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highlydissfunctional · 5 years

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Fandom & fan activism: Truly toxic or considerably constructive?

How many of us have firsthand or secondhand experience of the conversation below?

X: What music do you like?

Y: I’m a fan of One Direction’s stuff!

X: Oh, you’re one of them [scorns]

And by them, X probably meant:

We sort of understand what warranted X’s negative reaction when it was discovered that Y was part of the One Direction – or Directioner – fandom. But before we dive into why one would rather get maced in the face than to admit to being part of a fandom, and whether it’s really all that bad, let’s first begin by answering the most basic question: What is a fandom?

The term fandom is popularly used by the younger generation as means of identifying oneself with a social group that is a fan base of any entertainment content in the form of TV shows, films, novels, music, games or even celebrities. Thus, to be part of a fandom of something, one must first be a fan. But in today’s world populated with people who are quick to judge, fans have become marginalized and are used to being mocked by the media. To be a fan now, is to be shadowed by social stigma that paints you (if you’re a fan) as brainless and borderline crazy; something to be avoided like a plague.

However! Digital Communities MDA20009 and I are here to present fans and fandom to you in a new and more positive light; to show the other side of fan culture that usually goes unnoticed or blatantly ignored – the side of it that views these media consumers as proactive, critically engaged and creative instead of over-the-top, obsessive and people-who-have-too-much-time-on-their-hands.

To understand this, we must first look into the participatory culture present in fan-fictions, fandom web forums and when game companies give public access to their design tools to source for programmers (Jenkins 2006). Members of this culture is defined by Jenkins (2006) as someone who’s comfortable with artistic expressions and civic engagement; supportive of the creation and sharing of one’s creations with others; has experienced some kind of informal mentorship whereby knowledge from those most experienced are shared with novices; believe the significance in their contributions; and feel a degree of social connection with other members. It should also be noted that contributions do not have to be provided by every member, but they should believe that they are welcomed to contribute when ready and that their contributions will be valued and appreciated.

Based on this fundamental fandom concept, it would seem that the roots of fandom are pretty wholesome and inclusive.

Yet, people still view fandom as the black hole that created a participation culture practiced by problematic people who attract other problematic people into the picture. They forget that participation is an action that has existed long before computers or the internet was created, and that their creation merely enabled people to take this action across the physical plane onto the virtual plane to be developed into fandom’s current participatory culture. Moreover, instead of focusing so religiously on how fandom is stupefying the next generation, more attention should be directed at how its participatory culture are opening doors for the same generation to forge their creativity, develop certain skills and knowledge and boost their self-confidence – all of which would benefit these youngsters in the future as working adults.

And to those who have doubts about how fandom actually affords all these benefits, Henry Jenkins got you covered.

In his blog about the participatory culture, he highlighted that people part of a fandom are already in this self-enrichment process through affiliations in online communities, expressions from producing new creative content, collaborative problem-solving with others to complete tasks and develop new knowledge, and circulations which shape the flow of media (such as blogging).

Besides, who’s to say that fandom’s contribution to a fan’s growth as an individual stops there? Who’s to say that fans can’t achieve higher levels of self- and societal awareness and become activists themselves?

And thus on the 12th day of Christmas, God gave us fan activism.

Based on its definition by Jenkins, fan activism can be understood as a form of civic engagement and political participation emanated from fan culture and are basically fan-driven efforts to engage and address civic, social and political issues. Using superheroes or fictional elements from novels for activism is a classic example of fan activism whereby people looking to promote social change are utilizing the emotional and imaginative properties of popular culture to connect more intensely with their supporters (Jenkin & Shrestovva 2012).

And because popular culture – especially blockbuster franchises – are known and favored by many, it can serve as a common reference point for both protesters and casual observers and be used as an effective community-bridging tool for organizing collective movements (Jenkin & Shrestovva 2012). Additionally, this would make activism work more appealing and approachable to the younger generation who are usually excluded from traditional, ‘adults-only’ campaigns especially since social media is heavily used for for this new kind of social campaign.

But fans don’t usually wake up one morning and think, “I’m going to fight sex trafficking today.” What links fans with actual social or political activism and motivates them to be part of an activist group is the subject matter of each fandom aka the singers, the actors, the celebrities.

Some examples of celebrity-inspired fan activism for social causes include Alyssa Milano’s constant encouragement of fans to embrace female power and to stand up against sexual harassment; how Mark Ruffalo has never stopped being vocal on issues like sexual harassment and fracking in hopes to inspire fans to fight for the same causes; and BTS’ collaboration with UNICEF for an anti-violence campaign to raise funds and awareness among fans towards creating a safer, violence-free world for children.

Although there have been murmurs of discontent from fans who resist the idea of mixing something as serious as activism into simple, care-free fan activities, it is hard to forgo the beneficial elements of fandom in paving a path to social activism and influencing fans to use it for analysis, networking, mobilization and communication related to campaigns for social causes, which is ultimately a big plus for societies in general.

Hence, my verdict on the topic:

Fandom and fan activism are constructive when it is viewed and understood from an objective, unbiased perspective. Moreover, I personally think that fandom comes very close to being the perfect instrument in facilitating fights for social causes because as mentioned in my previous blog about social media’s role in the activism world, individuals with fame written in their résumé aka celebrities tend to make good symbols of movements because of their widely established identity.

These famous faces – the subject of fandom – who are already admired, respected and idolized by many make good leaders in uniting people among a socially diverse constituency to come together for a cause. They can easily serve as the guitar pick used to struck the emotional chord of their fans, the face of movements that activists have spent most of their life fighting for, and the key to reaching millions and millions of people that can be made aware of the rising social issues that they otherwise would remain ignorant about....that is, if these celebrities are willing to stand in the limelight and establish themselves as a true blue activist, just like good ol’ Mark Ruffalo.

So, to all famed people out there: stay informed, stay aware, be a Mark Ruffalo (minus the anger issues).

References

Jenkins, H 2006, ‘Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide’, NYU Press.

Jenkins, H & Shrestova, S 2012, ‘Up, up and away! The potential of fan activism’, Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 10.

Jenkins, H 2006, ‘Introduction: Confessions of an Aca-Fan’, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, NYU Press, New York, pp. 1-6.

#weeklyblogs #week9 #fandom #fanactivism #mda20009

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geopolicraticus · 7 years

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Of Vacuity and Blankness

The Convertibility of Vacuity and Blankness

I have written a few posts on the role of vacuity in philosophical principles -- Constructivism without Constructivism, The Vacuous Identity Principle, and, most recently,The Principle of Vacuous Pragmatism -- as well as several posts on the role of the “blank slate” in contemporary philosophical thought -- The Metaphysical Blank Slate, Addendum on the Metaphysical Blank Slate, Further Addendum on the Metaphysical Blank Slate, and, most recently, Blank Slate Cosmology. It would be a good idea, I now realize, to inquire into the relationship, if any, between the vacuity of vacuous principles and the blankness of various blank slates. Vacuity and blankness are, after all, synonymous in many contexts. A blank slate is a vacuous slate, and I could have called the vacuous identity principle the blank slate identity principle.

The Popular Piety of Positivism

One of the important things to realize about the idea of the blank slate is that this is one of those rare philosophical doctrines that has made its way into contemporary popular culture, influencing the lives of millions if not billions (for this is possible today) of individuals. Indeed, the idea of the blank slate may be considered the equivalent, for industrial-technological civilization, of the theological ideas present in agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, a few of which entered into contemporaneous life and became the basis of political controversy and popular piety.

The blank slate, which is the popular piety of scientific civilization (being a scientific idea with moral implications, making it an appropriate focus for those seeking meaning within scientific civilization), is an assertion that there are no principles when it comes to the mind. If construed more broadly, or maximally broadly in the case of blank slate cosmology, it is the assertion that there are no principles of cosmology. In so far as we deny principles of the mind, of society, of civilization, of cosmology, and so on, the principle of vacuous identity holds that all beings are ontologically equivalent in terms of being equally vacuous in their essential nature, even if we treat them for all practical purposes as being essentially different. This is, roughly, the position of positivism, especially those shrill forms of positivism that came of age in the early twentieth century and foundationally shaped the character of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. (It could also be argued that this is the position of speculative realism, which focuses on the “democracy of objects” and acknowledges no privileged objects, making all beings ontologically equivalent.)

There is a dialectical interplay between the principle of vacuous identity and the principle of vacuous pragmatism. In so far as the idea of the blank slate is held in common, this constitutes a principle, and in so far as there is disagreement over the implications of this principle, we fulfill the conditions of the principle of vacuous identity. However, at the same time, in so far as we agree upon social action in the context of a world without principles, the principle of vacuous pragmatism holds.

Partially Blank Slates and Partially Vacuous Identity

Now, I can easily imagine that a reader friendly to the doctrine of the blank slate might well affirm the blank slate in relation to the human mind, but deny its extrapolation to more complex wholes. Similarly, someone might have a blank slate conception of cosmology or ontology (or both), and yet deny the blank slate doctrine when it comes to the human mind (or animal minds) narrowly considered. Indeed, I think the latter is often the position of scientific positivists who hold a positivistically-inspired blank slate cosmology while admitting to the evolutionary psychology that shapes the human mind, while the former is implicit in a well-meaning moral affirmation of human equality that does not bother to consider the consequences of this affirmation.

There is an ambiguity in the above that should be more fully examined: cosmology is greater in scope than the mind, but in so far as cosmology only considers mute matter -- particle physics extrapolated to a gravitational scale -- it studies an object of intrinsically less complexity than the mind. However, if our conception of cosmology includes all that occurs within the cosmos, then this comprehensive cosmology involves all emergent complexities (perhaps including emergent complexities that have yet to emerge within the cosmos) and this comprehensive whole is more complex than the mind on its own. This ambiguity is not a fatal objection, as we can simply be a bit more careful in outlining the alternatives between a simple state of affairs asserted to be a blank slate and a more complex state of affairs not a blank slate, or, vice versa, a simpler state of affairs denied to be a blank slate while a more complex state of affairs is asserted to be a blank slate.

Precisely parallel to this, it is easy to imagine an individual advocating the principle of vacuous identity for one particular class of individuals, or for several classes of individuals, while denying it to another class of classes of individuals. In other words, the conceptions of the blank slate and of vacuous identities are not necessarily or intrinsically totalizing philosophical conceptions. One can judiciously argue for blank slates or vacuous identities without doing so across the board, and one can do so consistently and without risking a charge of hypocrisy. This is a perfectly reasonable position to take.

An intuitive way to think of this is that the world might be shot through with holes, ellipses, and various forms of vacuity, but this does not entail the vacuity of the world or the emptiness of all things. Indeed, it could well be argued (and often has been argued) that ellipses and vacuities only derive their meaning in contrast to substance and content. This is a little like Spinoza saying that the true is the criterion both of itself and the false (and there is a long philosophical history of regarding nothingness as a privation of somethingness).

As far as I am concerned, this is all to the good, since totalizing thought is often inhuman in its consequences (converging on totalitarianism), but this is no objection to a theory if it is correct. Also, as I have noted above, the idea of the blank slate has in fact been extrapolated to totalizing dimensions in the idea of a cosmological blank slate. One need not take the step beyond some specific blank slate to a totalizing conception of the blank slate, but it is at least arguable that positivism, as a philosophy, does indeed take this step -- or attempted to take this step and stumbled, because positivism as an overarching philosophy is intrinsically opposed to overarching philosophies.

Principled Thought is Limited by Complexity

It is tempting to assert that the mind is a blank slate because we do not yet have the philosophical or scientific sophistication that would be necessary to give a principled account of the mind, in the way that we can give a (partially) principled account of elementary particles. (Even evolutionary psychology would only be a stepping stone on the way to a fully formalized theory of mind that recognizes the mind as a certain kind of structure in the world.) We can also give a (partially) principled account of the largest structures of cosmology, describing stellar evolution and galactic ecology, which grows directly out of the emergent complexities, but there is at least as much in cosmology of which we can give no account -- the relationship between general relativity and quantum theory, the nature of dark matter, and the nature of dark energy -- and in recognizing these present limitations of scientific knowledge we need not make any claims about the universe based on our own limitations. Indeed, to do so is to overstep the bounds of science.

How does one give a principled account of anything, be it a mind or a universe? At the present stage of our civilizational development, a principled account of some phenomenon is understood to be a scientific theory of that phenomenon. At our present stage of scientific development, we are able to formulate scientific theories of some aspects of the world, but other aspects of the world elude our present ability in science. Ought we to conclude that that which cannot be explained by science as we know it today cannot ever be explained by any science, and must they be relegated to a mystical realm that science can never touch? Or is it possible that our ability to formulate a scientific theory of anything is relative to our level of intellectual achievement?

These considerations are related to what I wrote in Sciences Hard and Soft, in which I argued that the reason we do not yet have a rigorous, formal, and quantitative science of society is not that this is impossible, but because it is much more difficult than a rigorous, formal, and quantitative science of elementary particles. As complicated as elementary particles are, they are not nearly as complicated as human beings, who are composed of elementary particles, and human beings are not as complicated as civilizations, that are composed of human beings. At each level of emergent complexity the problem of formulating a rigorously formal science is made more difficult by an order of magnitude.

A formal account of the nature of mind eludes the present level of human development, and in a strange kind of reflexivity (since in attempting to formulate a theory of mind, it is the mind that is attempting to do so) this seems to point to an intrinsic limitation on the part of the mind -- but is this limitation to be found on the side of nature or on the side of humanity? What I mean by this is to ask whether the intrinsic limitation of mind is the ability of mind to understand itself, or whether the intrinsic limitation is the amenability of the mind to be understood? The former position would be to postulate a kind of ellipsis in the mind’s understanding that forbids the mind to understand itself; the latter position is like Colin McGinn’s transcendental naturalism, and the well-known quote from J. B. S. Haldane: “...the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Laws of Nature as a Metaphysical Bias

Another way to formulate our inability to give a formal account of mind is to acknowledge that we can give no account of mind in terms of laws of nature. However, I take a position on laws of nature that is not well represented in contemporary philosophy, though I think it accords well both with the evidence and with common sense. I have not yet attempted an exposition of my views because, of course, the role of laws of nature is a large and difficult topic in the philosophy of science. The most common contemporary conceptualization of laws of nature tends to make the same (teleological) error that we find in a lot of misinformed thought about biology. Indeed, I guess I should identify that reification of laws of nature as an obvious metaphysical bias that finds itself expressed throughout much of contemporary science.

Science would seem to be committed to the idea of laws of nature, as science is often identified as the attempt to discover and formulate these laws. But we need not reify these laws. i.e., we need not assert that the laws of nature are eternal, or certain, or immutable (traditional properties of divinity in many theologies), nor that they are ontologically or temporally prior to matter, the behavior of which is predicted by these laws. A less metaphysically biased science would formulate laws of nature that describe the world in which we find ourselves without making unverifiable claims about the nature of these laws themselves. Metaphysical claims about laws of nature that cannot be demonstrated scientifically have no place in science, though they are a legitimate concern for philosophy of science.

More Loose Ends than a Neatly Tied Philosophical Bundle

So now I have come rather far afield, without clarifying blanks slates or vacuity, and the reader (if the reader has made it this far) can probably tell that I am grasping at an elusive idea that I have not yet formulated with the clarity that I would like -- the kind of clarity that suddenly cuts through the metaphysical bewilderment and achieves an ex post facto understanding of what one was trying to do all along, i.e., an “Aha!” moment. That moment has not yet come.

At the same time that I have failed to do justice to the clarification of vacuity and blankness, I realize that I have also failed to systematically connect these to the related ideas of effacement -- explored in History Effaced, On the Longevity of Submerged Civilizations, A Brief History of the Loss of History, Constructing Prediction Walls, and The Effacement of Being -- as effacement might also be understood as convertible with vacuity and blankness. There is, then, a great deal of both systematization and analysis yet to done here.

#blank slate #philosophy of science #laws of nature #metaphysical bias #vacuity #effacement

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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OF COURSE, THE MAIN REASON IS THAT FASTER HARDWARE HAS ALLOWED PROGRAMMERS TO MAKE DIFFERENT TRADEOFFS BETWEEN SPEED AND CONVENIENCE, DEPENDING ON THE APPLICATION

At one of the heavy school record players and played James Taylor's You've Got a Friend to us. The Nude is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people would do. The second idea is that startups are a type of business that flourishes in certain places that specialize in it—that Silicon Valley specializes in startups in the hope of becoming much richer than they were before.1 To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only the important stuff. Though a rejection doesn't necessarily tell you anything about your startup, it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and runtime.2 In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. At the very least, we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Though novice investors seem unthreatening they can be the most dangerous forms of procrastination are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. And so most of them don't.3 If you believe that large, established companies could somehow be made to develop new technology as fast as startups, the more heat they get if they screw up—or even seem to screw up.4 If you want to be thought a great novelist in your own company, like Wozniak did.

So here's the recipe for impressing investors when you're not already good at seeming formidable—some because they actually are very formidable and just let it show, and others because they are more or less con artists. There are, of course. A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on it had been nice growing up in the country. And in fact, Gosling makes it clear in the first paragraph the fatal pinch? Periods and commas are constituents if they occur more than 10 who are interested; it's difficult to talk to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do. For example, the president notices that a majority of voters now think invading Iraq was a mistake, so he makes an address to the nation to drum up support.5 I see five things that probably account for the difference. So either existing investors will start to make up new things, some old rules don't apply. Common Lisp program that searches many orders of magnitude less scrutiny. We no longer admire the sage—not the way people did two thousand years ago. And, like Microsoft, they're losing.6 But gradually I realized it wasn't luck.

Like the JV playing the varsity, if you want to stop buying steel pipe from one supplier and start buying it from another, and though they hate to admit it the biggest factor in their opinion of you is other investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. This is arguably a permissible tactic.7 Language design is being taken over by hackers. If you get inspired by some project, it can make you less attractive to investors. He grew up in the company and went to work for a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs. It's not just that one's brain is less malleable.8 By far the biggest problem. Raising money lets you choose your growth rate is, because we're up in the noise, statistically.9 Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. But aside from that, I now believe, is like a ride in a Ferrari.

But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. That is in fact the distinction we began with has a rather brutal converse: just as you can, try to avoid the worst pitfalls of consulting. His class was a constant adventure. The people running the test really care about its integrity. Now, thanks to the documentary series Civilisation.10 The structure of their business means a partner does at most 2 new investments a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month. This is the single most common lie they're told. The owner wanted the student to pay for the smells he was enjoying. Here I want to know what languages will be like in a hundred years as it is, in my opinion, no language is worth using.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone. So these five false positives are so much worse than they seem.11 If a language is itself an object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. Free! 7x 2% 2. I can tell from a thousand little signs. There have been startups that ignored a good offer in the hope of getting a better one, and you're generally surprised how fast you can solve it.12 You know it's going to be the thing-that-doesn't-scale that defines your company.

Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they contain urls. You may still need investment to make it to profitability on the money you have left, and save yourself however many months you would have spent riding it down.13 Either the company is starting to appear in the mainstream. That is one of the main ways investors judge you. Be flexible. Subject Free Subject free FREE! It's sadly common to read that sort of narrow focus can be. Of course they do. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has such a core is one of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. And they turned him down. Hard to say exactly, but wherever it is, if you write them in Lisp?14

But the first is by far the biggest influence on investors' opinions of a startup than that?15 First of all, he was often in doubt. When it was first developed, Lisp embodied nine new ideas. How long will it take them to grasp this? Klee and Calder.16 In my filter, the spam probability of only 65%. Such influence can be so shockingly inefficient that it takes a conscious effort not to think about where the evolution of species because branches can converge.

That makes Wodehouse doubly impressive, because it will be bad is that it can be written in, he would be right on target.17 Focus on the ones that generate most growth if they succeed?18 So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today. A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on it had been nice growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too. Python to evolve the rest of us can use. Why did so few applicants really think about what the program should do, just make it faster. Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed a small and uninteresting area—experimental error, even—turns out, when examined up close, to have a separate note with a different cap for each investor. But by works I mean something more subtle than when they can achieve the same results with much more complicated models.

Notes

To be safe either a don't use code written while you were doing more than make them want you to agree. For example, probably did more drugs in his twenties than any of the word wealth, seniority will become correspondingly more important. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and are paid a flat rate regardless of the 3 month old Microsoft presented at a pre-Google search engines.

What they must do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else. This is not work too hard to say, recursion, and b not allow them to. To writing essays is to protect against truly determined attackers.

Note: An earlier version of this model was that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some central tap. Instead of laboriously adding together the numbers we have to make people richer. Obviously this is a bad idea has been happening for a solution.

But that solution has broader consequences than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters.

This of course finding words this way, because the processing power you can talk about aspects of startups small this first summer, we're going to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. The only reason I stuck with such energy that he had more fun in this, I was once trying to sell services than a nerdy founder trying to meet people; I was not drinking that kool-aid at the network level, because there are some controversial ideas here, since they're an existing university, or at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe, and that injustice is what you learn via users anyway.

Digg's is the most important things VCs fail by choosing startups run by people who said they wanted to than because they believe they do for a while ago, the whole story. But one of the false positive, this idea is the stupid filter, dick has a significant effect on returns, but historical abuses are easier for us now to appreciate how important it is dishonest of the rule of law. There are successful women who don't care what your body is telling you. Robert V.

35,560. That's why the series AA terms and write them a check. Bill Yerazunis. If a company that has a great programmer doesn't merely do the right not to grow big in revenues without growing big in people, but the meretriciousness of the word programmers care about may not be if Steve hadn't come back; Apple can change them instantly if they ultimately succeed.

Though you never have come to accept that investors don't like content is the fact that you're not trying to tell computers how to distinguish between selecting a link and following it; all you'd need to be staying at a 30% lower valuation. Economically, the only companies smart enough not to do it. Don't even take a lesson from the rest of the War on Drugs.

No VC will admit they're influenced by buzz. Many hope he was made a better source of them, would not change the world.

Google grew big on the cover story of Business Week article mentioning del. Oddly enough, a valuation.

Microsoft, not lowercase.

Corollary: Avoid starting a startup. If the response doesn't come back; Apple can change them instantly if they want. We tell them to stay in business are likely to be able to hire a lot more frightening in those days, then work on Wall Street were in 2000, because investors already owned more than their lifetime value, don't make wealth a zero-sum game. Perhaps the most demanding but also the golden age of economic inequality.

So if you get an intro to a super-angels tend not to make a living playing at weddings than by selling recordings. I'm using these names as we think. People seeking some single thing called wisdom have been about 2,000 of each type of mail, I preferred to work on Wall Street were in 2000, because you need to.

Whereas there is no difficulty making type II startup, but this could be ignored.

It seems quite likely that in the right thing to be a strong one.

Believe it or not, greater accessibility.

The dictator in the technology business. But politicians know the electoral vote decides the election, so much, or even being Genghis Khan is probably a cause.

Ed.

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giftofshewbread · 4 years

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Remarkable

: By Daymond DuckPublished on: May 3rd, 2020

This article begins with a list of remarkable facts that some readers already know.

The Jewish Talmud, Barnabus (a companion of Paul), Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and others taught that the earth would go through a 7,000-year cycle (6,000 years of human rule and 1,000 years of Messiah’s rule), and the last days of man’s 6,000 years are about up (1,000 years of our time is like one day to God; The last days of human rule started almost 2,000 years ago (Gen.2:17, 5:5; II Pet. 3:8; Acts 2:17).

Psalm 90 is called a prayer of Moses, and not all agree, but many believe that verse 10 teaches that a generation is 70-80 years. (Only God knows, but we could be the terminal generation that Jesus talked about in Matt. 24:34.)

The word “Trump” appears twice in the Bible, and both passages are about the Rapture (I Cor. 15:52; I Thess. 4:16).

Trump was born 700 days before Israel became a nation in 1948; he won the election by a margin of 77 votes; and he was 70 years, 7 months, and 7 days old on the day he was inaugurated.

Prime Min. Netanyahu had been in office 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days on the day that Donald Trump was elected.

Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in Israel’s 70th year.

Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem on Israel’s 70th birthday.

Trump’s Sec. of State, Mike Pompeo, is the 70th person to hold the job, and he accepted it in Israel’s 70th year of existence.

On Apr. 14, 2020, the world population meter hit 7,777,777,777 (10-7’s), and prophetically speaking, 10 is usually considered to be the number of completeness.

On Mar. 26, 2020, Microsoft published its application (filed internationally on 6-20-2019 under the number WO2020060606, which means World Order 2020 666) for a patent on a Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data (technology that will connect a person to a computer over a cell phone, or whatever, and allow that person to scan a tattoo or a Mark that will grant access to a Cryptocurrency that can be tracked and used to buy and sell).

Microsoft’s patent, World Order 2020 060606, is not the Mark of the Beast yet; it is not mandatory yet; the False Prophet is not involved yet, but an international patent on a system to track buying and selling that is numbered 666 (the number of the Antichrist’s name; Rev. 13:18) could be a sign that the Mark of the Beast System is being developed.

By the way, the word “Mark” is where we get our word “tattoo.”

The Mark of the Beast will be in a person’s right hand or in their forehead, and Gates wants to put the tattoo under a person’s skin.

This list has been compiled because the 6,000 years of human rule, a possible terminal generation of 70-80 years, a President named Trump, the unusual appearance of the number 7, and the World Order number 060606 on a patent application to track buying and selling have converged in this generation.

The significance may be questionable, but the facts are remarkable, and there is the possibility that God could be using these facts to alert those that are watching.

Consider this:

In less than three months, the global economy has almost been destroyed;

several oil companies are facing bankruptcy;

millions of jobs have been lost;

the U.S. Constitution has been trampled upon; several institutions (churches, schools, colleges, etc.) have been disrupted;

Christians have been told not to go to Church, not to shake hands, not to hug;

more than 200,000 people have died;

thousands of families didn’t get to say goodbye and many did not get to provide a normal funeral;

supply chains have been disrupted;

there have been some cases of panic buying; some store shelves have empty spaces;

some in the military have the virus;

some hospitals have been overrun;

many businesses have closed (some permanently);

drones from China are watching people in Connecticut to see if they are social distancing, coughing or sneezing;

Pope Francis is pushing a world government, a world religion, wealth redistribution, and more.

Yes, there are people that make themselves willingly ignorant of what is going on, but there are also many excellent prophecy teachers who understand that Jesus indicated there will be a convergence of the signs at the end of the age, and they realize that at least some of this relates to Bible prophecy.

Many believe Bible prophecy is being fulfilled all around us and we are getting just a tiny glimpse of what the Tribulation Period will be like.

Here are some more remarkable facts.

One, on Apr. 20, 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz agreed to form a new National Emergency Unity Government.

On July 1, 2020, they will initiate legislation to annex several areas in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).

Expanding Israel’s borders is a good thing, but there is a big problem.

Israel and the U.S. are proposing a map that will divide Israel and set aside perhaps as much as 2/3 of Judea and Samaria for a Palestinian state.

The good news is that the Palestinians probably will not accept that; but more importantly, God will not accept it either, and He may respond (see Joel 3:2).

Two, on Apr. 21, 2020, it was reported that YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki admitted that YouTube has removed thousands of videos because they contradict World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.

So, the Director-General of the WHO is a Communist from Ethiopia; his main support comes from China; Pres. Trump has suspended U.S. contributions to the WHO for parroting China’s lies and mishandling the Coronavirus Crisis; the U.S. States of Missouri and Mississippi are suing China for lying; and YouTube is censoring those that contradict what the liars at the WHO say.

Truth and freedom will not be tolerated in the coming world government; and lest we forget, the WHO is working with Bill Gates, Dr. Fauci and George Soros to force everyone on earth to be vaccinated and tattooed (Marked), if they want to work, buy and sell.

Three, on Apr. 22, 2020, it was reported that 19 members of the G-20 held a virtual meeting and called for a document to be signed to strengthen the WHO and put it in charge of a coordinated worldwide response to the Coronavirus Crisis.

Trump did not participate, but if he had not blocked it, the WHO would have already been empowered to mark and track everyone on earth (see Rev. 13:15-17).

Considering what the U.S. Constitution says, why should U.S. citizens be forced to obey an unelected organization (the WHO) composed mostly of foreigners under a lying Communist leader that is influenced by Gates, Soros and Fauci?

Four, on Apr. 21, 2020, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme told the UN Security Council the Coronavirus Crisis may cause widespread famine of Biblical proportions in more than 30 African nations (see Rev. 6:5-8).

We are now being told that there is a chance of some food shortages in the U.S.

Five, on Apr. 24, 2020, UN Sec. Gen. Guterres announced that the Global Vaccination Response Team will be headed up by French Pres. Emmanuel Macron and Melinda Gates.

Macron is an avid supporter of the New World Order, and Gates is the wife of Bill Gates, a strong advocate for population control, mandatory vaccinations and digital tracking of everyone on earth.

It is impossible to overemphasize how remarkable and dangerous these events are.

The globalists are not going to wait until Jan. 1, 2030, and try to get a one-world government up and running in one day.

Laws must be written and put into practice; many groups, including the 10 Kings, must be approved, staffed and funded; offices and equipment must be acquired; those that oppose it must be brought under control; a global economic system must be established; the world government must be funded (Guterres recently asked for a 10% global tax), and more.

The process of bringing this about appears to have started, the globalists are not going to back off, they are going to become more aggressive, and where the Bible says this is going is more dangerous than the Coronavirus.

Right now, they are trying to put America’s healthcare system under the control of the WHO, shutting the doors of America’s churches to bring Christianity under control, seeking to replace America’s currency with a digital system, initiating a surveillance system tied to a global ID to track everyone on earth, and this is just the beginning.

The Rapture is probably close, but if there is a little more time, there is no telling what the globalists will do (or what God will do) as the world moves closer to 2030 and the globalist desire for a world government and a global ethic.

The certainty of our salvation and the need to get the gospel out are urgent matters.

The Tribulation period will be the greatest disaster to ever come upon Planet Earth (Matt. 24:21-22; Matt. 24:5-7).

Do not be deceived: if God has decided that it is time to let the globalists have their world government, it is coming, and nothing short of a major revival will slow it down.

Some think a major revival is coming, but I believe the Church will be lukewarm at the end-of-the-age, and the multitude of salvations they are referring to will be in the Tribulation Period (144,000 children of Israel, Two Witnesses and angel).

The Christian’s hope is the Rapture of the Church (Titus 2:13), not the UN, national leaders, vaccinations, tracking systems, social distancing, masks or anything like that.

The only thing that God will accept to let a person into heaven is to sincerely believe what the Bible says about the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 16:30-33), confess that belief, and ask Jesus for forgiveness and salvation.

The remarkable thing is that He will grant it, and it is free to those that sincerely ask.

Do it now.

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plarndude · 7 years

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For those of you who are unwilling to even Glance at an article because of the website it's on, I've copied and pasted it here. I agree with every single thing this guy wrote in this article.

"Over the weekend, the Planeteers converged on Washington to hold a “Climate March.” I know what you’re thinking: didn’t they already do that, like, last week? Also, how will marching and holding signs improve the climate? And how many trees were slaughtered to make those signs, anyway? And how much CO2 was emitted by the cars and planes they took to get to this march? And how many of D.C.’s pigeons and squirrels were rudely disrupted from their daily routine because of all the extra humans traipsing through the street? Isn’t organizing a march to fight climate change a bit like organizing a hot dog eating contest to fight obesity?

I have posed these kinds of questions to environmental activists many times and never received an answer other than, “You must hate science.” I really don’t hate science, though. I love science. I hate faux-science. I hate leftist dogma disguised as science. I hate activism that calls itself science. I hate bad conclusions drawn from science. I hate hypocrisy. I hate inconsistency. These also happen to be all of the reasons why I hate climate change alarmism.

But my real problem with the alarmists, who I will now address directly, boils down to this: I don’t believe you. And when I say I don’t believe you, I mean that I believe neither what you’re saying, nor that you believe what you’re saying. I doubt both your narrative and your sincerity. I question your facts and your conviction about those facts. Allow me to explain why.

First, your facts. If you stuck simply to the modest contention that the world has warmed very slightly in the last 130 years, and you theorized — and admitted it was a theory — that humans have contributed to it in some small way, I wouldn’t take much of an issue with you. The problem is that you lie so much. You lie when you refuse to confess that the climate prediction models you use are extremely flawed. You lie when you scream about the “97 percent consensus” that doesn’t exist. You lie when you act like the real scientists who doubt man-caused global warming are all kooks and lunatics.

Most of all, your overblown, hysterical doomsday prophecies are lies. The world is supposed to already be over by now, according to you. At the very least, New York City should be under water. We should have all been dead from global warming or global cooling or overpopulation dozens of times over. Around the time of the first Earth Day, we were told that hundreds of millions would be starving to death per year within ten years of that date. Human civilization should have crumbled into dust and the few remaining survivors should be floating through a vast water world, locked in a struggle of survival against Dennis Hopper. Yet, here we are, standing on dry land. How many times are you allowed to be wrong about the end of the world before we are justified in not taking you seriously anymore? I’d say that threshold, whatever it is, has long since been reached.

Second, your sincerity. Here’s the real issue I have with you. Even if you’ve been wrong about the Environmental Apocalypse 100 times, you still insist that this 101st prediction will surely pan out. You tell us that we could be looking at an extinction event within a generation or two. Our planet will turn into Venus sooner rather than later if we don’t drastically change the way we live. Major world cities will be lost into the sea, and this will happen within decades. And even those not drowned in the depths of the ocean will face mass starvation or worse. What’s more, you tell us that Armageddon may already be happening. Even now, whenever there is a hurricane, or a tornado, or a thunderstorm, or even a snowstorm, you tell us that this is a direct result of global warming caused by our modern lifestyle. This is all quite traumatizing, so it’s good for your emotional well being that you don’t really believe any of it.

I can only assume that you don’t believe it because your actions do not at all resemble what one would expect from someone who does believe this sort of thing. With very rare exceptions, you continue living just like the rest of us. Maybe you recycle your plastic bottles, maybe you ordered a salad at Panera Bread today, but for the most part you are just another callous Homo sapien murdering the planet and cannibalizing the future of the human race. Why? How? You think the world is about to end, for God’s sake. What are you doing sitting at Starbucks like the rest of us? Why haven’t you renounced all modern technology? Why haven’t you fled to the mountains before the sea engulfs your family? Why aren’t you doing… anything?

I can only imagine how I would react if I actually believed that the extinction of all mankind was imminent, and my lifestyle was directly contributing to it. At a minimum, I would not drive a car anymore. Ever. At all. I would ditch electricity. I wouldn’t eat any kind of meat. I wouldn’t buy mass made consumer products. I wouldn’t give my money to any company that sells items made in factories with giant smokestacks. Those smokestacks are literally killing people. How could you continue shopping like everything is normal? What kind of monster are you? If I were you, I would live as John the Baptist, eating locusts and wild honey out in the desert. Lives are at stake, are they not? The end is near! Why are you so relaxed about it? Have you even started building the ark yet?

I’m not joking. If I were in your boat (pun intended), I would feel morally obligated to take extreme measures. As a member of the enlightened few, as a person who knows that human life is about to be eradicated, and who knows why, and even when, I would feel an incredible burden of responsibility. If I knew that driving my car, turning on my lights, shopping at the mall, and generally going about my day immersed in modern luxury were all directly causing the current and future death of millions of people, I could not continue engaging in these lethal activities. I would see them as acts of extreme moral recklessness, if not murder, to saunter along on as usual. My conscience would compel me to ensure that I am not responsible for the carnage that is about to occur. How could a person who believes what you allegedly believe possibly arrive at any other conclusion?

It’s become a cliche to point out how all of the major environmental mouthpieces, like DiCaprio and Gore and all the rest, also happen to fly private jets in between the several mansions they own. This fact alone does not disprove the environmentalist narrative, but it is a curious fact that none of its most vocal proponents seem to have taken their own words to heart. Imagine, by comparison, if almost every major pro-life activist also happened to sit on the board of Planned Parenthood. If one or two were exposed as hypocrites in this way you might overlook it, but all of them?

Strangely, only the Amish can be seen riding horses and buggies down the street in this country, but even they don’t believe that automobiles are going to annihilate life on Earth. You do believe that, yet you still drive them. You know how much CO2 was emitted in order to produce your iPhone, yet you still buy a new one every 18 months. You know that hurricanes and tornadoes are popping up everywhere because of the factories that make your trendy shoes and clothing, yet you still stock your closet full of them. You know that your air conditioning unit is slowly poisoning the atmosphere and leading us rapidly to certain death, yet you turn it on the moment the temperature rises above 70 degrees outside. You know that your refrigerator is a cancerous tumor metastasizing on Mother Earth, yet you still won’t preserve your food by drying or pickling it. You know how much safer we’d all be if we stopped using electricity, yet you haven’t gotten that ball rolling, either. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, aren’t we? And you can’t even be bothered to crack a window and eat pickled cabbage in the dark like a real environmentalist?

You seem only focused on insisting that the government fix the problem. But even if there were a problem to fix, the law couldn’t do anything on its own. The law can only influence or coerce behavior. So, rather than sitting around and waiting for the law to tell you to live how you already think you ought to live, why don’t you just start living that way? It’s like a vegetarian who declares that he will continue eating steaks until the government finally prohibits him from doing so. The cynical among us may conclude that a vegetarian of this type is not a vegetarian at all. If every vegetarian were of this sort, we might suspect that vegetarianism itself is hallucinatory: a belief system that many advocate but none believe strongly enough to actually live by. And if those who advocate it don’t believe it, why should the rest of us take so much as a second out of our lives to consider its merits?

Now, please understand that I’ve cut you some slack here. I’ve assumed that you don’t believe your own tales of civilizational destruction. The less flattering interpretation is that you do believe everything you say, yet you’re so unbelievably selfish and lazy that, even staring at Armageddon on the horizon, you still cannot stir yourself to make any noticeable changes to your life. One shudders at the moral baseness required for a person to sincerely say to himself, “Yes, my vehicle is melting the ice caps and inching humanity ever closer to liquidation, but, screw it, I don’t feel like walking.” I have faith that you are not so cold and heartless. I have faith that you are merely disingenuous hypocrites. Let’s hope I’m right." - Matt Walsh

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