How Find Safe Groups, Teachers, and Authors in the Pagan and Witch Community

In my last post, I talked about how to recognize if a group is a cult or is using cult techniques to control its members. As I pointed out in that post, cults can be based on any ideology -- including pagan spirituality or secular witchcraft.

So now that we know how to identify the bad teachers and groups, how do we find communities, teachers, and resources that are safe, healthy, and helpful?

Obviously, the first step is to compare any teacher, group, or author to Steven Hassan's BITE model (the four-part model of Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control used by cults to control members) and see if it matches up with their behavior -- anyone who employs the BITE model is not someone you want to involve in your spiritual journey.

Beyond that, here are some more things that you SHOULD look for in a teacher, author, or group:

1. A safe teacher, author, or group prioritizes the individuality, independence, and autonomy of every student, reader, or member.

A good teacher can share information and even their own personal experiences without telling students how to think or what to believe. The same goes for authors. Safe teachers and authors encourage students/readers to use their own judgement to decide if what is being taught is right for them.

Likewise, a healthy group may be founded on a common belief or practice, but group members recognize that each person's experiences within that framework are going to be different.

Be wary of groups with imbalanced power dynamics. If a group has a clear hierarchy (official or unofficial) with some members getting special treatment, ask why. Some pagan groups do perform ordination, and it's normal for students pursuing ordination to get extra training or coaching from leaders. But even then, they should not be treated as if they were superior to other group members.

Avoid groups that put pressure on new members to make public commitments, such as baptism, initiation, or ordination. Again, some groups do offer these, and that's perfectly fine. What isn't fine is new group members being pressured to make major commitments before they feel ready for them. In groups that offer these commitments, they should be available for students who feel ready for them, but should not be treated like the default or like they are mandatory.

2. Safe teachers, authors, and groups are honest and transparent about where they get their information.

If you're considering buying a book on witchcraft, paganism, or any other spiritual topic, perform this quick test before you do: flip to the back of the book and look for the "Resources" section. In a well-researched book, this section will be several pages long. In a really good book, it will include sources from non-pagan, non-witch authors, like historians and scientists. If the book doesn't have a resources section, or if the resources section is especially short, don't bother with it.

Likewise, when you're attending a class or group meeting, teachers and leaders should be open about where they got their information. If a teacher doesn't specify where their information is coming from, don't be afraid to ask them -- if they can't answer off the top of their head or they dodge the question, you may want to consider finding a different teacher.

Don't be afraid to ask teachers and group members for book recommendations! Most witches and pagans do a lot of reading, and will have no problem giving you a list of their favorite resources.

If you notice that a teacher or group is only using books from one or two authors, that's a red flag. This goes double if a teacher or author only uses or references books that they wrote themselves.

If a teacher or group relies heavily on information from a single author, do your own research into that author's legitimacy. For example, Silver Ravenwolf was a very popular Wiccan author in the '90s and early 2000s, and a lot of older witches still recommend her books to newcomers -- but a quick Google search will reveal that Ravenwolf is extremely controversial and has been accused of knowingly spreading misinformation in her books. If a teacher or group relies heavily on Ravenwolf or other authors that have been publicly exposed as frauds, you'll want to take what they teach with several grains of salt.

(For the record, the points in this post are based on the work of cult researchers like Steven Hassan, Margaret Singer, and Luna Lindsey. See? It's not that hard.)

3. Safe teachers, authors, and groups are open to analysis and criticism.

If you really want to know an author's integrity, look at how they respond to their negative reviews. Someone who accuses those who disagree with them of being ignorant and small-minded, or of "persecuting" them is not someone you want to rely on in your spiritual journey.

Likewise, if you're considering joining a group, pay attention to how they talk about ex-members. A healthy group is able to acknowledge that what they offer isn't for everyone, and doesn't take it personally when someone leaves.

A good teacher will lead class discussions that encourage questions from students. Avoid teachers who belittle students for asking "stupid" or "irrelevant" questions, or who refuse to answer questions on certain topics. You should also be wary of teachers who use canned answers that don't really address what was being asked.

4. A safe teacher, author, or group leader is qualified, approachable, and down to earth.

Determining someone's qualifications gets a little tricky in witchy and pagan communities, because many of these traditions don't have a formal clergy, and I have yet to see an accredited school offering degrees in magical theory. In some cases, the only qualification a person can have is being an experienced practitioner.

But there are some cases where you can -- and should! -- ask someone for their credentials. If someone uses a title like "High Priestess," "Elder," or "Reverend," make sure they were ordained by a legitimate religious organization. (Even if a group isn't legally classified as a church, you can still research them and their reputation.) If someone is teaching a formal system like Reiki, they should be certified to teach in that system. Any time someone claims to have a certain title, status, or certification, ask to see the paperwork to prove it.

A good teacher is accessible. If they charge for their services, the price should be reasonable for the service being offered. It's entirely appropriate for someone who is putting a lot of time and energy into teaching a class to expect payment, but it isn't appropriate to overcharge or exploit people.

A good teacher, author, or group leader is down to earth and approachable. They don't claim to be anything more or less than a human being looking to share their knowledge and experience with others.

Avoid anyone who claims to be an incarnated deity, angel, demon, or other non-human figure, or who claims to be the spouse, consort, or child of such a being. Avoid anyone who claims to be a reincarnated master or historical figure. Be very skeptical of anyone who claims to be on a unique divine mission or have been "chosen" by a higher power. These are all common tactics used by cult leaders to gain respect and worship from their followers.

If a teacher, author, or other authority figure asks to be "paid" for their services with sexual favors or says you have to have sex with them as a form of initiation, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY AND NEVER LOOK BACK. Any person who tries to coerce you into sex is an attempted rapist, and you need to get away from them as soon as possible, no matter what title or authority they have.

5. A safe author, teacher, or group believes in science and history and does not try to discredit them.

Contrary to popular belief, you can have faith in magic, divinity, or some other cosmic force and still believe in science. Paganism and witchcraft are no less compatible with science than any other spiritual practice.

Avoid anyone who tries to twist history to make themselves look more sympathetic. Any author, teacher, or group who talks about "the Burning Times" or claims that there was a unified "witchcraft cult" in ancient Europe is either a liar or willfully ignorant. These things never happened. We know they never happened because there is no historical evidence to support them and a lot of historical evidence that disproves them.

Likewise, pseudoscience should not be taught as fact. You may hear people talk about how your emotions vibrate at different frequencies which have the power to positively or negatively affect your life -- what they won't tell you is that these ideas come from a book about political theory (Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins) and have no scientific evidence to support them. Or, you may hear people say that psychoactive medications block your psychic abilities -- how can this be true, when most medications are derived from the same plants and herbs that witches have been using for healing magic for centuries? Most of these conspiracy theories have little to no backing in the scientific or witchcraft communities, and they have no place in a spiritual learning environment.

Most importantly: If YOU feel uncomfortable, then it is not the right group for YOU.

A group doesn't have to be cultish or unhealthy to be a bad fit for you and your spiritual path. Ultimately, both witchcraft and paganism are highly intuitive, and you will have to do what feels right for you.

They’re doing a series of sermons on the Apostle’s Creed at church. I thought I’d go through it again just to see if I still believe all of it because I’ve found lately that maybe there are some Christian precepts that I’m beginning to question.

As I was raised Episcopalian, I had to memorize this whole thing when I got confirmed, but I couldn’t remember all of it now so I had to google it and print it out. I went through it step by step and questioned myself. Do I really believe all of this? This is what Christians are “supposed” to believe. It was interesting to note that the Creed didn’t address any of the things that I, personally, am currently questioning. That was a bit of a relief to be honest. Anyway, here’s what I came up with. Honestly, I’m not expecting ANYONE at all to read this whole thing. It’s a lot of words. I’m just pasting it in to keep a note for myself for the future.

I believe in God,

(Yes, I really do believe that. I believe in a compassionate, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being who watches over us, who CAN take steps to change things and who DOES take steps to change things - from time to time - as He sees fit, that we cannot question because we just don’t know what He knows. I believe that He is omniscient, that we know nothing compared to Him and when we bring our petty complaints to Him - even though they don’t seem so petty to us because they may have to do with life and death - we have no idea of what the grand scheme of things is - He actually knows what He’s doing and we don’t. I also believe He keeps out of our business. After all, this is OUR world, He gave us free will and let’s us use it and if we don’t use the brains He gave us or if we use those brains the wrong way and use our free will the wrong way, the only time He might step in to fix the issues that we caused is if we petition Him with enough prayer and even then He might not step in. But, yes, I DO believe in God.)

the Father almighty,

(And, yes, I believe He is the Father almighty… pretty much see the above.)

maker of heaven and earth,

(Yes, I believe He created everything. I don’t think that necessarily means there was no evolution involved. I don’t see why creationism and evolution have to preclude each other. After all, “to God a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years,” so time is all screwed up so who knows what seven days was really in the beginning. But, either way, I believe He created everything. And I get really amazed when I think about all living things having the same DNA origin, sort of like God did a cut and paste then made variations to it. Yeah, of COURSE He created everything… come on.)

and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

(I DO believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and was fully God and fully man. I don’t exactly get completely how that works but I DO get that it DID work. For heaven’s sake, if we can “get” some of the fantasy books out there, then how can we not “get” the concept of fully man and fully God. Is it because we say that this is real? Maybe. You know that some people run around acting like Harry Potter is real. I saw people in Universal who were wearing robes and dressed like “He, whose name shall not be spoken,” and it was like 100 degrees outside. Yet, they paced around with that heavy stuff on and serious expressions across their faces as if they were truly headed for Dumbledore or whoever it is and ready to buy a real wand. I’ve never heard a story of a wand REALLY changing the course of someone’s life with a miracle but I have heard hundreds of stories of a prayer changing the course of a life with a miracle. So… yes, I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and I believe He’s real, but the reason I mostly believe is because of His presence in MY life.)

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

(Well, yeah, otherwise He wouldn’t have been fully God…)

born of the Virgin Mary,

Well, yeah, otherwise He wouldn’t have been fully man…)

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

(Even Josephus wrote about that — Josephus, for those of you who don’t know, was an ancient historian *nonChristian, by the way* who did confirm the reality of Jesus as a living, breathing human being.)

was crucified, died and was buried;

(Yep, it happened.)

he descended into hell;

(I don’t know how we know that and I’m less sure about that one but I’m going to buy into it because it makes sense.”

on the third day he rose again from the dead;

(Now, I struggled with this one for a while. I mean that’s a hard one to believe and it was hard for me. But here’s the thing, there were hundreds and hundreds of witnesses. There were hundreds of people who saw Him after he rose from the dead, not just like the Apostles - which is how it looks in the movies - there were hundreds! The way I ended up convinced was one afternoon, my daughter was telling me about a documentary where they said that Hitler was probably not actually dead at the end of WWII because there were some witnesses who saw him in South America. Not a lot of witnesses, but a few. I got really mad because I believed that, completely. There was no doubt in my mind. Then I thought to myself, if I could buy into the Hitler thing because of a few witnesses, why am I questioning the Jesus thing when there are hundreds of witnesses? That’s when I realized how biased I am. When it comes to Jesus and the Bible, I am pre-biased to more cynicism and anything from the Bible or to do with Jesus/God will require more convincing and more proof than anything to do with another subject. I am pre-programmed to believe anything Biblical LESS easily than anything else!)

he ascended into heaven,

(Yeah, that’s pretty easy to believe if you believe the last thing, right?)

and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;

(Also, pretty darn easy to believe if you believe the other stuff.)

from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

(If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, of course you believe He has the right to judge people.)

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

(I DO believe in this. I know what I am like inside. Don’t we all know who we are to a certain extent? And I know the capacity I have for evil. Yet, I also know how I’ve changed since I came to Jesus. I believe that the Holy Spirit DID enter me and is still doing that work in me. Yeah Yeah, I know you can say it’s just me maturing or whatever but you don’t know what is inside of me. You don’t know the struggle I’ve had with mental illness. You don’t know what I’ve been through, how I tried to commit suicide three times, the first time at age 13, how many times I cut up my arms, all that I’ve done to others and myself. And you don’t know how that changed once Jesus came into my life so you really can’t make the judgement call on what brought about the change. Only I can make that call and I say it was the Holy Spirit.. the hand of Jesus.)

the holy catholic Church,

(I was taught that this actually means “throughout the whole” and not the Catholic Church denomination. I DO believe in the church body but I don’t feel as if the church body is functioning appropriately in the USA or probably very well anyplace else at this time. I think we are a very very sick body currently and only getting sicker. We are diseased and Covid has made us even sicker.)

the communion of saints,

(Yes, I think communion is pretty cool in that it centers our thoughts and reminds us of what the Lord did for us but I don’t believe it has magic powers or anything.)

the forgiveness of sins,

(Boy, oh boy, do I believe in this. And I sure believe that we are called to forgive others. I think that is one of our number one callings. We must must must empathize and forgive and when we can’t find forgiveness in our hearts, we must pray for the Holy Spirit to put that forgiveness there. I think that is one of our primary goals as human beings and, especially, as Christians.)

the resurrection of the body,

(I don’t know about this one, but I’m hoping that it’s true.)

and life everlasting. Amen.

(Yes, I do believe in life after life, that it will be everlasting.)

Clarity in the Cancellation Crusade

After posting multi-paragraph comments on a couple different things that have popped up in my feed recently, it seemed like I should probably just sit down and write this out.

“Cancel culture.” Crazy shit, right?

The recent onslaught of cancellations includes Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, a handful of Disney movies (Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Aristocats), and *audible gasp* Dr. Seuss. The Muppets also got a newfangled Disney+ content warning, though I’ve seen significantly fewer headlines about that.

The thing that inevitably happens when the news media decides to publish a headline about a children’s toy or book being “canceled” is a veritable parade of social media complaints about how sensitive people have become. I saw this particular post over 10 times in the period of a couple hours one day last week…

The question I’ve been asking recently when I see posts like that is this: “Who do you think cancel culture is?”

Because “cancel culture” isn’t real. In the majority of the cases currently making headlines, the choice to remove a character from a movie or stop publishing a book has been made by the company responsible for that character or book… and that is very much a normal thing companies can choose to do.

No one I’ve posed the above question to has overtly mentioned “Libtards,” but it’s certainly implied. People who haven’t read a Dr. Seuss book in 20 years are now suddenly all up in arms (literally?) because “the Liberals” are coming for “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”

The Liberals are not coming for Dr. Seuss. They do not care about a potato toy. Also, nothing is happening to the Cat in the Hat. I repeat: NOTHING is happening to the Cat in the Hat.

The choices to stop publishing that book and to market a vegetable toy in a less gendered way were made by the companies responsible for producing those products… not the Liberal “cancel culture” ghoul. In fact, it’s really, really hard to find public outcry about any of the things that have been recently “canceled.” There was a single NYT article that recently discussed the problematic nature of the Pepe Le Pew cartoons… that said, Warner Bros hasn’t aired that show in decades and it is not clear whether that article had anything to do with the skunk’s scene being removed from the new Space Jam movie.

Even growing up I remember things like political correctness needlessly becoming a partisan issue. When we fall into that media trap, all we’re doing is watering the plant of an already poisonous and ineffective two-party system. Be bigger than that temptation. Push back against media intended to further divide Americans. If something stinks, it’s probably rotten. Sure, there are certain topics that fall under the umbrella of political correctness that sound alarm bells for censorship issues… but didn’t everyone’s mom tell them that if they didn’t have anything nice to say, they shouldn’t say anything at all?

Again, though, the most important thing to remember about this recent wave of “canceling” is that censorship concerns are moot. A person who owns a thing is legally allowed to do all the censoring they want. It’s not the government that has decided to stop publishing 6 books written by Dr. Seuss… if it were, we could have the censorship conversation. These changes aren’t happening because there is a Democrat in the White House. They’re happening because the company who makes these products, has for whatever reason, decided to take a different approach.

In the case of the Dr. Seuss books, Dr. Seuss Enterprises re-evaluated their choice to publish 6 books based on racist themes and images. I have only heard of two of those six. The image below is, in my opinion, objectively problematic:

The fact that a major company behind such a well-known name has seen that something is problematic and has decided to stop publishing the books containing overt racist images is awesome. It sets a great example that we can all learn from. Humans have an amazing capacity to learn… that’s one of the only reasons we are in charge here on Earth. If we fall on ice once, we are often more careful on ice the next time. When we see that something is racially problematic, it’s a good thing if we can take action to get that thing out of rotation. More on that later.

Fundamentally, what is happening right now in Media Land is gross sensationalism.

“Cancel culture” isn’t real. Should people face consequences if they say or do racist things? Yes. We should all agree on that. Should we stop publishing books that perpetuate racist stereotypes? Yes. There are plenty of non-racist books that provide an education about racial differences without the added (exceedingly inappropriate) zing of Asian characters being painted yellow and African characters being given monkey features.

If you’re not convinced that some of Dr. Seuss’s material is racially problematic, I encourage you to pop on over to Google to check out the series of ads he did for FLIT in the 1930s. Yes, it was the 1930s. In the last 90 years, we’ve learned that images like that are not okay… let’s use that knowledge to let old racist graphics die.

Still can’t accept that “cancel culture” isn’t real? Still feeling like there’s something in the air now that is different and worse than before?

Okay, then, let’s consider it further.

Things have been “canceled” by people for millennia… this isn’t new. Being all for cancel culture when Colin Kaepernick kneels for the anthem (a perfectly legal form of peaceful protest considered respectful by many veterans) but opposing cancel culture when it’s threatening to eliminate an obviously racist thing is not exactly a moral stance. Burning your Nikes in the street but then turning around and spending $400 on a copy of “If I Ran the Zoo” on eBay after Dr. Seuss’s own family has pulled it from publication due to racist imagery is… silly.

The same people who seem to be so vocal about “cancel culture” now are part of the same communities who tried to cancel plenty of things in my lifetime. Things like trick-or-treating, Harry Potter, school dances, books and movies with LGBT+ characters and themes…

History absolutely bubbles over with things that have been canceled… often for good reason! Some examples that come to mind: 

DDT

the Catholic Church (see the 16th century Protestant Reformation)

doing our everyday poopin’ in outdoor holes

polio

hoop skirts

phrenology (new science cancels old science like every damn day)

Ford Pintos (not to mention cars without seatbelts)

telegrams and rotary phones (replaced by easier and better ways to communicate)

lead paint

asbestos

Four Loco

Y’all remember when we all did the ice bucket challenge to cancel Alzheimer’s?

Learning that something is problematic and moving past it is LEARNING… not cancel culture.  Learning and growth are good things. We all benefit from them.

Another thing worth commenting on from that Cat in the Hat post that circulated in my Facebook feed: why do we consistently demonize sensitivity? Racism feels like something we should all be sensitive about. If being sensitive about something results in meaningful change and a less hateful country, isn’t that… good? Why do so many Americans seem to place so much value on their “freedom” to hurt others?

And don’t get me started on comparing this stuff to Cardi B. It boggles my mind that that’s happening at all. Why is there suddenly so much outcry about one song that features female genitals in a literal ocean of songs that feature male genitals. I grew up knowing every word to songs about sex well before I even knew what sex was. Your kids are only desperate to listen to WAP because they know it makes you squeamish. And take a second to think about why it makes you squeamish. Genitals are human and scientific and we literally all have them. If you have more of a problem with WAP than with any of the other 10,000 songs about dicks and sex, you need to spend some time examining why that is.

Here’s another post I’ve seen bouncing around the social media feeds:

Something about this is just plain hilarious to me. Like what are racism and rape culture if not THE REALEST issues? This country’s problem with systemic racism runs so, so deep and is reflected very plainly in centuries of cold, hard numbers. It’s not that I *think* systemic racism is a problem. The data very clearly shows that regardless of what white people think about race in this country, systemic racism absolutely IS a problem. Racism and rape culture, arguably at the root of the most recent canceling spree, are not just real issues, they’re real American issues. They’re cultural issues. And solving cultural issues is not easy. We know that these issues have been passed down through the generations so maybe changing children’s toys and books and shows isn’t such a bad thing to try. There is SO much work to do to address racism and rape culture in the United States, but small steps are still progress.

If choosing to stop airing a show that blatantly perpetuates rape culture means one less young person is stalked or assaulted or raped, that’s worth it, no? What if that one young person who doesn’t become a victim is your daughter?

If choosing to stop publishing a book with racist themes and images leads to even one kid understanding more about the nuance of race in America and the breath-taking extent of white privilege, that’s worth it too.

Would I rather the media spend time and money to bring American attention to bigger issues associated with this nation’s racism and rape culture? 100%. There are ENORMOUS fish to fry. Dr. Seuss is not an enormous fish. Potato head toys are not enormous fish. Pepe Le Pew is not an enormous fish. They’re not even big fish. They’re small. They’re tiny fish. They’re anchovies. But frying some fish is better than frying no fish.

Canceling Pepe Le Pew is not hurting anyone. Warner Brothers owns Pepe Le Pew. Warner Brothers owns nearly everything; they are not hurting for money. And canceling Pepe certainly isn’t hurting American kids. There are plenty of other kids’ shows to watch that are significantly less problematic. Just because you watched Pepe Le Pew and went on to be a properly respectful adult doesn’t mean there aren’t other kids out there who did internalize a harmful disrespect for consent. No, Pepe Le Pew probably isn’t single-handedly responsible for anyone’s decision to stalk or rape anyone else. But could a show reinforce the groundwork that ultimately leads a kid down a path where he is unable or unwilling to respect the boundaries of others? I mean, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard this week.

Canceling six total Dr. Seuss books that are already pretty obscure is not hurting anyone.

Changing the name of an already genderless potato toy to reflect that genderless-ness is not hurting anyone.

A brief recap: racism and rape culture are very real, very American issues.

If the decision to stop doing a thing doesn’t hurt anyone and may even save someone some hurt, why does that decision bother you?

Also, in all your frantic Facebook posting, make sure you are differentiating between “cancel culture” and consequences. When the media tosses around the phrase “cancel culture” it has this tone of finality that is, plainly, not realistic. Fads and trends move so quickly in the internet age that the idea that a group of people could “cancel” something permanently is just not possible. People who do or say racist things, though, should face consequences. People who do or say transphobic or homophobic things should face consequences. Consequences are one of the only ways we learn to do better. And again, that’s not my opinion, it’s science.

One of the consequences that can have the most impact is, you guessed it, losing money! In this capitalist hellscape, money talks. Boycotting and choosing how we spend our money are some of the most engaging ways to combat racist and homophobic garbage. When you have your temper tantrum because the company who owns a book with overtly racist imagery decides to stop publishing that book, that speaks volumes about your priorities. If you respond to that company’s decision by buying the book in question on eBay for $400, that speaks even louder volumes. What are you doing? WHY are you doing it? I’m guessing you don’t even know, and you should probably spend some time thinking about it before you flush away a chunk of your stimmy on a freaking RACIST KIDS’ BOOK.

All actions have consequences. All of our choices never affect just us. How we vote affects other people. How we spend our money affects other people. Spending our money on things that are problematic perpetuates the problem… whether it be racism, rape culture, homophobia, or transphobia… or so many other things this country desperately needs to address.

It’s human to not like change. Change is going to happen, though, regardless of whether or not we’re comfortable with it. In the information age, we have a remarkable opportunity to steer that change. Leaving behind racist relics is change, so it may be inherently uncomfortable. But change that moves our country away from racism and rape culture is GOOD change.

I am begging you. Use critical thinking… if you’re seeing a headline about something being canceled, look up WHY. Some of these headlines are absolute bunk… they’re shared just to get people all riled up and create American division. However, just like we *should* cancel lead paint, a children’s book with overtly racist images shouldn’t be published anymore and it’s weird if you disagree with that. Disagreeing with that decision, as silly as it may seem, perpetuates racism. I know how triggered y’all can get when someone suggests you might be perpetuating racism, but it is what it is. Do your research. Don’t spend your money on racist garbage. Be better.

I feel like this post is me just barking the exact same thing in different ways, but I also feel like there is so much more I could say.

I’ll leave you with this:

What will it take for Americans to weigh the threats of racism and homophobia the same way we weight the threat of lead paint? If it’s a matter of costing lives, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

Hi! I watched a lot of stuff theorizing that a lot of things that stand in the bible and in other religions could be real events tight to aliens... They apperantly still watch over us and want us to reach full potential, like hints like our dna, and communication, like they made they made the milky way ..what do you think about a more evolved something out there having created us and shaped us into the technology we know today?🤔🤯

Hi,

Thanks for this question! 

A few years ago, I was open to the the New Age ideas of a loving alien race that has humanity’s best interests at heart. I had a theory that Jesus was actually an alien-human hybrid, which would explain the immaculate conception (aliens planted the seed in Mary’s womb using their advanced technology) as well as the lights that the three wise men saw. Now, I realize this is all totally wrong-- especially the part about Jesus. 

I still believe in ‘aliens,’ but the evidence points to a malevolent extraterrestrial race that seeks human sacrifice and worship. There’s no reason to believe these ‘aliens’ are good. 

Evidence for Aliens

Copy-pasted the headline from the Jerusalem Post, an official publication:

Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready

The news story has been picked up by NBC. The Israeli Space Security cheif says that Trump knows about the aliens. This makes sense, since he rambled about creating a “Space Force” a few years ago. See the article Trump Administration adds Pentagon 'Space Force' to U.S. spy agency group or just google “Trump Space Force.”

And add to that the COVID-19 bill started a 180-day countdown for UFO disclosures. As in, there’s some addendum or provision to the relief bill about aliens.

I also have a post in my drafts about the monoliths but in the mean time, yes ‘aliens’ are real, but they’re bad fucking news. If the Trump administration or hell, any world government full of corrupt politicians and bloodthirsty military officials tries to convince you of something, it’s probably not in your best interest to listen. Which brings us to the next point...

Evidence for evil aliens

Cult leaders, such as Marshall Applewhite who founded Heaven’s Gate (the group that committed mass suicide), often claim to be contacted by Aliens. The Church of Scientology prescribes to the ‘alien’ theory in the form of this thing called Xenu. Aleistair Crowley, a satanist and p***phile, contacted an entity he called ‘Lam,’ which resembles a Grey alien. This is a short list of examples; many evil cults over the years were formed on the basis of alien contact.

And you can check out the Ancient Aliens series by the History channel. Although this show has been ridiculed by mainstream sources, it actually presents hard evidence for the case of alien presence on this planet. What disturbed me was that the beings described in the show often demanded human sacrifice, human blood, and specifically child or ‘virgin’ sacrifice. 

You can also examine accounts of personal encounters. Check out this video by Ryan Cropper, a youtuber who claims he once worked for ‘The Galactic Federation.’ Maybe he’s delusional, but I believe his experience was real, and the entities he describes seem to be intent on controlling and deceiving him to accomplish their own ends. 

Then, there are accounts by people who actually claim to be abducted by aliens. Again, you are free to write them off as delusional, but there are too many similarities in the incidents, and the people who spoke out risked humiliation/ridicule. It would be narrow-minded and unsympathetic to dismiss their stories without serious consideration. Abductees report “invasive examinations” and “psychological trauma” so horrible that they need therapy to recover.

This all barely scratches the surface of evidence for the existence of aliens, as well as evil aliens. If you have time and an open mind, I highly recommend this documentary by a Christian youtube channel about the true nature of these entities. This video aligned with my own research and conclusions; it confirmed what I already suspected. 

Christianity and Aliens

The belief in ‘aliens,’ beings not of this world, is compatible with Christianity. The bible describes a ‘war in the heavens’ in which the devil and his army were cast out of heaven and onto the earth. Considering the connection between satanists and ‘aliens’ (ref this website, literally called the ‘joy of satan’ for more proof. yikes...) it is plausible that ‘aliens’ are actually fallen angels. This would explain their evil, sadistic nature. 

Apparently, aliens often seem interested in human religion/spirituality, and try to offer an alternative perspective on Jesus. Not Buddha, not Muhammed, not Krishna, but Jesus. While interviewing victims of Abductions, researchers discovered that there was one way to stop the abduction experience. Something that the ‘aliens’ were apparently afraid of. I’ll let you do your own research to find out what this is. 

Tl;dr

Basically, there is substantial evidence for an ‘alien’ presence on this planet, but not many reasons to think these beings are benevolent, or that they created humans/the galaxy. This is compatible with the Christian faith. In fact, some who investigate aliens or come in contact with them eventually end up believing in Jesus, so it’s one of many roads to the ultimate truth. 

And (can’t believe this is a Thing I’m actually going to say) but if the government or anyone tries to convince you that the aliens are here and they’re The Good Guys, run. Run the other way and don’t look back. 

Thanks again for such a thought-provoking question. Have a great day and God bless you!

Okay Now Do The Rest

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

Bright but argumentative. I was never afraid of pointing out things I didn’t feel were fair hfhddh

When we were learning numbers kids would often write 91 for nineteen, just flip them, y’know, and Ms. Potter yelled at the class for it. Baby Generiq went into it about how it was an understandable mix up because you do say the number first. In twenty-three you write the two first, so in nineteen it’s easy to assume you would write the nine first.

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

Tired.

8. movies or tv shows?

TV shows. Every book adaptation should also be a series not a movie. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

9. favorite smell in the summer?

Honeysuckle and sunshine

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

Floor hockey! My friend and I used to be brutal and swing at each other’s shins going after the ball. Also it was reminiscent of golf, which I competed in.

12. name of your favorite playlist?

I have an untitled playlist I cycle my current music in and out of, but Newton’s Third Law is my favorite named one!

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

I don’t- I guess the yellow smarties. Don’t come for me they taste like lemonade.

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

I assume this means assigned book and not the reports we got to pick for ourselves. Ah, Night was good. Lord of the Flies was fine but way overhyped. Again, don’t come for me.

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

If I can tuck my legs into the chair I am sitting in that is ideal!

18. ideal weather?

When you know it is going to rain and you get to stay home

19. sleeping position? (Skipped on accident)

I reeeally like pressure, so either against something or on my stomach.

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

Phone notes and a notebook! Sometimes a blank document but I always find it strangely intimidating

21. obsession from childhood?

Warrior Cats, Percy Jackson, and Maximum Ride were my big three!

22. role model?

Aa I try to straw from people I want to copy, but there are talents I look up to. Rachel Chavkin is a brilliant director, and there are so many artists and authors I look up to and who inspire me.

24. favorite crystal?

Obsidian because it’s black like my hea- I’m kidding, I do love obsidian, but it’s Rose Quartz because it’s a very very pretty, soft pink and makes me happy.

25. first song you remember hearing?

The mobile above my crib played Imagine by John Lennon. My childhood room was themed after it as well!

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

Swim or sit in the sunshine. Ben and I usually go driving with the top down as well.

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

Walking through fresh snow is amazing, so are snowball fights and building snowmen.

28. five songs to describe you?

Oh fuck yes

Hurricane - Hamilton

The Reckless and the Brave - All Time Low

Almost There - The Princess and the Frog

All This and Heaven Too - Florence + the Machine

Facade - Jekyll and Hyde: A Gothic Musical Thriller

30. places that you find sacred?

I don’t typically find places sacred, but certain headspaces are very special to me, and time spent with loved ones means more than enough to be considered sacred.

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

A black blazer with a white button-down and a skirt.

32. top five favorite vines?

I am in Missouri (misery)

I love you, Bitch

I want a Church girl

Obama’s “I know because I won both of them”

I won’t hesitate, Bitch!

33. most used phrase in your phone?

“No worries”

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

That fucking PFI bandana boot sale I stg

35. average time you fall asleep?

Somewhere between 9:00 and three in the morning

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

Some girl doing bunny ears on her friend. I don’t remember what the caption was

38. lemonade or tea?

Both. Mixed together. It’s called an Arnold Palmer and it is my favorite drink

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

Lemon cake!

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

We duck taped out principal to the wall once. Also some kid broke their tray over another kid’s head at lunch one time.

41. last person you texted?

The family group chat, though Beau if Discord counts

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

I wear a lot of leggings so jacket pockets!

44. favorite scent for soap?

We had some Lily of the Valley hand soap that was amazing

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

Fantasy, I think! I’ve never done super heavy into the other two. Though I definitely don’t want to ignore sci-fi because two of my favorite stories are a little science-fiction-y

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

A t-shirt and shorts

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

A banana. Generally accepted as a fruit and kind of just rolls with it, but is actually a berry

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

I fucking hate Hamilton-ing on main, but

“And when my prayers to god were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance!”

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

That changes every time Beau and I play HetaOni together, but I have fucking lost it for at least five minutes the last two sessions.

51. current stresses?

I dunno, man, life? My hair could use a wash

52. favorite font?

Covered by your Grace and I’m a big Spectral baby. These are both google docs! I don’t know if that makes a difference.

54. what did you learn from your first job?

Patience is important when teaching material, but never be afraid to find another approach better suited to the person you’re tutoring.

55. favorite fairy tale?

Robin Hood!

56. favorite tradition?

My family does homemade Springfield cashew chicken for Christmas!

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

Uhh lots of self-acceptance shit no one really wants to read

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

I can pop the joint at the center of my foot

That’s all

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

I sort of like my role as mom friend, so maybe I could keep that role in a sort of action-based anime that followed a group of friends

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

“I am not the protégé to waste your time on; I'm complete!” Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

62. seven characters you relate to?

Haha

Lisa Carew - Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

Japan - Hetalia/Oni

Garnett - Steven Universe

Hfhddh that’s all I can say that aren’t my own characters

63. five songs that would play in your club?

I Don’t Like Clubs, but

Overwhelmed - Royal + The Serpent

Backseat Serenade - All Time Low

Go Big or Go Home - American Authors

The Nights - Avicii

Tempo - Lizzo

64. favorite website from your childhood?

Webkinz!

65. any permanent scars?

Yep - One from a bad bike wreck. My body rejected the dissolvable stitches so it’s a lot bigger than it was supposed to be

66. favorite flower(s)?

Lily of the Valley, daisies, Day Lilies, and Dandelions! I also love honeysuckles but I don’t know if those count.

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

Accidentally drank rancid milk once!

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned? (Haha, nice)

The fastest, free way to fill up your potions on Wizard101 is to play Potion Motion to level three.

70. left or right handed?

Right handed

71. least favorite pattern?

On myself, animal print

72. worst subject?

I’ve never been intuitively good at History, I do think it’s interesting though.

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

I don’t like to take it until I can’t move without it.

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

Kindergarten? I had mono and then scarlet fever twice, so my baby teeth were pretty much ruined and they all fell out very fast.

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

Curly fries!

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

Kalanchoe’s, it literally Window’s Thrill. These babies are fairly temperamental outside and love partial sun, so the window is the perfect spot for them. And! If you keep them happy! They’ll bloom! My personal favorite is the pink bloom.

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

What’s wrong with coffee from a gas station? Also I don’t like seafood.

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

Earth tones!

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

Lightning bugs

82. pc or console?

PC!

84. podcasts or talk radio?

Podcasts - talk radios actually tend to get under my skin for n o reason

84. barbie or polly pocket?

Barbie, but let it be known I was brutal with mine. We did human sacrifices and the like.

85. fairy tales or mythology?

Mythology!

86. cookies or cupcakes?

Cookies, but I’m a slut for whipped frosting

87. your greatest fear?

Losing control!

88. your greatest wish?

A life beyond where I am now. Haha Stop chasing new down the hallway you’re so sexy haha

90. luckiest mistake?

Logged into Omegle in like 2015 and some rando asked me to join their Doctor Who roleplay. Luckiest moment of my gd life.

91. boxes or bags?

Bags! They’re easier to store

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

Sunlight! But in the late afternoon when everything is bathed in orange.

93. nicknames?

Mom is the most prevalent!

94. favorite season?

Fall into winter. Peak leaf crunch!

95. favorite app on your phone?

Discord or Notes

Dragon Ball Z 210

World Tournament Saga!    I’m going to be calling this the 25th Budokai saga, since “World Tournament Saga” could be applied to any of three other arcs in this series.    Anyway, we open with the horrific murder of Punch Machine.    All it wanted to do is quantify the force of punches, like the machine in Rocky IV, and Vegeta killed it because he’s too full of himself to hold back.

This has two effects.    First, everyone has to wait for a replacement machine to be brought in so they can finish qualifying for the tournament.    Second, Videl is now suspicious of the Dragon Team group, since all of them had Punch Machine scores higher than Mr. Satan, who’s supposed to be the strongest man on Earth.

Then she finds out Gohan’s one of them, which only raises further questions.  

Gohan explains that Goku is his late father, and that’s why he has a halo over his head, which doesn’t explain anything.    I don’t understand why Gohan just tells her about this like it’s no big deal.   He spends the rest of this arc trying very hard to keep her from finding out about his true power, but he’s totally fine talking about this.

So Videl and Gohan have to wait to pass the prelims, but the others head off to watch the Junior Division tournament.    This was apparently introduced at the 24th Tenkaichi Budokai event.  This time around, the winner of the junior division gets to have an exhibition match with Mr. Satan.    To kick things off, Mr. Satan tries to make this big splashy entrance...

But he trips and hits his head on the stage, and then he has to play it off like he did it intentionally, as a joke.  

Then the Announcer reveals a special surprise to open the event, and this blimp flies over the stadium.    There’s a giant screen on it, and it’s for showing a new movie about how Mr. Satan’s battle with Cell.   Mr. Satan is horrified by this, because he had no idea this was even made, but the crowd wants to see it, so he can’t refuse them.

I’m not sure why Mr. Satan is so upset over this movie.    I get the impression that he might be afraid that ZTV, who made the film, might have discovered the truth about what happened at the Cell Games, and he’s worried that this movie might expose him.    But it’s also possible that he’s just very protective of his image.     Also, I can see how he’d want to put as much distance as possible between himself and the battle with Cell.   He’s made good use of it to launch his career as a superstar hero, but he’d prefer it if the public didn’t dwell too much on that event, lest they ask too many questions.

Anyway, this movie fucking rules.   It’s basically Toei doing some self parody, complete with the “waves and rocks” opening to start off the show.   

The problem with the Cell Games was that there was only one cameraman at the event, and the camera broke early on, and what footage was recorded wasn’t very good, since most of the fighters moved faster than the eye could follow.   So ZTV just re-enacted the event with actors wearing goofy masks.   

It’s kind of weird that they bothered to include the Z-Fighters in this story at all, but it just goes to show that their presence at the Cell Games left an impression on the public, even if no one knows what they were doing there.    Gohan and Bulma were concerned that people would recognize the Saiyans if they transformed, and this movie shows that this is definitely true.   

Vegeta and Piccolo aren’t happy about this at all, but I don’t see why, this is awesome.

On the other hand, Goku loves this.    He’s a man of good taste.

Awwww, they’re all tuckered out.    

Look at Yamcha all curled up over there.  This is terrific.

So yeah, Cell cleans house, declares himself the winner, and now he’s just gonna blow up the world.    Z stands for the end.  

But not yet, you green motherfucker.

Mr. Satan shows up to kick some ass, and this movie goes out of its way to show that Cell has gimmicked his ring with booby traps that don’ work on Mr. Satan at all.

Cell begs for mercy, but Mr. Satan tells him to take his ass to church, because he’s about to catch these hands.   

Yeah!   

Bam!    

What’s awesome about this part is that Cell basically suffers the same fate Mr. Satan did when he fought Cell in real life.     He gets smacked into a mountain and falls down.   The Funimation Dub of Z was hilarious here, because they made the deliveries really, really bad.    My favorite part is when Cell takes this tumble and he goes “Ow!  Aaaahhh!   I’m losing!”

Naturally the others are amazed by Mr. Satan’s genius fighting skill.

Then Cell explodes, which I guess is the most accurate part of this production.

And a good time was had by all.

The credits have some easter egg references to Toei’s staff.   I only recognize Yukio Ebisawa, who was the animation supervisor for this episode, but I’m betting you could find the rest of these names on Google.

All right, let’s move on.    The Junior Division tournament is mostly a formality, since only Goten and Trunks have any super powers.    Trunks’ first opponent is a kid named Idasa, and Idasa’s mom just happens to sit next to the Dragon Team contingent in the stands.   

We see a few of the bouts, but they’re all comedy spots, like this kid who starts crying in the middle of the match, and then he flips out and starts flailing around until he knocks his opponent out of the ring.

And there’s a part where Mr. Satan consoles a little boy who lost his match, which is this big heartwarming moment for the crowd.     Mr. Satan’s pretty cynical about it, but you know, he still made that kid feel better, regardless of his motives.   

Back in the stands, Idasa’s mom and Bulma take an immediate dislike to each other.

Idasa talks a lot of smack himself, but this all gets settle in the ring, where-- oh, wait, Trunks has already won, because he has super powers.    Right.  

Okay, I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about Harry Potter, but this right here is why DBZ rules and Harry Potter sucks.    This lady and her idiot son were just fed to Trunks as a quick gag.     They set her up to be as obnoxious and unlikable as possible, so that whant Trunks one-shotted her kid, she would be horrified and humiliated.    Oh, and Idasa’s a total punk as well, so this is his just desserts too.      The point I’m making here is that this is incredibly satisfying, because these two get put in their place, and we all knew it would happen, and it did happen, and we’re moving on to the next cool thing.   

If Idasa’s mom were a Harry Potter character, she’d be like the Prime Minister of Magic Land, and Trunks would get arrested for using Awesome Karate Moves without a permit, and he’d get sentenced to ten years in Bullshit Prison to serve as an example to others.    Then I’d have to hear about how this is the greatest novel ever written.    Shut the front door.

Look at Krillin here, he’s bummed out because this is the dull part of Dragon Ball Z.    From Episodes 200 to 219, things are pretty slow, but we’ve seen Gohan and Videl beat up a bunch of crooks and a dinosaur, and there’s been a surprising amount of explosions so far, which is weird since there’s no major villain on the board.     Right now, we’re kind of in this holding pattern, and this tournament’s off to a slow start because it’s turned into such a dog and pony show.   Krillin’s bored because the Junior’s tournament won’t be any good until Goten and Trunks fight each other... and that’s only one episode away.    

And I guess that’s the appeal this part of the series has always held for me.    Not much really happens, but it’s cool watching this cartoon just sort of take a breath and chill out after the Cell Saga, and even when it’s taking things easy, there’s still a lot of fun to be had.   Hang in there, Krillin.    Business will pick up before you know it.  

As machine learning and robotics improve in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of jobs are likely to disappear, disrupting the economies and trade networks of the entire world. The Industrial Revolution created the urban working class, and much of the social and political history of the 20th century revolved around its problems. Similarly, the artificial intelligence revolution might create a new “unworking class,” whose hopes and fears will shape the history of the 21st century.

The social and economic models we have inherited from the previous century are inadequate for dealing with this new era. For example, socialism assumed that the working class was vital for the economy, and socialist thinkers tried to teach the proletariat how to translate its immense economic power into political clout. These teachings might become utterly irrelevant in coming decades, as the masses lose their economic value.

In order to cope with such unprecedented technological and economic disruptions, we probably need completely new models. One that is gaining increasing attention and popularity is universal basic income.

UBI suggests that some institution - most likely a government - will tax the billionaires and corporations controlling the algorithms and robots, and use the money to provide every person with a stipend covering basic needs. The hope is that this will cushion the poor against job loss and economic dislocation, while protecting the rich from populist rage.

[…] Yet the formula of universal basic income suffers from several problems. In particular, it is unclear what “universal” and “basic” mean.

When people speak about universal basic income they usually mean national basic income. For example, both Elon Musk and former President Barack Obama have spoken about the need to consider some kinds of UBI schemes. But when Musk said that “There’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income […] due to automation,” and when Obama said that “whether a universal income is the right model […] that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years,” it is unclear who “we” are. The American people? The human race?

Hitherto, all UBI initiatives were strictly national or municipal. In January, Finland began a two-year experiment, providing 2,000 unemployed Finns with $630 a month, irrespective of whether they find work or not. Similar projects are underway in Ontario, Holland and Livorno, Italy. Last year, Switzerland held a referendum on instituting a national basic income scheme, but voters rejected the idea.

In the U.S, Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, proposes to greatly expand the Earned Income Tax Credit program, boosting the income of poor Americans by about $1 trillion. Though the plan does not promise any stipends to the unemployed, it is seen as a first step towards instituting national basic income.

The problem with such national and municipal schemes, however, is that the main victims of automation may not live in Finland, Amsterdam or the U.S. Globalization has made people in one country dependent on markets in other countries, but automatization might unravel large parts of this global trade network with disastrous consequences for the weakest links.

In the 20th century, developing countries made economic progress mainly by exporting raw materials or by selling the cheap labor of their workers and service personnel. Today, millions of Bangladeshis make a living by producing shirts that are sold to customers in the U.S., while people in Bangalore, India, earn their keep answering the complaints of American customers.

Yet with the rise of AI, robots and 3-D printers, cheap labor will become far less important, and demand for raw materials might also drop. Instead of manufacturing a shirt in Dhaka and shipping it all the way to New York, you could buy the shirt’s code online from Amazon and print it in Manhattan. Zara and Prada stores could be replaced by 3-D printing centers, and some people might even have such printers at home.

Simultaneously, instead of calling customer services in Bangalore to complain about your printer, you could talk with an AI representative in the Google Cloud. The newly unemployed workers and call center operators in Dhaka and Bangalore don’t have the education necessary to switch to designing fashionable shirts or writing computer code - so how will they survive?

Under this scenario, the revenue that previously flowed to South Asia will now fill the coffers of a few tech giants in California, leading to huge strain on developing economies. American voters might conceivably agree that taxes paid by Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. be used to give stipends to unemployed coal miners in Pennsylvania and jobless taxi-drivers in New York. However, does anyone think American voters would also agree that part of these taxes should be sent to Bangladesh to cover the basic needs of the unemployed masses there?

Another major difficulty is that there is no accepted definition for “basic” needs. From a purely biological perspective, the only thing a Homo sapiens needs for survival is about 2,500 calories of food per day. Over and above this biological poverty line, every culture in history defined additional basic needs, which change over time.

In Medieval Europe, access to church services was seen as even more important than food, because it took care of your eternal soul rather than of your ephemeral body. In today’s Europe, decent education and health care services are considered basic human needs, and some argue that even access to the internet is now essential for every man, woman and child.

So if in 2050 the United World Government agrees to tax Google, Amazon, Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. in order to provide a basic income for every human being on earth, from Dhaka to Detroit, how will it define “basic”?

For example, will universal basic income cover education? And if so, what would these services include: just reading and writing, or also composing computer code? Just six years of elementary school, or everything up to Ph.D.?

And what about health care? If by 2050 medical advances make it possible to slow down aging processes and significantly extend human lifespans, will the new treatments be available to all 10 billion humans on the planet, or just to a few billionaires? If biotechnology enables parents to “upgrade” their children, would this be considered a basic human need, or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich super-humans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo sapiens?

Whichever way you choose to define basic human needs, once you provide them to everyone free of charge, they will be taken for granted, and then fierce social competitions and political struggles will focus on non-basic luxuries - be they fancy self-driving cars, access to virtual-reality parks, or enhanced bioengineered bodies. Yet if the unemployed masses command no economic assets, it is hard to see how they could ever hope to obtain such luxuries. Consequently, the gap between the rich (Tencent managers and Google shareholders) and the poor (those dependent on universal basic income) might become bigger and more rigid than ever.

Hence, even if universal basic income means that poor people in 2050 will enjoy much better medical care and education than today, they might still feel that the system is rigged against them, that the government serves only the super-rich, and that the future will be even worse for them and their children.

People usually compare themselves to their more fortunate contemporaries rather than to their ill-fated ancestors. If in 2017 you tell a poor American in an impoverished Detroit neighborhood that she has access to much better health care than her great-grandparents did in the age before antibiotics, it is unlikely to cheer her up. Indeed, such talk will sound terribly smug and condescending. “Why should I compare myself to nineteenth-century peasants?” she might retort. “I want to live like the rich people on television, or at least like the folks in the affluent suburbs.”

Similarly, if in 2050 you tell the useless class that they enjoy better health care than in 2017, it might be very cold comfort to them, because they would be comparing themselves to the upgraded super-humans who dominate the world.

Modern communication systems make such comparisons almost inevitable. A man living in a small village 5,000 years ago measured himself against the other 50 men in the settlement. Compared to them, he probably looked pretty hot. Today, a man living in a small village compares himself to the 50 most gorgeous hunks on the planet, whom he sees everyday on TV screens and giant billboards. Our modern villager is likely to be far less happy with the way he looks.  Will universal basic income include plastic surgery for everyone?

Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently, even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.

If universal basic income is aimed to improve the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed to make people subjectively more satisfied with their lot in order to prevent social discontent, it is likely to fail.

- Yuval Noah Harari, 21 lessons for the 21st century

Piety Knob || Chapter 1

Summary: In 2017 Juniper Blackwood moves into a small town with her aunt because of a job opportunity thanks to distant family. Juniper was always homeschooled so she's unfamiliar with everything at her new town, and a new school to fit in with strangers. With noone to really talk to, she dwells in the mysteries of the town, while finding out secrets about her family and herself as well..

Parts: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 coming soon

Characters: Piety Knob OCS (see under Piety Knob intros tag)

The car ride from the airport is longer than expected. It's not like I didn't google the whole trip and count how long it would take, but actually experiencing a 16 hour long car ride is way different from theory. Perry, my aunt, is being cheerful without a stop since we packed our things in Chicago to move to the distant little town in Oregon, Detroit.

"We should be near to family, Juniper, you'll see how good it will be for you!" she said when she announced that she got a job in my hometown. I was excited for her, truly, she had such an awful job back in Chicago, her boss was mean to her all the time and she recieved a way too low paycheck after the plus hours she was working.

Finally she got a chance to start over in a small town, with people she already knew and liked so I guessed why not. Why not leave behind the town I grew up in and mostly loved to a place I hardly even remembered other than from my aunt's tales when I was little. At the age of four when people only remember insignificant events like there was a time when a butterfly flew on my mom's shoulder and my dad tried to catch it. Or when I hurt my knee in the backyard and my aunt scolded me for being so wild when playing. Not Perry, mind you, my other aunt, from my mother's side, Primrose.

And here I am in the overheated backseat of my aunt's old station wagon. It smells old, mixed with smells of used leather, overheated plastic and the burgers we ate a couple hours ago for lunch.

It's close to noon, which I can tell from the direction of the sun in the sky - I had to rely on such primitive modes since both my and my aunt's phone died due to lack of charge - which greets us sometimes when it reaches over the tall pine trees that sorround the main road to Detroit.

Perry promised to take me on many trips after we moved in to the Stantiam State Forest.

I look from the phenomenal view to the front seat and ask Perry:

"How is Church doing?" I look to our old tabby, who sleeps peacefully in her carriage.

"Wonderful, after he puked on my best traveling shoe back at the drivers' parkinglot."

Perry says sarcastically but looks lovingly at the cat for a second before turning her attention back to the road.

"How are you darling?" she asks looking at me through the rearview mirror.

"Good." I smile and I believe I manage to convince her because she smiles back and drives happily towards that hellhole.

I practiced smiling like that for a long time before talking to aunt Periwinkle about moving to Oregon. It's not the nature I have the problem with, the lack of city noise. I actually love the idea of being somewhere quiet and nice. Somewhere I can actually breath clear air.

But the thought of leaving my home and the place I was so used to terrified me in a way I never thought it could.

Maybe a repressed childhood fear, I reckoned. Moving meaning to lose something I love, just when I was four. Losing both my parents than having to move to my aunt Perry, who was my closest next to kin. Meanwhile my sister stayed there with Primrose. I never understood why was that, and truly Perry couldn't explain it either, it was some mix up with my father's and mother's last will. That's why I've barely met my sister, Betty or my other aunt. I got a card and some cash for my birthday from them always, with some petty excuse of not being able to visit me and meet. On Christmas it was our turn to go to them, but Perry having terrible pay at her work made that difficult as well.

I'm not saying it's all their fault. We could have called or texted any time, it's 2017 for God's sake. But it was too awkward and forced so we stopped trying to connect with my sister.

Now that we'll move there, I don't really know what to expect from this sudden change. I would prefer to skip any small talk with them, but if Perry will persist, which I know she will, I will try for her sake.

She always put me in first in her life since my parent's accident, it's only fair I try and make it up for her.

Doing all this thinking I only realize that Perry was talking as she calls my name probably for not the first time:

"Juniiii? Earth to Juniper, is anyone home?"

I roll my eyes and smile.

"Of course, sorry I was daydreaming."

She dismisses it with a smirk.

"I was only saying now that you'll attend high school maybe you'll get a chance to meet a boy."

I make an annoyed sound and bury my head in my hand.

"What? Stooop, no!"

She shrugs in reply.

"Or a girl, I don't judge, you know me."

I shake my head and look out the window again.

"I'm going to pretend that you didn't say any of that."

Perry chuckles with amusement then turns her attention to the road.

"Whatever."

The rest of the trip is boring, we almost hit a deer at one point, which freaks Perry out the most, then Church, who acts wild in her special carriage 'cage'. I on the other hand just want to catch some sleep and recharge my phone so I can return to socialization. Jeez, I'm really one of those people who can't live without their phone for a longer period. Longer meaning hours, it's ridiculous.

I would read something, but all my books are in the new house, we sent the moving truck way ahead so at least when we arrive in the new house all our things will be there.

After what seems like ages I notice an old, mossy sing with the usual welcome messeage. 'Welcome to Detroit, Oregon. Stay for a while.'

"Well that sounds like what a desperate husband would say to her wife when they are having a divorce." I let the comment slip out of my mouth and Perry shushes me but I see her trying not to let out a chuckle.

When we finally reach the house it's already dark and I feel terribly tired after the long drive.

"I want to sleep for a month." i comment as Perry parks the car in the driveway. She nods in agreement and we step outside the old station wagon.

I breath in deeply the summer warm but fresh air and let my body to be free from sitting all day long. I strech my arms and legs with a low growl, then take out Church's cage from the front seat.

Perry is already at the door, all fast and excited even after the trip, like it was nothing to her, just a five minute trip to the store or something.

She lets out an excited squel searching for the right keyes in her hand as I close the car with an exhausted sigh and join her at the doorway.

She looks at me with a grin excited for both of us.

"This is gonna be so great, sweetie! I'm going to make you something for dinner, maybe you can unpack a little in your room?"

"Sure thing, Captain."

She doesn't mind my sarcastic tone as she lets the front door fling open so our new home can greet us.

Periwinkle steps in first and I follow her inside, locking the door behind me.

It's a two story building, all wooden and bricks. It looks cozy, it's definitely bigger than our flat in Chicago.

It has a half-deck to the front door. A garage and an attic. Basically the attic is the second store to the house. My room as Perry told me. Two bathrooms, one downstairs next to Perry's room and one upstairs next to mine.

The living room is open and is connected to the kitchen. Other than that it looks pretty simple, no guest rooms or a cellar. We don't need them anyway.

I like the style of the house. It's like the one from Oregon Trail. The window shutters and doors are painted to a deep green, like the color of the pines around the house.

The moving company did a great job with the furniture, though we mostly left everything behind. We only brought the old couch and the Perry's wardrobe with us. I didn't need anything in my room, all my stuff could fit in three boxes and that was pretty much all I really cared about. Things are just things, the people around us is what matters. My mom used to say that, according to Perry. I like that thought.

I set down Church in the living room and let her out of the carrier. As soon as she knows it's freedom for her she runs to Perry in the kitchen.

I hear my aunt chuckle from next to the stove as I go upstairs towards my room.

It's a narrow stair, followed by a similarly narrow hall which ends in two doors. First I assume is to my room and next to it is the bathroom.

I open up the door which creaks with an eery sound. From the pictures Perry showed me it looked a lot smaller but now stepping into it I immediately smile. It's small alright, but looks cozy with the two windows looking down to the small town and lake, somewhat covered by the pine trees.

My bed is right under those windows, and it has a wardrobe, a desk and a small bookshelf.

I can already imagine stacking up the walls with polaroid pictures I took ages ago in Chicago with the posters of movies I always watch with uncle Gabe. He lives in Salem, so I'm also excited to meet with him more often.

He couldn't help us to move from the airport because he was out on a job, but he called us and said he would visit next thing tomorrow.

I look at the boxes that the moving company put down in the middle of my new room and I start to open the up and unpack my things. Just some clothes, I never was really that into fashion and having a lot of clothes to wear. My books are the next, which I immediately put on the bookshelf above my desk, and some other trinkets, such as my laptop and charger. I search for a place to plug it in my phone.

"Arise!" I say dramatically and put it down to charge on it's own.

Now my main goal is to put on something comfortable and go down and eat whatever is smelling so good downstairs.

I put on a button up shirt which is way too baggy for me, I got it from my dad. Well I found it in a box that had my dad's belongings in it. My mom's stuff stayed with my sister and aunt Primrose.

It covers the short I'm having on and in this summer heat it's perfect and comfy. I run down the stairs towards the kitchen and meet my aunt with a new sense of energy.

"What are we eating, I'm starving!"

She looks at me with a smile and holds up the plates.

"Bacon and eggs.. Right from the locals."

"My precious..." I make a lame impression and we eat our food in less then a couple of minutes.

"I'm gonna go wash up. You should too, and get ready to bed. We have to go into town tomorrow, I have to meet with my new boss and we have to sing you into high school before august starts!"

With no time to argue she heads into the bathroom downstairs and I hear the water starting. I sigh and look at Church who is already licking up our empty plates. I pet her and say to her.

"You are very lucky to not have to go to work or school."

With no response other than some purring I fill up the washer with the dishes. Just as I would head back upstairs to have a quick shower then hit the sack there's a knock coming from the door.

I look toward Perry's bathroom then I sigh and put on a tired smile before going to answer the door.

As the front door swings open the cool air comes inside the house making me have goosebumps all over my body. I hear the sound of crickets and I look upwards to meet the eyes of a stranger.

He looks to be in his late thirties, with slicked back short hair and a small mustache above his mouth. He wears a suitjacket with a v neck grey shirt and some very 'important looking shoes'.

His salesman smile falters for a moment when he looks me up and down and I realize I look like a girl with only a shirt on. I immediately feel uncomfortable for multiple reasons.

"Umm... Can I help you?" I ask because he hasn't said a word yet and I want to close the door on his face already.

"I hope you can. I'm Damian Forrester, mayor of the town. And hereby welcome you and your lovely family to our community."

I nod but I find it extremely odd that he came all the way up here to just introduce himself in the middle of the night.

"I see..." I say clearly uncomfortable under his eyes. It's like he's a robot, his smile never fades or changes on his face.

I'm seemingly being rude as he raises his eyebrows.

"And you are.."

I try to conjure some politeness up, even though I'm feeling grumpy and tired by late night smalltalk. You never see the mayor of Chicago knock at your door to introduce himself and welcome you to town.

"Juniper Blackwood." i say standoffishly.

"Ah. Yes! Rose talked a lot about you coming to town... And your other aunt of course."

I look at him weirdly before asking.

"Then why did you ask my name if you already knew it?"

There's a moment of awkwardness and his unfaltering smile starts to scare me. I can almost see a twitch in his eye like I made him mad, but it's gone before I could interpret it like it was never there.

I hold the door awkwardly and I can't stand his gaze any longer so I look behind him. It's only then when I notice the very expensive looking car and next to it the presumed driver. He looks out of place, wearing similar clothing to a car mechanic, with a name tag on it. I try to read it from the distance but it only has a handdrawn smiley face on it. The wearer himself looks in his thirties, his hair buzzed at the sides, but letting it grow longer. Like he regretted the hairstyle and wants to regrow it. The rest is slicked back, but not like Mr. Mayor here, but more messier, like he used the product on his hair days ago and it's use is growing weaker.

He leans on the car door, looking bored and off to the distance.

Mr. Creepy smile notices my sudden change of attention and looks back at the driver as well.

"Don't mind Marcus, he doesn't have any manners."

At the mention of his name he lazily looks at the mayor and then at me. He doesn't come up to introduce himself or even just to break a smile, he just stands there looking.

Okay, this is getting creepy, it's like looking at Frankenstein and Igor. I think.

As if I had said the joke out loud Igor 'Marcus' shakes his head with a chuckle and looks at his wrist to check the time. Yeah, I would like you two to leave as well.

"So.. You need anything, Mr. Mayor?"

I turn my attention back to Creepy Smiles. He looks surprised at the title.

"No, I just wanted to welcome you to town... Is your aunt in?"

He tries to look inside the house and I know he wants to get invited in, but I am not going to do that. Even if I get a scolding for it later from Perry.

"She's having a shower. We are both very tired actually. We have to do some paperwork tomorrow and unpack as well, so.."

He looks from the house to me again, not forgetting the salesman grin.

"Of course, I'm sorry for the late intrusion. I'm sure we'll meet soon again. My wife is inviting you two to the ball we are having this weekend. Please come, have a laugh. I'm sure you would like my son, he's similar to your age."

I fake a smile, in my head already planning to forget to mention this invite to Perry.

"I surely will." I lie. "Goodnight."

He's ready to leave the porch as he waves goodbye and gets inside the car. The driver looks at me again before entering the vehicle.

"Nice legs." He says with a cheeky grin and I can't help but make a face and shut the door.

Who the fuck... I think angrily and go up to my bathroom. Who the hell invites people to a ball in the 21st century anyways.

With those thoughts I lay in my bed after the quick shower and I quickly fall asleep.

tags: @onl-you

A/N: hope anyone who sees this likes it even just remotely. 😂💕 SORRY ITS ON MOBILE I COULDNT ADD KEEP READING LINK

After Rapture Pet Care

American christians are wild y'all.

https://twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/1114391567572393984

Dear Fellow Christian:

As the Apostle Paul describes in Thessalonians as quoted above, at some point in the future Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to heaven with the Church. This is known as the Rapture and it will be glorious. But what of our pets? Who will take care of our pets when we’re gone?

I’d like to help answer that question. First, let me tell you a story.

The After The Rapture Pet Care Story

The idea came from seeing someone else’s joke. An atheist created a site in England that said she’d take care of Christian-owned pets after the Rapture, and asked for 70 pounds as a “donation.” She promoted it as a joke, and it virally made the rounds amongs non-believers who enjoy making fun of Christians. My husband saw it (he’s an Internet geek) and told me about it. Admittedly, it seemed funny. I told my friend, Carol, who is not a Christian, and she brought up a question: “Hey, if you get raptured, what happens to Petey?” It was an excellent question, and I didn’t have an answer.

A couple weeks later Carol came back and suggested we start After The Rapture Pet Care together. She said she had asked several Christian friends the same question she’d asked me, and every one of them would pay for a service to ensure the care of their pets after the Rapture. I had also asked some fellow Christians their thoughts. In every case they wished there was a way to prepare for their pets’ survival.

I agreed – it’s a real concern, and a legitimate concern. Our pets are given to us by God for us to care for. We are stewards of their lives. Should we simply forget them at the Rapture, allow them to starve or worse?

While planning our system, we thought about the stories of pet rescues in New Orleans after Katrina. Imagine how many more pets would have been saved if there had been a database of pets and volunteers activated immediately. This is something we could do for Christian owned pets.

Carol began recruiting other non-Christian animal lovers nationwide to volunteer to take care of left-behind pets if the Rapture occurs. As a Christian, my role has been to put together a program that is Biblically appropriate and provides true value to Christians. I believe we’ve come up with a plan that is affordable, unique, Biblical and practical.

We have created a database structure that is stored on multiple secure servers, with multi-location online and offline password-protected backups. While I don’t intend to be here when the Rapture occurs, we are building a network of non-Christians who have agreed to rescue and care for our members’ pets if we all disappear.

Yes, it seems funny at first. But, if you believe there is a coming Rapture, and you love your pets, it becomes serious. And that’s what we are – serious about the safety and care of your pets, as well as your peace of mind.

Here’s where our story lead from there:

  › We started with a monthly fee, and people accused us of running a scam of some sort.

  › We wanted to eliminate that stumbling block, so we tried having the registry be free and using Google Adsense and other ways to bring some money in to pay our expenses.

  › Then, a lot of anti-Christian jerks started submitting fake memberships and cluttering up our database.

So we have settled on charging a one-time 10 dollar registration fee to discourage fake sign-ups, while being only a small amount for serious people. You will never pay another dime, your information is kept secure (never ever shared with anyone outside our organization), and you have peace of mind.

This is what will happen for all pets registered with us immediately after the Rapture:

Our non-Christian administrators will activate our rescue plan.

Volunteers will be alerted immediately by email and telephone that they have been activated.

Pets will be assigned to our Volunteer Pet Caretakers based upon location and other factors.

Our administrators and Volunteer Pet Caretakers will do whatever it takes to find and rescue your pets. If your pet has a location chip, they’ll use that, or they’ll go to every location you’ve registered with us, and, if your pets are not at one of those locations, they’ll search for your cars as well as stay in contact with the local pet shelters. If they are unable to reach a Volunteer Caretaker in your area for whatever reason, our administrators will communicate with local animal organizations, like the Humane Society, to advocate for your pet’s rescue and care.

Our administrators will stay in touch with our Volunteer Pet Caretakers regarding each and every pet to be sure everything is being done to rescue and care for them

Part 1, Chapter 13

Or: Encyclopedia Vampirica

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

Paris—March 14, 1994

Paris is a city of many mysteries.

Why are Parisian stereotypes simultaneously sexy and repulsive? Did Victor Hugo ever get to fuck the cathedral? What’s Jean Reno doing these days?

Take, for example, the electric power lines leading into the foundation of Notre Dame Cathedral. No records exist showing why the cables are there or where they lead. They are live wires, supplying electricity to a location somewhere beneath the church. Since no one complains about the lines, the powers that be in the public works department leave them strictly alone. The policy, as in most big-city administrations, is, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

The first page and a half of Chapter 13 is about describing several weird things about the city and how Phantomas is responsible for all of them. The most interesting what-was-Stonehenge-type mystery (or would be if we didn’t already know the truth) is the network of underground tunnels under the city, not to be confused with the Catacombs.

Located hundreds of feet beneath the ground, these passages are not the result of any known city engineering project. Impossible to reach, no man has walked through them in public memory.

Beats me how mortals were able to learn about the tunnels when they can’t even get to them. Maybe they used a ground penetrating radar, but modern ones can only reach a hundred feet at best.

No one knows who built the tunnels or when, but official policy, considered ludicrous in-universe, is that they’re the remains of an underground Roman fortress. ‘Course, we already know from the first Phantomas chapter that the tunnels are for the old vampire’s personal use.

The tunnels aside, the mysteries described in this chapter are more along the lines of modern infrastructure quirks like the power lines. There’s a two hundered year-old Vert-Galant warehouse whose owners’ identities through the centuries are unknown to everyone but whose rent is paid promptly by a Swiss bank cashier’s check each month. Shipments of computer supplies and expensive art prints are delivered to the warehouse, but nothing is ever shipped out and no one knows what happens to the deliveries. The clerks who work in it are paid stupidly well not to ask.

Phantomas knew the truth lurking behind the mysteries. The power lines snaked down to his hidden lair deep beneath the Crypte Archeologique in the main square fronting Notre Dame. The tunnels, constructed in secret over the centuries through subterfuge and deception, provided him with access to hundreds of locations in Paris. The warehouse belonged to him and the purchases were made through the convenience of ordering merchandise by computer.

What he used the warehouse for during the 190 years before online shopping isn’t said.

The necessary capital came from his bank account in Switzerland. The funds had been raised over the centuries by the judicious use of blackmail among the rich and famous of Paris. No one, living or undead, in the vast metropolis could keep a secret from the prying eyes and ears of Phantomas.

In short, all of Paris’ little mysteries are funded by upper class sins to power and maintain a vampire’s PC. In front of which is where we find ol’ Phantomas.

He’d spent the past few hours on a computer terminal trying to find anything on the Red Death, only to find nothing. A scholar in life and a Nosferatu in death, Phantomas is obsessed with information. Despite reaching that age where passions are long since cooled and when, as the prologue indicated, he should’ve started craving only the blood of other Kindred, Phantomas maintained a passion for knowledge.

Phantomas lived for facts. He collected them, saved them, ordered them, and tried to weave them into a pattern. Especially facts concerning vampires.

Phantomas hasn’t been searching for “Red Death” on Ask Jeeves. He has his own personal database.

Here we learn about Phantomas’ “great project” and why the Red Death had called him “the meddling record keeper.” For the past millennium, he’d been writing an encyclopedia about the Kindred.

A thousand years ago he had conceived of his great project involving the history of the Kindred. He had been working on this masterpiece of information ever since. It was his obsession, his dream. [...] It contained every fact, every scrap of information he had been able to learn about the Cainites during the past millennium.

There was a Tumblr thread going around about the idea of vampires using their immortality to focus on their personal hobbies, like creating new plant hybrids through a century of cross-breeding. Not evil magic plants either, just regular garden stuff.

The invention of computers had greatly helped his work, eliminating the tedious work of hand-writing the information into journals. Also, the powerful database he used enabled him to cross-reference millions of vampiric acts, establishing clear links between hundreds of seemingly unrelated incidents and occurrences.”

Search engines and tabs understandably being a bigger deal back in ‘94.

The most important feature of Phantomas’ project is a “family tree” of the Kindred, starting with Caine and including enough vampires for him to consider it “the most complete family tree ever attempted of the Kindred race.” 

Along with describing each Kindred’s relationship to the other Cainites, the chart also featured a detailed biographical profile of the vampire.

This recorded genealogy, backed up by “a hundred different sources,” includes thousands of Methuselahs and other one thousand plus year-old vampires that could potentially fit the Red Death’s profile, but so far it hasn’t helped.

About those sources, or at least the modern ones. Despite his age, it turns out Phantomas is one of the few vampires who can keep up with the times.

Phantomas had been using computers since their invention and was perhaps the greatest hacker in the world. He could access the files from any major data bank or information file. No security code was safe from his descramble program. The secrets of the world were at his gnarled fingertips.

You’re never too old to hack the planet.

I’d be annoyed that we have yet another character who has to be the greatest or most whatever in the world, but it’s all in service of his hobby and he doesn’t seem to be the unknown power behind a major historical event like Troile’s diablerie of his sire or the rise of the Giovanni, so I’ll let it slide.

Most of Phantomas’ data came from the mainframes used by the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Both sects maintained extensive code-word systems to protect their files from their hated enemy. Neither were aware that a third party, uninvolved in their blood war, had been stealing data from them for years.

Phantomas had to sift through mountains of awful Toreador poetry and Tzimisce how-to guides on gift wrapping using only one toddler, but he’s tough. He endured.

Phantomas also gets his info from the usual sources: the CIA, SAS, CID,   Sûreté, Mossad, and KGB.

He was insatiable in his quest to make his encyclopedia as accurate as possible. That it was never seen by anyone else didn’t matter. Phantomas worked for his own satisfaction.

Yeah, but when social media gets started, we’ll see if Phantomas can resist dumping the whole thing on ShreckNet MySpace.

Speaking of ShreckNet, that’s the secret vampire dark web created, maintained, and used mainly by Clan Nosferatu. I’ve heard that writers used to like to emphasize it’s security, like in Bloodlines when Mitnick talks about wrecking several computers just to break into an unimportant server, so I thought it was weird that Weinberg resisted the urge to namedrop it as one of the databases his greatest hacker character broke into. I looked it up and it looks like ShreckNet wasn’t a part of the lore until the release of the revised Nosferatu sourcebook in 2000.

Phantomas has also got taps on phone company computers all over the world, getting more intel on the Red Death’s attacks on Camarilla strongholds.

Together with his own information on the monster’s appearance in Paris, Phantomas had fed the encapsulated data into his computer. Then he had programmed the machine to search and evaluate his files for those Kindred powerful enough to wield the powers of the Red Death. He purposefully had the machine eliminate the thirteen members of the third generation of vampires. It wouldn’t require a computer to tell when they had arisen from their ages-long torpor.

After initiating the search, he realizes he forgot to exclude Caine and the second generation, and has to start the whole thing over again in the age of dial-up.

(No, not really.)

His proto-Google showed twenty-seven possible Red Death identities. Then he does a second search, eliminating any vampire either “engaged in major blood feuds” for whatever reason or in torpor.

To Phantomas’ frustration, the procedure left two possible names, neither covered in his files of biographies—

Boy oh boy, I wonder who they could be...

Anis, Queen of Night, and Lameth, the Dark Messiah. Both were legendary figures of the fourth generation. But among the Kindred, legends often were based in fact.

“Queen of Night,” huh? That’s a kinda generic title for a woman vampire. I might’ve talked trash about Lameth’s title, but it’s a little better than Queen of Night. And given how petty immortals in stories like this tend to be, you’d think an Antediluvian woman like Arikel or Ennoia would have shut this shit from an upstart Methuselah down long ago.

I’m also gonna go out on a limb and say that, from what we’ve seen of her characterization and how we’ve yet to see the Red Death feel up his own amazing tits while talking about the power of passion, she isn’t our culprit.

We’re given summaries of the two Methuselahs. Lameth, as we already know, was a powerful sorcerer, considered the greatest one “to ever walk the earth,” believed to have been taught by “one of the primeval forces that had once walked the earth,” but no two tales can agree on which. We’re then finally told how he got his grandiose title.

According to myth, Lameth discovered a potion that artificially induced Golconda, the mental state that allowed vampires to exist in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Whoever controlled the elixir controlled the Kindred. That was why Lameth had been dubbed ‘The Dark Messiah.’

And subbed “The Great Evil Jesus”

He had vanished into the mists of history over five thousand years ago. Though rumors of his meddling in Cainite affairs continued to surface.

It’s that time again. Time to pause the story so I can talk about vampire crap.

Golconda’s the name for a sort of vampire enlightenment, supposedly discovered by the Salubri Antediluvian Saulot in India and the overall goal of Clan Salubri. Or it was, until Clan Dick Wizards slaughtered them. It’s thought to be complete freedom from the Beast, or the Beast and Human aspects of a vampire’s nature becoming perfectly balanced. What, exactly, any of that means...

Early game books gave some suggestions, like no longer going into frenzies, or not needing blood so much, or losing all Kindred weaknesses. Hell, it could even be a full-on cure, turning a vampire back into a mortal and maybe even keeping a few powers. Obviously that last one isn’t very popular among storytellers and players.

Later editions made it more vague, and ultimately, it’s another one of those things that’s up to the storyteller. Is it true enlightenment, a balance of one’s two natures, not human yet something beyond Kindred? Some kind of vampire Super Saiyan? Is it true salvation in the eyes of God? Maybe it’s an impossible ideal, something you’re unable to obtain but still something one should strive for, like perfection in your craft or Enuff Dakka. Or maybe it’s all bullshit, a fairy tale believed by the desperate and the misinformed.

How you reach Golconda’s also vague, but what’s there’s your typical enlightenment routine. First you’ve gotta find out about it, which isn’t easy thanks again to the dick wizards. Then you’ve gotta maintain your humanity and feel remorse, or in gameplay terms, keep your Humanity stat at 7 or above and never, ever frenzy. While doing that, you make up for any wrongdoings you’ve ever done as much as possible. It’s just like My Name is Earl, only the guy’s atoning for things like “Hey, I’m sorry I diablerized your sire” or “Hey, sorry I ghouled your dad and casually killed him to make a point I don’t remember.”

During all this, you’ve probably got a guru helping you out. Preferably a real (vampire) guru and not a cult leader or gigolo.

If you do all that enough you’ll reach the final step and go into a trance called a suspire, where you’ll have a spirit journey into the self, the soul, or whatever you want to call it. The whole thing’s a test you only get one shot at. If you succeed, congrats, you’ve achieved Golconda! If you fail, it means you’ll never reach Golconda, most likely because your brain broke so hard you’ve turned into a mindless animal.

Or you can skip all that and drink a magic elixir.

What I’ve learned from fiction and actual real-life religions is that there’s no shortcut to enlightenment. You can’t just do one weird trick and suddenly reach full understanding of yourself and the world. It’s supposed to be a trial. Now, Lameth and Anis believed the elixir would cure them of their compulsion to drink blood, but we don’t know what it actually did yet. We’ll have to wait to see whether the elixir was a lead-in to a moral, something beneficial but mistaken for Golconda after millennia of legends, or actually did induce Golconda and it’s more OP shit.

Alright, back to the story. We’ve heard what legends say about Lameth, and now it’s Anis’ turn.

Anis, Queen of Night, was a contemporary of Lameth’s. Myths dating back to the Second City held her responsible for the revolt in which the third generation rose up and killed their sires.

She did that too? Next you’ll be telling me she was the one who got Caine to kill his brother.

She was described as the most beautiful woman who ever walked the Earth (of course she was). And among the most deadly.

That’s the third time in a single page the phrase “walked the Earth” was used. You’re a writer and editor, Mr. Weinberg. Stretch those writing chops a little more.

The legends of the Second City described Anis as consumed with ambition. She was said to possess seductive charms nearly as intense as Lilith, the lover of Adam and one of the most powerful of demons.

To ever walk the Earth, I’m sure.

And yeah, of course Lilith would fit into the World of Darkness somewhere. Jewish mythological figure and favorite of Wiccans and occultists everywhere, Lilith was said to be the first wife of Adam, the actual second human created by God and molded equally from the same clay as her husband. Adam wanted her to be subservient to him, so she dumped his ass, left the Garden of Eden, and started banging demons out of spite. In V:TM’s backstory, God cursed her for this, dooming her to never truly know the love of another. Meaning anyone she fancied would ditch her eventually.

It was actually Lilith who invented the vampires’ superpowers. She found Caine, injured by all those people pissed at him for inventing murder, healed and fed him, and taught him the powers that would eventually become the Kindred disciplines. Then he ditched her too. In Caine’s defense, it was the curse, and anyway dating his dad’s ex-wife must’ve been too weird for him. But Lilith’s still pissed about it...

Anis, too, had disappeared more than five millennia ago. And, like Lameth, rumors of her reappearance circulated constantly among the Kindred.

Some say she’s the creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film. Hey, who says standards of beauty weren’t different back in the Second City?

Phantomas is frustrated that his only search results are mythological figures, so he changes tactics and looks for powers resembling the Red Death’s fiery death touch. He looks through disciplines, Paths of Enlightenment, and even the latest developments in chemical and biological warfare. He also searches for any mention of demons granting someone powers like it. In the end, he finds jack.

The Nosferatu shook his head in distress. Recent reports from America, obtained by phone taps on supposedly safe lines, indicated that there might be more than one Red Death. The possibility of an entire bloodline of vampires not included in his genealogy chart depressed him. He had worked for hundreds of years on his chronology. It was inconceivable that he had missed an entire branch of the Kindred family. Yet the facts seemed to point directly at that conclusion.

Poor guy. I’m no historian, but I bet this is something they go through at least once in their lives. Someone out there feels for you, buddy.

Phantomas pounded his keyboard in frustration.

Phantomas walked so PC gamers could run.

Lameth or Anis had to be the Red Death. Or one of them had founded a bloodline, all of whose members possessed the power of the Red Death. That was the only possible solution to the mystery. Still, he was not convinced it was correct.

Sherlock Holmes puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Fuck you, Monsieur Cokehead,” replied Phantomas.

Nor did any of his speculations, Phantomas suddenly realized, address the equally mysterious young man who had warned him in advance of the Red Death. And who knew his name.

As if set off by this thought, his keyboard, luckily not broken by his mighty undead fists a moment ago, suddenly starts typing on its own.

Shocked, Phantomas lifted his hands off the console. The keys continued to type, as if hit by invisible fingers.

Reuban’s been watching Ghostwriter. The show’s gonna end in ‘95 so let’s hope he ain’t too big a fan.

A single phrase appeared on the computer monitor.

“Lonely Single Women in Your Area!”

Staring at it, Phantomas shivered. He had no idea what the words meant. Yet he was convinced that his stray thought about the man in the Louvre had triggered this response from his computer. Voice trembling, he read the name aloud.

“The Sheddim.”

Actually it was “djefhfkhfkffdThe Sheddim.” The narration didn’t say Phantomas or Reuban deleted the results of his keyboard pounding.

Shedim are spirits or demons from early Jewish mythology thought to represent foreign gods, but they have other theorized origins, as the children of Adam and Lilith or humans God didn’t finish making before he rested on the seventh day of creation. Here’s a link if you want to know more.

With that ominous name, this chapter ends and so does Part 1 of Blood War.  Part 2 marks a change in viewpoint characters, so we’re gonna take an extended hiatus from Dire McCann, Flavia, Madeleine Giovanni, Phantomas, Makish, and company. We’ll see them again in Part 3, which suits me fine. I need a break from McCann’s “Ohoho, if you only knew what I knew” thing.

Traveling Alone

(Contributed by Sophia Gilmore-Montero)

When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a choice: I could either receive a fancy class ring, or we could add on a week in Ireland to our annual vacation in Spain to visit my family. As someone who wanted nothing more than to travel across Europe and has had a bucket list of destinations since they were five, I think you can figure out what I chose. In fact, because I chose Ireland rather than the hunk of metal, they also added a week in England, in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary, which just so happened to be that year.  

I got to plan the whole of the Ireland portion of the trip. We stayed in Dublin for a few days (still to this day my favorite capital city I have ever been to), then moved to a nice hotel in Trim for two days, and then back to Dublin, but in the outskirts so we would have better access to other destinations. I have always loved everything Irish, so this was a dream come true. I never even imagined I would get to the land where I felt my soul belonged so early on in my life. I got to see the Book of Kells, Kells itself, Trim Castle, the Boyne Valley, the Hill of Tara, and so much more.  

Upon arriving in Cork, a few days before everyone else, I stepped out in the openness of the taxi lane outside the airport. Luggage in both my hands and a backpack, a playful child, hitching a ride. The wind hit me like smell of an air freshener relieving a family from the dank stench of an old home. I felt the earth and sky and sun and energy of the land. I felt it all. I wanted to see everything. I didn’t even take pictures. I just wanted to live it and keep living it and never miss a thing.  

I was so happy that I had made an international journey by myself. My whole life, up until this point, I had only ever travelled with my family. It was such a raw feeling. I missed them and wanted to share the joy I felt, even after my 28-hour journey through five airports and four countries. I grabbed a taxi, checked into my AirBnB, then ran into town for some food. I failed. I got lost. I found a convenience store and settled for all dairy options: yogurt and an ice cream – the dinner of bull-fighting champions, ancient Greek Olympians, and twenty-something-year-old transatlantic travelers.  

I walked back home. It hit me – this was my home now. For the next month and few days, I would live, sleep, breathe, eat, and learn in Ireland. I had finally achieved what I had desired, and I was damned well going to enjoy every second of it. I slept like a sedimentary rock that night. The sounds of the Mardyke and sports players yelling lulled me into a peaceful sleep.  

The next day I set out after a lovely breakfast with the hostess of my stay, Maria. She just about talked my ear off about the United States, bless her heart. She told me that it was very unfortunate what we were going through with our, ehhem, President, and that it was entirely up to women of my generation to fix it. “It happened to us,” Maria said in her charming accent. She told me how Ireland went through rough times, and that only we could change it if we didn’t like it. While I appreciated her enthusiasm for the future of America and its women, I did not appreciate having to think of things to say after waking up at 8:30am to be in time for breakfast in my severely jetlagged state of mind and body.  

With a little bit of knowledge about the city in hand, thanks to a some more Google-mapping, I set out to find the department store, H&M, that I so desperately wanted to find. I found a church instead. Went inside, lit some candles for my mother, who was about to have a hip replacement, and for my aunt, who was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago for the second or third time with the news that she will be in chemotherapy for the rest of her life. I don’t really believe that praying works, but a little bit of love and good energy into the world could never do anything but good.  

I left again, got lost again. Found the Tesco. Decided to go back there for lunch. Went to look for H&M again. Got lost and found the Tesco again. Decided that I would go into the TKMaxx and look for some clothes. Ran into an old lady in the toilets who didn’t want to pay the 20p to get in, then snuck in behind me after I shelled it out. I didn’t realize what she was doing at the time because she told me she didn’t speak English. Trust me, I tried any language I knew even a few words of. It hit me after I left that she was just cheap and waiting for someone to do exactly what I did. I even offered her the 20p to get in, in case she was poor she didn’t understand what to do to get in. I thought back to my grandfather’s village. She just seemed like someone I would have known there. I loved her in that moment somehow. I don’t know why.

I left and got lost again. Decided that I would just make my way to Tesco, grab some sandwich makings and then head back to the BnB. I enjoyed the walk back through the breeze and extremely light mist as most would after living in New Orleans their whole life. Walking around made me think about the characters in the works we’ve read and about the families that had emigrated from this country to America so long ago. As I made my way through this very small sliver of my life, I wondered many things. Was this the same smell that my the families would have left behind? Was that old tree on the edge of campus the same one my distant relatives could have walked by? What was it like to leave the only place you’d ever known? In search of a destiny you could never know the result of.

I realized that, for the first time being lost, I wasn���t anxious about being lost, because I didn’t have anywhere to be. I knew in what direction I needed to walk to get home, and that was enough for me. It made me think about how crazy my life is back in New Orleans, about how time-oriented I am, about all my fears to be late to events and let people down for plans. I realized that just for once, I’d want to get lost here in Cork. I think about the stereotypes that the Europeans have of Americans. Always in a rush, always busy. I never really realized that I did, in fact, match that stereotype.  

However, now I realize that I wasn’t lost. I was just living. Being lost is when you have no hope and don’t know where you are going. Being lost means you can’t find the good about the bad. That is not me. I know where I am going, and I am going towards happiness.  

TOP 5 MOVIES the director HAD to star in

In my constant obsession about wanting to make a contribution, that is purely original, I find it hard to think every time of a list that hasn’t been made yet. Unfortunately for me, we live in times where the internet can provide us with any information about any subject whatsoever. Kind of hard to be original when you can actually google “why does my husband fart so much” (true story) and find an answer. So, I guess all we can do, is try to give a personal point of view that will be unique. Anyway, sorry if I’m sharing my existential-what-is-happening-to-the-world thoughts but, all this to say that you CAN find this list anywhere and it’s not original per se BUT I tried to find less obvious examples than what IMDb will probably give you. Who cares about my opinion? Well, I guess you do since you’re reading this. Either this or you don’t have a life. Anyway, here it goes. Directors that act in their own movies are not rare. Apart from the obvious ones, here are some weirder but in my opinion very successful examples.

5-      Woody Allen in To Rome with Love, 2012

See? I told you I wasn’t going to be obvious. To Rome with Love is certainly not the most acclaimed Allen movie, nor his most famous one. The story is told in four separate segments: a clerk who wakes up to find himself a celebrity, an architect who takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student, a young couple on their honeymoon, and an Italian funeral director whose uncanny singing ability captures the attention of an American opera director portrayed by Woody Allen himself. The director has so many times been part of his cast, when the role allowed him to be, that we feel very close to him, as if we knew him. But in this movie, I found the character of Woody Allen so hilarious that it had to be him and no one else could play the neurotic and nervous “ahead of his time” opera producer. Then again, all Allen characters are neurotic and nervous. However, when Allen plays in his movies, he seems to be quite himself. As if he was just being natural. And in that movie, he does it with such normality, that he is probably the most convincing character I have ever seen on screen. No. Not exaggerating. (Leave me alone! It’s MY blog). 

And Woody Allen is just hilarious right there:

4-      Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County, 1995

HA! See? Still unexpected huh? You thought I was going to say Unforgiven or Million Dollar Baby. But, at the risk of sounding weird, I believe The Bridges of Madison County gave him his best role EVER, but is still to my taste an underrated movie. Sure, the story is quite simple, yet gives such dimension to the characters. Photographer Robert wanders into the life of housewife Francesca, for four days in the 1960s. Eastwood managed to get away from his western badass personality to appear as a romantic, very sensitive victim of an impossible love story. He was so convincing that I found myself falling for an old guy. And finding him hot ! The profound look on his face managed to hold the story all along and make it consistent. And no actor whatsoever could have achieved the elegant portrayal of the heart-broken photographer.

3-      Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Don Jon, 2013

Underrated movie as well. The story is quite original. A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness with his potential true love. The director was so keen on how his character should be that no one could have done him in a better way. To the extent where you wonder if he’s playing his own self. Because the script, also written by him, hid a very determined intention. And while it is the case for every movie a director starred in, this movie was particular because Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s very nuanced and spirited acting was perfectly in place. Just what it needed to be in that very down to earth free adaptation of a Don Jon in a modern world.

2-      Ben Affleck in Argo, 2012

Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans out of Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980. The director was perfect for his role as he portrayed the hopeless journalist with a pocketful of emotion. A story that meant a great deal to Affleck and helped him express the mixed emotions his character had to be showing. His gentle, humble acting made the movie what it is today and I don’t believe it would have been the same with someone else. He simply took the part because he felt so close to his characters that staying in a director’s chair would’ve only been frustrating to him. And it all worked out well for us, movie fans. You can’t say he wasn’t yummy with that beard.

1-      Alfred Hitchcock in… all his movies

 Alfred Hitchcock made a total of 39 cameos in his films over a 50-year period. Even if it doesn’t serve his stories, the director made his appearances unexpected and witty. The audience ended up looking for him in every new movie he made. If the master of suspense was known for his breathtaking thrillers, he also developed a sense of humor that was quite popular for its irony and sarcastic tone. Hiding in the corners of his stories, but careful not to disturb their flow, he managed to add with his presence a slight touch of comedy to his psychological and thrilling adventures. Therefore, would his movies turn out to be the same without him wandering about in some scenes? It probably wouldn’t have changed much, and the movies would still be masterpieces, but what started out as a sly cameo appearance, turned out to be the master’s signature. And it would be a shame to deny us that. After all, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and, may I add, so is his famous silhouette.

Have fun watching his cameos here (personally the one in Blackmail killed me):

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45,46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, and 100. My hand hurts now.

Lord have mercy upon my soul 1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? I always try and have a decent balance with the two, but I lean towards more milk. 2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? It depends. If I've just left a warm place, it feels refreshing, but if I'm already outside and cold then it feels like death.3) what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? Right now I'm alternating between an astrology card I got from a fortune teller machine in a Spinelli's and a dollar bill that has the word "BONER" written on it. 4: how do you take your coffee/tea? Coffee sweet with shit like chocolate or pumpkin spice, and tea usually iced with enough sugar to taste the diabetes.5: are you self-conscious of your smile? Yep 🙃 I lost my retainer in the 8th grade so my teeth are Fucked Up™6: do you keep plants? I certainly try, but I'm kind of like Timmy's mom from Fairly Odd Parents7: do you name your plants? Yep! I used to have a bromeliad named George before I accidentally killed it. 8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? I tend more to just bottle them up lmao but if I had to pick one it would be writing 9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? I do, but I refrain from doing so in public out of respect for others 10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? I'm a stomach sleeper. It's painful. 11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends? Most of my jokes honestly. "Just watch some porn and eat more chocolate", "you got a 30 on your ACT", the implication that I on the reg put it in @fuckthepersonthattookmyusername's ass, stuff like that. 12: what's your favorite planet? I feel like I should say Earth since I live on it? But I also highkey relate to Pluto bc I, too, constantly struggle with validation. 13: what's something that made you smile today? My dogs. My Big Dumb one is chasing his tail in front of me as I type this. 14: if you were to live with your best friend(s) in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? Spacious, with lots of plants and a goat skull hanging on the wall. A nice kitchen. My dog is there and healthy. 15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! I don't have my glasses on and at first glance I thought this said "weird spice fact" and I got really excited. I did google a space, fact, though, and I learned that Neutron stats can spin at a rate of 600 rotations per second. 16: what's your favorite pasta dish? Does "all of them" not count? If I had to pick one, right now it's tortellini. 17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? Silver. I do love my red, though. 18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. Basically everything I do that exemplifies how dumb I am lmao. I almost didn't graduate high school and they nag me parent-style about that one a lot.19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? I do not, I've tried before but I've never known what to write in it. Plus I'm always way too paranoid that someone will find and read it. 20: what's your favorite eye color? @stripper-boots's 21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. The only bag I really have that's lasted a while (I abuse my bags lol) is an orange drawstring with a skull printed on it. It's got some weeaboo buttons on it bc for a while it was my convention bag. Now I mostly use it to collect buttons on. 22: are you a morning person? Absolutely not. If allowed to I will sleep until 2 pm with no issues.23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? Usually just sit around and watch YouTube/Netflix or play video games. Today is actually one of those few days, actually. I've got plans on running to the local farmer's market too so I can plant some herbs later on. 24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? I have people I would trust not to tell anyone else, but I still wouldn't ever tell them. It's less a trust issue and more that I just don't want anyone knowing some of these things. 25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into? An abandoned church compound. It was a big lot full of tons of old buildings. Some of them were used for storage and had a bunch of newer stuff in it but some of them looked like old schoolhouses and dorms. The desks inside had schoolwork dated from the 70s in them. The place has since been leveled, though. It's a shame. 26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit? My combat boots. They've seen hell, basically. 27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor? I can't remember the name, but 5 gum has these two that are great. One is a fruity flavor that kind of tastes like Monster and one is a mint that's great because it's not as harsh as most other mint gums.28: sunrise or sunset? Sunset, probably. I'm usually awake to see that one more. 29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? Exist. 30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? On one hand, I think so, but on another hand I do have that "could be worse" issue. Yesterday I was woken up by a man I didn't know knocking on my door and then literally climbing on my roof. After he got down he started banging on my door and yelling. That was pretty terrifying but I do feel like it could have gone much worse. 31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. I do enjoy weird patterned socks, I think they're cute. White socks are demon spawn tho. I also despise sleeping with socks on. I went through a phase in middle school in which I exclusively wore fuzzy socks. Never again.32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. Boy do I have a story to share. I once went out to watch Rogue One with @stripper-boots and another friend, and somehow the night ended with us picking up another person, stealing a grocery cart from a CVS near my school, and driving through our old high school's parking lot while someone sat in the cart and held on to my van. We would then hit the brakes and the person in the cart would let go and see how far they would keep rolling. It was absolutely amazing. 33: what's your fave pastry? Listen, I'm a baking and pastry student, I can't pick just one. If I had to narrow it down, I love making turnovers and scones. Blackberry and sage scones are absolutely amazing. 34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? I kept (and currently keep) two stuffed Dalmatians named Spot and Pongo (I was a creative kid, I know). I've had them since I was born and they're both incredibly dear to me. 35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? I always want to, but almost every time I end up too afraid to use them because I want to wait and find something that would be worth using them for (spoiler alert: I never do). So I've stopped getting them lol36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now? Probably The Neighborhood or something like that. I'm feeling pretty mellow today. 37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? I like to keep it super clean (even if it occasionally gets messy thanks to depression). The people I live with are pretty messy and it gets to me pretty badly so I try to have at least one clean area that I can retreat to.38: tell us about your pet peeves! Hoo boy, here we go. I cannot stand it when people chew with their mouths open (people that have to due to some sort of disability or something don't count, ofc). It is seriously one of the grossest things in the world to me and it honestly makes me uncomfortable to the depths of my very soul. Most of my family and a few of my friends do it, too, and it absolutely kills me. I also can't stand it when people put their feet on things or when they do something I've asked them not to because they find it humorous. 39: what color do you wear the most? Black. I'm still a little emo kid at heart. Plus I own all dark haired animals lol. 40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you? I wear a collar around my wrist that belonged to a dog we fostered. It's from when he was a puppy, which I think is pretty great because as he grew up he ended up coming up to my hip with his shoulder. Seriously, he was huge. 41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving? Both of the books in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series. I read them my sophomore year of high school and I still think about them a lot. I'm not even sure why, they just struck a chord with me and I absolutely love them. 42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! I feel obligated to say the one that belongs to my school. It's basically the only one that I really frequent, anyways. The cafe mochas are amazing. 43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? Honestly, I can't remember the last time I actually stargazed. It's definitely been a while.44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? Probably before I was born. My mom smoked a lot of weed while pregnant with me so I'd imagine I was a pretty chill little fetus. 45: do you trust your instincts a lot? Anxiety won't let me. 46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. Basically any pun my chef instructor this past quarter told us lol. Or anything that comes from @stripper-boots47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? Candy corn 48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? I was always terrified of tornadoes, to the point that some nights I would just lay awake and cry because I was afraid that a tornado would come crashing through my house, even on nights with nice weather. I'm no longer that afraid of them, but I do still get really nervous when it storms out.49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? I love CDs! I haven't bought one in a while, but the most recent one I "acquired" (aka stole from my dad) was the Cloud Atlas soundtrack. 50: what's an odd thing you collect? Sadness. 51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? I associate the song "Fuck You" with my mom. Because fuck her. 52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? All of them53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? I've seen Rocky Horror and parts of Beetlejuice. They're both pretty awesome. 54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? Myself in the mirror lmao55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point? I try not to be dramatic that much? Idk. I'm answering all 100 questions of this rn to prove that I'm not a little bitch. 56: what are some things you find endearing in people? Genuine care. Like honestly, someone can act caring towards me once and there we go, I think they're great and want to be their friend. 57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? You mean there aren't people that dramatically reenact the lyrics? 58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? @thenomoreotaku is the self-proclaimed wine mom. I feel like @stripper-boots is the vodka aunt. 59: what's your favorite myth? Listen I love mythology, do not get me started. Just all of them. 60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? I really like "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" from Robert Frost and basically anything from Neil Hilborn. 61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received? Every gift I give is stupid. I'm not very good at giving gifts. 62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? I'm not really a fan of juice. 63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? I want to be organized but I am Not. 64: what color is the sky where you are right now? Kind of a light gray with some blue. It rained last night. 65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with? I haven't seen my friends since Saturday night, does that count as a long time? 66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? Anything with bright flowers (probably red) and maybe some Quartz on it too. I actually plan on making some soon. 67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? I like the melancholy feel but I hate how humid it is when it's misty so I'm kind of on the fence about it. 68: what's winter like where you live? Normally I would say Fucking Cold but this winter was actually pretty warm so?? Thanks global warming. 69: what are your favorite board games? I really like Betrayal at House on The Hill, and I appreciate the cutthroat factor of Monopoly. I was also recently introduced to Arkham Horror and it was pretty lit. 70: have you ever used a ouija board? Nope71: what's your favorite kind of tea? I have this black tea that's cacao mint flavored and I love it 72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it? YEP73: what are some of your worst habits? All of them. 74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. Listen I have like, 3.5 friends this is going to be a pain to choose one. I have one that's pretty saint-like lately. Bc they're holey. 75: tell us about your pets! They're all amazing and I love them. I have a 6 year old blue pitbull named Jinxx, 3 year old Presa Canario named Murdoc, a 9 year old brown tabby cat named Tiger, a fluffy black cat named PJ that's somewhere between 7-9, and a betta fish named Radicchio. 76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't? Going to the farmer's market and cleaning my house. 77: pink or yellow lemonade? I don't like lemonade 😐78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? I will hate minions until the day I die 79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? My friends literally made me a bedroom. 80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? They're just white. I wanted to paint them but I never got a chance before we moved in. 81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. He much will everyone hate me if I use "azure pools" 82: are/were you good in school? Definitely not lol. I think I'm getting better now that I'm college though. 83: what's some of your favorite album art? I really like some of the drawings from Alesana's album The Emptiness. That's all I can think of off the top of my head.84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? I currently have one tattoo of my cat, and I plan on getting something baking related (probably a quote about bread) and something Wizard of Oz related. 85: do you read comics? what are your faves? I always mean to but I've never actually gotten around to it. 86: do you like concept albums? which ones? I love concept albums. Alesana did three concept albums in a row that were all related and I absolutely adore them. 87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? Cloud Atlas, Uno: The Movie88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? Do Snapchat filters count 89: are you close to your parents? Occasionally with my dad, but not with my mom 90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. The one I live in lol. Louisville is pretty lit. Lots of good food. 91: where do you plan on traveling this year? I'm hoping to make it to Sandusky for ColossalCan in the beginning of June.92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? There is never enough cheese 93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most? My sidecut. It's basically my most recognizable trait at this point. 94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? My stepbrother's birthday is the 14th 95: what are your plans for this weekend? I'm not sure, but I'm hoping to chill with the D&D squad and play some more board games. 96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? I can't remember the last time I installed an update on my computer 97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? ISTP, Libra, Slytherpuff98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? Probably year or so ago. Hiking is lit. 99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Stressed Out from top because I'm always stressed 🙃100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? I wouldn't press either tbh. Leave that shit how it is.

I had a dream a couple weeks ago where I was at a butcher shop—and before I continue, I know this is all severely superfluous; being subjected to hearing other peoples’ dreams is the social equivalency of being shown your friends’ baby photos when you never asked. But hear me out... because I really could not think of any other way to start this blog post otherwise. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a fever dream, obviously because I wasn’t sick, but the ambiance of it all: the ominous droplets of water echoing from a leaking facet somewhere, the red-tinged, Lynchian hue of the entire dream, the fact that no one was actually there but me. All of it made it just so unsettling. I didn’t see the butcher or any staff for that matter. But the meats were lined up neatly behind the glass partition and was priced in what seemed to be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Why do I mention this? Well, I recently made a blog post that went over the matter of me officially starting the process of trying to de-vegetarian (not a word, I know) myself in the past few months. To avoid reiterating myself in full detail, it has been a tad bit of a challenge. But is it really that serious to warrant an entire dream about it? I don’t think so. I didn’t get caught up over decoding just what that dream was supposed to symbolize, I just found it funny that I would be doing something similar for school.

Now, to segue into what I should be talking about: I really don’t know anything about the specifics of meats—be it the cuts or how to handle and cook said parts. I look at one of those diagrams of a pig or cow where all the parts are outlined, and the only thing I can think of is 1. It looks cool, in a morbid way 2. I can’t believe consuming living animals has been reinforced/normalized in our society for so long to the point where we have identified every part and crevice of most if not all animals 3. A friend of mine used to have a poster of a pig diagram on her wall. I don’t know why because she’s studying physics right now. It could be the fact that she was a heavy metal fan. Something about a pig carcass is totally metal, it seems.

Truth be told, I was never fond of beef. Even before going vegetarian, the only instance where I would actually have it is if it was incorporated into a certain dish. With that said, I’m Korean. And yes, we love our pork—especially samgyeopsal (삼겹살). Fun-yet-semi-depressing fact: the whole pork belly and soju combo has more or less become a nightmarish touchstone in the hierarchical system of the South Korean office workplace (or just about any workplace in general). Forget calling it a tradition, it is more or less a mandatory ritual for all employees to go out together nearly bi-monthly: yes, that means the boss is there, as well, and they don’t even pay usually. Rookie employees are often peer-pressured in gulping down soju like water. They are then peer-pressured some more to do ridiculous things to entertain their superiors, like sticking a spoon in an empty bottle of soju and singing a song in front of the whole restaurant. Because refusing to do so means you will be remembered as the disobedient one. The rebel. Abuse of authority happens in just about any environment where there are striking imbalances in power, but it is more extreme over there.

This blog post is getting dark real fast, so let’s get back on track. You may say that I’m already familiar with pork so writing about it seems obsolete, but that’s really not the case. I mean, if I really think about it, the only cut of a pig I’ve tried is the belly. Now, I haven’t had pork in a long while, and I’m still not really sure if I’ll ever wake up one morning and get a craving for it. But I also proclaimed in that aforementioned post that I want to gradually lessen the lifestyle I chose solely for the purpose of going somewhere in this industry. Because whether I like it or not, I’m going to have to cook all sorts of animal flesh. Pardon me if that sounds morbid, but so it goes!

My choice of pig part (there really is no eloquent way in phrasing this) is the shoulder blade, or if you will, the top portion of the front leg of the hog. According to Pork Be Inspired, a website that is apparently dedicated to pork lovers, the terminology for pork shoulder can vary widely depending on the region. The lower ‘arm’ portion of the shoulder is most commonly called the arm pork roast, while the upper part is often called the blade roast, stemming from the area near the loin. The blade is known for its well-marbled cut, making it ideal for pot-roasting it whole, or dicing it up into pieces for stews, or even cooking it over moist smoke to make a classic pulled pork barbecue. Honestly speaking, I don’t know what any of this means. Vegan meats generally just come in chunks, or less commonly, a block (think Spam); the more expensive brands are usually pre-seasoned and don’t really require any other additional cooking other than heating it up.

Some of the most popular methods of cooking this cut are braising, grilling/barbecuing (is that even a word?), roasting, using a slow cooker, or stewing. The shoulder or shoulder blade cuts are also rather inexpensive; it can also be purchased with the bone intact (averaging to about six to nine pounds) or boneless (averaging four to seven pounds). Pork shoulder is also used for making ground pork, which sounds… interesting, to say the least.

My initial plan was to go to the St. Lawrence Market for some exploring, some sight-seeing (because, hell, the last time I was there was on a school trip in high school). Maybe get a smoothie or something. It’s crazy: I always walk by it, and every time I do, I keep telling myself “Hey man, you have the privilege of living in semi-poverty in one of the most diverse cities on earth. Why can’t you get off the bed and explore?”. But alas, I went there after-school this past Monday only for it to be closed. So note to self: do your assignments early next time. Also maybe use Google for the hours of operation. Because Google is free and it’s in the palm of your hands.

So, what to do next? I had to compromise. My option was either the Loblaws near Church-Wellesley (I personally call it the Loblaws Dome, because that’s literally what it is) or the Metro near the Ryerson Rogers Communication Centre. Honestly, that Loblaws makes my anxiety go haywire: it’s too bright (the entire building is one big sensory overload), the lighting makes me look like I spent a month drinking Vodka in a hole, and there’s always too many people there. And thus I ventured over to the Metro instead. I know what you’re thinking: you’re wasting time and energy, Wooju. So what if it’s further? I barely exercise so I could really use this. I need this, man.

Unrelated-but-sort-of-related-note: The assignment asked us to take photos with a personal belonging for the sake of preventing plagiarism. That’s why my keys make an annoying appearance. You have no idea how much of a challenge it was for me to find the right timing to take a photo of this on the cold, hard floors of Metro.

The recipe I chose is a Korean dish called bossam (보쌈), less commonly just called sooyook (수육), which literally translates to “water-meat” and sounds just as unappetizing in English as it does in Hangul. Bossam is cooked through a wet (moist-heat) cooking method that is essentially just boiling the meat in flavoured brine. Aside from the obvious, this is done to remove excess fat, grease, and blood from the meat, resulting in tender mouthfeel. If I remember correctly, pork sometimes has a very distinctive odour that varies in severity depending on which packet you buy at the groceries; it’s kind of like an innocuous game of Russian roulette. The good news is that this unwanted smell can be removed by boiling the pork with an assortment of things, such as onions, garlic bulbs, bay leaves, and, yes, instant coffee mix. Some higher-end restaurants will bump up the price tag just because they use ginseng or other medicinal herbs, but that can be reserved for yuppies.

So why did I choose bossam? Despite being recognized as one of the more popular comfort foods in Korea, bossam is actually a pretty healthy dish (well, as healthy as pork can get), care of its wet cooking method. There’s no cooking oil or any additional trans-fat involved, making it healthier than, say, bokkeum (pan-fried) or twigim (deep fried) type dishes.

Truth be told, I haven’t actually had bossam since I was about 12 or so, but it is generally served with a side of napa cabbage leaves and perilla leaves. The Korean way to eat any meats, grilled or otherwise, is to wrap it in the aforementioned vegetables with a smattering of ssamjang (쌈장)—a traditional Korean sauce made of gochujang and doenjang. Some prefer to just dip it in saeujeot (새우젓), a fermented food made with small shrimps. It’s all up to personal preference!

This post has been unexpectedly lengthy, so I’ll cap it off with the recipe. I found this rendition through a YouTube cook by the name of Maangchi. She is a Korean-Canadian ahjumma who apparently started her YouTube channel out of sheer boredom. What an icon and a queen! I adore her attitude, and the fact that she single-handedly built a brand for herself is pretty incredible. It goes to show that women should never feel the need to be held back or withhold their passions, just because this patriarchal society reinforced the idea that marriage should be their ultimate end-game. it is not, and it never will be.

Fun but hedonistic fact: It’s socially acceptable to drink in public in South Korea. It’s like a watered-down version of the infamous North legalizing (and possibly advocating) the use of an assortment of illicit drugs. As for us South, we really love our alcohol. Hell, soju now comes in little juice box containers with the straw and everything.

Ingredients:

3 lb pork shoulder, shoulder blade, or pork belly, rinsed and drained

1 large onion, cut into quarters or sliced

2 tbsp ginger, sliced thinly

12 garlic cloves

2 tbsp Korean fermented soybean paste (doenjang)

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp instant coffee or any ground coffee

10 cups water

1 lb napa cabbage leaves, washed and drained

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup white vinegar

1 tbsp salt

¾ cup water

Method:

Add the pork, onion, ginger, garlic, soybean paste, brown sugar, coffee mix, and the water to a large pot. Cover and cook for 1 hour over medium-high heat.

When it boils vigorously, turn the pork over with a wooden spoon or tongs.

After 1 hour of boiling, turn down the heat to low and cook for another 15 minutes.

Take out the cooked pork and let it cool down until ready to serve.

Combine sugar, vinegar, salt, and water in a large bowl. Mix well until it turns into a clear pickle brine.

Add the cabbage and mix well by hand.

Let it sit for 15 minutes, then mix well and turn it over so the leaves pickle evenly. Repeat this every 10 to 15 minutes for 1 to 2 hours until the cabbage gets soft and withered.

Squeeze out the excess water and refrigerate until ready to serve.

[Logo design by me; bossam image courtesy of Fooding Me]

01/05/2017 DAB Transcript

Genesis 11:1-13:4 ~ Matthew 5:1-12 ~ Psalm 5:1-12 ~ Proverbs 1:24-28

Today is January 5th.  Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible.  I'm Brian. It is awesome to be here with you today from the rolling hills of Tennessee and I pray wherever you are on this big blue earth that God has given us to live in or on or both, that you are doing well and that you are kind of beginning to get into the rhythm of this fresh start known as the new year.  We are certainly getting off to a good start to this year in the scriptures and we’ll continue with that rhythm now.  We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week and picking up where we left off in the book of Genesis.  Yesterday we learned of this great flood and now we enter into the territory that happens after.  Genesis chapter 11, verse 1 through 13, verse 4 today.  

Commentary

Alright, so there are a number of things to point out in today's reading to bring some context and to fill in the story that we’ve traveled so far in just the first few days of the year.  So we read about the Tower of Babel today.  That is a famous story.  I grew up in church so I’ve been hearing the story of the Tower of Babel since Sunday School and maybe you have too, or maybe this is the first time you’ve ever heard of it.  Either way, it's  a famous story in the Bible.  

There are a couple of ways to read this story and one of them introduces this first uptight, angry, spiteful God, then there are other stories that we will come to that seem to indicate this judging, vengeful God and God gets this reputation, this Old Testament reputation that is fascinatingly and completely incorrect that has been perpetuated for a long, long time.  

We see in the story of Babel God comes down, sees what the people are going to do.  They are going to build this big tower.  It is going to go up into the sky.  And God says, ‘we can’t let this happen.  If we let this happen, then nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them.’ So it's easy enough to go ‘what's God so uptight about here?  What's the big deal?’  The big deal is the ‘impossible for them’ part.  

Let's go back a couple of days, back to Genesis chapter 3, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which we’ve already covered, the whole breach and breaking of trust that happened, the separation of divinity from humanity that happened, this chasm that was not bridgeable.  So we go through all that and the slide downward of man that becomes so evil that a flood overtakes the world and a reset is done.  Now we’re on the other side of that.  People are repopulating the earth and the same kind of thing is happening.  This tower can’t be built for the same reason that people can’t continue to eat from the tree of life.  Humanity and divinity have been separated from their ordinary, normal, natural created state, which is intertwined.  

So God banished humanity from the tree of life in the Garden of Eden because of this trade that was made.  This perfect intimacy with God was traded for the knowledge of good and evil.  Then mankind tried to use the knowledge to understand and control God and then to become his own god.  We see this playing out in Babel again. So when God says ‘the people are united and they speak the same language and after this nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them,’ it's just echoes of Eden.  Echoes of the tree of life.  

We can look at God as this spiteful, jilted person who is vengeful and is on a power trip or we can see it for what it is, a counterintuitive rescue and saving of all things, because humanity separated from divinity altogether is not humanity as it was created to be.  Separated from divinity, separated from God, it will only do what it has always done, continue to slide into inhumanity, subhumanity and will only perpetuate its own total annihilation.  All you have to do is look around even today.  These thousands and thousands of years later all you have to do is look around and see that the possibility of complete annihilation is ever-present. 

What the Bible will teach us later is that nothing is impossible with God. Our attempts to make nothing impossible without God will not work.  We were not made that way.  That is not how life works.  So God confuses the whole mess and disperses people throughout the earth.  He has larger plans of redemption for a later time.

We could stop there because there is plenty to think about there because it begins to shift our own assumptions about God and his work or his counterintuitive work or his disruptive work in our lives and the places that we go in our heads, in our hearts, the assumptions that we make that ultimately estrange us from God.  So there is plenty to think about there, but we also meet a very, very important person in today's reading and his name is Abram.  He is going to have a name change pretty soon and be a very central figure in the story of the Bible and in the story of the world we live in right now.

We went through some genealogical territory today and you can feel like that is tedious at times, but we’ll get to that later.  We read through some genealogical things today leading us to Abram and he is in Ur of the Chaldeans.  This is modern day Iraq.  He is a nomadic kind of person similar to the modern day Bedouins of the desert.  He is a desert person who ends up coming into the land of the Canaanites.  He comes to this place called Shechem which is a very ancient city and the city still exists today in modern day Israel.  It is now known as Nabulus.  But this city is going to keep recurring.  It is going to keep coming up.  Some of the most pivotal things in all of the Bible happened in and around Shechem and today is one of them because God comes to Abram and tells him near Shechem ‘all of this land I'm giving to you.  I will make a nation out of you and you will bless the people of the earth.’

Now Shechem is not desert country and Abram continues to move southward. You can easily Google a map of Israel and the Middle East and kind of see this whole trajectory, but he moves south to Bethel where he makes an altar.  Bethel will also become an important landmark as we move forward. And then he moves even further south toward the Negev, another desert, something a little more arid, something that he is accustomed to.  But famine is in the land and so he has to go to Egypt where this whole episode happens of Abram telling his wife Sarai to claim that she is his sister.  It's amazing because she is obviously unspeakably beautiful, of biblical proportions because the Bible says so.  She is gorgeous.  She also happens to be 75 years old’ish which can feel like a little bit of a contradiction because you don’t usually think of a person 75 years old as being completely, unspeakably hot.  As we’re reading in the book of Genesis, people had longer lifespans closer to the beginning when there was less pollution and population, so we read of people not really beginning their families until after the first 100 years. So this is what we find with Abram and Sarai.  

Sarai is taken into the harem of the Pharaoh only to be given back to Abram and he is enriched with many things.  Many of the gifts that the Pharaoh gave him made him wealthy, rich, and fortified.  So when they leave Egypt, and I mean this is a pathway that the ancestors of Abram are going to follow, back toward Bethel, this man Abram has followed a God that he has just recently met, gotten a promise from this God, and has been fortified and enriched by partially plundering Egypt.  This will happen again by the ancestors of Abram.  This little trick of Sarai posing as Abram's sister, this trick will happen again as well, but we’ll save that for another day.  

Then in the New Testament we move into Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is really his central teaching, but we’ll be covering this territory, so we’ll save that for another day.  

Prayer

Father, thank you for your word.  What a gift.  Our hearts come alive within us as we hear the stories of our spiritual ancestry, how it is that we got from there to here and things begin to fill in and all of a sudden we see ourselves in these stories and we realize every fork in the road is a choice that is leading somewhere, even the small decisions that we make are choices that are going somewhere.  Your word helps us to be awake and aware of those decisions and it makes us awake and aware of your presence in all of it.  So come, Holy Spirit.  Plant these words deep in our lives, in our souls.  May our hearts be fertile soil that the fruit of the Spirit may grow in us.  Come, Jesus, we pray.  In your name we ask.  Amen.  

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website.  It's home base.  It's where you find out what is going on around here.  So be sure to check it out.  You’ll find all the ways to connect with Daily Audio Bible and with each other and all the resources that are available at www.DailyAudioBible.com.  

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com as well.  There is a link on the home page.  If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible App, you can push the More button in the lower right-hand corner.  Or if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.  

And, as always, we are a community here and we pray for each other really well around here.  If you have a prayer request or comment, there are a number of numbers that you can use, depending on where you are in the world and really I think you can use these numbers no matter where you are in the world if you just happen to not want to call the number closest to you.  Either way, if you're in the Americas, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UK or Europe: 44, 20-3608-8078 is the number.  And if you are in Australia or the lands down under:  61, 3-8820-5459 is the number to call.

And that is it for today.  I'm Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here, right here tomorrow.  

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

Hey Dabbers, this is Slave of Jesus.  Alright, Holy Spirit, let's roll.  This is for all of us but this is really focusing on the new Dabbers that are joining us probably after the first of the year and those that came in the middle of last year.  They’re psyched.  They’re ready to do this thing and do it every year.  So I'm in military intelligence and it's my job to tell the commander what the enemy is going to do, so I'm going to tell you all what the enemy is going to do in your lives if you try to get through a year with the DAB. You need to have a plan.  You need to have a plan.  You can have a great plan, but you need to have what they call a Plan B.  Because you might be saying ‘okay, I'm going to go ahead and do this every single night right before I go to bed.’  After a few months the enemy is not going to like you listening to the Bible every day. He's going to do something to mess up your night, whether it's you have a new class you have to take or something like that.  You gotta have a Plan B.  Maybe that Plan B is you have to set your alarm a half hour earlier than you normally get up to do that.  I don’t know what it is, but you’ve got to start thinking about this.  You have to start thinking about if you call into the DAB and you don’t hear your call and the enemy gets in your head to tries to say ‘hey, you don’t need this community anymore.’  You need to have a plan that you’re going to fight through that. You're going to post something to Facebook, maybe somebody is going to say something that offends you, you need to get a plan out there right now so that you can fight your way through this. Be prepared.  The Bible says that the enemy prowls like a lion.  That is what he's doing.  He's going to go out there for all of us who lightly planted seeds that just don’t have big roots and you’re all excited, but as soon as that storm comes it rips it all out.  That is what he wants to do.  If you fight through that, if you get through a year, you get through two years, you start to say the Daily Prayer out loud, start learning scripture, you become a powerful warrior, but you gotta have a plan to fight through that so when that enemy comes at you, you’re ready.  So that's just a little warning for all of you out there.  Don’t be afraid.  The enemy is defeated.  Scripture beats him every single time just like Jesus did, but start to have a plan now so you can get through it when you face it in real life.  Love you all.  Have a great day.  

Hey there DAB family.  This is Julie from Louisiana.  Many of you have called in over the holidays because you're lonely and so I just wanted to say a prayer for you.  Lord, I just lift up every person who is heartbroken right now, who is struggling through the holidays, who feels alone.  Lord, I just pray you’d wrap your arms around them right now and I pray that they would feel your peace and they would feel your love and they would feel your joy and, Lord, they would know that you became one of us so that you could be with us.  So we’re thankful, Father, for you touching them right now.  I just wanted to challenge everybody and especially if you're lonely, I want to challenge you to do something I did last year.  You know in 2015 I found the DAB and I listened to it all year by myself and it was so awesome that I just wanted everybody I knew to go through it with me.  And so last January, my husband and I started a small group at our church for anybody who wanted to go through the Bible in a year.  And we had about 15 people that signed up.  And so what we would do is each of us would listen on our own every day and we might take notes on what we heard or we might write down any questions that we had and then one night a week we would get together and we would discuss what we had heard and what we learned and talk about questions that we had. It had to be the best small group that I’ve ever been part of in my life.  In fact, this New Year's Eve we’re all going to get together and we’re going to listen to the very last podcast of the year together as a group and then we’re going to have a party to celebrate that we’ve gone through the whole Bible together with each other.  I want to encourage you to begin your own small group in 2017 and go through the Bible with your friends.  If you have any questions about how to launch a small group, you can shoot me an email.  I’d love to hear from you.  My email address is [email protected].  I'm praying that lots of groups spring up in 2017.  Love and blessings from Louisiana.  

Good morning DAB.  This is Sandy in New Hampshire.  I wanted to say Brian, thank you so much, and actually China and Jill and everyone else. I love the way Brian says ‘I love you. I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.’ You know sometimes when we’re going through hard times, just knowing that somebody else is going to be there is awesome, so I want to thank you for that.  I want to thank you for the sacrifices that you guys make personally, professionally and with your family, so I pray that God will bless you for that. Thank you for your faithfulness in serving God through serving others, selflessly serving and encouraging every day, loving through serving.  I would like to pray for our family this year, for the whole DAB family, to have abundance, restoration, strength, resilience, depth, healing in relationships, health, marriages, families, siblings, serving opportunities.  I ask that we would see Jesus’ reflection and feel his arms holding us, that we would see his smile through others smiling.  I pray that we would see others beside us and that we would love through serving alongside others that are serving the Lord, that we would join hands with those who are serving, that God would use us to be a light in dark places. I just want to thank you and I pray that God will bless you.  In Jesus’ name.  

Hi brothers and sisters from the Daily Audio Bible family.  This is Washed in the Blood of the Lamb from Perth, Western Australia.  Today's date is the 29th of December, 2016, and it's not really a prayer today, but this is more just a word.  This is called Anchors for Our Souls.  In Hebrew 6:19 it talks about an anchor of hope, having our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ as an anchor of hope.  Sometimes in life we have tempestuous storms.  We have trials and tribulations and we can wax cold and grow cold and be hot and cold in this Christian relationship.  So sometimes we need anchors for our souls.  So in Hebrews 6:19 it talks of an anchor of hope and it also says in Romans 15:13 that God is our hope.  He is the hope.  Psalm 42:5 is to hope in God.  Sometimes we need to have an anchor of duty to a church or a duty in which we’re doing things that God has asked us to do, whether that is to be street preaching, evangelizing, doing outreach programs, feeding the homeless, just things that will anchor our souls to the duty of working for God.  Another one is an anchor of prayer which is what we do here.  We pray and we bring our prayers and supplications to the throne room of grace.  And last but not least is the anchor of love, to know that God loved his creation that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever shall believe upon him shall not perish but have everlasting life.  I love you all, my god brothers and sisters.  I guess you would all be my god brothers and sisters.  I love you all and peace and safety to you.  God bless.  Amen.  

Hey family, it's Arjen from Florida.  By the time this message gets played, it is probably going to be the new year, so it is awesome just to be in 2017 with you guys.  I look forward to walking through all of our struggles and supports and just continuing in that love together.  Brian, thank you so much, Brother.  I don’t say that, but I just want to know how grateful I am.  I'm calling to pray for Reyna who is struggling with alcoholism and who is having confrontation with her sons and is just going through depression. Reyna, I know what depression is like. I know what isolation, feeling isolated is like.  I pray for the company and unconditional love of Jesus, Reyna, to be so unbelievably strong in your life, so unbelievably powerful and unshakeable and present that all of the other worldly issues that come in your life will grow so dim that you forget that they even exist, that these enemies of yours will be extinguished, that though you look for them, you will not be able to find them, that you walk and live and love in the fellowship of Jesus and are at so much peace that you can comfort all of us, Reyna.  I pray this in Jesus’ mighty name.  I pray this with Jesus’ mighty heart.  I pray with the Spirit of God, our creator, sustainer, and principle mover of all things. Reyna, we love you and we thank you for how open you are being because that openness gives us a window to be open.  I love all of you guys.  God bless.  

Hey everybody.  This is Pelham from Birmingham with Molly and now baby Andy whose name is Gerald Anderson Hart.  I'm just calling in today because if I don’t call some time I'm not going to call because it’s pretty busy here in the hospital room.  I'm standing here with my wife, with Molly.  Say hi.  [Molly] Hey everybody!  Thank you all so much for your prayers.  That was Molly and then we’re looking down here on Grandma who is holding Andy with the WubbaNub and he's just as happy as he can be.  I'm blown away by how good God has been through this whole process, the miracle of him giving us this baby.  The fact that the baby was born on the day that we lost our first child is not lost on me. The health of this baby, everything has just been checking out just right.  He's amazed us at every turn.  Let me see if I can get him to make a noise.  Can you make a noise buddy?  Only got a couple of seconds.  [Molly] Say hey to your DAB family, baby Andy.  [Pelham] You want to say something Andy?  Nope, Andy doesn’t want to say anything.  He wanted his WubbaNub back.  Alright, well, I just wanted to call and thank everyone all over the world for praying for me and Molly through all these years.  My father who passed away, he was here and is here and it just means so much to me, everyone out there.  I’ll keep you updated as to how the child is doing.  Everything is wonderful and I hope everyone is well.  

The Best Things We Ate This Week (3) added to Google Docs

The Best Things We Ate This Week (3)

London restaurants are back, baby. Well, kind of. Some of them are anyway. And the great thing about restaurants reopening is it means that with each day there are more and more things for you to eat. The bad thing about that is, after three months alone with your fridge, all those options can feel pretty overwhelming. That’s why we’re highlighting the best dishes we’ve had recently, to point you in the right direction. Not ready to eat out just yet? Don’t worry, we’ll be shouting out our favourite delivery and collection options too.

If you’ve eaten something great recently that you want to share with our team, send us an email at [email protected]. Now, onto the dishes.

Sorry—looks like you screwed up that email address

INFATUATION NEWSLETTER Get our newest guides & reviews first,

plus more restaurant intel you won't find anywhere else. ATL ATX BOS CHI LDN LA MIA NYC PHL SF SEA DC Subscribe Smart move. Excellent information will arrive in your inbox soon. Do you have friends and family who also eat food? Enter their emails below and we’ll make sure they’re eating well. (Don’t worry, we won’t subscribe them to our newsletter - they can do that themselves.) Help Your Friends No Thanks Well done. You’re a good person. All good. We still like you. Want to quickly find restaurants on the go? Download The Infatuation app.   THE DISHES  Jake Missing Quo Vadis £ £ £ £ British  in  Soho ££££ 26-29 Dean St

Tomato salad

“The phrase ‘too hot to eat’ isn’t one I really understand. Nobody is ever too hot to eat, you’re just too hot to eat certain things. Maybe it’s because of our climate. We know the cold months better than the hot. So when a 30-odd degree-er comes around, everyone panics. What do we eat? Chilled baked beans? An ice cube dipped in gravy? Sod it, let’s just drink instead. Or, alternatively, eat and drink. Outside. On Frith Street. At Quo Vadis. With a cold beer or a glass of something crispy. All you need then is a plate of sweet tomatoes bathing in oil, topped with finely chopped red onion, and a healthy turn of salt and pepper. It, with bread, is all I want this summer.”

- Jake Missing, Staff Writer

 Madame Pigg ££££ 480 Kingsland Road

Tempura courgette flower, ricotta, and blackberries

“What you have here is what I, a seasoned professional, like to call a shit tonne of textures. Am I this generation’s AA Gill? Definitely. But in all seriousness, this dish is summer on a plate. There’s plenty of crunch and creaminess, and the sharpness from the blackberries will remind you that, yes, you absolutely should have another glass of wine.”

- Heidi Lauth Beasley, Staff Writer

MAP Maison ££££ 321 Kingsland Road

Quetzacoalt Cocktail

We ran (walked) in from the rain (it wasn’t raining), desperately in search of sanctuary, safety and maybe, like, a cosmo or something. In a classic game of ‘guess where might still be open’ I came across Map Maison on the Kingsland Road and had a series of excellent cocktails. The gin-heavy Columbia Road cocktail is super fresh, but this tequila number was my favourite. Newsflash: fig liqueur is excellent with fresh lemon and pomegranate.”

- Heidi Lauth Beasley, Staff Writer

Monmouth Coffee The Borough £ £ £ £ Cafe/Bakery  in  London Bridge ££££ 2 Park Street, London SE1 9AB, Southwark

Iced filter coffee

“I’m an aspiring coffee nerd. There. I’ve said it. And I really don’t care if you’re not okay with it. I’ve got all the gear: a grinder, scales, one of those gooseneck kettles, elaborate glassware that I spend half my life trying to keep clean… and I have all of this because last autumn I got hooked on the iced coffee at Walden Woods in Kyoto. It was an instant top five* and I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since. Sadly, even the life-changing ice-making technique of Infatuation NYC Senior Staff Writer and resident cocktail expert, Bryan Kim, plus the unusual abundance of time 2020 has offered up hasn’t helped me get it right. Monmouth’s iced filter coffee however nails it. It might just be the best tasting, most nuanced cup of coffee I’ve ever had in London, and I’m not just saying that because Thursday was my first coffee outing since early March.”

- Oliver Feldman, Senior Editor

*”in case you’re interested, the others include an iced almond-macadamia milk latte from Go Get ’Em Tiger in LA, a very hot petrol station coffee somewhere in Oregon on a very cold morning in October 2016, and, a little closer to home, the nitro at Climpson’s.”

 Jake Missing Pollo Feliz ££££ 13-23 Westgate St

Quesadillas

“The other day I was feeling a bit blue, and that tends to lead me to eating something beige. Walking home and maybe subconsciously, but probably not, my brain took me to Pollo Feliz in Netil Market. Having just eaten a bagel (note: beige), I wasn’t that hungry but also, I can always eat. Their quesadillas are just beans and cheese. Gooey and soft, packed between handmade wheat-flour, pork-fat tortillas. They’re simultaneously rich and light, and I’d eaten both before I crossed the road”.

- Jake Missing, Staff Writer

 Mac And Wild £ £ £ £ British  in  City ££££ 9A Devonshire Square

Deep-fried Mars Bar Sundae

“I have a confession - I don’t know why Hot Priest never magically appears when I say this - I had never eaten a deep-fried Mars bar before my recent trip to Mac and Wild. There, I said it. But happily for me, but not my arteries, I am going to be eating a lot more if they all taste this good. I have a suspicion the sheer glory of this dessert was also down to the ice cream and whisky-infused toffee sauce. All in all, a sweet treat for the ages.”

- Heidi Lauth Beasley, Staff Writer

 Coya London ££££ 118 Piccadilly

Crab, Tuna, and Salmon Tacos

“London is home to a lot of things: double-decker buses, overly confident pigeons, and people who pretend they don’t watch Love Island. But decent tacos isn’t one of them, which is why I was so excited about the tacos at Peruvian spot Coya. I had the tuna, crab, and salmon. The crab tacos are the tell-you-I-love-you-on-the-first-date kind of good, but the tuna and salmon are also pretty great. Just get them all.”

- Rianne Shlebak, Editorial Assistant

 Jake Missing The Good Egg £ £ £ £ Middle Eastern  in  Stoke Newington ££££ 93 Church St

Lox & Cream Cheese Bagel

“A few years ago, I tried to get takeaway from The Good Egg. They didn’t offer this, so I was rejected, but a stranger in the queue told me I smelled nice. Location aside, this story isn’t at all related to the lox and cream cheese Montreal bagel I had the other day. Less a slice of pastrami-smoked trout so much as a wedge hacked off, the bagel had some solid schmear going on, and a very welcome handful of capers. The sesame Montreal bagel, said to be denser, was the perfect vehicle.”

- Jake Missing, Staff Writer

 OMBRA ££££ 1 Vyner St

The Park Picnic For Two

“Look, I rarely picnic. If I’ve learnt anything from the picnics of my youth it’s that grass stains suck and the only creature on planet Earth that has the same determination and inner strength as Beyoncé is the common ant. Well, rejoice my fellow picnic pessimists, because Ombra’s park picnic for two has made the whole thing pretty lovely. For 25 quid, you get focaccia, salami, burrata, and more - but the DIY sandwich situation is the real winner of the lot.”

- Heidi Lauth Beasley, Staff Writer

 Mamasons ££££ 32 Newport Court

The Bilog

“Hi my name is Rianne, and I’m an ice-cream addict. So much so that I decided the perfect time to try this Filipino spot, that I’d been wanting to visit for months, was on a rainy Sunday. I ordered a bilog (a milk bun filled with ice-cream) and went with the Milo flavour (yes, the chocolate powder). It was basically like eating a pancake filled with ice-cream, what’s not to like?”

-Rianne Shlebak, Editorial Assistant

 Xi'an Impression £ £ £ £ Chinese  in  Highbury ££££ 117 Benwell Rd

Beef Biang Biang Noodles

“If I was playing a game of word association and someone said ‘soulmate’, my instant, brain-snap reaction would be shouting ‘liangpi noodles’. You see, we are very much an item, me and Xi’an’s traditional coldskin. But this week I went rogue and ordered the hand-pulled biang biang noodles instead. They travelled well, the noodles were just the right amount of chewy, and the beef smelt so good that my flatmate pulled the old meerkat air-sniff move when they arrived. Officially my mistress.”

- Heidi Lauth Beasley, Staff Writer

via The Infatuation Feed https://www.theinfatuation.com/london/guides/best-dishes-of-the-week-london Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created August 7, 2020 at 11:42PM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF