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yourtoradorasextendedwarranty · 2 years

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You’re probably not a Bigot

So this one is titled for a reason and it’s because I want that shit bold, and to be the very first thing people see.

Criticism is NOT bigotry.

And since people in the back can’t hear let me say it more clearly. Having an issue with a person, group of people, etc isn’t bigotry or hate so long as a few conditions are met. 1. That criticism isn’t based on lack of knowledge 2. That criticism isn’t based on hate 3. That criticism acknowledges that something can be generally true without being completely true. 4. You are consistent in your criticisms.

So take for instance men who call women gold diggers or women that call me predators. So long as you realize that it’s not all, and do your best to STATE it’s not all, in your wording, I can give you a pass. However let’s be fair here too. I see both men and women make sweeping generalizations about the opposite sex all the time. More over with shit like “Yes all men” and “All women are whores” or “Men are monsters”, with a dash of, “women are all gold diggers”. I don’t generally agree with the broad generalizations in these cases because you had issues with a select few individuals among the several BILLION people on this planet. This doesn’t just go for sex either. It also goes for religion, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. And it’s easy to be an asshole. But thing is, people are allowed to be assholes.

Also though, don’t be a bigot. And I use that in the actual sense. Not the, “Everyone that disagrees with me is a bigot”, or, “Everyone that criticises a few people in a group is a misogynist” or something similar. And another thing too. If you are hiding behind calling someone something you best bring proof. And not just proof that simps and people who know and like you agree with. Proof that the definition of the word agrees with. And proof that most people in the middle of the isle will agree with beyond that. Because your sex/gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ect are not indicative of making you a bigot. Your world view is however. And given we can see in to others minds, it takes a lot to prove someone is in fact a bigot. That “Lot” can be as simple as a person saying, “All of X group is without a doubt this stereotype thing”. It’s a loaded statement and is pretty telling.

What isn’t telling however is the absence of someone criticising others. Just because you see it, doesn’t mean that it does not happen. And you are only with a person so many hours in a day. I can say, “A number of women do X” and not involve my opinion in the matter and it can be a fact even if it’s negative. And with a different group of friends or otherwise I can just as well bring up, “A number of men do X” within the same vein of conversation. Which funny enough is important in general to realize that. It’s quite literally like those people on twitter who go, “I like cake”, to which the follow up is “Why are you always talking about cake? It’s like nothing else exists”, or “OH WOW then you must hate pie. What an asshole”, and other stuff like that. I could have had Pie the day before but just wanted to profess my love of cake to the world. And just because I love cake does not also mean that I have to hate pie, or cookies, or muffins or anything like that. But people love to assume the worst about a person because they can. Because villainizing a person makes them feel better about themselves. Slandering a person all over social media makes them feel like a hero. Honestly? It’s sad. Sad that you have so little meaning in your life you have to shit on people to your friends just to feel good about yourselves.

But what’s worse than that is watching the people who call you names and shit talk you, calling you a bigot, also talk shit about others behind their back as if they are innocent. And that’s another thing too. I wouldn’t suggest calling people bigot when you’ve vented to those same people about how much you hate people and how much they piss you off because of X reason. Because some people are spiteful and would be willing to publish shit all over the internet. And I’ve seen it all happen before.

Long story short. disagreeing with a person or people, and criticising a person or people does not make you a bigot. Especially not when you’re not levying that criticism or disagreement towards an entire group of people. (Mind you an exception to this would be acceptable bigotry like disagreeing with religious practices that demand the cutting off of peoples private parts because they are gay, or throwing them from rooftops for being gay. OR cutting off womens bits so they can’t enjoy intercorse for same religious reasons). Either way. I’ve made my point. Contrary to popular belief not everyone is a Racist. Not everyone is a Terf. Not everyone is a Transphobe. Not everyone is a Homophobe. Not everyone is a Misogynist. Not everyone is a Misandrist. There are certainly people whom are. And we need to stop pretending it’s everyone in the world who is.

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infinitys-spirits · 3 years

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Hi thanks for the response, I don’t hate you, and I want you to have a good life, I just disagree with some of views and am genuinely curious about what other people think, and I would like to address some of the tags.

First saying “lgb drop the t” is honestly not a good way to get your point across as most people agree that lgbtqia+ is something that should include everyone who is falls out of society’s norms on gender, sexuality, and anatomy.

I think something a lot of people don’t know is that trans women and men are biologically different and studies have show that trans women have a brian structure close to that of a cis women’s than a man, not only that but there have been multiple historical instances of trans people.

I of course you don’t have the statistics I wouldn’t expect you too, I just want you to have some perspective and maybe do a bit of research into the hate and oppression trans and other gender queer people face.

I know personally from being a trans person that it is not from my internalized homophobia (I don’t know why it would be) and is not autogynphobia. I struggle every feeling as if I was born into the wrong body and it makes day to day life pretty difficult so I hope you can understand at least my personal struggles even if you still don’t fully understand the trans experience.

And although I disagree with it please ask for a space or groups for only cis women with out making about excluding trans women.

I hope you have a nice day and thanks for your time :)

I’ll address each point individually to make things easy on myself.

1. Most TRAs approach us radfems with hateful intent.

2a. “Lgb drop the t” is a general radfem/gender critical tag that I use to spread my posts. It isn’t that deep. Plus, the LGB is united in our same sex attraction. The T was originally added to accommodate same-sex attracted people who also enjoyed crossdressing and considered themselves “transsexual”. The current trans rights movement is homophobic and its goals are antithetical to the rights and needs of the LGB. They ask us (I’m a lesbian for reference) to go under conversion therapy. They demand that we “examine our preferences”. I will never want a relationship with a trans woman because they are men. I will never want a relationship with a man and I never have. The trans movement says that if a son likes dresses, he must in fact be a girl. Radfems simply say that he is a boy who likes dresses and that that is fine. The same is true for girls, but a little more serious. Teenage girls, including myself at the time, often hate our bodies. We go from a regular kid to a sexual object during puberty. The trans movement says that these uncomfortable feelings must be dysphoria and that you’re actually nonbinary or trans. No, you’re just a girl who is uncomfortable with society’s expectations, and that is completely normal. Note that dysphoria is a real and severe condition, but often fades after puberty (I believe the stat is 80% of the time it fades? Don’t quote me, I’m new here and I only run this blog casually). Those with gender dysphoria often benefit from talk therapy to help them understand the source of their feelings. I’m sure a radfem who faces dysphoria can tell you more. (Forgive me, Tumblr’s formatting is being stupid and any new paragraph I try to make is a million meters down)…. 2b. The LGB isn’t the “weird kids club”. It was made for those who experience same sex attraction. It originally had nothing to do with gender identity or level of sexual attraction. I, for example, am sex-repulsed. I consider myself asexual. But I am only in the LGB for my same sex attraction towards women. Straight aces are not in the LGB. 3. Oh goodness the brain sex argument… Everyone’s brains are different. The only sex difference is in size. Men have slightly larger brains because they have larger skulls. If anything, differences within the male sex should discredit the brain sex argument. There is nothing in your anatomy that makes you desire to be more feminine or more masculine. To suggest there is is sexist. It’s like when old philosophers would say that women are just “natural followers” and shit. (My god I hate this. You’re arguing with the wrong person…) 4. The statistics. All you TRAs love to hype up about trans women getting killed. It’s unfortunate that anyone dies. BUT, the vast majority of TWs killed were in prostitution and killed by their MALE johns. They are also killed because of homophobia. But it’s still male on male violence. Consider the millions of females aborted or murdered in China’s one child policy. Consider the hundreds of thousands mutilated all around the world because of FGM. Consider those who are killed by domestic violence. Consider those who get acid thrown on them. There are billions of dead women in history who were killed just for having the misfortune of being born female. 5. I do sympathize with your struggles. You are AFAB, yes? If I had been a little younger when all this transgender stuff kicked off, I would’ve wanted to transition myself. I definitely want to be a man sometimes. I feel for you how you feel you are in the wrong body. Believe me or don’t, but I get it. I am you, in a way. You may not be a lesbian or bisexual and don’t experience internalized homophobia or biphobia. Only straight males experience autogynophilia. From your descriptions, it seems like you are dissatisfied with how the world views you. You just wanna be a person, right? You just wanna be yourself and get the respect you deserve no matter your appearance or your sex. That is completely normal and understandable. Most women feel the way you do. Even “cis” women. We all just approach it differently.

#this was long #please please just dm me #this was more stressful than I thought itd be #you seem like a nice person #but PLEASE JUST DM ME #tumblr format sucks omg #I couldn’t fit in your last part #about the separatist groups…#WE DO #we ask for female only groups!#but they get invaded by TW and called transphobic #we aren’t ALLOWED to have anything to ourselves

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christianstevefinnell · 3 years

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ORIGINAL CHRISTIANITY? BY STEVE FINNELL

Are the Christians today the same as the first century Christians? Do contemporary Christians believe the New Testament, as it was

originally written or do they believe it is a living, breathing document? All Scripture contain in the Bible was completed by AD 100 .

Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. (NKJV) (NOTE: Jude was written in AD 65 )

The common salvation was handed down to all the Christians. There was not a new faith handed down nor was the faith amended to fit the will of individual churches.

Acts 2:42 They continually devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching...(NKJV)

They did not devote themselves the teaching of the scribes, the Pharisees nor the Judaizers.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (NKJV)

The apostles doctrine was all Scripture. That was all that was needed for teaching. The original Christians not need the doctrine of the Roman Catholic catechism, the writings of John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Knox, Charles Spurgeon, nor John Wesley in order to know and practice God's truth, that was presented by the apostles.

Acts 20:27 For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. (NKJV)

The apostle Paul knew the whole purpose of God, he did not have to consult with Billy Graham, the Pope, Rick Warren, Max Lucado, nor John Piper.[NOTE: None of those even understand the correct terms of pardon.]

-----------------------------------------------------

Revelation after the first 100 years of, original Christianity, is not found in the Bible; because everything Christians need for faith and practice in found in the 66 books of the Bible.

Proverbs 30:6 Do not add to His words Or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar. (NKJV)

DOCTRINES ADDED TO GOD'S WORD

1. Water baptism is not essential for salvation.

2. Water baptism is for a testimony of faith, not in order to the forgiveness of sins.

3. Men are saved by grace alone. God causes men whom He has selected for salvation to have faith so they will be saved.

4. Sprinkling and pouring are just other modes of baptism.

5. Men are saved by faith alone. Immersion in water is a work, therefore is not required in order to be saved.

6. All men are sinners at conception because Adam and Eve sinned. Non-believing infants can have the sin of Adam as well as all future sins wash away by being baptized. In other words sin can be forgiven without faith in Jesus Christ.

7. Jesus is one of many ways to enter heaven.

8. Men can live a unrepentant sinful lifestyle and still enter the kingdom of God.

9. God approves of many denominations, even though they teach different terms of pardon.

10. Denominations have the right to man-made doctrines even if they are contrary to Scripture, because God will not judge sincere people.

Pos

Speaking In Tongues

GEORGE L. FAULL

Dear Brother Faull,It is my understanding that you do not practice "Speaking in tongues." Why?Let me give you the reasons why I do not wish to "speak in tongues."

1. I could not defend it as having practical value.

It does not prove that I am saved, nor that I'm spiritual, nor that I have the truth, for men of every creed claim this gift.

2. I could not defend it as an aid to devotions.

It does not do anything the Holy Spirit does not do for every believer. He searches out our unspeakable requests and make intercession for us.

Romans 8:26-27,

"26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what [is] the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to [the will of] God."

3. I could not defend it as a sign for unbelievers.

If I do it publicly, men of all conflicting doctrines do the same. If I do it in my prayer closet, how will the unbeliever know of it?

4. I could not defend its "continual existence" from the Word of God.

The Scriptures neither imply nor promise the continuance of the gift, but, in fact, states that they will cease while faith, and hope yet abide.

I Corinthians 13:8-13,

"8 Charity never faileth: but whether [there be] prophecies, they shall fail; whether [there be] tongues, they shall cease; whether [there be] knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I under-stood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity."

5. I could not defend its "continual existence" from Church History.

History records that the gifts did cease. History records when and how the gift was supposedly revived. History records the deceitfulness of the modern day movement to increase the supposed gift among churches.

6. I could not defend its "continual existence" by commonsense.

Since prophecy and divine knowledge have ceased, [I neither know, nor know of anyone with these gifts] commonsense assumes that the lesser gift has ceased.

7. I could not defend its "continual existence" by the clichés of modern tongue speakers.

Clichés such as:

"God is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

"God does not change."

"He could do it, therefore, He does do it."

"He once did it, and therefore, He is doing it."

Doesn't our God ever do anything singular or unique? Is He still making women out of man's ribs? Have you seen any world wide floods lately? Are there still virgins having babies?

8. I could not defend it as "unifying the Body of Christ."

It is setting believer against believer. The only unity it promotes is unity of men of a thousand different conflicting doctrines agreeing to disagree. It may well be

Romans 8:26-27,

9. I could not defend it in light of those who have "spoken in tongues," who now admit that it was not of God.

We are told that we cannot deny a man's experience. Can a man deny his own interpretation of his experience? He once thought that it was of God. He now concludes that it was not. Hundreds, who have spoken in tongues, now deny that the experience was of God. How can I defend that my experience was of God when others with the same experience admit that theirs was not of God?

10. I could not defend it "as a promise from God."

He did not promise it to me, therefore I cannot accept it by faith. I can accept salvation, forgiveness, and redemption by faith. These were promised to all believers. I believe the promises. I "enjoy" them because I believe the promises. I cannot accept tongues by faith because they were not promised to every believer.

I Corinthians 12:30,

"Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?"Therefore, my "feelings" about tongues may be imaginary rather than real.

11. I would not want to be a possessor of a gift that I had to hide.

Imagine having a gift for which you could not thank God publicly. If it is known that you possess tongues, YOU:

Cause division among your brethren.

Are suspected of false doctrine by those whom you know are Christian.

Lose opportunities for service with your real talents and abilities. I wouldn't want a billion dollars if it did those things to my witness.

12. I would not want to be a possessor of a gift which I could not know was genuine.

Who would want a diamond or a ruby if it could not be proven to be such? it would have no real value. It would cause only bickering, arguments, and debates. Since there is no way to tell the apostate's "tongue speaking" from mine, why should I want it?

13. There are more desirable gifts mentioned which would edify the Church.

If it is an aid to devotions, I would get the benefit. [Incidentally, Paul didn't say it was.] But if I could prophesy or heal, I would be able to help others. I would enjoy being the steward of such abilities as these, but I would find "tongue speaking" in private or public a difficult stewardship with no real value.

Conclusion:

Tongue speaking is therefore undesirable because it is unneeded, unhelpful, undefendable, and uncertain.Posted by

ARE WE ALL GOD'S CHILDREN? BY STEVE FINNELL

Are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, and all other men, God's children? No, they are not. They are all created by God, but they are not all God's children. God loves them all, but they are not all God's children.

Who are God's children? Christians are God's children.

Galatians 3:26-27 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. (KJV)

Men become children of God by faith in Christ Jesus and being baptized into Him.

John 11-12 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name;(KJV)

The Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ were not God's children. Those who believe in Jesus have the opportunity to become God's children.

GOD LOVES ALL MEN, HOWEVER, SALVATION IS CONDITIONAL.

Terms to become the children of God.

A. Faith: John 3:16

B. Repentance: Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19

C. Confession: Romans 10:9

C. Immersion in water: Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38, 1 Peter 3:21.

All men have the opportunity to become God's children. Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you all one in Christ Jesus.(KJV)

ALL MEN ARE NOT GOD'S CHILDREN, HOWEVER, THEY ALL CAN BE.

THE DOCTRINE OF FREE-WILL BY STEVE FINNELL

The teaching that men do not have free-will evolved from the false doctrine that men are saved by grace alone. There is not one place in the Bible that has grace and alone in the same sentence. If in fact men are saved by grace alone and have no free-will, there are many things that would be true.

If men have no free-will, then God would have to force men to have faith so they could be saved.

If men have no free-will, then God would have to force men to repent.

If men have no free-will, then God would have to force men to confess Jesus as the Christ.

If men have no free-will, then God would have to force men to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins.

If men have no free-will, then God would be responsible for all of the sins of mankind.

If men have no free-will, why did the men on the Day of Pentecost ask "Brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37)

If men have no free-will, then why did the jailer ask Paul and Silas, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30)

If men have no free-will, then why did Saul ask, "What shall I do Lord?" (Acts 22:10)

Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appear has appeared to all men.

God's grace is available to all men. Grace is not forced nor is it denied to any man. MEN HAVE FREE-WILL!

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS BY STEVE FINNELL

The thought process of some Christians is puzzling to say the least. Why do some believers in Christ question that God has the power to guide men to translate Bibles that are inerrant, trustworthy, accurate, faultless, reliable, infallible.

Some of the same Christians who believe the following miracles of the Bible, doubt that God can produce an inerrant translation of the Bible.

They believe that Aaron's staff became a serpent. (Exodus 7:10-12) However they do not believe that translations of the Bible are trustworthy.

They believe Jesus was resurrected from the dead. (John 21:14) However they do not agree that Bible translations are inerrant.

They believe that the dead man Elisha stood up on his feet. (2 Kings 13:20-21) However they doubt that Bible translations are infallible.

They believe Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. (John 11:37-44) However they do not affirm that Bible translations are reliable.

They believe that God turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26) However they are not convinced that God has given us a translation of the Bible that is accurate.

Even those who state that the King James translation is the only accurate translation, believe that Mark 16:16 does mean what is says: They say "Has been baptized shall be saved" actually means, "Has already been saved before they were baptized." The assert that Acts 2:38 actually means "Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ because your sins have already been forgiven." They really do not trust the KJV either.

Ninety-nine percent of the Bible translations are accurate, trustworthy, inerrant translations of God's word.

A few of my favorites are New American Standard Bible, King James Version, New King James Version, English Standard Version, and New International Version. There are also many other reliable translations.

#read more at steve-finnell.blogspot.com

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enfpguy · 4 years

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BioShock Infinite MBTI and Enneagram — Cornelius Slate Cornelius Slate is a side character within BioShock Infinite, he’s a disturbed man with an interesting backstory who stands in the way of our protagonists because he wants a worthy death. We’ll be taking a deep look into his history and the history of the battles he took part in. Dominant Function: Extroverted Thinking Outspoken, organized, efficient, practical, rigid, stubborn, aggressive, and a leader, Slate bleeds TE dominant traits. To start our analysis on him, we’ll first need to know some of his backstory. Captain Cornelius Slate served in the United States Armed Forces. He participated in several battles but most notably the Battle of Wounded Knee where he became acquainted with Booker DeWitt, The Battle of San Juan Hill which is not mentioned with the game and The Battle of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion on behalf of Columbia who was allied with the U.S. After the battles Slate questioned Comstock’s systematic whitewashing of history. Slate wanted the truth and confronted Comstock. This defiance against the prophet stripped Slate of his rank, publicly branded him a liar, and forced him to work at Finkton. Slate immediately vowed to destroy Comstock. This prompted him to join the Vox populi and united they waged war on Comstock, this action was inspired by a TE-NE loop. His first action was to take over the Hall of Heroes and vandalize it, calling it the Hall of Whores. Comstock is a sellout who changed history. This action was meant to enrage Comstock and make him face a real soldier aka Slate. He believes practical action always trumps political subterfuge and strongly dislikes when anyone isn’t honest or direct. We can identify Slate’s TE-SI traits through his beliefs, and actions he takes against Zachery Hale Comstock. Such as organizing an army who willingly joined him to fight Comstock. Slate also tests Booker DeWitt to see if he can meet his expectations to consider him a worthy soldier by sending hoards of soldiers at him. This impresses Slate since Booker provides his men with the glorious death they seek. Slate only cares for the feelings of his men and can see Booker has no interest in harming him or them. Apparently, this is how Slate has always been he’s been disregarding others and always making enemies as Booker claims. Auxiliary Function: Introverted Sensing Before we venture into Cornelius Slate’s SI function, we’ll be looking into the battles Slate was a part of so we can better understand his experiences. (If you have no interest in history, you can skip this segment) The Battle Of Wounded Knee or better known as the Wounded Knee Massacre which took place on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. Tensions were high before this battle took place because the U.S. government was seizing Lakota Sioux lands and refused to stop. There was great unrest. Later, a prophet named Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance religion. This caused a movement. The Ghost Dance movement was associated with Wovoka’s prophecy of an end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, cross-cultural cooperation, and peace. This united the Lakota Sioux peoples, and in 1889 they gathered at Wounded Knee to participle in the Ghost Dance. Fearing large numbers of armed Lakota Sioux peoples, the U.S. military surrounded Wounded Knee and attempted to ban the Ghost Dance ceremony. This failed, and the government sent Indian agency police to arrest Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota leader whom they suspected in joining the Ghost Dance Movement. This ended in bloodshed and resulted in the death of Sitting Bull. Tensions drastically increased and on the morning of December 28, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Spotted Elk, a Miniconjou Lakota chief. They demanded Spotted Elk to surrender his peoples weapons, they complied since they did not want violence, they were escorted to Wounded Knee and asked to set up camp there so 7th Calvary could slowly remove their weapons. It’s now December 29 and this is when the massacre would start. No one truly knows who fired the first shot, but some claims mention a misunderstanding broke out between a solider and a Lakota warrior. Thus the bloody massacre had begun. Historians estimate 150—300 Lakota peoples perished in that battle. Half of the casualties were unarmed women and children. While 25 U.S. soldiers died and 39 were wounded. This battle was the last major battle of the American Indian wars. Our next battle is the Battle of Peking, which took place during the Boxer Rebellion on August 14th to 15th 1900 in Beijing. Before we get into the battle, we need to understand how it started. In the mid-1880s a secret society called the Yìhéquán or the Fists of Harmony and Justice started to gain power within the Qing Dynasty. By 1899 their numbers increased drastically. Their numbers swelled to 50 000 to 100 0000 members, they were now known as the “Boxers” to the rest of the world. They oppressed the Westernization of China and Christian missionary activities being practiced by foreigners. Eventually, the Boxers became violent. They torched Western churches, murder Chinese citizens who practiced Christianity, and attacked foreigners. This kicked off the Boxer Rebellion and lead to the Battle of Peking. The battle was massive over 18 000 soldiers from the British Empire, Russia, France, Japan, Germany, the United States, Italy, Austria-Hungary joined forces with the Mutual Protection of Southeast China against the Boxers and the Qing Dynasty. The objective of this battle was to fight their way into the city of “Peking” to rescue 900 foreigners who were captured by the Chinese Army since the 20th of June. Peking had formidable defenses. The city was surrounded by walls that spanned 21 miles with 16 gates. The wall around the inner city was 40 feet tall and 40 feet wide. On the dreadful night of August 13, The Eight-Nation Alliance thought they failed their rescue mission because the sounds of heavy artillery and machine-gun fire could be heard within the city. Within those walls, another battle was taking place. The Pei-Tang cathedral was being sieged by the Boxers and the Chinese army. 28 foreign priests and nuns, 42 French and Italian soldiers, and 3400 Chinese Catholic citizens defended that church. Inside that church 2800 Chinese Christians took shelter. Several hundred people died from starvation and disease, while 66 of the 900 foreigners died and 150 were wounded during that battle. Sadly, the casualties among the Chinese Christians were not recorded. But that’s not all the battle still rages on! It’s now 3:00 am on August 14 that assault from the allies has started, each nation attacks a different gate. First to attack was the Russians who broke formation and took the Americans designated gate. This resulted in the Russian army getting pinned by opposing forces, 26 of their soldiers die and 102 are wounded. The Americans arrive at their gate at 11:03 am to find the Russians pinned down both join forces and scale the walls. By 4:30 pm the siege has ended. There were 60 recorded deaths and 205 wounded within the Eight-Nation Alliance. As a consequence, the city was looted and burned. Many of the nations committed atrocities and even the captured civilians, missionaries and Chinese citizens pillaged the city for all it’s worth. At the end of it all, China had to pay $335 million (over $4 billion in current dollars) plus interest for 39 years, exile the government supporters of the Boxers, and destroy Chinese forts within northern China. The Qing Dynasty would end in 1911 as a consequence of the Boxer Rebellion. Alright, the history lesson is over, we’ll be returning to the analysis. Slate took part in both battles. He massacred the Lakota Sioux peoples and set fire to Peking. During that battle, he lost 30 men and his left eye. He’s so obsessed about these battles that he forces Booker and Elizabeth to combat his soldiers through “replicas” of them. These battles also have shaped his personality and identity. Therefore Comstock changing history hurt Slate since he was part of that chaos and he’s the one who suffered. To Slate, you should never change history, especially if you didn't fight within it. Most of the time Slate's SI function is used interchangeably with his TE function. However, his SI function is overdeveloped and refuses to let go of the past. Instead, he’ll drag others into like Booker and Elizabeth. Here are 2 examples influenced by SI usage that involve protagonists. As Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth enter the Hall of Heroes, they spot a grand statue of Zachery Comstock. Slate immediately contacts Booker and remembers him being a true soldier and demands Booker to kill his men. “All my men have left is a choice: die at the hands of a tin soldier, or a real one!” This forces Booker's hand who has no interest in harming Slate or his men. We can see another example after Booker kills Slate’s men, Slate calls Booker a hero and Booker disagrees. Slate then explains to Booker that if he takes away all parts of Booker DeWitt that Booker tries to erase, then what’s left? Slate is suggesting that our past is exactly what makes us. By deleting your past, you delete yourself. The last example of his SI function can be seen within his attire. To further prove he’s still living in the past and denial, Slate still wears his uniform but with a twist, he has an American flag on his right shoulder and a Pinkerton badge on his eye. It’s possible Slate views the Pinkerton detective agency as an organization that deserves his respect thus uses it to cover his left eye to fill what he’s missing with justice and law. Tertiary Function: Extroverted Intuition Slate often ignores the NE function for his dominant TE and auxiliary SI functions but will use it effectively when he feels threatened or wants to prove a point. Slate has a problem with Comstock altering history other than his strong personal feelings towards the subject. Changing history means Comstock is becoming a tyrant and will silence anyone who opposes him, including Slate himself who is a known war hero. Slate proves his point by having Elizabeth and Booker walk-through Comstock’s false history. Slate also ends being correct about Comstock silencing him. His disagreements with the prophet got him arrested and sent to work in Finkton. Slate isn’t dumb though and saw this situation as an opportunity and joined the Vox populi. He knew that after he’d defeat Comstock he’d be labelled as an assassin and would trade Comstock’s lie for another. This suggests that thinks the Vox populi would change history to indoctrinated younger generations as Comstock did. His analysis is completely based on inductive logic and patterns that have occurred in our history. This type of thinking can be seen within individuals who use both TE and NE. TI users rely on deductive and situational logic. Inferior Function: Introverted Feeling The FI function is pretty tricky with Slate, since most of his feelings are driven by his past and how he refuses to let go of it. Oh, and he’s also gone completely mad. Naturally, this causes him to become trapped in an FI grip. For Slate, he must remain as true to himself as possible, and he projects this idea onto his soldiers. Slate believes he’s still a soldier, therefore he must do his duty as one, and if that fails he must die as one. Slate and his men believe to die in battle is honorable, but they don’t want to die to fake “Tin men” but rather a real soldier such as Booker DeWitt who’s proven his worth time and time again. This belief is so extreme that if Booker refuses to kill Slate at the end of the Hall of Heroes battle, he will equate Booker to a heartless “Tin Man” and will allow himself to get captured by Comstock to be tortured into submission. To Slate, if a real soldier like Booker doesn’t kill him then he is not worthy of an honorable death. Here’s a bonus fact. Ken Levine’s inspiration to create Slate was driven by the pathologizing of soldiers in war. In the end, Cornelius Slate was a victim of his own inner war. An unwavering soldier to the end. https://youtu.be/jJMc0ishwbs

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

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Superman: Up in the Sky #4

Best DC cover ever or greateast DC cover ever? Those are the only two choices.

Die Tasche. Die Tasche? DieTasche! Die Tasche. Shtop.

The story begins with somebody talking about a race for charity between Superman and The Flash. They say it was televised and that people bought tickets to sit along the route and watch it. Seems like a huge scam to me. How long could it actually take Flash to run around the Earth ten times? Like fifteen seconds? I could probably do the math on it but I don't want to show off. But this story assumes that Flash and Superman didn't run so fast that people couldn't at least see them blur by. So this kid telling the story says that Lex Luthor offered to double the money to charity if Superman loses. And Superman heard it with his super-hearing which meant Superman was going to just have to win no matter what! He'd just have to believe he was faster than The Flash and then be faster than The Flash. Because that's how comic books work. What makes a hero is the secret reserve of strength and will and confidence that only appears when the hero is about to be defeated. People who are defeated aren't heroes because they don't have that reserve. They are losers. Big stupid losers. Did you die from your cancer? Not a hero, jerk. Did you fail to get that promotion at work because you didn't complete the project a hero would have completed at the last minute? Total loser. Did one of your kids drown in the pool because you gave up on the CPR like a big jerko loser dumb-dumb? Yeah. Not a hero. Maybe even a villain! But Superman, being a hero, now had to win the race for charity! And The Flash apparently isn't a hero because where were his secret reserves to beat Superman? What an idiotic failure. Although I haven't finished the story yet! Maybe Superman is still going to lose just like the cover implies! I bet the point of this story is that Superman loses sometimes but nobody ever gives up hope in him! And he always tries his hardest! And maybe even before the race, he made a bet in Vegas that Lex Luthor would bet a billion dollars against him which would pay off like a billion to one!

Lame. Superman wins.

Superman wins but the dumb kid telling the story doesn't explain how. The kid just goes on and on about contradictions but totally uses the word incorrectly. Like saying "Superman is faster than a speeding bullet" is a contradiction. Is it? How? If Superman is faster than a speeding bullet than he's faster than a speeding bullet and that's not a contradiction! Stupid idiot kid. The kid is so dumb I bet the kid got the story wrong and just made it up to make herself feel better. Because the kid telling the story is the girl that Superman is looking for and she has to believe that Superman can do the impossible (like win a race against The Flash) or else she's just going to rot on whatever planet she's lost on. So the story is about hope or something. Superman hopes and so Superman does. It's kind of like Oprah's Secret, I guess? It doesn't make any sense but since it's Superman, you always know he's going to win. Even that time he died, he won by killing Doomsday as well. So see? Blade was wrong. You should always bet on red! And blue! The second story is also about hope. Hey! Are all these stories about the hope Superman gives people?! I've been duped! I thought this was going to be a bunch of stories about how hard Superman can punch bad guys! Stupid DC Comics hiring some intellectual namby-pamby like Tom King! Writing stories that are all, "Superman shows how faith and hope can inspire us to be better than we are!" Whatever! I hope the next issue is about Superman punching a gigantic space monster! Superman: Up in the Sky #4 Rating: Oh yeah! The second story was about Superman interacting with Clark Kent because they were struck by magic space lightning and separated into two unique people. As if that's a thing! Somehow Superman's Kryptonian DNA makes him all logical and shit while his human upbringing makes him all emotional and valiant and sacrificial and awesome! Isn't that the way it always is? Humans are the greatest beings in the universe because they know how to cry while reading Shakespeare! Everybody else in the universe is a boring old rational Vulcan! If another alien species is allowed to be emotional, they only get one emotion. Like how Klingons are angry and Ferrengi are sneaky and Romulans have huge cocks and Guardians of the Universe are assholes. Only humans have mastered the spectrum of emotion and that makes them the best! Go Clark Kent! You teach that Superman a thing or two about hope! Now merge with him again for next issue and get to punching shit!

#Superman #Up in the Sky #DC Comics #DC #Tom King #Andy Kubert #Sandra Hope

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pinkchaosart · 5 years

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In response to Mr. Prager

If you haven’t seen it, this is the video that this essay is in response to

So, obviously I disagree with this video. Let’s go through it: welcome to my ted talk.

1. Universities - First of all, let’s get this out of the way: just because one professor has an opinion about his school becoming a “laughing stock,” doesn’t mean that all education is going down the tubes. In reality, more people of colour and women are being educated than ever before. Kids are graduating high school more than ever, and education is more accessible than ever, at least according to the National Centre for Education Statistics. I don’t know if Mr. Prager has ever been to a modern, public university, but the only people that shut down vs debate are people who are not open to new ideas, who feel overwhelmed and persecuted because their opinion isn’t the only one in the school. Also, Christopher Columbus (pictured in the video as a pillar of education) was a genocidal lunatic. He murdered the Tainos people, didn’t discover America, and didn’t prove the earth was round. Go read about that.

2. The Arts - “The primary purpose of art was to elevate people.” I don’t know if there is a single time in human history when this stands true. This is a topic I’ve personally studied and so I’m going to tell you that, for most of human history, the primary purpose of art was for the rich to show off their money. Portraits were paid for by wealthy people to immortalize themselves. Selfie culture who? I also want to point out that, in the animation in the video, an example of “classic art” given is a painting by Monet, a modern artist who’s work was seen as shocking at the time due to it’s non-photorealism. The only reason we see it as beautiful now is because of time and the art prestige classifying it as such. I would also like to point out that the urinal in the next bit of the video was actually “made” around the same point in time. By no means is it something anyone would consider a current piece of art. I would also like to point out that Mr. Prager is being a hypocrite here, employing the imagery of “urine and feces” for shock value, the very thing he had just criticized. Pablo Picasso said, “What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.” Art isn’t for beauty, it’s all politics, war, sex and money.

3. Literature - “The English department of the university of Pennsylvania replaced the portrait of the greatest English writer who ever lived, William Shakespeare, with a picture of a black lesbian poet.” Yes they did, and that poet’s name is Audre Lorde. First, William Shakespeare’s work is not prestigious. His work was not considered refined when it was produced. It’s full of lewd and ridiculous jokes. “Much ado about nothing” roughly translates to “everyone wants the pussy”. “Nothing” was slang back then for vagina. But let’s go back to Lorde. Mr. Prager said that they replaced Shakespeare with her because they value diversity over excellence. What he’s implying is that Lorde is not worth revering, despite being a very important writer of her time, five thousand times more serious than Shakespeare ever was, and her writings are much deeper than Prager gives her credit for. In fact, he gave her no credit, didn’t even say her name.

4. Late-night television - “In America, late-night shows were completely apolitical” This is completely wrong. Late night TV started in the 1940-50’s, and often they were based on politically charged comedy, just like they are now.

5. Religion - “In many churches and synagogues, one is more likely to hear the clergy talk about political issues than about any other subject, including the Bible.” First of all, I would like to point out that political issues were what Jesus mostly talked about. “Love your neighbour” was a direct comment at the racism Jews experienced and held towards others. “Turn the other cheek” was about how to make your aggressor look like a total jerk. What is the point of church if not to give people usable tools in our modern world? That’s what Jesus did. I would also like to point out that, again, this is Prager’s opinion, and it’s clear what kind of content he thinks should be taught.

6. Freedom of Speech: “Yet the whole point of free speech is that it allows people to express any political or social position, including what any one of us considers hate speech.” Except that it doesn’t. Freedom of speech is described: “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” by the International Human Rights Law, but it also states that the rights carry “special duties and responsibilities” and are “therefore ....subject to certain restrictions ... for respect of the rights or reputation of others ....or the protection of national security of public order or of public health or morals.” Freedom of speech is not absolute, and common boundaries are hate speech, food labeling, pornography, obscenity, slander, copyrights, etc. I would also like to point out that him arguing to be allowed to use hateful words is pointing out the obvious: that he hates us, ie: people that he describes in or agrees with this video.

7. Race - “America has become the least racist multiracial society in world history” ding dong, this is so unbelievably wrong. Let’s talk about “systemic racism” for a minute. This isn’t some “angry diatribe,” but a legitimate and historically accurate concern. It is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions, reflected in disparities regarding wealth, income, criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among others. It is a reality that millions of North Americans (yes, Canada’s not clean on this issue) experience daily. For example, Caucasian people and black people consume the same amount of pot on a national scale. Black people are way more likely to be arrested and receive convictions for it. In America, once you receive a criminal conviction, you are no longer able to vote. So even though equal amounts of white and black people use marijuana, black people are arrested and convicted (and therefore cannot vote) because of a system designed to take away their voice. Let’s also touch on the “red lining” from a half-century ago which allowed banks to not lend money to people of colour which created ghettos, which is now home to an overwhelmingly poor and coloured population. That’s systemic oppression and it has been going on for decades. Mr. Prager is the epitome of White Privilege. I’m as white as he is and even I can see that this man hasn’t had to question his good fortune a day in his life and instead chooses to blame others for not “working hard enough” even though they’ve worked harder than he ever has.

8. The Boy Scouts - “They’re not even the Boy Scouts anymore, they’re just the Scouts. The left forced them to admit girls” - So? “The Boy Scouts have helped shape tens of millions of boys into independent and strong good men.” Okay, so wouldn’t you want your girls to grow up strong and independent? How is adding MORE PARTICIPANTS destroying the Scouts exactly?

9. Male-Female - “In New York City, parents do not have to select male or female on a newborn’s birth certificate.” Again, so what? How is that going to affect anyone other than that family. Also, designations of gender at birth on a certificate aren’t set in stone, they can be changed later. It’s not a big deal. Allowing a child to grow up unrestricted in gender norms, won’t create confused people. Letting your boys play with dolls isn’t going to make them want to be a girl, and letting your daughter roll around in the dirt won’t make her a lesbian. Mass confusion doesn’t just happen because of an “x” on a birth certificate.

“America is only bad compared to Utopia.” No, America is bad in comparison to most other first-world countries. The only thing that America excels in is making war. It spends billions of dollars occupying other countries while its people can’t afford health care, food, education, and other basic human rights.

What i find really interesting about this video is that it is completely his opinion. There’s no facts or sources given, he’s chosen his quotes very carefully (even taken them out of context), and I have to conclude that a video like this is only meant to drive the “us vs them” mentality. At it’s best this philosophy is unhealthy, at it’s worst it can kill millions of people and has started countless wars. Mr. Prager isn’t well-educated on most of what he’s talked about. He has an undergraduate in Middle Eastern Studies. Everything else he’s studied appears to be related to orthodox religions. He hasn’t done his research, got some of the most basic ideas completely wrong, and nobody should be listening to a word he has to say on any of the topics he’s talked about in this video.

As someone who used to go to a radical church and was part of the “us vs them” mentality for a number of years, I know that my words aren’t going to change many people’s minds. But what I will say is that we have more in common than we have differences. He said he wants us to debate, so here’s a rebuttal. You can have your opinion but only if you can defend it (not using religious texts). Videos like this are just dividing our culture even more than it already is. My uncle referred to “leftists” as vultures. How awful is that? To dehumanize people so extremely is a great first step to calling for their destruction.

Just ask your German Jewish friends, Mr. Prager.

#leftism #conservatives #conservative #trump #christianity #government #prageru #racism #white privelage #education #systemic racism #omg shut up

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scanlonblogs · 5 years

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Five Reason Not to Stress Over the Future

The future is something everybody stresses over from time to time. We want to be in control of our lives, but when we look towards the future, housing the unknown, we feel like deer in headlights. This will happen from time to time, and it is natural, but the best action to take is to calm yourself. There are no reasons to stress over the future, but there are plenty of reasons to stop stressing over it. Here are five reasons why the future should not be stressed over.

1. The Future is Unpredictable

Nobody can predict the future, but we do our best to try. We dream of our desired outcomes and expect them to become reality. However, things do not always turn out the way we want, and this can lead to disappointment and fear, the fear of the unknown. When we do not have a plan, we panic. We need to know our next move to feel secure. This can cause stress and negative scenarios to flow through our heads. However, life is unpredictable, and because of this, nobody knows what the future holds. The only aspects we can predict are the positive and negative experiences we will inevitably have. Thus, the negative outcomes we create could happen, but so could positive outcomes. Coming to this realization allows you to plan generally, dealing with the negatives when they arise and enjoying the positives as much as possible. Furthermore, life throws unexpected curve balls, meaning the path you are currently traversing may not be the path you end up on. Everything can change instantaneously whether you want it to or not. The goal is to, again, plan generally. If life changes, and it is not something you wanted to happen, like an unexpected death in the family, then the only thing you can do is handle the pain and deal with the negative. Later in life, you will find a positive moment to be thankful for. However, if a curve ball is thrown, and it is a positive one, then congratulations. Sometimes, all you need to do in life is wait for the opportunities to come to you. Overall, do not stress over things that cannot be predicted. Keep doing what you are doing, work hard, and handle whatever life throws your way.

2. Everyone Is in the Same Boat

It may not seem so, but everybody is facing their own battles around you. Whether they are young, old, successful, or poor, everybody has problems, and everyone has worries about the future. Take comfort in knowing you are not alone, as most people feel like they are. People around the world are trying to find their way, and there have been billions of people before us who have searched, worked hard, and succeeded. If people of the past and present have succeeded in finding their way, so can you. However, it is important to remember that everybody is different, and success is dependent on the person. More so, it can take more time than others to achieve success, but that is okay. As long as you push forward and work hard towards success, you have a higher chance of achieving it. We all have to face the future, so do not worry, we will get through it together.

3. You Are in Control

The future is unpredictable, but it is not decided. The fact of the matter is, we are in control of our own destiny. If we want something to change, we have the ability to make that change happen. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, but if we never try, the future will look less familiar than what you pictured. The more we work towards achieving our goals, the higher the chance our future will turn out the way we want to. Of course, everything can change in an instant, but because of that unpredictability, there is a chance everything could work out as well. We will never know unless we try, so it is important to take the first step towards success. Stop stressing over the what-ifs and start shaping the future, your future.

4. It Is Never Too Late

There is no time limit to success despite what you may have heard. Many people assume they are too old, too dumb, too lazy, or their time has passed. Therefore, they cannot change their future through achieving the goals they once had. These people are correct if they continue to believe this nonsense. Again, you can shape the future, but the process of achieving a goal includes patience and determination. Believing it is too late is giving up, and giving up is a sure fire way to fail. There are plenty of stories online of older men and women earning their college degrees because they wanted to succeed. More so, people sometimes get busy with life and put their dreams on hold. When the time comes they can pick up where they left off. The important piece to remember is to never give up. There is always a way, you just have to find it.

5. The Present Shapes the Future

The present is the driving force behind the future, so worrying about the future will do nothing to shape it. Focusing on the present allows you to work towards shaping a better future. For example, if you are worried about making more money, do not stress over what will happen without the extra income. Instead, look for better paying jobs, acquire a second job, third job, whatever you have to do to succeed. If you want a promotion, work towards it, and if it does not happen, then keep trying. The only way the future can become your desired future is by using the present to make it happen. Stress and self-pity solve nothing, actions do. Stop overthinking and focus on today. One day, you will look back and laugh at how pointless stressing over the future really was.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the reasons above? Do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments! Thank you for reading!

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kalesandfails · 5 years

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buckle up

Every time I have done something difficult — from dragging screaming toddlers through the greyhound station to unmedicated childbirth to running a half marathon — I’ve had that moment where my expectations for the thing, those reassurances that it wouldn’t be so bad, crashed hard against the reality that this is actually going to be really, really bad.

This happened all the time when I was working night shift, with a preschooler and an infant at home, and I’d initially feel great about my decision to get up after three fitful hours of sleep. It’s fine! look how bright it is outside! How hard can it be to keep up with people I outweigh by a hundred pounds, people whose needs are limited to breast milk and Thomas the Tank Engine?

And then, later, around one-thirty: oh, no. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

It also happened in social situations: every bad date has that time when the dude or lady across the table brings up how Courtney Love ruined Nirvana or how they “support women” but “don’t need to see Lena Dunham naked all the time” and you realize that the heart wants what it wants, and what it wants to to leave, right now, and go home to underpants with better butt coverage, snacks and Greys Anatomy recaps, but it is seventy-thirty -five and the waitress hasn’t even brought your drinks.

Anyway, I thought I knew better than to hope that maybe there’d be this report and then someone would come along and make Trump stop cutting Medicare and the Special Olympics out of our budget so tin order to pay for a wall that 1. is not evidence based and 2. doesn’t even make sense and 3. is designed to solve a problem that appears not to exist and 4. costs billions of dollars.

Well, we don’t seem to be able to get anywhere pointing out to actual people who pay taxes and rely on Medicare that this guy wants to take money out of Medicare and put it into building this wall, and do you want the wall more than your allopurinol? But maybe we can just make this guy shut up and go away because of how is blatantly collaborating with Russia, as evidenced by how he publicly asks Russia to damage his political opponent and also says he believes Russia and not his own intelligence agency even though Russia is led by a guy who seems to just, you know, kill people he disagrees with and enable genocide. Maybe it's that easy, given how the guy seems to actual revel in both obstructing justice and colluding with Russia. What if it were just that easy? Hey, this will be totally fine!

Except somehow it’s not. And I don’t understand, because this was obviously a totally shit thing to do, like, a bored plotline from another iteration of Mission: Impossible, where a cartoon villain is flirting with the Russian President on national TV and also trying to build hotels in Russia, and we’re all looking around like, did anyone just see that?

But also, I do understand it, because of how fundamental gaslighting is to almost all heteronormative relationships in which I have participated.

To me, it makes total sense that someone will do the thing and then call you crazy for observing that they are doing that thing, and to be honest, this is a solid argument for running a female candidate against Trump in 2020, because men are heavily rewarded for applying this very practice is their relationships with women and women are repeatedly told from childhood that there is a biological difference between them and men that means that we can’t simply call them on their shit until we have thought deeply about the possibility that maybe we are “making” them drink/ name-call/ text their ex-girlfriend. By then they may have gotta over it and come back to apologize, or not; what’s important is that they never actually have to address their behavior on anyone’s terms but their own.

This, of course, is exactly what is happening here. Smarter people than me have pointed out that the deep appeal of Trump is the possibility of a return to a world in which a certain breed of person — the rich white kind — can be glaringly mediocre and still lay claim to whatever they want; a world in which white Americans congratulate themselves for being progressive enough to elect a Black Columbia Law professor and wonder what more people want. A world, maybe, a presidential appointee whose job application highlighted his belief that the President cannot obstruct justice states that a report we have not seen exonerates the president from collusion with a foreign government, despite the fact that the presidents’ political party refuses to allow us to read the report and corroborate this claim, and that is considered not just a win for that president but an indictment against the people who called to investigate him in the first place.

The only only purpose for any of this, from the Trump administration’s perspective, is to reinforce the idea that the President is above the law, and what he says, even when it conflicts entirely with the things we actually can see. You gonna believe your baby or your eyes?

It shouldn’t be hard to say that the bar to be President of the United States should be higher than “we can’t prove this person obstructed justice”. But people want Trump to stay in power because entrenched racism, class disparity, and patriarchal benefit some of us; because climate change is scary and it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist; because it’s hard, exhausting work coming to terms with the ways in which our comfort hinges on the oppression of others and maybe we don’t really want things to be fair if that means we can’t have everything.

But the first step to solving a problem is to get over how things should be and face how things actually are. Right now it is not possible to get this president out of office with this report. As much as we should still try to see it, we need to let go of the idea that getting it released will help get Trump out of office. We need to see it so that we don’t move further along the path towards complete despotism

But it’s not going to help get rid of him. For that, we need to pour another cup of coffee and do the work.

#mueller report #trump #resist

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arcticdementor · 5 years

Link

I agree with this blog’s reader, Matt in VA, who says that American conservatives are so stupid about cultural reality, and so rigidly locked in to a 1980s playbook, that they think the real threat to liberty comes from the State. In fact, says Matt (and he’s right), Woke Capitalism is as great a threat, if not a greater one. He writes:

Basically, the State, itself, won’t need to send secret police out to arrest dissidents, and won’t need to censor samizdat directly. The big corporations (working hand in glove with the political elites, of course) will do it for them. Look at the power Amazon already has over the government and politicians — massive billion dollar subsidies for the world’s richest man (the Amazon deals for the headquarters — why not two new headquarters, right, since each deal means an insane profit taken directly from taxpayers!)

This strategy will be massively effective in no small part because conservative elites are so stupid and short-sighted and dogmatic that they will continue to say “the government has no right to interfere in the Free Market, if Google bans you, well too bad and go start your own search engine!” to its own people until its own people are all wiped from the internet altogether. This will mean economic and social pariah status, and conservative elites will tell their own base that they *deserve* this.

…

Put into more concrete terms, Del Noce saw that having failed at economics, the Marxist idea migrated into culture. “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains,” proclaimed the Communist Manifesto (1848). The “chains” that the post-1968 Left proposes that we lose are all things limiting personal desire, especially sexual desire. This is why Philip Rieff, in his 1966 masterpiece The Triumph Of The Therapeutic, said that the cultural revolution underway in the West (the leading edge of which was the Sexual Revolution) was far more radical than anything the Communists dreamed up.

These days, people hate the term “cultural Marxism” because it has become an alt-right mainstay, but it happens to be true.

…

You see how this works? If you disagree with Abrams, a black woman, then your argument must be in some way bigoted. Thank goodness Fukuyama is of Japanese, not Caucasian, descent, or he would have been dismissed as an Old White Man. It’s a wonder Beauchamp didn’t say “critics like Fukuyama are functionally telling people like her to go to the back of the bus.” The right-wing version of this would be to dismiss a conservative who says the GOP needs to care more about building a robust social safety net and protecting precarious workers by saying, “Sounds like you want socialism, mister.”

…

Here’s what the identity politics people on the Left (and the journalists who write favorably about them) don’t see.

First, you cannot simply wish away these internal conflicts. It is perfectly understandable, and just, to factor in concerns of racial and sexual minorities into one’s politics. We live in a pluralistic, multicultural democracy, after all. What these IP Democrats are doing, though, is privileging certain groups over others. Look at Legutko’s list of the Left’s traditional enemies, and you’ll find a close correspondence with the IP Democrats’ scapegoats:

1. Religion — traditional Christians are bigots, and their schools are bigot factories 2. The Traditional Family — heteronormative and sexist; must be deconstructed, with toxic masculinity excised, and gender nonconformity extolled 3. The Nation — people who oppose open immigration and globalization are bigots; the history of the United States and Western civilization generally is nothing but oppression 4. Moral Conservatism — the philosophy of oppressors who hate women and gays 5. Classical Metaphysics — there is no such thing as objective truth; “justice” is whatever benefits favored classes

If you are white, male, heterosexual, and religiously and/or socially conservative, and if you have a problem with open borders, well, sorry bud, but there’s no place for you on the ID Left. And if you appeal to old-fashioned liberal ideas of fairness and justice, well, that just goes to show that you don’t understand how privilege works, and that in order for justice to be realized, people like you are going to have to lose their jobs and positions in society.

…

It’s fine for people to talk about economic inequality and jobs. It’s good and it’s necessary to do so! But people should not be fooled into thinking that that’s the only thing the Left is concerned with. It’s not even the main thing. Hence the Woke Menace. If the only thing we talk about when we talk about socialism is the economic aspect of it, we will miss what these people will do to our country.

…

If you are white and male, you would be well advised to stay far away from Isis Davis-Marx, I mean, Davis-Marks. She’s watching you, white boy. Whiteness and maleness are evil.

The fact that in the Yale Daily News, she is able to publish a column with these actual words, whereas a white guy who wrote a column about, say, disproportionate black male crime rates, and ended by saying that, “I’m watching you, black boy,” would be thrown out of school and the campus shut down in a paroxysm of social-justice agony — well, that tells you a lot about the nature of the Woke Menace. It’s anti-human moralists, commissars, and informants all the way down.

#rod dreher #the american conservative

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jessicasenvironmentalstudies · 3 years

Text

Overpopulation and Urbanization (Topic #9)

As I write this, the world’s population is at 7,854,812,760 people. The next time I check the World Population Clock the number will have gone down and then up again immensely. Our world population changes every day. It has grown so rapidly that it is unsustainable, which results in harmful environmental impacts. As our population grows, we take more of the earth’s natural resources, our ecological footprints increase, and we break down the natural capital that supports us and our economics. The continuous question that no one seems to know the answer to is, how many people can the earth support and for how long?

Some argue that there are no physical limits to human population growth and economic growth on a finite planet. These analysts believe that technology has allowed us to overcome the environmental limits and increased the earth’s carrying capacity that all populations of species face. These people believe that we can continue increasing economic growth and still avoid serious damage to our life-support systems by making technological advances such as food production and medicine. However, I strongly disagree with that view. Thinking this way is very dangerous and ignores the warnings from environmental scientists. It may be true that technological advances could push back population and resource limitations but it should not be our final solution. For one, some technological advances like food production are responsible for 76 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, which results in more environmental issues like climate change. Second, some technologies are too expensive. Of course, it could be achievable in a developed country like the United States but it would not be easily affordable in less-developed countries like India and Africa.

Out of the 2.5 billion people expected to be added to the world’s population from now to 2050, 95 percent will be born into less-developed countries like India and Africa. These developing countries are not prepared to deal with the pressures of rapid population growth. The main causes of overpopulation are poverty, a lack of educational resources, and high birth rates. Birth rates tend to be lower when women have access to education and employment. So women in less-developed countries with no education are more likely to have two more children than a woman with a high school education level. Another factor for high birth rates is no availability of reliable birth control methods. Family planning is a great solution to these issues. It is a program that provides education and clinical services that help couples choose how many children to have and when to have them. Family planning programs can also provide information on birth control methods and health care for pregnant women and infants. Another factor of overpopulation is migration. Most people who migrate to another area are searching for jobs, education, and economic improvement. People also leave their homes when war or food shortages and soil erosion become a major problem. People are most likely to migrate to urban areas.

(Overcrowding due to overpopulation in India)

Today, 55 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas and is expected to increase to 68 percent by 2050. There are some advantages to urbanization as mentioned before when discussing education, jobs, and medical care like family planning. Also in these areas, recycling is more economically attainable, heating and cooling take less energy because most buildings are multistory apartments and offices rather than heating and cooling single-family homes and small office buildings, and they have lower carbon dioxide emissions due to people driving less often and relying more on mass transportation, walking, and biking. When reading this I was actually very surprised to learn that New York City has some of the lowest per capita carbon dioxide emissions of all cities. However, there are of course many issues with urbanization as well. First, urban sprawl, which eliminates surrounding agricultural and wild lands to build housing developments, shopping malls, parking lots, and office complexes. In the United States, urban sprawl has paved over about 155,000 square kilometers of land, which is an area the size of the U.S. states of Georgia. Other problems include large ecological footprints, health problems, air and water pollution, and climate effects.

(New York City: hundreds of buildings but no wild lands or vegetation)

There are solutions to the disadvantages of urbanization like land-use planning, smart growth policies and tools, and the eco-city concept. I found a case study about the city of Cheyenne in Southeastern Wyoming. In 2003, the city of Cheyenne area had a population of 79,000 people which accounted for 90 percent of the population in Laramie County. The PlanCheyenne was an interagency and multidisciplinary coordination to develop an official development plan. The public was involved in developing a better future for Cheyenne. Public participation included two design charrettes, workshops, community meetings, and a scenario-building exercise. The PlanCheyenne lasted three years and unified federally funded land use, transportation, parks and recreation, and open space planning.

(Researchers conducting urban planning with model)

(Word Count: 830)

Question: What are ways to influence authority leaders in less developing countries so they can provide women access to family planning?

Work Cited:

Sommerfeld, Julia. “Will Technology Save Us from Overpopulation?” NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, March 4, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3072069

https://www.mdt.mt.gov/research/toolkit/m1/casestudies/plancheyenne_wy.shtml

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diaryofanangryasianguy · 7 years

Note

Hello! So I've been asking different blogs their opinions on race, LGBT+, and other "controversial topics" that I don't entirely understand. I wanted to know some examples of ways that (you think) white people should show support for people of other races without "worshipping" those races. Thanks!

Hi there! Sorry for the late reply.

There are tons of different things but one of the most fundamental, basic things is simply to just learn general info/experiences about a specific group that is written, shared, and/or spoken by members of that group. I’m not part of the LGBTQ+ community nor can I speak for other races, but I can help provide *some* info on Asians/Asian Americans.

This very long answer will be broken into two parts: General Info and Asian Americans

Part I: General Info

Some quick facts on Asia:

Asia is the most populous continent in the world, with over 4.4 billion people (nearly 60% of the world’s population).

There are 48 recognized countries in Asia.

There are 6 regions in Asia: North, East, Southeast, South, West, and Central.

Things to remember part 1, Asia is diverse:

All regions in Asia are not interchangeable.

The countries that make a specific region are not interchangeable.

The people, languages, and cultures in each specific country are not interchangeable.

Things to remember part 2, social variation:

All Asian people vary when it comes to educational attainment, from less than high school to doctoral/professional degrees.

All Asian people vary when it comes to economic status, from extremely poor to extremely rich.

All Asian people vary when it comes to political affiliation, from the extreme right to the extreme left (this applies to every other social status/category/etc.)

Things to remember part 3, languages:

Chinese people don’t speak Chinese, they speak in Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.

Indian people don’t speak Indian, they speak in Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, etc.

This goes for many (but not all) people and countries throughout Asia.

Things to remember part 4, difference of “status”:

Asian people in Asia are NOT the same as the Asian diaspora (Asian Americans, Australians, Canadians, British, etc.).

Asian immigrants that immigrate to countries outside of Asia are not the same as the Asian diaspora.

Asian refugees that take refuge in other countries outside of Asia are not the same as Asian immigrants nor are they the same as the Asian diaspora.

Things to remember part 5, Asian diaspora:

Each Asian diaspora group is not the same (so Asian Americans are not the same as Asian Australians for example) and this applies to every diaspora group.

Ethnic groups among the Asian diaspora are not the same (so Vietnamese Americans are not the same as Vietnamese Australians for example) and this applies to every ethnic and diaspora group.

Ethnic groups within an Asian diaspora group are not the same (so Vietnamese Americans are not the same as Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Australians are not the same as Chinese Australians for example) and this applies to every ethnic and diaspora group.

Part II: Asian Americans

Now we can finally start on Asian Americans (because that’s what I am):

The first “Asian Americans” were Filipinos in the 1700s, followed by Chinese in the 1800s.

There are over 21 million Asians in America, about 5-6% of the US population.

The term “Asian American” was coined by Yuji Ichioka, a Japanese American in 1969 (?).

Things to remember part 1, avoid:

Referring to any Asian American (or any Asian person period) as an “orient” or “oriental” as these are racial slurs.

Grouping Asian Americans with Pacific Islanders (Pacific Islander is a separate race and NOT Asian unless mixed).

Explaining an Asian American’s traditions, culture(s), or language(s) to them because chances are, we already know.

Things to remember part 2, “regional” identities:

Many Asian Americans tend to go by regional identities (East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Central Asian, West Asian, and North Asian), though I’ve rarely ever seen West Asian or North Asian being used.

Regional identities group Asian Americans with more “relatable” cultures, identities, groups, and/or people (for example, Chinese and Japanese Americans are both East Asian groups and relate to each other more so than Indian and Bangladeshi Americans, both of which are South Asian groups).

Even if Asian Americans go by regional identities, each ethnic group within it is NOT the same (for example, even though Vietnamese and Filipino Americans are both Southeast Asian, they are completely different from one another).

Things to remember part 3, *some* issues commonly discussed:

Media misrepresentation - model minority myth; whitewashing; cultural appropriation; monolithing different cultures, languages, groups, or individuals; emasculation of Asian American men; submissiveness of Asian American women; erasure of any form especially with experiences, stories, or identities (including LGBTQ+ and mixed people); stereotypes; and other related topics.

Social standing - immigrants from Asia (especially family members); refugees from Asia (especially family members); underreported poverty, gentrification, and crime; wage gaps and disaggregated data (especially among Asian American women); and other topics of social standing/status/class/etc.

History and today - exclusion acts (especially with Chinese in 1882); Japanese internment during WWII; wars; colonialism; imperialism; activism; Islamophobia (including Sikhs); xenophobia; racism; mental health and illness; abuse; and other sensitive topics.

Things to remember part 4, no spokesperson:

There is NO spokesperson for all Asian Americans and I don’t believe that there ever can be because we are too complex, diverse, and constantly changing AND clashing.

No singular person, group, or perspective can explain any and everything that goes on in regards to Asian Americans.

You cannot go to or “use” ONE Asian American and expect them to explain everything or speak for everyone.

For the sake of length, I will end it here but just know this is only scratching the surface. Once you and other people (even Asians/Asian Americans including myself) are able to understand or at least remember some of these things, then we will be able to see and hopefully understand how complex Asians/Asian Americans really are. Of course, this isn’t to say that no one understands, many of us can recognize how different we all are from each other but many parts of the world (especially western countries) generally don’t. Hope this helps.

Note: I don’t speak for everyone, I may be wrong, others may disagree, and other disclaimers.

Angry Asian Guy

#anon #asian #asian american #ask #long reads

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didanawisgi · 7 years

Link

Nina Teicholz; Eric Thorn, MD

"Coconut oil is bad for health!" announced headlines recently when the American Heart Association (AHA) issued a new Presidential Advisory[1] on saturated fats, stating that these fats really do most definitely cause heart disease. As a writer who's spent more than a decade researching the science, and as a cardiologist whose practice is based on the most updated findings, we can say that the AHA paper is an outlier, with at least nine other expert reviews finding weak to nonexistent evidence for this link. Who's right?

What is striking about the latest AHA President's Statement is that it's such an anomaly.

The official notion that saturated fats cause heart disease goes back to 1961, when the AHA published[2] the world's first recommendations to avoid these fats, along with dietary cholesterol, in order to prevent a heart attack. This "diet-heart hypothesis" appeared as a windfall for a panicked public grappling with a disease that had risen quickly from the 1920s on to become the nation's leading cause of death. Yet the diet-heart hypothesis had never been tested in a clinical trial—the only kind of science that can establish cause and effect—meaning that the AHA advice, despite being adopted by most leading experts, lacked a firm scientific foundation.

Recognizing the need for rigorous data, governments around the world, including our own National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent billions of dollars in the ensuing decades on some of the largest and longest human clinical trials ever conducted. Somewhere between 10,000 and 53,000 people were tested on diets in which saturated fats were replaced by unsaturated vegetable oils (the tally depends on which trials are counted). However, the results did not turn out as hoped, and so researchers, either unable or unwilling to believe the outcomes, largely buried the data. For instance, the leaders of one large NIH-funded study with findings unfavorable to the diet-heart hypothesis did not publish them for 16 years.[3] When asked why, one reportedly replied that there was nothing wrong with the study; "We were just disappointed in the way it turned out."[4]

Long-Buried Trials Reexamined

In recent years, however, work by us[5] and others[4] has shed light on these forgotten trials, prompting teams of scientists all over the world to unearth and evaluate this evidence. One set of files was literally hauled out of a basement, reconstructed, and reexamined.[6]

And the results? None of these reviews could find any evidence that saturated fats had an effect on cardiovascular mortality or total mortality (Table).[6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]

As quite a few of the authors state in their conclusions, the results clearly do not support the current national dietary guidelines which limit saturated fats to 10% of daily calories, or those by the AHA and American College of Cardiology, which further limit those fats to 5%-6% of calories for people with high cholesterol.[15,16]

What is striking about the latest AHA Presidential Advisory is that it's such an anomaly. It concludes that swapping saturated fats for vegetable oils will reduce the risk for cardiovascular events by about 30%—as much as a statin! In the four other reviews with similar findings, the risk-reduction estimate did not exceed 19%, and in two cases, these results lost statistical significance when the authors applied more stringent criteria, conducting a sensitivity analysis in one case and removing trials that had been poorly controlled in another. When one examines only the statistically significant results from well-controlled trials, only two review papers had findings similar to the AHA's. All of the others disagreed.

How could separate reviews of largely the same data draw such different conclusions? The disparity hangs mainly on the endpoint chosen for consideration. Looking at the more conclusive, so-called "hard" endpoints of myocardial infarctions, stroke, cardiovascular mortality or total mortality, seven reviews found that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated vegetable oils had no effect. Only by ignoring that data and looking instead at the less definitive composite endpoint of "cardiovascular events," a category that combines heart attacks with more subjective events such as angina, could the AHA arrive at their negative findings for saturated fats.

What's more, even these findings depend on which trials are chosen to include for analysis. A well-conducted trial requires that patients in the intervention and control groups receive the same amount and type of care. For instance, if patients on the intervention diet get all of their meals cooked for them, the control group must get the same (much like patients in drug trials receiving a placebo). Whether testing a drug or special diet, researchers must be careful to avoid the placebo effect, which occurs simply by virtue of receiving some special treatment.

Cherry Picking

Researchers have found that one diet-heart study from the 1970s, conducted in Finnish mental hospitals, was especially poorly controlled. The patients were not randomly assigned and as a result, significant confounding factors make it impossible to determine why cardiovascular event rates differed. For instance, the antipsychotic medication thioridazine, which was later found to cause sudden cardiac death, was dispensed disproportionately to the control arm on the regular saturated-fat diet. Whether the drug or the saturated fats caused higher cardiac event rates, we can't know. For this reason, all of the major review papers on saturated fats since 2014 have excluded this trial.[14] Yet the AHA chose to include it. This Finnish trial also happened to show an exceptionally large cardiovascular benefit from vegetable oils over saturated fats, which clearly drove that statin-like risk reduction of 30%. In fact, an analysis by an Australian researcher discovered that only by including this and other poorly controlled trials could "a suggestion of benefit" from vegetable oils be found.[14]

The AHA advisory also deviated from other reviews in that it examined only four trials. The other nine reviews included an average of 10 (even after many excluded the Finnish study). And again, one has to question the AHA's selection choices. It excluded the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, based on the reasoning that the 9750 men and women who spent a year-plus on the intervention diet did not meet the AHA's standard of "at least two years of sustained intake of the assigned diets." Yet in 2013, the AHA issued a "strong" recommendation for the DASH diet[15] while citing DASH studies on fewer than 1200 people, with no trial lasting longer than 5 months.[17] Why the varying standards?

So much data refute the diet-heart hypothesis that it's a wonder the AHA can ignore it all.

The likely explanation is that the Minnesota Coronary Experiment found no benefit for restricting saturated fats, whereas the DASH trials appear to support the AHA's nutritional advice. As Andrew Mente, PhD, a nutritional epidemiologist at McMaster University, told us, the AHA's choices of what studies to include or not include amounted to "cherry picking."

We all have a tendency to resist seeing evidence that contradicts our preconceived views. After all, we have believed for more than half a century that cholesterol-lowering would inevitably benefit health. A mystifying aspect of most of the diet trials is that they did successfully lower total cholesterol by an average of 29 mg/dL,[14] a sign that whatever their flaws, the participants achieved meaningful dietary changes. Yet lowering total cholesterol didn't reduce mortality. In the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, in fact, researchers later discovered that the more the men were able to lower their cholesterol, the more likely they were to die from a heart attack.[6]

One possible explanation is that while it's true that saturated fats drive up LDL cholesterol a bit, they also raise HDL cholesterol, nullifying the effect on heart-disease risk. Another possibility is that LDL-C is less meaningful than we thought. One little-known reality is that trials lowering LDL-C by diet have failed to yield consistent cardiovascular benefit despite the apparent sustained benefits from LDL-C lowering that have been found in trials on drugs.

Regardless of what happens to cholesterol markers in the blood—a much-debated and still-evolving field—the far more meaningful outcomes are those "hard" endpoints of heart attack and death, and by this reckoning, saturated fats appear harmless.

So much data refute the diet-heart hypothesis that it's a wonder the AHA can ignore it all. In addition to the nine review papers of the clinical trial data, there have been at least four other review papers looking at all the epidemiologic evidence. Such observational data can only show associations, not causation; yet these review papers, on upwards of 550,000 people, have uniformly found no association between the consumption of saturated fats and coronary heart disease.[10,18,19,20,21]

Other data stubbornly out of line with the diet-heart hypothesis include the fact that since 1970, Americans have cut their intake of animal fats by 27% while increasing consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils by nearly 90%.[22]Since the invention of these oils in a chemistry lab in the early 1900s, their consumption has risen more than any other foodstuff in America, to some 7%-8% of all calories by the year 2000.[23] Meanwhile, cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death among men and women, killing more than 800,000 people each year.[24] If replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats were the answer, it seems that we should have seen results by now.

Crisco Conflicts

We believe that one reason for the AHA's resistance to this evidence is its significant, longstanding reliance on funding from interested industries, such as the vegetable-oil manufacturer Procter & Gamble, original maker of Crisco Oil, which virtually launched the AHA as a nationwide powerhouse in 1948.[5]Just recently, Bayer, the owner of LibertyLink soybeans, pledged up to $500,000 to the AHA, no doubt encouraged by the group's continued support of soybean oil, which is by far the dominant type of oil consumed in America today. It is striking that the authors of the three review papers supporting the AHA's stance on vegetable oils all report receiving funding from one or more vegetable-oil companies. Indeed, the review paper that most favored these oils was written by a researcher who discloses serving on the scientific advisory board of Unilever, one of the largest manufacturers of vegetable oils in the world.

Which brings us back to coconut oil. There's no reason to single out this foodstuff, yet the AHA statement devotes a section to it. Yes, coconut oil contains saturated fats, but if one relies upon the vast majority of available evidence, from teams of scientists worldwide, these fats will neither shorten life nor lead to heart disease. Of course it's still possible that a very large, long-term clinical trial could ultimately demonstrate some harm from saturated fats. But over the past half century, the diet-heart hypothesis has been tested more than any other hypothesis in the history of nutrition, and thus far the results have been null.

Readers may charge that a team of top experts from a trusted public health institution have reached these conclusions, so who are we to question them? However, these trusted experts have been proven wrong—on dietary cholesterol caps and on the low-fat diet—such that the AHA has quietly backed out of some of this erroneous advice in recent years. We can again eat eggs, guilt-free (and avocados and nuts). And now, if the AHA were to reckon fully with these long-buried studies on the diet-heart hypothesis, there's every indication that the group should be backing out of the non-evidence-based limits on saturated fats as well. Lacking the evidence to convict, the right thing to do is acquit.

References:

1.Sacks FM, Lichtenstein AH, Wu JHY, et al. Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2017 Jun 15. [Epub ahead of print]

2.Dietary fat and its relation to heart attacks and strokes. Report by the Central Committee for Medical and Community Program of the American Heart Association. JAMA. 1961;175:389-391. Abstract

3.Frantz ID, Dawson EA, Ashman PL, et al. Test of effect of lipid lowering by diet on cardiovascular risk. The Minnesota coronary survey. Arteriosclerosis. 1989;9:129-135. Abstract

4.Taubes G. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2007.

5Teicholz N. The Big Fat Surprise: New York: Simon & Schuster; 2014.

6Ramsden CE, Zamora D, Majchrzak-Hong S, et al. Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). BMJ. 2016;353:i1246.

7Skeaff CM, Miller J. Dietary fat and coronary heart disease: Summary of evidence from prospective cohort and randomised controlled trials. Ann Nutr Metab. 2009;55:173-201. Abstract

8Mozaffarian D, Micha R, Wallace S. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS Med. 2010;7(3):e1000252.

9Hooper L, Summerbell CD, Thompson R, et al. Reduced or modified dietary fat for preventing cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012:Cd002137.

10Chowdhury R, Warnakula S, Kunutsor S, et al. Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2014;160:398-406. Abstract

11Schwingshackl L, Hoffmann G. Dietary fatty acids in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease: a systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression. BMJ Open. 2014;4:e004487.

12Hooper L, Martin N, Abdelhamid A, Davey Smith G. Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2015:Cd011737.

13Harcombe Z, Baker JS, Davies B. Evidence from prospective cohort studies does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med. 2016;3:e000409.

14Hamley S. The effect of replacing saturated fat with mostly n-6 polyunsaturated fat on coronary heart disease: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Nutr J. 2017;16:30.

15Eckel RH, Jakicic JM, Ard JD, et al. 2013 AHA/ACC Guideline on Lifestyle Management to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines. Circulation. 2014;129:S76-99. Abstract

16Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture; 2015.

17Siervo M, Lara J, Chowdhury S, et al. Effects of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet on cardiovascular risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Nutr. 2015;113:1-15. Abstract

18Mente A, Koning L, Shannon HS, Anand SS. A systematic review of the evidence supporting a causal link between dietary factors and coronary heart disease. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169:659-669. Abstract

19Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010;91:535-546. Abstract

20de Souza RJ, Mente A, Maroleanu A, et al. Intake of saturated and trans unsaturated fatty acids and risk of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. BMJ. 2015;351:h3978.

21Mente A, de Koning L, Shannon HS, Anand SS. A systematic review of the evidence supporting a causal link between dietary factors and coronary heart disease. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169:659-669. Abstract

22Bentley J. U.S. trends in food availability and a dietary assessment of loss-adjusted food availability, 1970-2014, . In: U.S. Department of Agriculture ERS, ed. Vol EIB-166, 2017.

23Blasbalg TL, Hibbeln JR, Ramsden CE, Majchrzak SF, Rawlings RR. Changes in consumption of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in the United States during the 20th century. Am J Clin Nutr. 2011;93:950-962. Abstract

24Benjamin EJ, Blaha MJ, Chiuve SE, et al. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2017 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2017;135:e146-e603. Abstract

25Skeaff CM, Miller J. Dietary fat and coronary heart disease: summary of evidence from prospective cohort and randomised controlled trials. Ann Nutr Metab. 2009;55:173-201. Abstract

26Mozaffarian D, Micha R, Wallace S. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS Med. 2010;7:e1000252.

27Otto MC, Padhye NS, Bertoni AG, Jacobs DR Jr, Mozaffarian D. Everything in moderation--dietary diversity and quality, central obesity and risk of diabetes. PLoS One. 2015;10:e0141341

#diet #controversy #best practices #family medicine #cardiology #american heart association #big pharma #Integrative Medicine #coconut oil

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confrontingbabble-on · 7 years

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Every religious belief system...is a complete blasphemy...in the eyes of every other religious belief system...and all are a complete blasphemy in the eyes of rational unbelief...

For example, as outlined by Atheist Ireland ...

“Here are the 25 blasphemous quotes that we first published on 1 January 2010, along with the quotation that has caused the Irish police to investigate Stephen Fry.

1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.

2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.

3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.

4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy — he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”

7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”

9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”

10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”

11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.

18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”

19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”

20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”

21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”

22. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”

23. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.

24. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

25. As a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.

26. Finally, here is the quote that has caused the Irish police to investigate Stephen Fry for blasphemy. Asked by Gay Byrne on RTE what he would say if he was confronted by God, Fry replied: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?” Questioned on how he would react if he was locked outside the pearly gates, he responded: “I would say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’ Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of God would do that?””

https://atheist.ie/2017/05/25-blasphemous-quotes-in-solidarity-with-stephen-fry/

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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wisdomrays · 7 years

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Satan and Humanity.Part2

It is the same with humanity. By fighting Satan and their evil-commanding selves, many “worthless” people have been lost in exchange for hundreds of thousands of Prophets, millions of saints, and billions of men and women of wisdom and knowledge, sincerity and good morals. All of these people are the sun, moon, and stars of the human world.

How Satan Tries To Seduce Humanity. Involuntay evil thoughts, fancies, and ideas are usually the result of Satan’s whispering. Like a battery’s two poles, the human heart (by “heart” we mean the seat or center of spiritual intellect) has two central points or poles. One receives angelic inspiration, and the other is vulnerable to Satan’s whispering.

When believers deepen their belief and devotion, and if they are scrupulous and delicate in feeling, Satan attacks them from different directions. He does not tempt those who follow him voluntarily and indulge in all that is transitory, but usually seeks out sincere, devout believers trying to rise to higher spiritual ranks. He whispers new, original ideas to sinful unbelievers, in the name of unbelief, and teaches them how to struggle against true religion and its followers.

We read in Qur'an 7:17 that when God cursed Satan because of his haughty disobedience, Satan asked for a respite until the Day of Judgment so he could seduce human beings. God allowed him to do so, as was discussed above, and Satan retorted: “Then I shall came upon them from before and behind, from their right and their left, and You will not find most of them grateful.”

The verse means that Satan does everything he can to seduce us. We are very complex beings, for God has manifested all of His Names on us. This world is an arena of testing, where we are trained so that we can serve as a mirror to God and earn eternal happiness. God has endowed us with innumerable feelings, faculties, and potentials to be trained and developed. If certain feelings and faculties (e.g., intellect, anger, greed, obstinacy, and lust) are not trained and directed to lofty goals but rather are misused, and if our natural desires and animal appetites are not restricted and satisfied in lawful ways, they can cause us great harm here and in the Hereafter.

Satan approaches us from the left and tries, working on our animal aspect and our feelings and faculties, to lead us into sin and evil. When he approaches us from the front, he causes us to despair about the future, whispers that the Day of Judgment will never come, and that whatever religions say about the Hereafter is mere fiction. He also suggests that religion is outdated and obsolete, and thus of no use for anyone living now or in the future. When he comes upon us from behind, he tries to make us deny Prophethood and other essentials of belief, like God’s existence and Unity, Divine Scriptures and angels. Through his whispers and suggestions, Satan tries to sever completely our contact with religion and lead us into sin.

Satan can only seduce devout, practicing believers by coming upon them from their right and tempting them to ego and pride. He whispers that they are wonderful believers, and gradually causes them to fall through self-conceit and the desire to be praised for their good deeds. For example, if believers perform supererogatory late-night prayer (tahajjud) and then proclaim it so that others will praise them, and if they attribute their accomplishments and good deeds to themselves and criticize others in secret, they have fallen under Satan’s influence. This is a perilous temptation for believers, and so they must be incessantly alert to this tactic.

Another of Satan’s tricks is to cause unimportant things to appear important, and vice versa. If believers dispute in the mosque over a secondary matter, such as whether one can use a rosary when glorifying God after the daily prescribed prayers, while their children are being dragged into unbelief and materialism or are drowning in the swamp of immorality, Satan has seduced them.

If Satan cannot seduce devout believers, he whispers disagreeable thoughts and fancies to them. For example, by associating some ideas with others, he makes believers have some unpleasant conceptions of the Divine Being, or conceive of unbelief or disobedience. If they dwell on such ideas, Satan pesters them until they fall into doubt about their belief or despair of ever leading a virtuous life.

Another trick is to cause good, devout believers to suspect the correctness or validity of their religious acts. For example: Did I perform my prayer correctly? Did I wash hands or face completely while performing the ritual ablution? How many times did I wash the parts of my body that must be washed?

Believers who are pestered with such involuntary thoughts, fancies, and doubts should know that they are involuntary and that their hearts have no part in them. Just as pirates attack treasure ships, thieves rob rich people, and strong countries try to control rich countries, Satan uses his evil suggestions to harm them. Believers’ hearts become troubled. This resembles a fever, for when the body’s temperature rises, antibodies are formed in the patient’s blood to inhibit or destroy harmful bacteria or germs. Similarly, those with troubled hearts begin to fight.

This shows that such thoughts and suggestions do not come from, and are not approved of or adopted by, the heart. So, just as the reflection of something foul is not foul and does not make you dirty, and just as a snake’s reflection does not bite, conceiving of unbelief is not the same as unbelief, and imagining yourself cursing is not really cursing. It might even be said that Satan’s evil suggestions are beneficial, for they keep believers always on ready to resist temptation and to continue their struggle against the carnal self and Satan. This causes them to make spiritual progress.

How To Resist Satan. In fact, Qur'an 4:76 tells us that the guile of Satan is ever feeble. It resembles a cobweb that appears while you are walking between two walls. It does not cause you to stop, and you should not give it any importance. He suggests or whispers and presents sinful acts in a “falsely ornamented wrapper,” and so believers must never accept his “gifts.” When he whispers evil thoughts, believers should know that this is his last, and weakest, strategy and treat it accordingly. If they pay attention to such whispering, they might be defeated. Like a commander who, deceived by his own fear, dispatches his army to the two wings and leaves the center exposed, believers exhaust their powers of perseverance and resolve by fighting Satan and their own carnal selves when they concentrate on such whispering. In the end, they cannot withstand the real fight.

To free yourself from such evil suggestions, remove yourself from the attractive fields of Satan and sin. Heedlessness and neglect of worship are invitations to Satan’s “arrows.” The Qur'an declares: Whose sight is dim to the remembrance of the All-Merciful, We assign unto him a devil who becomes his comrade (43:36). Remembrance of the All-Merciful, noble or sacred phenomena, and a devout religious life protect us from Satan’s attacks. Again, the Qur'an advises: If a suggestion from Satan occurs to you, then seek refuge in God. He is All-Healing, All-Knowing. Those who fear God and ward off (evil), when a passing notion from Satan troubles them, they remember, and behold, they see (7:200-1).

God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, advised: “When you are angry, sit; if you are standing, sit down; lie down or stand up if you are sitting and perform the ritual ablution.” On the way back from a military expedition, the Prophet called a halt at a certain place. They were so tired that they slept through the time for the dawn prayer. When they woke up, the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, commanded: “Leave here at once, for Satan rules this place.” The Prophet also says that Satan flees the call to prayer (adhan).

Satan sometimes tries to tempt us through obscene scenes. He causes us to obsess over illicit pleasures. On such occasions, try to persuade yourself that any illicit pleasure will result in fits of remorse and may endanger your afterlife or even your mortal life. Know that the life of this world is but a passing plaything, a comforting illusion, and that the true life is that of the Hereafter. When some of his men hesitated to join the expedition to Tabuk because of the scorching summer heat, God warned them of summer: The heat of Hell is much more intense, if they would but understood (9:81).

#islam #allah #satan #humanity #afterlife #quran #ayat

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