.
Yet somehow it feels fitting.
Not dramatic. Not grand. Just fitting.
I think of the phrase “getting my feet wet,” as though ministry, faith, and discipleship are things I ease into gradually, carefully, at a manageable depth. But some days it doesn’t feel like that. Some days it feels more like simply having wet feet and carrying on. Not preparation for service, not a metaphor about a faithful beginning, but the thing itself. Wet feet. A small discomfort that stays with me. A quiet bodily reminder that I am not moving through the day untouched.
And sitting here, I cannot help but think of Jesus washing feet.
Not the polished image of it. Not the sentimental church painting version. But the actual strangeness of it. Wet feet. Dirty feet. Vulnerable feet. Tired feet. The feet that carried dust, ache, story, and status. The Lord kneeling with basin and towel. The Most High God attending to what is lowest. Not avoiding the human mess, but stooping into it.
Maybe there is something right about reflecting on servant life while sitting in damp shoes.
Because service is rarely abstract. It is seldom dry and comfortable. It does not usually happen in pristine conditions, after everything has been neatly changed and arranged. Often it is inconvenient. Often it lingers. Often I think I have addressed the problem, only to discover the wetness has seeped through again. I change the socks, but the shoes are still soaked. I try to reset myself, but the deeper discomfort remains.
That, too, may be part of ministry.
I carry wetness with me. The sorrows of others. The unfinished conversations. The burdens that seep through. The humble tasks nobody notices. The little irritations that become, strangely, occasions of grace. And maybe part of following Jesus is not always finding a way to stay dry, but learning how to keep loving with wet feet.
Jesus washed feet not because feet are noble, but because they are ordinary. Necessary. Exposed. Human. He met his friends there, at ground level. And then he told them to do likewise.
So perhaps wet feet are not the worst thing.
Perhaps they are a reminder.
A reminder that I am not above the ground.
A reminder that discipleship is tactile.
A reminder that love kneels.
A reminder that service is not clean.
A reminder that holiness may sometimes smell like damp shoes and feel like wrinkled skin.In some ways, it seems fitting to go through this day with wet feet.
Maybe, in some ways, it seems right to go through life that way too.Not just getting my feet wet,
#basinAndTowel #ChristianReflection #dampShoes #Discipleship #embodiedFaith #FollowingJesus #FootWashing #holyOrdinary #Humility #JesusWashingFeet #ministryReflection #pastoralLife #pastorsBibleStudy #sacredDiscomfort #ServantLeadership #wetFeet
but having them wet—
as one who follows the Christ
who washed feet,
and who still seems to meet me there,
down low,
with basin,
with towel,
with love. -
Philippines Inflation Accelerates To 7.2% In April 2026
Considering the immense economic impact the conflict in the Middle East had on the world, the inflation rate of Philippines unsurprisingly accelerated to 7.2% in April 2026, according to a news report by GMA News.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the GMA News report. Some parts in boldface…
Inflation rate accelerated to its fastest in three years in April 2026 as higher global fuel prices brought about by the Middle East petroleum crisis spilled over to food, local petroleum, and utilities costs during the period.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Statistician and PSA chief Claire Dennis Mapa said inflation — the rate of increase in the prices of goods and services — accelerated to 7.2% last month from 4.1% in March 2026 and 1.4% in April 2025.
This was the fastest inflation print since March 2023, when the inflation rate clocked in at 7.6%.
April’s inflation brought the year-to-date rate to 3.9%, still within the 2% to 4% comfortable ceiling set by the government for the entire 2026.
“Ang pangunahing dahilan ng mas mataas na antas ng inflation nitong Abril 2026 kumpara noong Marso 2026 ay ang mas mabilis na pagtaas ng presyo ng Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages na may 6% inflation rate,” Mapa said.
(The main contributor to the increase in inflation rate in April 2026 compared to March 2026 was the faster hike in the prices of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages which posted a 6% inflation rate.)
Also contributing to the uptrend of the overall inflation in April 2026 was the faster annual increases seen in the Transport index at 21.4% in from 9.9% in March as well as the Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels at 8.2% during the month from 4.7% in the previous month.
Moreover, faster increment were likewise seen in the indices of the following commodity groups last month:
Alcoholic beverages and tobacco – 4.8% from 3.7%; Clothing and footwear – 2.8% from 2.6%; Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance – 3.5% from 3.1%; Health – 3.8% from 3.4%; Information and communication – 0.9% from 0.7%; Recreation, sport and culture – 4.9% from 4.7%; Restaurants and accommodation services – 6% from 5%; Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services – 3.3% from 2.9%.
Food inflation – Food inflation, which tracks the price movements of food items in a “basket” commonly purchased by household, soared to 6.1% from 2.7% month-on-month driven primarily by the faster increase in rice inflation at 13.7% from 3.5% in March 2026.
Faster increments were also seen in corn (21% from 12.3%), flour and other bakery products (3% from 2.5%), fish and other seafood (9.4% from 6.6%), fruits and nuts (6% from 4.7%), vegetables (10.4% from 7%), and ready-made food (2.5% from 2.4%).
Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the inflation rate of the Philippines will end up at 5% by the end of this year?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
+++++
Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
#ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #commerce #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #energy #Facebook #food #geek #GMANews #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #inflation #inflationRate #Instagram #Investagrams #MiddleEast #news #oil #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Twitter #war #WordPress #WordPressCom -
"I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle -- from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.
It's important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They're notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.
These are likewise the same degenerates who think the prospect of a cage fight on the White House lawn is a fitting means by which to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The irony doesn't escape the intellectual mind. Juvenal’s 'bread and circuses' idiom is obscenely fitting.
I recently happened upon a comment written by a Gravy Seal residing in a Kansas town made famous by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist applauded Trump’s “crackdown,” saying 'if Martial law is what it takes, so be it.'
'The communist demotards are lying,' he wrote. 'I’m glad Trump is gettin rid of the homeless. I’m tired of seein all these stolen Walmart carts all over town.'
For a Christian, the gentleman evidently suffers a lack of altruism.
Of course, when it comes to the question of where exactly transients are being relocated, nobody seems to know, and few 'Christians' appear to care."
http://web.archive.org/web/20250903020440/https://www.alternet.org/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated/
-
"I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle -- from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.
It's important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They're notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.
These are likewise the same degenerates who think the prospect of a cage fight on the White House lawn is a fitting means by which to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The irony doesn't escape the intellectual mind. Juvenal’s 'bread and circuses' idiom is obscenely fitting.
I recently happened upon a comment written by a Gravy Seal residing in a Kansas town made famous by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist applauded Trump’s “crackdown,” saying 'if Martial law is what it takes, so be it.'
'The communist demotards are lying,' he wrote. 'I’m glad Trump is gettin rid of the homeless. I’m tired of seein all these stolen Walmart carts all over town.'
For a Christian, the gentleman evidently suffers a lack of altruism.
Of course, when it comes to the question of where exactly transients are being relocated, nobody seems to know, and few 'Christians' appear to care."
http://web.archive.org/web/20250903020440/https://www.alternet.org/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated/
-
"I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle -- from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.
It's important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They're notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.
These are likewise the same degenerates who think the prospect of a cage fight on the White House lawn is a fitting means by which to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The irony doesn't escape the intellectual mind. Juvenal’s 'bread and circuses' idiom is obscenely fitting.
I recently happened upon a comment written by a Gravy Seal residing in a Kansas town made famous by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist applauded Trump’s “crackdown,” saying 'if Martial law is what it takes, so be it.'
'The communist demotards are lying,' he wrote. 'I’m glad Trump is gettin rid of the homeless. I’m tired of seein all these stolen Walmart carts all over town.'
For a Christian, the gentleman evidently suffers a lack of altruism.
Of course, when it comes to the question of where exactly transients are being relocated, nobody seems to know, and few 'Christians' appear to care."
http://web.archive.org/web/20250903020440/https://www.alternet.org/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated/
-
"I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle -- from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.
It's important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They're notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.
These are likewise the same degenerates who think the prospect of a cage fight on the White House lawn is a fitting means by which to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The irony doesn't escape the intellectual mind. Juvenal’s 'bread and circuses' idiom is obscenely fitting.
I recently happened upon a comment written by a Gravy Seal residing in a Kansas town made famous by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist applauded Trump’s “crackdown,” saying 'if Martial law is what it takes, so be it.'
'The communist demotards are lying,' he wrote. 'I’m glad Trump is gettin rid of the homeless. I’m tired of seein all these stolen Walmart carts all over town.'
For a Christian, the gentleman evidently suffers a lack of altruism.
Of course, when it comes to the question of where exactly transients are being relocated, nobody seems to know, and few 'Christians' appear to care."
http://web.archive.org/web/20250903020440/https://www.alternet.org/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated/
-
Philippines Inflation Accelerates To 7.2% In April 2026
Considering the immense economic impact the conflict in the Middle East had on the world, the inflation rate of Philippines unsurprisingly accelerated to 7.2% in April 2026, according to a news report by GMA News.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the GMA News report. Some parts in boldface…
Inflation rate accelerated to its fastest in three years in April 2026 as higher global fuel prices brought about by the Middle East petroleum crisis spilled over to food, local petroleum, and utilities costs during the period.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Statistician and PSA chief Claire Dennis Mapa said inflation — the rate of increase in the prices of goods and services — accelerated to 7.2% last month from 4.1% in March 2026 and 1.4% in April 2025.
This was the fastest inflation print since March 2023, when the inflation rate clocked in at 7.6%.
April’s inflation brought the year-to-date rate to 3.9%, still within the 2% to 4% comfortable ceiling set by the government for the entire 2026.
“Ang pangunahing dahilan ng mas mataas na antas ng inflation nitong Abril 2026 kumpara noong Marso 2026 ay ang mas mabilis na pagtaas ng presyo ng Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages na may 6% inflation rate,” Mapa said.
(The main contributor to the increase in inflation rate in April 2026 compared to March 2026 was the faster hike in the prices of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages which posted a 6% inflation rate.)
Also contributing to the uptrend of the overall inflation in April 2026 was the faster annual increases seen in the Transport index at 21.4% in from 9.9% in March as well as the Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels at 8.2% during the month from 4.7% in the previous month.
Moreover, faster increment were likewise seen in the indices of the following commodity groups last month:
Alcoholic beverages and tobacco – 4.8% from 3.7%; Clothing and footwear – 2.8% from 2.6%; Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance – 3.5% from 3.1%; Health – 3.8% from 3.4%; Information and communication – 0.9% from 0.7%; Recreation, sport and culture – 4.9% from 4.7%; Restaurants and accommodation services – 6% from 5%; Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services – 3.3% from 2.9%.
Food inflation – Food inflation, which tracks the price movements of food items in a “basket” commonly purchased by household, soared to 6.1% from 2.7% month-on-month driven primarily by the faster increase in rice inflation at 13.7% from 3.5% in March 2026.
Faster increments were also seen in corn (21% from 12.3%), flour and other bakery products (3% from 2.5%), fish and other seafood (9.4% from 6.6%), fruits and nuts (6% from 4.7%), vegetables (10.4% from 7%), and ready-made food (2.5% from 2.4%).
Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the inflation rate of the Philippines will end up at 5% by the end of this year?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
+++++
Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
#ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #commerce #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #energy #Facebook #food #geek #GMANews #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #inflation #inflationRate #Instagram #Investagrams #MiddleEast #news #oil #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Twitter #war #WordPress #WordPressCom -
Philippines Inflation Accelerates To 7.2% In April 2026
Considering the immense economic impact the conflict in the Middle East had on the world, the inflation rate of Philippines unsurprisingly accelerated to 7.2% in April 2026, according to a news report by GMA News.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the GMA News report. Some parts in boldface…
Inflation rate accelerated to its fastest in three years in April 2026 as higher global fuel prices brought about by the Middle East petroleum crisis spilled over to food, local petroleum, and utilities costs during the period.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Statistician and PSA chief Claire Dennis Mapa said inflation — the rate of increase in the prices of goods and services — accelerated to 7.2% last month from 4.1% in March 2026 and 1.4% in April 2025.
This was the fastest inflation print since March 2023, when the inflation rate clocked in at 7.6%.
April’s inflation brought the year-to-date rate to 3.9%, still within the 2% to 4% comfortable ceiling set by the government for the entire 2026.
“Ang pangunahing dahilan ng mas mataas na antas ng inflation nitong Abril 2026 kumpara noong Marso 2026 ay ang mas mabilis na pagtaas ng presyo ng Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages na may 6% inflation rate,” Mapa said.
(The main contributor to the increase in inflation rate in April 2026 compared to March 2026 was the faster hike in the prices of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages which posted a 6% inflation rate.)
Also contributing to the uptrend of the overall inflation in April 2026 was the faster annual increases seen in the Transport index at 21.4% in from 9.9% in March as well as the Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels at 8.2% during the month from 4.7% in the previous month.
Moreover, faster increment were likewise seen in the indices of the following commodity groups last month:
Alcoholic beverages and tobacco – 4.8% from 3.7%; Clothing and footwear – 2.8% from 2.6%; Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance – 3.5% from 3.1%; Health – 3.8% from 3.4%; Information and communication – 0.9% from 0.7%; Recreation, sport and culture – 4.9% from 4.7%; Restaurants and accommodation services – 6% from 5%; Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services – 3.3% from 2.9%.
Food inflation – Food inflation, which tracks the price movements of food items in a “basket” commonly purchased by household, soared to 6.1% from 2.7% month-on-month driven primarily by the faster increase in rice inflation at 13.7% from 3.5% in March 2026.
Faster increments were also seen in corn (21% from 12.3%), flour and other bakery products (3% from 2.5%), fish and other seafood (9.4% from 6.6%), fruits and nuts (6% from 4.7%), vegetables (10.4% from 7%), and ready-made food (2.5% from 2.4%).
Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the inflation rate of the Philippines will end up at 5% by the end of this year?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
+++++
Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
#ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #commerce #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #energy #Facebook #food #geek #GMANews #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #inflation #inflationRate #Instagram #Investagrams #MiddleEast #news #oil #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Twitter #war #WordPress #WordPressCom -
Philippines Inflation Accelerates To 7.2% In April 2026
Considering the immense economic impact the conflict in the Middle East had on the world, the inflation rate of Philippines unsurprisingly accelerated to 7.2% in April 2026, according to a news report by GMA News.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the GMA News report. Some parts in boldface…
Inflation rate accelerated to its fastest in three years in April 2026 as higher global fuel prices brought about by the Middle East petroleum crisis spilled over to food, local petroleum, and utilities costs during the period.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Statistician and PSA chief Claire Dennis Mapa said inflation — the rate of increase in the prices of goods and services — accelerated to 7.2% last month from 4.1% in March 2026 and 1.4% in April 2025.
This was the fastest inflation print since March 2023, when the inflation rate clocked in at 7.6%.
April’s inflation brought the year-to-date rate to 3.9%, still within the 2% to 4% comfortable ceiling set by the government for the entire 2026.
“Ang pangunahing dahilan ng mas mataas na antas ng inflation nitong Abril 2026 kumpara noong Marso 2026 ay ang mas mabilis na pagtaas ng presyo ng Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages na may 6% inflation rate,” Mapa said.
(The main contributor to the increase in inflation rate in April 2026 compared to March 2026 was the faster hike in the prices of Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages which posted a 6% inflation rate.)
Also contributing to the uptrend of the overall inflation in April 2026 was the faster annual increases seen in the Transport index at 21.4% in from 9.9% in March as well as the Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels at 8.2% during the month from 4.7% in the previous month.
Moreover, faster increment were likewise seen in the indices of the following commodity groups last month:
Alcoholic beverages and tobacco – 4.8% from 3.7%; Clothing and footwear – 2.8% from 2.6%; Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance – 3.5% from 3.1%; Health – 3.8% from 3.4%; Information and communication – 0.9% from 0.7%; Recreation, sport and culture – 4.9% from 4.7%; Restaurants and accommodation services – 6% from 5%; Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services – 3.3% from 2.9%.
Food inflation – Food inflation, which tracks the price movements of food items in a “basket” commonly purchased by household, soared to 6.1% from 2.7% month-on-month driven primarily by the faster increase in rice inflation at 13.7% from 3.5% in March 2026.
Faster increments were also seen in corn (21% from 12.3%), flour and other bakery products (3% from 2.5%), fish and other seafood (9.4% from 6.6%), fruits and nuts (6% from 4.7%), vegetables (10.4% from 7%), and ready-made food (2.5% from 2.4%).
Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you think the inflation rate of the Philippines will end up at 5% by the end of this year?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
+++++
Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
#ASEAN #Asia #AssociationOfSoutheastAsianNationsASEAN #Bing #Blog #CarloCarrasco #ChatGPT #commerce #economics #economy #EconomyOfThePhilippines #energy #Facebook #food #geek #GMANews #Google #GoogleSearch #governance #inflation #inflationRate #Instagram #Investagrams #MiddleEast #news #oil #Philippines #PhilippinesBlog #Pinoy #publicService #socialMedia #SoutheastAsia #technology #Twitter #war #WordPress #WordPressCom -
What we really are
We pay attention to our own true nature and by becoming fully conscious of the union of our nature with Christ, we become fully ourselves.
John Main, Word into Silence, p.18
The idea of time has many expressions, from chronological to biological, emotional to cosmic. We sometimes feel we have lived a lifetime in a moment. We can feel time as a crucifixion or as a resurrection. The vast figures measuring cosmic time in an expanding universe can seem overwhelming but the few years of a human life can seem more significant and precious. Time and mortality live out the drama of birth and death and the painful mystery of separation. In the light of faith we come by stages to see the all-pervading mystery of union…
This consummation of union, whether it is called nirvana, liberation from rebirth, enlightenment, moksha or heaven is part of the common ground of all religious wisdom when we understand religion in its mystical dimension. It refers to the experience of oneness, the transcendence of the ego’s centre of consciousness, the transformation of the dualistic mind, the movement from the mind’s self-mirroring complexities into the simplicity and pure vision of the heart, the non-duality of the spirit. With a silent passion deeper than their words and differences, all religions point to this. If they do indeed teach this way and not just pay lip service to it, religion offers our often sad and battered humanity a reasonable and empowering hope.
We both lose and find ourselves in the otherness of ultimate reality. This is easy to say but it is a hard paradox to wrestle with. It demands a deepening faith commitment. When the master class of life has taught us enough, commitment meets detachment and solitude, the recognition and acceptance of our uniqueness becomes more attractive and even easier. We gradually withdraw from unnecessary activity and distraction. We become freer from compulsions and addictions.
Laurence Freeman, First Sight: The Experience of Faith, p.76-77
What we really are is this. We are not what we think we are, frail isolated intelligences trapped in a zero-sum game of mere survival, creatures of allegiances and enmities, just barely hanging on. We belong. We are part of it all, wavelets on a limitless ocean of grace.
We must… make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.
Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity p.24
Faith is no more, perhaps, than this radical open-heartedness, this helpless surrender to what is, in David Jones’ words, “actually loved and known”. All our practice, all our patience and all our prayers come down to this simple oneness. What we used to be is dispersed, patched and rotted through with light. None of the old certainties can hold. They don’t need to: this trackless brightness beyond the memory of shorelines is the waking heart itself, nothing more.
#AlanWatts #awakening #contemplation #faith #JohnMain #LaurenceFreeman #prayer #stillness #union -
@Jasper BurnsPermissions meet groups
It gets really interesting when the permissions system is applied to groups. As the owner of a Hubzilla forum, you have the following options:- You can control who can see the profile of the forum, i.e. what it is all about. For example, you can only allow confirmed members to see it. Or, in fact, you can only allow certain members to see it by assigning a specific contact role to them. Or you could make it Fediverse-specific: Only those who can be recognised as logged-in Fediverse users can see the profile. Or you can hide it altogether.
- You can control who can see the contacts, i.e. the forum members, all the same. Like, for example, only a chosen inner circle may be allowed to see the list of forum members, but Joe Average Forum Member is not.
- Likewise, you can control who can see what has already happened in the forum when visiting the group profile.
- You can choose to hide the whole forum from the directory, the place where people go to find new contacts (the mastodon.social equivalent is https://mastodon.social/directory), to keep the forum secret altogether by keeping people from finding it accidentally or by searching.
(streams) and Forte have four different types of group channels instead:- Normal: public, group members may upload media to the group's file storage
- Limited: public, but group members may not upload media to the group's file storage
- Moderated: like Limited, but by default, posts and comments by new group members have to be approved by the admins; members may have their permissions upgraded and post and comment without approval once they've proven themselves worthy
- Restricted: private, profile is only visible to group members, stream of posts and comments is only visible to group members, posts and comments are only sent to group members, but group members may upload media to the group's file storage
As I've already said, you can grant individual permissions to your contacts on your personal channel. But you can grant individual permissions to forum users on a forum channel just the same. You can have regular users. You can have users with certain extra privileges. You can use the permissions system to silence users without kicking and blocking them.
And you can use the permissions system to appoint extra forum admins/mods. You can grant contacts permission to administer your forum. Now, this requires for your channel to recognise visitors and their identities to see what permissions they shall have and to grant them these permissions. And this requires OpenWebAuth. So right now, you can only make forum members from Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, Friendica, Mitra and Tootik additional admins/mods. But you can.
(9/9)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Privacy #Security #Permission #Permissions #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #PrivateGroups -
Blog/Apologetics: Where Should the Ethical Lines be Drawn in the Online Christian Space?
Last week, there was somewhat of a stir in the Christian space on YouTube. The reason for this is because Bryce Crawford (who I’ve spoken extensively about here on the blog) had the highly controversial and greatly deceptive Kenneth Copeland on his show. There was a lot of buzz about this since not only was it Copeland’s first interview in 15 years, but it was one of the biggest Christian voices online giving him a platform. This news was so big that Good Fight Ministries did an hour-and-a-half-long livestream talking about why this was a bad thing.
Then, on Monday, the interview came out. Bryce made it very clear that he does not agree with the prosperity gospel and acknowledged that Copeland teaches a “different gospel” (“false gospel” is more accurate.) From there, the interview was 70% Copeland telling stories about his life, 29% him defending the prosperity gospel by taking Scripture out of context, and 1% Bryce asking softball questions.
However, while I could dedicate this entire blog post to talking about everything wrong with that interview, or how people like Good Fight Ministries are starting to notice that Bryce is a false teacher, the thing I want to focus on today are the ethics. Should Christians online be platforming certain people who teach a false gospel? Where do we draw the line in the sand?
Though I have seen some people do a good job of bringing on people with differing religious backgrounds in the name of a common goal without promoting one view or another (for example: David Wood and Apostate Prophet (Ridvan Aydemir) often collab though Wood is Protestant and Aydemir is Eastern Orthodox) I do think it can be a bad idea. This isn’t anything against these people, but as a Christian influencer, you have a responsibility to vet who you’re platforming and, likewise, allowing to influence your followers. And in the case of known heretics who try to pass themselves off as believing the same or similar things as other believers while teaching something that’s incredibly deceptive, you shouldn’t give them the light of day, especially if you yourself are ill-equipped or unwilling to push back on their beliefs.
In the case of Bryce bringing on Kenneth Copeland, this is absolutely something where he shouldn’t be given the light of day. His main power is manipulation. He has the ability to cover deception with misquoted Scripture that he knows most people won’t catch and a charismatic personality. He tries to play himself off as a normal Christian like anyone else who has just figured out how to get God’s blessings. He makes it sound like the Prosperity Gospel that he preaches is an accurate reading of the Bible – just turn your brain off, listen to him, and you’ll be fine.
Further, when bringing on someone of differing beliefs, ask yourself if the collab will actually be good for the audience. Remember, most of your audience probably doesn’t have good discernment, so if you’re platforming someone that teaches a gospel that doesn’t line up with the Bible, it’s possible that many of them won’t catch the issues. While you might get plenty of clicks and views, if they can’t distinguish a wolf from a sheep, then you end up hurting them more than you’re helping them.
On that note, if you’re bringing on someone controversial who you know is a false teacher just for views and attention, then you shouldn’t have them on period. In Bryce’s case, while I don’t claim to know his heart, it seems very much like his interview with Copeland was done to generate views. After all, it was Copeland’s first interview in 15 years, and he rightly has drawn the ire of many in the church. Add on that this isn’t Bryce’s first time having a controversial figure on, collaborating with Carl Lentz back in December of 2024 and January of 2025, and this seems like a trend.
Thus, I think it needs to be a rule of thumb for Christian influencers that if they want to bring someone on their podcast who’s controversial or believes in questionable doctrines, they need to first ask themselves if the discussion will truly benefit the audience or if it will simply give the guest access to a broader range of people who they may end up deceiving. If the latter, then it’s best not to have them on.
On that note, the second thing the influencer needs to ask themselves is if they’re actually prepared and willing to give a respectful, but firm and clear rebuttal against anything that the guest may say that goes against Scripture (basically, they need to be prepared to do the discernment part that the audience may not be willing or equipped to do.) They need to understand the arguments and be willing to protect the flock if the guest tries preying on the audience with a nice sounding, but false message. Just saying that you don’t agree with the person or that they teach a different gospel is not enough. You need to demonstrate for the audience how they’re teaching a false gospel via a sound rebuttal.
And third, they need to ask themselves the reason for bringing on the person. Is it to have a discussion and respectful debate about the points of contention? Or is it simply to garner attention online, even if it means potentially harming your audience’s spiritual walk because they don’t know how to tell a wolf from a sheep?
If you’re not willing to ask these questions, or you’re just doing it for the clicks, then you shouldn’t be bringing the person on.
Until next time,
M.J.
#Bible #Blog #BryceCrawford #ChristianInfluencers #Christianity #Church #Ethics #faith #FalseTeachers #god #Influencers #jesus #KennethCopeland #OpinionPeice #Writing #YouTube -
I got into an argument recently about whether or not #MooresLaw is dead.
It's not, but I'm going to explain exactly why it's not, and how there isn't even a foreseeable horizon to it.
Now, Moore's Law as originally stated, is "the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years".
Okay, so there's a problem here. By one definition, Moore's Law has been dead for a long time. See, when the Law was coined, an integrated circuit was always a chips and transistors were always the same silicon thing, and they were always done in two dimensions.
This was largely true up until the Pentium (I'm sure some computer historian here can refer to earlier incarnations, but we'll go with what I know).
So, with the Pentium, the CPU was actually composed of multiple chips. It, specifically, ad caching and controlling as separate chips that interacted with the main processor component (registers, instruction processors, etc). This was unlike the 386. The 386 had specialized parts of the chip, but it was all a single integrated circuit.
So, here we already run into a question, "Does more transistors on a Pentium 'count' when talking about Moore's Law?" This problem gets even worse when we start running into multi-core CPUs, and modern CPUs contain multiple independent processors with often radically different architectures. It's not clear what constitutes an "integrated circuit", and to some extent it doesn't matter.
This gets worse as we go along. We could define Moore's Law as transistor density. However, we long since hit the theoretical limit of 2D silicone. Powering a modern computer on 2D silicone would require chips that violate the uncertainty principle. Likewise, we know, that there's a limit to even 3D transistors, and we're approaching that limit on an x86 architecture.
From the perspective of computer science, none of this matters. To a hardware engineer it does, but computer scientists care about Ops. Classically we've measured FlOPS (Floating point Operations Per Second), more recently we care about TOPS (Tera Operations per Second), which is literally any operation at all. We could also talk about "BOPS" (Binary Operations Per Second). What we actually care about is FOPS (Functional Operations Per Second).
A theoretical FOP, would be an operation that meets the demand of a programmer. It's thus impossible to define. We could, in theory, run a ton of random code on it and see relative performance to create a FOPS measure, but we know for a fact that it would be incredibly highly correlated to FLOPS, TOPS, and BOPS.
So, if you look at the history of FLOPS and TOPS, you find something interesting. Locally, you find variations, but we've had a doubling of FOPS less than 2-years since well before the integrated circuit was invented. Let's call this Moore's Law Prime.
So, before I continue, I want you to understand that there is a very physical reason for Moore's Law, and it's not the cynical "business pressure to validate it". It is because last generations chips are used to create the next generation of chips. Meaning, that every generation of chip is getting twice as hard as the last, but we have tools that are three times as powerful.
We have seen the x86 slow down the increases in performance year over year. However, at the same time we've seen a huge explosion of the performance of ARM and NVIDIA chips.
Simultaneous to that we've seen compute per dollar plummet, and computer per watt also plummet. So, with the exception of minor year over year variations, we have absolutely no reason to believe Moore's Law Prime is dead.
Furthermore, there is no established theoretical limit to Moore's Law Prime, except at the density of a black hole. We have theoretical models that show light based computer could easily perform Zettascale Computing with each, because every wavelength of light could be a separate processing stream in a single white beam. We don't know what we don't know in terms of possible models of computation.
There is the comment from Jensen Huang declaring Moore's Law dead. However, what you're actually getting is a CEO making a wild claim to justify the companies Rent-Seeking prices for their computing. NVIDIA is so far ahead of everyone else in terms of AI compute, that they're intentionally engaged in monopolistic pricing until the rest of the industry catches up.
(Yes, they have a monopoly. Their chips are capable of 10x the TOPS of their competitors.)
I've been hearing for decades about how Moore's Law is almost dead, or even that it's dead. It's all complete and utter nonsense. In the last four years (two doubling) we've gone from GPT-3 running on a supercomputer, to AIs almost as capable running on a tablet. We've gone form graphics cards that were good enough to render a scene to ray-tracing and DLSS super resolution. Phones can now run 4k games for hours.There's been plenty of change and growth in the last four years.
-
What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott
-
What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott