Everyone's a hero in their own way.
Didn't catch any grenades, but I imagine so?
I played last night and showed those young'uns how to use the gravity gun.
Hadn't played regularly in about 15 years, but the reflexes are still there.
From Wikipedia:
In November 2024, following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 United States presidential election and Elon Musk's nomination as a co-executive of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Bluesky experienced a surge in new user registrations as people migrated from other social platforms, particularly Twitter. Many came from the United States, United Kingdom (where Bluesky had previously seen growth during the 2024 UK riots following Musk's commentary), and Canada. The social app added over 4 million registered users in that week, becoming the most popular app in the US App Store and Play Store.
And Republicans still pretend like these aren't their allies.
Oh yeah, Amarillo is a big city for the NI-coC. Abilene, too.
The us-or-them situation is exactly what they're aiming for: isolated people are easier to control. But yeah, I'm not sure if it's an intentional strategy or just what happened to work out for their purposes.
Wow, I'm so glad this dipshit who's never had to work a day in his life could give this paternal wisdom to the plebs who might need this medication to retain employment and not die destitute in the streets.
Who knew they just needed to be sent to a farm upstate so they could run free forever and ever?
Well, I grew up in what is known as the non-institutional church of Christ. There are different branches of the coC, ranging from the relatively liberal to the downright draconian.
What made this particular branch of the coC "non-institutional" is that they are independent of each other congregation, so the leadership of each group is separate from every other.
The way it actually shakes out is that every congregation gets super deep into the weeds about arcane interpretations of an ancient text about which they are unqualified to explain while making overconfident proclamations of certainty. Other congregations disagree with a fairly minor point in this reading, and they will become effectively dead to each other. Ultimately, the different churches (they would hate me calling them that) would form a loose confederation across the region with various groups they could live in uneasy peace with.
Within the congregation itself was a religion that taught that the world is a wicked place from which we should set ourselves apart. Evolution was a lie spread by the devil to make us doubt God's power. Women were not allowed to speak or wear pants during the church service. We did not use instruments to make music during the service, as that was not mentioned in the Bible. Any disagreement with doctrine could get one removed from good standing, and we left two churches (forced out, really) based on the Elders' strict views on baptism and musical instruments: my father would not agree that immersion was strictly necessary to save one's soul, or that it was sinful to exceed the Bible's authority and use instruments.
It is a bit of a weird duck as a cult, but they're extremely controlling, patriarchal, and reactionary. They're in most towns, but people usually think they're an offshoot of the Baptists (of which certain types also dip into cult status in my opinion). I'd place them between the Baptists and the Jehovah's Witnesses on a fundamentalist belief scale. I think the BITE model is a useful one (but not perfect) for defining cults:
- Behavioral control
- Information control
- Thought control
- Emotional control
The coC did all of these things: they wanted members to live apart from society where only those in the church were acceptable social peers, to limit exposure with "subversive" ideas and science, to make people so afraid of going to hell that you'll blindly accept the teachings. You were expected to attend every service: Sunday morning & night and Wednesday night.
In short, they wanted to control people's lives by love-bombing newcomers and then suffocating them until they fit into their assigned tiny little box.
And yes, we were in the end times. Even though nobody knows when Jesus will return. Wink.
I feel equal parts pity and exasperation that they're ignoring critical crises like global climate change to focus on superstitious nonsense.
I grew up in a cult, so my whole life.
Pope Paul III and His Grandsons is an oil on canvas painting by Titian, housed in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. It was commissioned by the Farnese family and painted during Titian's visit to Rome between autumn 1545 and June 1546. It depicts the scabrous relationship between Pope Paul III and his grandsons, Ottavio and Alessandro Farnese. Ottavio is shown in the act of kneeling, to his left; Alessandro, wearing a cardinal's dress, stands behind him to his right. The painting explores the effects of ageing and the manoeuvring behind succession; Paul was at the time in his late seventies and ruling in an uncertain political climate as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor came into ascendancy.
Paul III was the last of the popes appointed by the ruling Medici family of Florence. He was socially ambitious, a careerist and not particularly pious. He kept a concubine, fathered four children out of wedlock and viewed the throne as an opportunity to fill his coffers while he placed his relatives in high positions. A talented and cunning political operator, Paul was precisely the sort of man the Florentines needed to assist them in their defence against French and Spanish threats.
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
I think they've been watching too much porn.
The canvas is filled with multiple mini-scenes including a Punch and Judy, the coach of a newly married couple, and a funeral procession. In the background on the right is St Marylebone Church.
1
LV 137: Coast scene with a battle on a bridge- Claude Lorrain, ink and watercolor wash on paper (c. 1655)
(lemmy.world)
Here is the painting that was based off the drawing, but I really like the drawing so I made that the main post.
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Do you enjoy audiobooks? You can listen to pretty much anything and go for a hike.
I got pretty big into them a while back when I had an hour commute before podcasts were a big thing.