Podcasts about Contrast

Click here to receive today's free gift on the Radio Page: Bible Overview – The Bible has 66 Books, more than 1,000 chapters, and was written by about 40 different authors. Bible Overview will help you get a grasp of each book quickly. Use the coupon code: RADIOGIFT for free shipping!*Limit one copy per person* --------Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org. Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

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Summary  Tune into "Adventures in Legaltech" for an engaging talk with Caspar Roxburgh, GM of Draftable. Discover how to tackle the infamous Word doc track changes mishap, get insights on law firm tech overload solutions, and explore fresh paths in legal technology innovation.

Empire, Stability, and the Smokescreen of MoralityBy Renaldo C. McKenzieLet us be honest—brutally honest, the way history demands and empire resents.What is unfolding in Venezuela, and across the wider Caribbean basin, has little to do with democracy, human rights, or some sudden moral awakening in Washington. It has everything to do with power—raw, unapologetic, strategic power—and the anxiety that sets in when that power feels challenged.The United States does not intervene because a government is despotic. If that were the case, half the world's strongmen would be facing sanctions before breakfast. The United States intervenes when dominance is threatened—when a small country dares to rearrange its economic loyalties, when it flirts with alternatives, when it whispers to Beijing or Moscow instead of kneeling to Washington.This is not conjecture. This is pattern. Take Venezuela. The hostility toward the Maduro government is not rooted in humanitarian outrage. It is rooted in the fact that Venezuela has chosen to deepen relations with China and Russia—to do business outside the American orbit. That is the unforgivable sin. Everything else—drugs, dictatorship, democracy—is stage dressing.The same script plays across the Caribbean. Jamaica, like many of its neighbors, has welcomed Chinese investment: ports modernized, infrastructure built, capital flowing where Western lenders once stalled. Suddenly, “stability” becomes a concern. Suddenly, sovereignty is suspect. Funny how that works.This is not about policing the world's conscience. It is about preserving a hierarchy. History offers receipts. In Guyana, the United States once supported a government that was neither democratic nor just—one that violently suppressed dissent and oversaw the assassination of revolutionary scholar Walter Rodney. That regime, led by Forbes Burnham, was later found culpable by a commission of inquiry. Yet at the time, it enjoyed American backing. Why? Because it played ball. It served U.S. interests. Morality, apparently, is negotiable.Contrast that with today. Guyana now hosts massive U.S. oil interests, where American corporations extract vast wealth while the Guyanese people receive a fraction. That arrangement is deemed acceptable—commendable, even. But let Guyana decide tomorrow to nationalize its resources, to partner elsewhere, or to rely on itself, and watch how quickly the tone changes. Hypothetical? Hardly. We have seen this movie before.Consider Cuba—decades under embargo, not because it threatens the world, but because it refuses submission. Consider Ukraine, punished by war for seeking stability outside one imperial sphere and into another. When small nations move independently, the ground shakes.The language of “communism” is the oldest smokescreen in the book. It is wheeled out whenever convenient, retired when inconvenient. The real crime is not ideology—it is disobedience.This is the central argument of my forthcoming book, Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered: Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations. Nations do not collapse simply because of internal failure; they are often pushed—cornered by systems designed to ensure that wealth flows upward and outward, never inward, never locally, never freely.And here lies the uncomfortable truth: empire does not require virtue. It requires compliance.Yes, America wants to remain competitive. That desire is not irrational. But competitiveness built on coercion, embargoes, and destabilization is not leadership—it is fear masquerading as strength. And fear, history tells us, is a dangerous policy advisor.The Caribbean must tread carefully. Sovereignty is costly. Independence comes with consequences. But the alternative—permanent subordination dressed up as partnership—is far more expensive in the long run.Renaldo is the Author of Neoliberalism, 2021) and Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered, Unfair Competition and the Death of Nations", contributions by Martin Oppenheimer

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT http://relay.fm/upgrade/595 http://relay.fm/upgrade/595 Contrast in the Horse 595 Jason Snell and Myke Hurley After whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! After whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! clean 7929 Subtitle: The 2025 Upgrade Holiday SpecialAfter whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! This episode of Upgrade is sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code UPGRADE. Sentry: Mobile crash reporting and app monitoring. Get 6 months of the Team plan free with code upgradepod. ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Links and Show Notes: Get Upgrade+. More content, no ads. Submit Feedback Lex's Games by Lex Friedman Adam C. Thomas: Gaming Apple Podcasts - Mastodon Is the iMac Pro coming back? – Six Colors Apple Developing iMac Pro With M5 Max Chip - MacRumors Inside Apple's iPhone Road Map, From Foldable Screens to Curved Glass Cases — The Information New report claims Apple's 2026-27 iPhone roadmap includes 7 new models | Macworld Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold Impressions: NOW It Makes Sense! - MKBHD - YouTube iOS 26.3 Makes It Easier to Switch From iPhone to Android - MacRumors iOS 26.3 Adds Notification Forwarding Option for Third-Party Wearables - MacRumors Apple is forcing iPhones to update to iOS 26 to patch security holes – Six Colors The Twelfth Annual Upgradies Nomination Form Upgrade #526: Journal and Learnal - Relay The Icons We're Judging Daring Fireball: MacOS 26 Tahoe's Dead-Canary Utility App Icons QuickTime turns 34! Yes, Apple's big bet on 'multimedia' still matters | Macworld Our Final Tier List (Spoilers!)

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT http://relay.fm/upgrade/595 http://relay.fm/upgrade/595 Jason Snell and Myke Hurley After whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! After whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! clean 7929 Subtitle: The 2025 Upgrade Holiday SpecialAfter whipping through a bunch of segments in order to play as many jingles as possible, Myke and Jason celebrate the festive season by aesthetically judging the new icons of macOS Tahoe. Happy holidays to all who celebrate! This episode of Upgrade is sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code UPGRADE. Sentry: Mobile crash reporting and app monitoring. Get 6 months of the Team plan free with code upgradepod. ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Links and Show Notes: Get Upgrade+. More content, no ads. Submit Feedback Lex's Games by Lex Friedman Adam C. Thomas: Gaming Apple Podcasts - Mastodon Is the iMac Pro coming back? – Six Colors Apple Developing iMac Pro With M5 Max Chip - MacRumors Inside Apple's iPhone Road Map, From Foldable Screens to Curved Glass Cases — The Information New report claims Apple's 2026-27 iPhone roadmap includes 7 new models | Macworld Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold Impressions: NOW It Makes Sense! - MKBHD - YouTube iOS 26.3 Makes It Easier to Switch From iPhone to Android - MacRumors iOS 26.3 Adds Notification Forwarding Option for Third-Party Wearables - MacRumors Apple is forcing iPhones to update to iOS 26 to patch security holes – Six Colors The Twelfth Annual Upgradies Nomination Form Upgrade #526: Journal and Learnal - Relay The Icons We're Judging Daring Fireball: MacOS 26 Tahoe's Dead-Canary Utility App Icons QuickTime turns 34! Yes, Apple's big bet on 'multimedia' still matters | Macworld Our Final Tier List (Spoilers!)

Are you familiar with the saying, “born with a silver spoon in one's mouth”? That's how children of kings or business tycoons are described. Contrast that with “wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12, NIV). That's how the birth of Jesus is described. Instead of a doctor and nurses attending to the newborn king, it was sheep and other cattle that welcomed Him.All Rights Reserved, CBN Asia Inc.https://www.cbnasia.com/giveSupport the show

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The two eternal destinations are being played out in this world

The two eternal destinations are being played out in this world

John Granger Attempts to Convince Nick (and You!) That The Hallmarked Man will be Considered the Best of the Series.We review our take-away impressions from our initial reading of The Hallmarked Man. Although we enjoyed it, especially John's incredible prediction of Robin's ectopic pregnancy, neither of us came away thinking this was the finest book in the series. For Nick, this was a surprise, as enthusiastic J. K. Rowling fan that he is other than Career of Evil every book he has read has been his favourite. Using an innovative analysis of the character pairs surrounding both Cormoran and Robin, John argues that we can't really appreciate the artistry of book number eight until we consider its place in the series. Join John and Nick as they review the mysteries that remain to be resolved and how The Hallmarked Man sets readers up for shocking reveals in Strike 9 and 10!Why Troubled Blood is the Best Strike Novel:* The Pillar Post Collection of Troubled Blood Posts at HogwartsProfessor by John Granger, Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, Louise Freeman, Beatrice Groves, and Nick JefferyTroubled Blood and Faerie Queene: The Kanreki ConversationBut What If We Judge Strike Novels by a Different Standard than Shed Artifice? What About Setting Up the ‘Biggest Twist' in Detective Fiction History?* If Rowling is to be judged by the ‘shock' of the reveals in Strike 10, then The Hallmarked Man, the most disappointing book in the series even to many Serious Strikers, will almost certainly be remembered as the book that set up the finale with the greatest technical misdirection while playing fair.* The ending must be a shock, one that readers do not see coming, BUT* The author must provide the necessary clues and pointers repeatedly and emphatically lest the reader feel cheated at the point of revelation.* If the Big Mysteries of the series are to be solved with the necessary shock per both Russian Formalist and Perennialist understanding, then the answers to be revealed in the final two Strike novels, Books Two and Three of the finale trilogy, should be embedded in The Hallmarked Man.* Rowling on Playing Fair with Readers:The writer says that she wanted to extend the shelf of detective fiction without breaking it. “Part of the appeal and fascination of the genre is that it has clear rules. I'm intrigued by those rules and I like playing with them. Your detective should always lay out the information fairly for the reader, but he will always be ahead of the game. In terms of creating a character, I think Cormoran Strike conforms to certain universal rules but he is very much of this time.* On the Virtue of ‘Penetration' in Austen, Dickens, and Rowling* Rowling on the Big Twist' in Austen's Emma:“I have never set up a surprise ending in a Harry Potter book without knowing I can never, and will never, do it anywhere near as well as Austen did in Emma.”What are the Key Mysteries of the Strike series?Nancarrow FamilyWhy did Leda and Ted leave home in Cornwall as they did?Why did Ted and Joan not “save” Strike and Lucy?Was Leda murdered or did she commit suicide?If she was murdered, who dunit?If she commited suicide, why did she do it?What happened to Switch Whittaker?Cormoran StrikeIs Jonny Rokeby his biological father?What SIB case was he investigating when he was blown up?Was he the father of Charlotte's lost baby? If not, then who was?Why has he been so unstable in his relations with women post Charlotte Campbell?Charlotte CampbellWhy did her mother hate her so much?What was her relationship with her three step-fathers? Especially Dino LongcasterWho was the father of her lost child?Was the child intentionally aborted or was it a miscarriage?What was written in her “suicide note”?Was Charlotte murdered or did she commit suicide?If she was murdered, who done it?If she committed suicide, why did she do it?What happened to the billionaire lover?What clues do we get in Hallmarked Man that would answer these questions?- Strike 8 - Greatest Hits of Strikes 1-7: compilation, concentration of perumbration in series as whole* Decima/Lion - incest* Rupert's biological father not his father of record (Dino)* Sacha Legard a liar with secrets* Ryan Murphy working a plan off-stage - Charlotte's long gameStrike about ‘Pairings' in Lethal WhiteStrike continued to pore over the list of names as though he might suddenly see something emerging out of his dense, spiky handwriting, the way unfocused eyes may spot the 3D image hidden in a series of brightly colored dots. All that occurred to him, however, was the fact that there was an unusual number of pairs connected to Chiswell's death: couples—Geraint and Della, Jimmy and Flick; pairs of full siblings—Izzy and Fizzy, Jimmy and Billy; the duo of blackmailing collaborators—Jimmy and Geraint; and the subsets of each blackmailer and his deputy—Flick and Aamir. There was even the quasi-parental pairing of Della and Aamir. This left two people who formed a pair in being isolated within the otherwise close-knit family: the widowed Kinvara and Raphael, the unsatisfactory, outsider son.Strike tapped his pen unconsciously against the notebook, thinking. Pairs. The whole business had begun with a pair of crimes: Chiswell's blackmail and Billy's allegation of infanticide. He had been trying to find the connection between them from the start, unable to believe that they could be entirely separate cases, even if on the face of it their only link was in the blood tie between the Knight brothers.Part Two, Chapter 52Key Relationship Pairings in Cormoran Strike:Who Killed Leda Strike?To Rowling-Galbraith's credit, credible arguments in dedicated posts have been made that every person in the list below was the one who murdered Leda Strike. Who do you think did it?* Jonny Rokeby and the Harringay Crime Syndicate (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0),* Ted Nancarrow (Uncle Ted Did It),* Dave Polworth,* Leda Strike (!),* Lucy Fantoni (Lucy and Joan Did It and here),* Sir Randolph Whittaker,* Nick Herbert,* Peter Gillespie, and* Charlotte Campbell-RossScripted Ten Questions:1. So, Nick, back when we first read Hallmarked Man we said that there were four things we knew for sure would be said about Strike 8 in the future. Do you remember what they were?2. And, John, you've been thinking about the ‘Set-Up' idea and how future Rowling Readers will think of Hallmarked Man, even that they will think of it as the best Strike novel. I thought that was Troubled Blood by consensus. What's made you change your mind?3. So, Nick, yes, Troubled Blood I suspect will be ranked as the best of series, even best book written by Rowling ever, but, if looked at as the book that served the most critical place in setting up the finale, I think Hallmarked Man has to be considered better in that crucial way than Strike 5, better than any Strike novel. Can you think of another Strike mystery that reviews specific plot points and raises new aspects of characters and relationships the way Strike 8 does?4. Are you giving Hallmarked Man a specific function with respect to the last three books than any of the others? If so, John, what is that exactly and what evidence do we have that in Rowling's comments about reader-writer obligations and writer ambitions?5. Nick, I think Hallmarked Man sets us up to answer the Key mysteries that remain, that the first seven books left for the final three to answer. I'm going to organize those unresolved questions into three groups and challenge you to think of the ones I'm missing, especially if I'm missing a category.6. If I understand the intention of your listing these remaining questions, John, your saying that the restatement of specific plot points and characters from the first seven Strike novels in Hallmarked Man points to the possible, even probable answers to those questions. What specifically are the hallmarks in this respect of Hallmarked Man?7. If you take those four points, Nick, and revisit the mysteries lists in three categories, do you see how Rowling hits a fairness point with respect to clueing readers into what will no doubt be shocking answers to them if they're not looking for the set-ups?8. That's fun, Nick, but there's another way at reaching the same conclusions, namely, charting the key relationships of Strike and Ellacott to the key family, friends, and foes in their lives and how they run in pairs or parallel couplets (cue PPoint slides).9. Can we review incest and violence against or trafficking of young women in the Strike series? Are those the underpinning of the majority of the mysteries that remain in the books?10. Many Serious Strikers and Gonzo Galbraithians hated Striuke 8 because Hallmarked Man failed to meet expectations. In conclusion, do you think, Nick, that this argument that the most recent Strike-Ellacott adventure is the best because of how it sets us up for the wild finish to come will be persuasive -- or just annoying?On Imagination as Transpersonal Faculty and Non-Liturgical Sacred ArtThe Neo-Iconoclasm of Film (and Other Screened Adaptations): Justin requested within his question for an expansion of my allusion to story adaptations into screened media as a “neo-iconoclasm.” I can do that here briefly in two parts. First, by urging you to read my review of the first Hunger Games movie adaptation, ‘Gamesmakers Hijack Story: Capitol Wins Again,' in which I discussed at post's end how ‘Watching Movies is a a Near Sure Means to Being Hijacked by Movie Makers.' In that, I explain via an excerpt from Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, the soul corrosive effects of screened images.Second, here is a brief introduction to the substance of the book I am working on.Rowling is a woman of profound contradictions. On the one hand, like all of us she is the walking incarnation of her Freudian family romance per Paglia, the ideas and blindspots of the age in which we live, with the peculiar individual prejudices and preferences and politics of her upbringing, education, and life experiences, especially the experiences we can call crises and consequent core beliefs, aversions, and desires. Rowling acknowledges all this, and, due to her CBT exercises and one assumes further talking therapy, she is more conscious of the elephant she is riding and pretending to steer than most of her readers.She points to this both in asides she make in her tweets and public comments but also in her descriptive metaphor of how she writes. The ‘Lake' of that metaphor, the alocal place within her from her story ideas and inspiration spring, is her “muse,” the word for superconscious rather than subconscious ideas that she used in her 2007 de la Cruz interview. She consciously recognizes that, despite her deliberate reflection on her PTSD, daddy drama, and idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, she still has unresolved issues that her non-conscious mind presents to her as story conflict for imaginative resolution.Her Lake is her persona well, the depths of her individual identity and a mask she wears.The Shed, in contrast, is the metaphorical place where Rowling takes the “stuff” given her by the creature in her Lake, the blobs of molten glass inspiration, to work it into proper story. The tools in this Shed are unusual, to say the least, and are the great markers of what makes Rowling unique among contemporary writers and a departure from, close to a contradiction of the artist you would expect to be born of her life experiences, formative crises, and education.Out of a cauldron potion made from listening to the Smiths, Siouxie and the Banshees, and The Clash, reading and loving Val McDermid, Roddy Doyle, and Jessica Mitford, and surviving a lower middle class upbringing with an emotionally barren homelife and Comprehensive education on the England-Wales border, you'd expect a Voldemort figure at Goblet of Fire's climax to rise rather than a writer who weaves archetypally rich myths of the soul's journey to perfection in the spirit with alchemical coloring and sequences, ornate chiastic structures, and a bevy of symbols visible only to the eye of the Heart.To understand Rowling, as she all but says in her Lake and Shed metaphor, one has to know her life story and experiences to “get” from where her inspiration bubbles up and, as important, you need a strong grasp of the traditionalist worldview and place of literature in it to appreciate the power of the tools she uses, especially how she uses them in combination.The biggest part of that is understanding the Perennialist definition of “Sacred Art.” I touched on this in a post about Rowling's beloved Christmas story, ‘Dante, Sacred Art, and The Christmas Pig.'Rowling has been publicly modest about the aims of her work, allowing that it would be nice to think that readers will be more empathetic after reading her imaginative fiction. Dante was anything but modest or secretive in sharing his self-understanding in the letter he wrote to Cangrande about The Divine Comedy: “The purpose of the whole work is to remove those living in this life from the state of wretchedness and to lead them to the state of blessedness.” His aim, point blank, was to create a work of sacred art, a category of writing and experience that largely exists outside our understanding as profane postmoderns, but, given Rowling's esoteric artistry and clear debts to Dante, deserves serious consideration as what she is writing as well.Sacred art, in brief, is representational work — painting, statuary, liturgical vessels and instruments, and the folk art of theocentric cultures in which even cutlery and furniture are means to reflection and transcendence of the world — that employ revealed forms and symbols to bring the noetic faculty or heart into contact with the supra-sensible realities each depicts. It is not synonymous with religious art; most of the art today that has a religious subject is naturalist and sentimental rather than noetic and iconographic, which is to say, contemporary artists imitate the creation of God as perceived by human senses rather than the operation of God in creation or, worse, create abstractions of their own internally or infernally generated ideas.Story as sacred art, in black to white contrast, is edifying literature and drama in which the soul's journey to spiritual perfection is portrayed for the reader or the audience's participation within for transformation from wretchedness to blessedness, as Dante said. As with the plastic arts, these stories employ traditional symbols of the revealed traditions in conformity with their understanding of cosmology, soteriology, and spiritual anthropology. The myths and folklore of the world's various traditions, ancient Greek drama, the epic poetry of Greece, Rome, and Medieval Europe, the parables of Christ, the plays of Shakespeare's later period, and the English high fantasy tradition from Coleridge to the Inklings speak this same symbolic language and relay the psychomachia experience of the human victory over death.Dante is a sacred artist of this type. As difficult as it may be to understand Rowling as a writer akin to Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus, Spenser, Lewis, and Tolkien, her deployment of traditional symbolism and the success she enjoys almost uniquely in engaging and edifying readers of all ages, beliefs, and circumstances suggests this is the best way of understanding her work. Christmas Pig is the most obviously sacred art piece that Rowling has created to date. It is the marriage of Dantean depths and the Estecean lightness of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, about which more later.[For an introduction to reading poems, plays, and stories as sacred art, that is, allegorical depictions of the soul's journey to spiritual perfection that are rich in traditional symbolism, Ray Livingston's The Traditional Theory of Literature is the only book length text in print. Kenneth Oldmeadow's ‘Symbolism and Sacred Art' in his Traditionalism: Religion in the light of the Perennial Philosophy(102-113), ‘Traditional Art' in The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr(203-214), and ‘The Christian and Oriental, or True Philosophy of Art' in The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy(123-152) explain in depth the distinctions between sacred and religious, natural, and humanist art. Martin Lings' The Sacred Art of Shakespeare: To Take Upon Us the Mystery of Things and Jennifer Doane Upton's two books on The Divine Comedy, Dark Way to Paradise and The Ordeal of Mercy are the best examples I know of reading specific works of literature as sacred art rather than as ‘stories with symbolic meaning' read through a profane and analytic lens.]‘Profane Art' from this view is “art for art's sake,” an expression of individual genius and subjective meaning that is more or less powerful. The Perennialist concern with art is less about gauging an artist's success in expressing his or her perception or its audience's response than with its conformity to traditional rules and its utility, both in the sense of practical everyday use and in being a means by which to be more human. Insofar as a work of art is good with respect to this conformity and edifying utility, it is “sacred art;” so much as it fails, it is “profane.” The best of modern art, even that with religious subject matter or superficially beautiful and in that respect edifying, is from this view necessarily profane.Sacred art differs from modern and postmodern conceptions of art most specifically, though, in what it is representing. Sacred art is not representing the natural world as the senses perceive it or abstractions of what the individual and subjective mind “sees,” but is an imitation of the Divine art of creation. The artist “therefore imitates nature not in its external forms but in its manner of operation as asserted so categorically by St. Thomas Aquinas [who] insists that the artist must not imitate nature but must be accomplished in ‘imitating nature in her manner of operation'” (Nasr 2007, 206, cf. “Art is the imitation of Nature in her manner of operation: Art is the principle of manufacture” (Summa Theologia Q. 117, a. I). Schuon described naturalist art which imitates God's creation in nature by faithful depiction of it, consequently, as “clearly luciferian.” “Man must imitate the creative act, not the thing created,” Aquinas' “manner of operation” rather than God's operation manifested in created things in order to produce ‘creations'which are not would-be duplications of those of God, but rather a reflection of them according to a real analogy, revealing the transcendental aspect of things; and this revelation is the only sufficient reason of art, apart from any practical uses such and such objects may serve. There is here a metaphysical inversion of relation [the inverse analogy connecting the principial and manifested orders in consequence of which the highest realities are manifested in their remotest reflections[1]]: for God, His creature is a reflection or an ‘exteriorized' aspect of Himself; for the artist, on the contrary, the work is a reflection of an inner reality of which he himself is only an outward aspect; God creates His own image, while man, so to speak, fashions his own essence, at least symbolically. On the principial plane, the inner manifests the outer, but on the manifested plane, the outer fashions the inner (Schuon 1953, 81, 96).The traditional artist, then, in imitation of God's “exteriorizing” His interior Logos in the manifested space-time plane, that is, nature, instead of depicting imitations of nature in his craft, submits to creating within the revealed forms of his craft, which forms qua intellections correspond to his inner essence or logos.[2] The work produced in imitation of God's “manner of operation” then resembles the symbolic or iconographic quality of everything existent in being a transparency whose allegorical and anagogical content within its traditional forms is relatively easy to access and a consequent support and edifying shock-reminder to man on his spiritual journey. The spiritual function of art is that “it exteriorizes truths and beauties in view of our interiorization… or simply, so that the human soul might, through given phenomena, make contact with the heavenly archetypes, and thereby with its own archetype” (Schuon 1995a, 45-46).Rowling in her novels, crafted with tools all taken from the chest of a traditional Sacred Artist, is writing non-liturgical Sacred Art. Films and all the story experiences derived of adaptations of imaginative literature to screened images, are by necessity Profane Art, which is to say per the meaning of “profane,” outside the temple or not edifying spiritually. Film making is the depiction of how human beings encounter the time-space world through the senses, not an imitation of how God creates and a depiction of the spiritual aspect of the world, a liminal point of entry to its spiritual dimension. Whence my describing it as a “neo-iconoclasm.”The original iconoclasts or “icon bashers” were believers who treasured sacred art but did not believe it could use images of what is divine without necessarily being blasphemous; after the incarnation of God as Man, this was no longer true, but traditional Christian iconography is anything but naturalistic. It could not be without becoming subjective and profane rather than being a means to spiritual growth and encounters. Western religious art from the Renaissance and Reformation forward, however, embraces profane imitation of the sense perceived world, which is to say naturalistic and as such the antithesis of sacred art. Film making, on religious and non-religious subjects, is the apogee of this profane art which is a denial of any and all of the parameters of Sacred art per Aquinas, traditional civilizations, and the Perennialists.It is a neo-iconoclasm and a much more pervasive and successful destruction of the traditional world-view, so much so that to even point out the profanity inherent to film making is to insure dismissal as some kind of “fundamentalist,” “Puritan,” or “religious fanatic.”Screened images, then, are a type of iconoclasm, albeit the inverse and much more subtle kind than the relatively traditional and theocentric denial of sacred images (the iconoclasm still prevalent in certain Reform Church cults, Judaism, and Islam). This neo-iconoclasm of moving pictures depicts everything in realistic, life-like images, everything, that is, except the sacred which cannot be depicted as we see and experience things. This exclusion of the sacred turns upside down the anti-naturalistic depictions of sacred persons and events in iconography and sacred art. The effect of this flood of natural pictures akin to what we see with our eyes is to compel the flooded mind to accept time and space created nature as the ‘most real,' even ‘the only real.' The sacred, by never being depicted in conformity with accepted supernatural forms, is effectively denied.Few of us spend much time in live drama theaters today. Everyone watches screened images on cineplex screens, home computers, and smart phones. And we are all, consequently, iconoclasts and de facto agnostics, I'm afraid, to greater and lesser degrees because of this immersion and repetitive learning from the predominant art of our secular culture and its implicit atheism.Contrast that with the imaginative experience of a novel that is not pornographic or primarily a vehicle of perversion and violence. We are obliged to generate images of the story in the transpersonal faculty within each of us called the imagination, one I think that is very much akin to conscience or the biblical ‘heart.' This is in essence an edifying exercise, unlike viewing photographic images on screens. That the novel appears at the dawn of the Modern Age and the beginning of the end of Western corporate spirituality, I think is no accident but a providential advent. Moving pictures, the de facto regime artistry of the materialist civilization in which we live, are the counter-blow to the novel's spiritual oxygen.That's the best I can manage tonight to offer something to Justin in response to more about the “neo-iconoclasm” of film This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

• Hormone imbalance discussion: energy, mood, weight, libido • Personal health experiences with pre-menopause, food sensitivities, histamine, allergy testing • Emphasis on testing before treatment and access to modern wellness • Friday Free Show structure with Ross McCoy and EJ • Nerd/Jock as a long-running love-or-hate segment • Admitting weak audience research and marketing instincts • Audience enjoyment of grumpy moods, mistakes, and chaos • Reading and reacting to a YouTube comment calling Tom "a grumpy dickhead" • Holiday burnout from nonstop recording • Comparing current workload to lighter past years • Best-of episodes versus all-new content debate • Guest hosts helping fill gaps during burnout • Burnt-out shows often becoming fan favorites • Behind-the-scenes workload: editing, censoring, scheduling, prep • Confusion between radio and podcast standards when exhausted • Mental fatigue affecting content awareness • Dan's voice airing on the Howard Stern show • Playing and reacting to the Stern clip • Embarrassment versus pride in being noticed • Longtime listeners instantly recognizing voices • Joking rivalry and clip-stealing between shows • Stern feud framing, contract drama, and aging radio habits • Criticism of repetitive bits and unchanged formats • Shift from traditional radio power to internet distribution • Listeners no longer caring who distributes content • Stern paranoia, hostile rant, and profanity response • Stern relying on obsessive super fans and mundane calls • Belief wealth led Stern to phone it in creatively • How Stern's team pulls clips without credit • Interns or junior staff scraping the internet for content • Wig and hair-system discussion tied to aging and density • Distinction between wigs, systems, and transplants • How modern hair systems are blended and thinned • Admission of using a beard extension • Debate over whether pointing out wigs is factual or insulting • Cultural shift toward open wig acceptance • Comparison to Trump hair discourse • Analysis of why Stern reacted emotionally • Admiration for Stern despite criticism • Pride in being insulted by a radio idol • Idea of turning the rant into art or a tattoo • Celebrity hair examples, rumors, and transplants • Discussion of modern transplant tech and medical tourism • Examples including Travolta, Carell, McHale, LeBron • Openness to getting a transplant • Alex Trebek wearing a wig during chemotherapy • Tease of British wrestling clip and real-vs-work moments • Classic TV altercations: Jim Rome/Jim Everett, Geraldo • Tommy's beginner band winter concert • Winter concert as midpoint progress showcase • Dress code drama: all black, dress shoes, tucked shirts • Kid resistance to dress shoes and looking dorky • Parents reliving their own childhood insecurities • Blending in socially versus strict rule enforcement • Contrast with dance culture's rigid discipline • Music education as focus, repetition, and cognitive training • Performance anxiety leading up to the concert • Post-performance relief and zoning out • Forgetting to flip sheet music pages mid-song • Learning discipline through repetition and mistakes • Respect for the difficulty of teaching beginner band • Frustration over inconsistent rule enforcement • Debate over standards, fairness, and commitment • Studio snack shelf decline and expired leftovers • Embarrassment over half-used snacks and clutter • Joke about being cheap and keeping old food • Clearing the snack area over the break • Building possibly being for sale and lease uncertainty • Jokes about making life hard for a new landlord • Transition into voicemails and wrestling clip • Heavy workload and Beerfest stress • British wrestler Giant Haystacks clip setup • Shock at how dangerous the slam looks • Nostalgia for real physical TV moments • Discussion of shock moments helping or hurting careers • Planned stunts versus real emotional meltdowns • Frustration with formulaic TV interviews • Jokes failing when clips lose context • Ad insertion breaking broadcast continuity • Appreciation for tight back-timing and experienced producers • Holiday stress causing on-air tension • Apology for seriousness creeping in • Gratitude toward co-hosts, contributors, staff, and BDM • Tease of best-of episodes, Wife Cast, BDM shows, AMA • Holiday well-wishes and return-after-break note ### • Social Media: https://tomanddan.com | https://twitter.com/tomanddanlive | https://facebook.com/amediocretime | https://instagram.com/tomanddanlive
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Main Texts: Mark 10:13-16 & 10:17-24The Call to accept Christ as little children, from infancy to 12years old, was a radical call for ancient Jewish culture:Countercultural.In Jesus' day, children, while loved (especially sons) wereconsidered for the most part immature, unreasonable and objectsto be trained. They were to be schooled until the ages 13, to beconsidered a useful part of adult Jewish society.Elite rabbis like Jesus should not waste their busy lives andmission, addressing children, rather focus their needed attentionto the issues of the adult world. But Jesus broke this societal ruleand encouraged parents to bring their children to be officially“blessed” by Him. (verse 14)And He became incensed when His own disciples “rebuked”them: The children and their parents, and even possibly Jesus!But when Jesus heard their rebuke and saw their dismissiveattitudes, that was more loyal to their rigid Judaism, He becomeindignant/angry at them (verse 14).He then set up a new rule for His good news: “Let the littlechildren come to me and do not hinder them (and their parents)for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these”, not like theproud but those running to receive His gift.Like the children's humble demeanor, the adults are to realizehumbly their need and accept Jesus' grace, gift or they wouldnever enter the Kingdom of heaven (verse 15).This story provides a fitting contrast for the Rich adult who was areligious heavy weight (see Mark 10:17-24). He bragged to be aheavy-weight in Judaism as well trusting in his riches. (The love ofmoney can become the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6:10)Jesus pointed this out in verse 21, and with a heart of love askedhim surrender his first love and to receive the gift of Jesuskingdom or have also treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21).He refused the offer: “At this the man's face fell and he went awaysad because in spite of his religious law abiding, he selfishlyaccrued great wealth (my paraphrase of verse 22), he did notreceive the kingdom.Contrast this to the joy experienced by the children and theirparents in Mark 10:13-16. They were willing to approach Jesus,counter-culture, with the need and hunger to be blessed by Jesus,and accept His gift of the Kingdom.They had no claim of power and status, especially from theirreligious society, but the humble need to be “touched” or“blessed” by Jesus; and not earn but receive the Kingdom as agift. The disciples' failure to understand Jesus' kingdom as a giftof grace responding to humility, earned Jesus' ire and rebuke.And the children received, not earned, His hands upon them andblessing.They demonstrated the attitude needed to enter into Christ'sKingdom: The rich adult was out; the children and their parentswere in!AMEN

M

Imaging center administrators face a critical question: are technologists truly prepared for virtual contrast supervision? With the CMS 2026 rule approaching, discover the essential protocols, regulatory requirements, and operational strategies every administrator needs to know. Learn more at https://www.contrast-connect.com/blog-post/why-technologist-training-is-the-cornerstone-of-virtual-contrast-supervision ContrastConnect City: Las Vegas Address: 309 Queens Gate Ct Website: https://www.contrast-connect.com/

Hey, Notre Dame!  Listen-up, Vandy fans.  You, too, BYU! How about getting behind today’s idea which would have placed your favorite large division (FBS) college football team into a new 24-team College Football Playoff system? The latest and greatest 12-team College Football Playoff format began last year in the 2024 football season.  The howling has continued about which teams make the 12-team field and which teams don’t. Last year, it was Alabama’s fans crying about being left out.  A few weeks ago, it was Notre Dame’s fans and administrators yelling the loudest about being left out of the 12-team field. Why don’t we hear similar complaints coming schools in the smaller division FCS? The FCS (comprised of 129 teams) has a smoothly-working playoff system which includes its top 24 teams. That’s right!  They begin with twice as many playoff teams as the major college FBS group (which had 136 teams this season). This year’s FCS playoffs began with eight first-round games played on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. After the first three rounds of elimination games, the two FCS semifinal games will be played this coming Saturday.  Surprising Illinois State visits Villanova and Montana State will host intrastate rival Montana. The FCS title game will be played on Monday, January 5, 2026 at 6:30PM CST in Nashville, Tennessee on ESPN. Contrast that with the FBS and its cantankerous 12-team College Football Playoff system The larger schools haven’t even played one first round playoff game yet. Friday night will have Alabama traveling to play Oklahoma (a rematch from November 15 in Tuscaloosa won by OU 23-21).  Three more opening round games will be played this Saturday. One of Saturday’s games features yet another rematch as Tulane visits Ole Miss for the second time this year. The larger schools’ College Football Playoffs will not crown a champion until Monday, January 19, 2026! Think about this. If #1 seed Indiana should reach the championship game, the Hoosiers’ spring semester would have been underway for a full week prior to the championship game involving last fall semester’s athlete/students. That is absurd! It is a consequence when major college football conferences and universities become hooked on television money.  The networks now dictate how, where, and when their games are played. How many total games are played in the FCS playoffs vs. the major College Football Playoffs? From start to finish, the small college FCS playoffs include 24 teams. The top eight seeds receive a first round bye.  The remaining 16 teams play eight first round games to trim the field to 16.  Another eight games are played in the second round, four in the quarterfinals, two in the semifinals, and finally the national championship. That makes a total of 23 playoff opportunities for television.  The FCS winner and runner-up may end-up playing five post-season games by January 5. Meanwhile, the 12-team major College Football Playoffs have 12 teams playing “4+4+2+1” for a total of 11 games.  The winner and runner-up will play no less than three but as many as four post-season games ending on January 19. Would anyone really care if we lost the major conference championship games? To emulate the small college playoff system, the major college (FBS) current 12-game regular season would not provide for an extra week to play those made-for-TV conference championship games. Eliminating conference championship games would end the complaining from the losers of those title games. For example, look at the SEC. Why should 11-1 Ole Miss and 11-1 Texas A&M receive a week to heal-up at home after “losing” the SEC’s four-team tiebreaker for first place?  Were 11-1 Georgia and 10-2 Alabama privileged – or penalized – by participating in the SEC Conference Championship earlier this month? This season, there were nine different conference championship games being played on the weekend of Saturday, December 6. The television partners carrying those conference title games (primarily Disney’s ESPN/ABC group) can fight over who will carry our new format’s eight first-round match-ups. Raise your hand if you would really miss losing six bowl games under this new 24-team plan! Adding the 12 additional playoff teams would eliminate six annual bowl games.  Before grabbing your box of Kleenex, please remember that 26 bowl games still remain for the 52 remaining teams which finish with at least a 6-6 record. ESPN’s massive bowl-a-rama of post-season games would receive an overdue trim.  The television ratings for any first round playoff game will easily eclipse Tuesday night’s “Salute to the Military” Bowl (won 17-13 by Jacksonville State over Troy). Who would be playing in a 24-team major College Football Playoff scenario? Let’s utilize the current FCS (small college) selection and its playoff format.  I will also use the major College Football Playoff rankings to determine this year’s 24-team playoff field. Part 1 – Select the nine conference champions and 15 at-large teams based on the CFP rankings Nine conference champions – The following nine teams receive an automatic bid: American – CFP #20 Tulane (11-2) Atlantic Coast (ACC) – unranked Duke (8-5) Big 12 – Texas Tech CFP #4 (12-1) Big Ten – Indiana CFP #1 (13-0) Conference USA – unranked Kennesaw State (10-3) Mid-American – unranked Western Michigan (9-4) Mountain West – unranked Boise State (9-4) Southeastern (SEC) – Georgia CFP #3 (12-1) Sunbelt – CFP #24 James Madison (12-1) 15 At-large teams – These participants are selected from the CFP’s highest ranked remaining teams. They would have been: #2 Ohio State (12-1) – Big Ten #5 Oregon (11-1) – Big Ten #6 Ole Miss (11-1) – SEC #7 Texas A&M (11-1) – SEC #8 Oklahoma (10-2) – SEC #9 Alabama (9-3) – SEC #10 Miami (FL) (10-2) – ACC #11 Notre Dame (10-2) – Independent #12 BYU (11-2) – Big 12 #13 Texas (9-3) – SEC #14 Vanderbilt (10-2) – SEC #15 Utah (10-2) – Big 12 #16 USC (9-3) – Big Ten #17 Arizona (9-3) – Big 12 #18 Michigan (9-3) – Big Ten Part 2 – Determine the top eight overall seeds by utilizing the CFP Final rankings These teams would receive a “bye” in Round 1 and host a playoff game on their campus during Round 2 the following weekend. #1 – Indiana (13-0) #2 – Ohio State (12-1) #3 – Georgia (12-1) #4 – Texas Tech (12-1) #5 – Oregon (11-1) #6 – Ole Miss (11-1) #7 – Texas A&M (11-1) #8 – Oklahoma (12-1) Part 3 – The next eight seeds (#9-16) will host a first round playoff game on their campus This year’s first round home games would go to: #9 Alabama (9-3) #10 Miami (FL) (10-2) #11 Notre Dame (10-2) #12 BYU (11-2) #13 Texas (9-3) #14 Vanderbilt (10-2) #15 Utah (10-2) #16 USC (9-3) Part 4 – The final eight teams in the playoff field do not receive a seeding Those final eight teams (according to the College Football Playoff rankings) would be: Arizona, Michigan, Tulane, James Madison, Duke, Kennesaw State, Western Michigan, and Boise State. Like the FCS small college playoffs, first round match-ups would be based on geographic proximity and the avoidance of conference rematches from the regular season. Let’s do a little first round matchmaking.  Grab your ancient Rand McNally maps and let’s go! #9 Alabama vs. Kennesaw State (202 miles) #10 Miami (FL) vs. James Madison (1,026 miles) #11 Notre Dame vs. Western Michigan (85 miles) #12 BYU vs. Boise State (390 miles) #13 Texas vs. Tulane (534 miles) #14 Vanderbilt vs. Duke (527 miles) #15 Utah vs. Michigan (1,621 miles) #16 USC vs. Arizona (491 miles) Part 5 – The eight first round winners hit the road in Round 2 to play at Seeds #1 – 8 in the second round. Since this is the first game for the top seeded teams, match-ups would consider geographic proximity and the avoidance of replaying a conference opponent. Part 6 – The highest seeded teams would continue to host games during the quarterfinals. At this point, the top seeds will simply host any unseeded teams or any remaining team with the highest seed number (for example, #1 vs. an unranked team or #16 or #15, etc.). Rematches between two regular season opponents are permitted at this point. Part 7 – The semifinal round will be played on New Year’s Day The “Final Four” would play a semifinal game at two of the former “big” New Year’s Day bowl game sites (Cotton, Rose, Sugar, and Orange). Part 8 – The national championship game would be played one week later and rotated at one of the former “big” New Year’s Day bowl sites (not being utilized in the semifinal round) Let’s summarize these changes if major college football should adopt the small college FCS 24-team playoff concept: No more conference championship games As a result, no more squabbling about the losing teams in conference title games 12 additional playoff teams More home playoff games Generating more television interest Six fewer lower-tier bowl games What are we waiting for? The post The FBS should utilize the FCS 24-team playoff model! appeared first on SwampSwamiSports.com.

In this episode, Stuart and Jacob dive into the enchanting(?) world of romantic comedies as they compare the beloved 1934 classic "It Happened One Night", directed by Frank Capra, with its 1956 musical remake "You Can't Run Away from It", directed by comedian and actor Dick Powell?! The two explore the charming chemistry between leads Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, and how their performances set a high bar for cinematic romance. Contrast this with Jack Lemmon and June Allyson's iteration of the story, and see how the musical elements and sound effects can form a... grating... experience. What makes the original resonate with audiences even today? Is the addition of musical numbers a blessing or a curse for this kind of movie? And just what in the hell is "Eve Knew Her Apples"? Also featured in this episode are opinions on the newest "Wicked" movie, a takedown off public transportation villains, praise for Claudette Colbert, and a long diatribe about the current state of the film industry (what else is new for this show?). All this and more on They Remade It!Plot Synopsis Timestamps: 15:26 - 20:20----------Socials----------@theyremadeit.bsky.social on Blueskytheyremadeit@gmail.com

Brooks & Colter Nuanez of Skyline Sports compare and contrast all the dynamics between Montana State's 31-28 win over Montana in Missoula and the upcoming matchup between the 'Cats & Griz in Bozeman on Saturday afternoon.

Rocky Snyder sits down with Kyle Porter, Colorado Rapids' Director of Player Performance.The Zelos Podcast is all about the “Pros behind the Pros.” Each week, Rocky interviews leading experts in strength & conditioning, sports medicine, athletic training, and physical therapy who work behind the scenes in leagues like the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS, and NWSL.Hosted by internationally recognized movement specialist and master trainer Rocky Snyder, new episodes drop every Monday at 9am EST / 6am PST.TIME STAMPS:4:00 The lives of Kyle Porter7:00 Leaving the family business10:00 Starting a gym and a valuable lesson14:30 Utilizing a financial background with the Rapids20:00 Top 3 buckets for injury mitigation26:30 SAID principle dilemma34:30 Low level plyometrics36:00 Contrast training38:30 Key elements to reducing hamstring injuries45:45 Staff expansionGET TO KNOW KYLE PORTERLINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-porter-400425267/ INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/kyleporter_performance/ COLORADO RAPIDS: https://www.coloradorapids.com/GET TO KNOW ROCKY SNYDERMEET: Visit the Rocky's online headquarters: RockySnyder.comREAD: Grab a copy of his new "Return to Center" book: www.rockysnyder.comINSTA: Instagram fan, check him out at https://www.instagram.com/rocky_snyder/FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rocky.snyder.77LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rocky-snyder-cscs-cafs-nsca-cpt-a77a091/TRAIN WITH ROCKY WORKOUT: Want to meet Rocky and get a private workout: https://rfcsantacruz.com/INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/rockysfitnesssc/FACEBOOK: Facebook.com/RockysFitnessCenter

Rocky Snyder sits down with Kyle Porter, Colorado Rapids' Director of Player Performance.The Zelos Podcast is all about the “Pros behind the Pros.” Each week, Rocky interviews leading experts in strength & conditioning, sports medicine, athletic training, and physical therapy who work behind the scenes in leagues like the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS, and NWSL.Hosted by internationally recognized movement specialist and master trainer Rocky Snyder, new episodes drop every Monday at 9am EST / 6am PST.TIME STAMPS:4:00 The lives of Kyle Porter7:00 Leaving the family business10:00 Starting a gym and a valuable lesson14:30 Utilizing a financial background with the Rapids20:00 Developing the outdoor conditioning center21:30 Top 3 buckets for injury mitigation26:30 SAID principle dilemma34:30 Low level plyometrics36:00 Contrast training38:30 Key elements to reducing hamstring injuries45:45 Staff expansionGET TO KNOW KYLE PORTERLINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-porter-400425267/ INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/kyleporter_performance/ COLORADO RAPIDS: https://www.coloradorapids.com/GET TO KNOW ROCKY SNYDERMEET: Visit the Rocky's online headquarters: RockySnyder.comREAD: Grab a copy of his new "Return to Center" book: www.rockysnyder.comINSTA: Instagram fan, check him out at https://www.instagram.com/rocky_snyder/FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rocky.snyder.77LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rocky-snyder-cscs-cafs-nsca-cpt-a77a091/TRAIN WITH ROCKY WORKOUT: Want to meet Rocky and get a private workout: https://rfcsantacruz.com/INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/rockysfitnesssc/FACEBOOK: Facebook.com/RockysFitnessCenter

John 3:36 captures the gospel in one powerful sentence: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." In this verse, John brings the entire chapter to a crossroads belief or rejection, life or judgment. There is no middle ground. This message reminds us that faith in Jesus isn't just an idea; it's a response. To believe in Him is to trust, follow, and surrender. To refuse Him is to remain under the weight of our own sin. Yet within this verse is the heartbeat of God's mercy: the offer of eternal life through His Son. If you've ever wondered what it truly means to "believe in Jesus," this passage lays it bare. It's not about religion it's about life or death, and the invitation to step into grace that never ends.

Radiant Arrival Pt. 3The stories we love usually feature a prideful villain and a humble hero - and the Christmas story is no different. This week, Pastor Dave highlights the stunning contrast between Caesar's pride and Jesus' humility, and shows why humility isn't just admirable - it's the way forward for all of us.

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:Analysis of the contrast between the approaches of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and State Rep. James Talarico deepens and is shaping the parameters of the primary contest between them: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/jasmine-crockett-james-talarico-texas-senate-primary-democrats-future.html...Also, Crockett's strategy to mobilize and grow the Democratic base comes into contrast with the more traditional strategy of inter-party persuasion of Talarico come into contrast: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jasmine-crockett-texas-senate-race-vibes-based-political-strategy.html...Meanwhile the GOP is eager to face Crockett, claiming to have "lured" her into running for Senate: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6386303950112Lone Star Left's Michelle Davis focuses on the woefully underqualified Julie Pickren of the State Board of Education and the Democrats seeking to rid the state of her destructive influence: https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/the-2026-texas-democratic-primaries-976South Texas Democratic Candidate Etienne Rosas tried to ask Governor Greg Abbott a question at a Weslaco event earlier this week, and ended up forcibly ejected from the event by a local police officer: https://www.chron.com/politics/article/abbott-event-rosas-removed-21237141.phpConditions for detainees at a South Texas immigrant detention center are reported to have become deplorably inhumane: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/09/politics/migrant-families-ice-detention-facility-texasSee the full list of 2026 races and candidates, courtesy of Lone Star Left, ⁠⁠HERE ⁠⁠and ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠.We had a blast at our first of two holiday parties in Austin, and are excited to see YOU at the second in Dallas! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://act.progresstexas.org/a/progress-texas-holiday-parties-2025⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Check out our web store, including our newly-expanded Humans Against Greg Abbott collection: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://store.progresstexas.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://progresstexas.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Send us a textVoid Signal welcomes Jake Desrochers of darkwave industrial project HOLY WATER to discuss his powerful new album Contrast. Known for raw, high-energy performances that emphasize authenticity and emotional connection, Jake shares insights into his creative process, the meaning behind standout tracks like “Tasted Tears, Wasted Time,” and the role of community, resilience, and second chances in both his music and life. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of art, vulnerability, and the bonds that make music transformative.Featured Songs:HOLY WATER - EYE.LL.FND. Uhttps://holywater-music.bandcamp.com/ for more HOLY WATER.Void Signal intro courtesy of Processor. Visit https://processor2.bandcamp.com for more Processor.Void Signal intro remix by Mortal Realm. Visit https://mortalrealm.bandcamp.com/ for more Mortal Realm.Support the showVoid Signal is ad-free and powered by people. Visit https://VoidSignal.net to support Void Signal and enjoy exclusive episodes, series, and more.

Tara hosts the nine o'clock hour with live calls

Tara opens the nine o'clock hour for callers, diving into hot-button issues from immigration fraud

Is God's law contrary to His promises in Christ? Many think Jesus came to abolish the law, but Paul emphatically says "absolutely not!" Drawing from Galatians 3:21-22, Dr. John explains that the law never gave life—only Christ does. Yet the moral law still stands. Jesus didn't come to make us lawless; He came to fulfill what the law demanded and empower us by His Spirit to live righteously. This message reveals the crucial continuity between law and grace.Christmas From Galatians: This Christmas, Dr. John takes an unprecedented approach to the season by exploring why Jesus' coming was absolutely necessary. Through the book of Galatians, this series traces God's plan from Abraham's promise through the giving of the Law to the arrival of Christ. Discover why the Law was never meant to save us but to diagnose our condition, how Jesus fulfilled what we could never accomplish, and how Christmas opened the door for all people to become sons and daughters of God.

Join Ramtin Mojtahedi (Computing) for a discussion of his PhD research on deep learning approaches for liver cancer segmentation, tumour-type classification, and survival prediction from contrast-enhanced CT imaging. Ramtin is open to discussing his research further and can be reached at ramtin.mojtahedi@queensu.ca.

Tara unpacks the chaos at America's borders, at sea, and inside government programs. From U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-running “shipwreck crews”

In today's episode, we welcome back one of my favorite souls on the planet Sarah Prout, bestselling author, artist, and one of the world's greatest manifestation teachers. Together, we explore how manifestation is changing, why your intuition is becoming louder, and how your angels are preparing you for a year of profound expansion. We talk about embracing the journey instead of chasing the destination, trusting God's timing, creative flow, divine feminine and masculine energetics, identity shifts, perimenopause as spiritual initiation, and why the best is truly yet to come for you. This conversation is cozy, honest, mystical, and full of reminders from Spirit that you are supported, guided, and deeply loved. Book a Reading or Explore the Angel Membership If you feel the nudge I want to hear my angels clearly, I want to work with them every day — your next step is waiting for you.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent Romans 15:4-13 by William Klock In our Epistle, in Romans 15:4, St. Paul writes, “Whatever was written ahead of time, you see, was written for us to learn from, so that through patience and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.” Maybe more than any of our other Advent scripture lessons, that verse sums up what Advent is about.  There's a big story.  The story of God and his people and the world.  And the Christmas story is just one part of it.  A very importantly part, without a doubt, but still just one part.  Pull it out, try to make it stand on all on its own, and it ends up becoming something else.  And that's what secular culture has done.  Contrast how the world prepares us for Christmas and how the church prepares us.  Our commercialistic, materialistic, entertainment focused culture just starts shoving Christmas at us as soon as Halloween is over.  How do you get ready for Christmas?  You buy Christmas stuff.  You start listening to Christmas music.  You start watching all the Christmas movies on TV.  Our culture prepares for Christmas by doing Christmas.  And then Christmas comes and then it's suddenly over in a day…or maybe two, if you count Boxing Day.  And I hear it all the time: people are left wondering what happened, feeling like they missed something. It occurred to me that this is like trying to explain to someone that Die Hard is a Christmas movie by making them watch the scene of Hans Gruber falling from Nakatomi Plaza…over and over and over.  It's an iconic scene.  It says Christmas almost as much as Baby Jesus in the manger.  But your friend will still have no idea what Die Hard is about, let alone why it's a Christmas movie.  He just knows it ends with a bad guy falling off a building into a big explosion.  If you want him to understand, you've got to start at the beginning.  He has to know the story all the way back to the opening with John McClane on the airplane.  Then your friend will get it…and maybe he'll even understand why it's the best Christmas movie ever.  And when the time comes for that scene, the grand crescendo of the movie, and Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Tower, he's gonna cheer, because it's not just a cool scene.  It's not just iconic.   It's the denouement of the story. And that is what the church does with Advent, Brothers and Sisters.  It takes us back into the story of Israel and Israel's God, it shows us the darkness of the world and the fallenness of humanity, it reminds us God's plan and his promises to set it all to rights, to make everything new again.  That's why our daily readings through Advent are taken from Isaiah.  And so, when Christmas comes, it's more than just an orgy of consumerism and it's more than just sentimental feelings about Baby Jesus in a manger, it's more than vague good thoughts about God.  No, when Christmas comes and we've been reading the promises in the scripture and singing the promises and songs of longing during Advent, we recognise the light and life that have been born into the midst of darkness and sin, we see God's saving Messiah, and most of all we're moved to give him glory because Christmas shows that he is faithful to his promises. And for Paul, that was kind of everything.  Because when you know what the story is all about and when you know where it's going, you realise that following Jesus isn't just about sentimental feelings, or about being good until you die so you can go to heaven, it's about the fact that in Jesus, God has sent his king to bring new creation into the midst of the old and to make us a part of it.  In fact, to make us the agents of that new creation and his saving work.  To be the stewards of his good news and his Spirit who carry his light and life into the darkness and death of the world in preparation for the day when Jesus' work is consummated.  When people don't know the story, they too often reduce Christianity to fire insurance, to a “Get out of hell free” card.  Christmas becomes a sentimental holiday about a baby.  But when you know the story, you that Christianity is all about is a vocation—to be the people of God for the sake of the world—and the baby in the manger shows us what our vocation looks like. And this is precisely why Paul writes what he does here in Romans 15.  Because when you forget the story, or when you forget where it's going, and especially when you stop living in hope of God's future, it becomes very, very easy to just go with the flow.  To take the path of least resistance.  To let the world and its values and ideas carry you away back into the darkness.  To give up on the vocation that the gospel and the Spirit have given us.  The big problem Paul saw in the Roman churches was that the Jewish believers in Jesus and the Gentile believers in Jesus were splitting up.  They were letting ethnicity define them instead of Jesus and because of that they were losing their gospel witness and letting the darkness and division of the world define who they were. And Brothers and Sisters, the same thing happens to us.  It still happens with churches dividing up over ethnicity and language and things like that, but it happens all sorts of other ways too.  We lose sight of our hope.  We lose sight of God's future.  And when we do, we lose our vocation and instead of being gospel people of light and life swimming upstream, we end up just going with the worldly flow.  Sometimes it happens without us even realising it.  Other times we knowingly give up because it seems like there's no other option.  I was talking with someone this week about politics in my country and he said, “Well, you have to be a Democrat or a Republican!  There's no other choice!”  And I kept saying, there is another choice.  You commit to doing the right thing, the kingdom thing, to following Jesus and being light and life.  These days that means saying no to the options that everyone else is making.  It means making a deliberate choice to lose, but you do so knowing that God's justice will win in the end—because the story shows us that God is always faithful to do what he's promised and to finish what he starts.  If you understand the cross, this shouldn't be a difficult concept. This is why Paul starts out with some of that scripture that was written in the past, some “Old Testament” as we call it.  In verse 3 he writes, “The Messiah, you see, didn't please himself.  Instead, as it was written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you are fallen on me.'”  In other words, Jesus took on himself a punishment he didn't deserve.  When David wrote that psalm he was thinking of his own situation.  It's Psalm 69.  He cries out to God because the flood waters are rising around him.  Because he feels like he's sinking in the mud with no footing to be found.  His enemies were surrounding him and kicking him when he was down.  But he knew the Lord and he knew his promises and he knew the Lord is faithful, so he cried out for justice and salvation.  And as he closes the psalm, he cries out with hope-filled praise.  God hadn't delivered him yet, but David still praises the Lord for his salvation—what he knows God will do. And this wasn't just David's story and vocation, it was the story and vocation of Israel and that meant that when Jesus came as the faithful Israelite to represent his people, it became his story and his vocation.  David knew, Israel knew, Jesus knew because it had been written, because they had God's word and because of that they had Gods' promises.  The way of God's people is the way of the servant who suffers.  It's the way of unjust suffering for the sake of others and for the sake of the whole world.  But through that suffering God has brought redemption and kingdom and new life. As the Mandalorian says, “This is the way.”  Looking to the good of others instead of our own good is the way of the cross.  Just as it was for Jesus the way to his throne, it is for us the way to his kingdom.  Jesus could have given in to the devil's temptation in the wilderness.  He could have bowed down to him and received his throne.  And he'd be king, but he'd be king of a people still enslaved to sin and death.  The world would still be dark and broken and fallen.  Think of our Gospel last week.  Jesus could have let the Palm Sunday crowd carry him into Jerusalem and seat him on a throne.  But again, he'd have his throne, but the primary mission would have failed.  He'd be king over a dead people.  Instead, he had to come as a humble servant, he had to face the rejection of his people, he had to face their jeers and their mocking, and he had to go to his death in a way so humiliating that polite people wouldn't even discuss it.  But through the cross, by letting all the forces of evil come together to do their worst in one place, Jesus defeated them and brought light and life back to God's good world.  And now, as Jesus said, he calls us to take up our cross and to follow him.  Not when it's expedient.  Not when the cross is light.  The point of a cross is that it's heavy!  It's our calling, no matter what.  But it's a joyful calling in the end, because we know the story and we have the promises of a God who faithful.  The lowly birth, the constant antagonism, the humiliating and painful death make possible the glory and the joy of the resurrection and new creation. So, Paul goes on writing in Romans 15:5, “May the God of patience and encouragement grant you to come to a common mind among yourselves, in accordance with Jesus the Messiah, so that, with one mind and one mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.” That's the mission, Brothers and Sisters: to glorify God.  And not just when we come to church and pray and praise and give thanks.  That's certainly one way we give him glory, but one of the things the story teaches us is that God is glorified when we respond to his faithfulness with faithfulness of our own—and especially when the watching world sees it, especially when it involves humility and even suffering.  God was glorified as the world watched Jesus go to the cross, trusting his Father's promises.  And God is glorified today as, trusting our Father's promises, we take up our crosses and follow him.  As we walk in faith, as we do good, as we live in hope, and as we do it without compromise, even it means trouble or loss.  Think of the apostles.  Think of all the Christians in the first centuries after Jesus who lived in hope of God's future and who trusted in his promises and refused to compromise their gospel life and witness and gave their lives for it.  At first it seemed like a pointless failure, but as the world watched, their gospel witness made a difference and eventually—not in a single generation, but eventually—their witness brought an entire empire to Jesus and taught it grace and mercy and lifted it up out of barbarism and sexual immorality the likes of which—even in light of the world today—we'd be hard-pressed to imagine.  And it happened because Jesus' people were united in him and faithful in hope and witness. That unity part is a major theme of Paul's letter to the Romans, because the unity of the church across the Jew-gentile divide was one of the most significant ways the early church broke with both Jewish and Greco-Roman culture and swam against the current.  We don't think about that nearly as often as we should.  Unity is essential to our Christian vocation.  It reveals that our identity is Jesus the Messiah.  Those early Christians showed the world what it looks like to find your identity, not in your ethnicity or language, not in your customs or biological kin, not in your social class, but in Jesus.  Jews and gentiles, rich and poor, slave and free came together as brothers and sisters in those churches and it shocked the world, Jews and Greeks alike.  It became a powerful witness to God's new creation.  It was that witness coupled with the proclamation that Jesus, crucified and risen, is the world's true lord, that brought the nations—a few at first, but eventually a whole empire—that's what moved them to give glory to the God of Israel.  Something absolutely unthinkable.  Romans giving glory to a loser God of a loser people.  But Jesus changes everything and the faithful witness of a servant church backed that truth up. So, going on in our Epistle, Paul says in verse 7: “Welcome one another!”  Don't let the values, identities, and prejudices of the world divide the church.  Paul says, instead, “Welcome one another as the Messiah has welcomed you, to God's glory.  Let me tell you why: the Messiah became a servant of the circumcised people in order to demonstrate the truthfulness of God—that is, to confirm the promises to the patriarchs, and to bring the nations to praise God for his mercy.” That was the plan all along.  This is the big story.  God called Abraham and through him created a people, a holy nation through whom he would eventually save the whole world.  Jesus was the culmination of that chapter of the story: the perfect, faithful Israelite, the humble Davidic king, who died the death his people deserved in order to deliver them.  In doing that, God fulfilled what he'd promised the patriarchs, what he'd promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what he'd promised to David. The unity of the church, the bringing in of the gentiles into the covenant family, is a witness to the faithfulness of God, so Paul keeps hammering away at it.  These are the things, the scriptures, that were written in the past and that tell us the story.  And so Psalm 18:49.  It's the Psalmist celebrating the victory that the God of Israel has given him as he declares that he will praise him not just in Israel, but in the midst of the nations so that they hear of the glory of God, too.  He sings: “That is why I will praise you among the nations, and will sing to your name.”  And then, in verse 10 Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32:43: “Rejoice, you nations, with his people!”  This was the song of Moses celebrating God's victory over and just judgement on both rebellious Israel and the gentile nations and Moses calls those pagan nations, having seen the victory of Israel's God, to join in his praises.  And then, verse 11, Paul is back to the Psalms, to Psalm 117:1: “Praise the Lord, all nations, and let all the peoples sing his praise.”  Again, the Psalmist calls to the nations to come and praise the God of Israel with him.  And then, finally, the Prophet Isaiah: “There shall be the root of Jesse, the one who rises up to rule the nations; the nations shall hope in him.” The bit from Isaiah is important.  Because Paul's showing the Roman Christians (and he's showing us), that it was God's plan all along for the nations to join Israel in praising and glorifying Israel's God.  And in the days of Moses and the days of David, that was crazy talk.  People didn't glorify other people's gods.  The gods were the strength of their respective nations, so not only was it unpatriotic to give glory to a foreign god, it was sort of like inviting the defeat of your nation and your king.  But this was God's plan all along.  To bring the nations to him in faith.  And Paul's reminding the Roman Christians that this is exactly what's happened to them.  Pagan Romans heard the gospel and they saw the uncompromising witness of the believers there—probably mostly Jews—who believed Jesus was truly the Messiah.  And those pagans were moved to faith.  And in the early days of the church there, Jewish and Gentile believers were doing the unthinkable: they were worshipping the God of Israel side by side.  And that only served to witness the power of the gospel even more powerfully.  But things happened and those Christians started to go with the flow and the unity began to fall apart: Jews worshipping in that house and Gentiles in this one over here.  And so Paul reminds them how God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus.  The root of Jesse promised by Isaiah has come and he was raised up on the cross to the glory of God, and the nations have begun to come to him.  And Paul's saying: don't lose that that or you risk losing the whole gospel.  I know it's hard.  The gentile believers will be mocked by their friends and family for worshipping the God of the weirdo Jews, with weirdo Jews at their side, no less.  And the Jewish believers, they were going to be hassled by their Jewish family and friends for worshipping beside those unclean gentiles.  And Paul's saying, “Don't give in to the pressure from the world.  Keep witnessing the power of the gospel.  Remember that you worship the God who was born in humility as one of us and who went humble to a cross for our sake.  Live humbly for the sake of each other—and live humbly for the sake of the world.  Romans, you show your people that the God of Israel is faithful and full of mercy and grace and unlike any god your people have ever known.  And Jews, you show your people that in Jesus, your God has purified the gentiles and is fulfilling his promises.  And he wraps it up exhorting them, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Paul knew that persecution was coming and the temptation to fragment would be even strong, but the hope-filled joy that began with the birth of Jesus and that carries through the story to the cross, burst out of the tomb with joy on Easter—and that resurrection hope, that light and life, would keep them faithful to their calling.  Will keep us faithful to our calling. A people overflowing with hope.  Hope in the fulfilment of what God has promised and what he's revealed in Jesus: hope for a world where the darkness is gone, hope for a final end to sin and death, hope for the day when heaven and earth are brough back together and men and women live and serve in the presence of God as he created us in the beginning. And here's the thing, Brothers and Sisters, it's that gospel- and Spirit-filled hope that will make us the gospel force Jesus calls us to be.  It's that hope that makes us heaven-on-earth people even when it means swimming upstream, even when it means choosing the option that no one else will choose, even when it means that the world is angry with us, even when it means rejection—and in some cases even martyrdom.  It's that hope that will drive us to proclaim the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection; it's that hope that will give us the hearts of servants ready to humbly teach the world mercy and grace; it's that hope that will move us to love our enemies and even to die for them; it's that hope that will move us to take uncompromising stands against what is wrong and for what is right, even if it means losing in the short term.  Because our hope is sure and certain—that what God began in humility at the manger, he will surely one day bring to completion in an all-consuming burst of glory.  Let's close with our collect.  Think on that prayer and how it calls us, not just to read the scriptures, but to so immerse ourselves in them that they become a part of us. Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

John 3:36 captures the gospel in one powerful sentence: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." In this verse, John brings the entire chapter to a crossroads belief or rejection, life or judgment. There is no middle ground. This message reminds us that faith in Jesus isn't just an idea; it's a response. To believe in Him is to trust, follow, and surrender. To refuse Him is to remain under the weight of our own sin. Yet within this verse is the heartbeat of God's mercy: the offer of eternal life through His Son. If you've ever wondered what it truly means to "believe in Jesus," this passage lays it bare. It's not about religion it's about life or death, and the invitation to step into grace that never ends.

12-7-25 AM "The Blessing of Trusting the LORD"Scripture Reading: Psalm 32Sermon Text: Psalm 32:10I. The Contrast to the Blessing of Trusting the LORD A. Who the Wicked Are B. What the Sorrows AreII. The Action in the Blessing of Trusting the LORD A. The Nature of the Action B. The Object of the ActionIII. The Result of the Blessing of Trusting the LORD A. A Gift of Mercy B. An Abundance of MercyRev. Greg Lubbers

Contrast between today's macro backdrop and the 2021 Bitcoin peak, with tighter liquidity, higher rates, and far stronger structural support for BitcoinCory's base case: no classic 80% “crypto winter” drawdowns anymore and a strong chance of new all-time highs in 2026John's “yearly lows” chart framing: rising annual Bitcoin floors as proof of real accumulation and diminishing panic sellingLarry Fink, Harvard, sovereign wealth funds, and major banks (BofA, Vanguard, Schwab, Citi) as long-term Bitcoin buyers, not momentum touristsDiscussion of CFTC-approved spot Bitcoin trading on designated contract markets as another on-ramp for pensions and endowmentsBig critique of prediction markets and “scambling” (scam + gambling) as an extractive, nihilistic, fiat-era attempt to financialize everythingCory and John argue that crypto casinos, meme coins, and prediction markets are a giant gambling funnel that ultimately pushes people toward Bitcoin's seriousnessBitcoin and energy: riffing on Elon Musk and Jensen Huang's comments about Bitcoin turning stranded or excess energy into a universal monetary batteryMicroStrategy's new USD reserve is framed as a cosmetics move to soothe institutions and make their Stretch preferreds more attractive, not a change in core strategyCory pushes back on “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” de-banking narratives, distinguishing between true systemic exclusion and individual risky accounts being dropped Swan Private helps HNWI, companies, trusts, and other entities go beyond legacy finance with BItcoin. Learn more at swan.com/private. Put Bitcoin into your IRA and own your future. Check out swan.com/ira.Swan Vault makes advanced Bitcoin security simple. Learn more at swan.com/vault.

In this week's mixtape rewind, we go back a couple of years to when Matt and Sam did a deep dive into music supergroups.Imagine loading a playlist where legends keep walking through the door. That's the ride we built as we dive into supergroups that actually deliver, from the crunch of Audioslave and the finesse of Cream to the indie cohesion of Boygenius and the pure joy of the Traveling Wilburys. We chase the central mystery behind these collaborations: when distinct sounds collide, what holds, what changes, and why does it matter?We start with the gravitational pull of great voices. Chris Cornell gives Audioslave immediate identity while Tom Morello adds that unmistakable edge, and Maynard James Keenan turns A Perfect Circle into a masterclass in mood without copying Tool. Then we test chemistry in the engine room: Chickenfoot fires up old-school rock craftsmanship, and Them Crooked Vultures stretch grooves into cinematic builds powered by Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones. For a genre swerve, Mount Westmore brings bass and swagger with Snoop, Too Short, E-40, and Ice Cube trading bars like it's a victory lap.Contrast keeps the mix alive. Wild Flag threads surfy drums with indie bite, and Boygenius shows how three solo voices can trade lead without crowding the song. Prophets of Rage fuse protest and power, pulling rap and rock tight around a sharp social focus, while The Highwaymen remind us that sometimes the most classic move—four giants trading verses—still lands hardest. And to cap it all, the Traveling Wilburys prove that when Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty decide to have fun, the hooks practically write themselves.Be Yourself by AudioslaveBig Subwoofer by MOUNT WESTMOREWhite Room by CreamDown the Drain by ChickenfootElephants by Them Crooked VulturesRomance by WILD FLAGPassive by A Perfect CircleBruised by The BensLiving on the 110 by Prophets of RageHighwayman by HighwaymanSatanist by boygeniusWilbury Twist by The Traveling Wilburys Support the showVisit us at https://www.superawesomemix.com to learn more about our app, our merchandise, our cards, and more!

Titus 1:10-16 Pastor Eric Mounts

John 3:36 captures the gospel in one powerful sentence: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." In this verse, John brings the entire chapter to a crossroads belief or rejection, life or judgment. There is no middle ground. This message reminds us that faith in Jesus isn't just an idea; it's a response. To believe in Him is to trust, follow, and surrender. To refuse Him is to remain under the weight of our own sin. Yet within this verse is the heartbeat of God's mercy: the offer of eternal life through His Son. If you've ever wondered what it truly means to "believe in Jesus," this passage lays it bare. It's not about religion it's about life or death, and the invitation to step into grace that never ends.

Canada is building homes at a record pace, but a closer look reveals a growing disconnect between what's being constructed and what Canadians actually need, want, or can afford. While total units under construction sit at all-time highs, homeowner-oriented housing tells a very different story. Single-family home starts have fallen to levels not seen since 2009, even dipping below those of 25 years ago when adjusted for population growth. Over just three months, single-family starts are down more than 9%, condo starts are down over 11%, and yet purpose-built rental construction is up more than 30%. Building permits, the clearest leading indicator show Ontario and British Columbia at a 40-year low for single-family approvals, all but guaranteeing a future shortage of that housing type. The trajectory is clear: fewer Canadians will live in single-family homes, not by choice, but by supply design.That supply shift is already reshaping the rental market. Canada now has roughly 180,000 purpose-built rental units in the pipeline, including an extraordinary 16% of British Columbia's entire rental stock currently under construction. Contrast that with 2012, when fewer than 2,000 rentals were being built nationwide. Today, that number exceeds 35,000 annually. Vacancy rates, which hit a historic low near 1.5% in 2024, have already climbed to roughly 2.5%, with growing evidence they could push into the 4% range over the coming years. Rents are responding quickly. In Metro Vancouver, average one-bedroom rents fell in November to roughly $2,164 — down 9% year-over-year — with similar declines now seen across 17 of Canada's largest metro areas. For investors, particularly institutions that piled aggressively into rental housing, this is an inflection point worth watching closely.Against this backdrop, Ottawa has rolled out its latest housing intervention: Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency aimed almost entirely at affordable rental and social housing. The program brings long-awaited clarity around income-based definitions of affordability and outlines a three-pillar strategy focused on financing, building, and industrializing housing production. But it also exposes critical blind spots. The program does not target market-rate ownership or middle-class housing. Its standardized design catalogue emphasizes low-rise, low-density buildings, often with small unit sizes, at a time when cities are short family-sized homes and need density. Innovation is championed rhetorically, yet without a clear plan to reconcile higher upfront costs with housing volume or to modernize zoning and building codes that frequently block new construction methods before they scale.Absorbing this supply would normally rely on strong population growth. That engine is stalling. Telecom data tracking mobile phone additions shows population growth slowing sharply, with 2025 on track for one of the weakest increases in over 70 years — and federal policy aimed at slowing it further.Taken together, the picture is sobering. Canada is producing housing but increasingly rentals instead of ownership, volume instead of suitability, optics instead of outcomes. Until supply aligns with real demand, regulations match ambition, and confidence is restored, the housing crisis is unlikely to ease. The question isn't just what Canada is building it's who it's being built for, and whether that answer still works. _________________________________ Contact Us To Book Your Private Consultation:

Affordability Narrative Democrats were previously dismissing inflation and now emphasizing affordability. Democrats are trying to portray the economy as a disaster and blame Trump. Gas Prices & Energy Positive news: Thanksgiving gas prices at their lowest since the pandemic. National average forecast: $3.02 per gallon. Nearly 30 states have prices under $3; Oklahoma leads at $2.50. Liberal states like California have much higher prices ($4.63), attributed to regulation and taxation. Trend framed as a result of Trump’s energy policies. Holiday Spending U.S. holiday spending expected to top $1 trillion for the first time. Mixed consumer sentiment: Surveys show some tightening (Gen Z plans to spend 23% less). National Retail Federation predicts sales growth of 2.9–3.4%. Concerns about tariffs and shipping delays; advice to shop early. Thanksgiving Meal Costs Down 5% from last year, lowest in four years. Average cost for 10 people: $55.18. Sharp decline in turkey prices (down 16%). Contrast with Biden-era inflation: Prices surged 14% in 2021 and 20% in 2022. Overall increase of ~24% during Biden’s term. Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast and Verdict with Ted Cruz Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening X: https://x.com/benfergusonshowYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanksgiving “Recipes” for 30 MLB TeamsAL East Power ShiftsRed Sox add Sonny Gray, creating a potential rotation anchor alongside CrochetYankees uncertainties: Garrett Cole's health, unproven young armsOrioles lose Grayson RodriguezBlue Jays surge by adding Dylan Cease and retooling their rotationIs it now a Red Sox & Blue Jays division for 2026What does it take to get a top tier player  - Cash - Payouts - Location - TeamsBlue Jays Go All-InToronto surpasses the 2026 luxury tax for the first time.Dylan Cease deal building a legacy around young starter Trey Yesavage and a veteran rotation mix of Gausman, Berríos, Bieber, and CeaseBo Bichette's future with Blue Jays or elsewhere & getting out of Vladdy's shadowWhat does it take to get a top tier player  - Cash - Payouts - Location - TeamsWhat's cooking with the Rays RosterThe club DFA's Jake Fraley to avoid arbitration—then brings him back and save over half of a million .Cooking ‘up a stew for Tampa Bay's outfield mix: Jake Fraley, Ryan Vilade, Chandler Simpson, Josh Lowe, Jonny DeLuca, Richie PalaciIos, Jake Mangum.Does Rays' aggressiveness lag behind AL East rivals.Extend Junior Caminero – a punch of positivity for the future of the Rays & the fansLoving past Rays players including Isaac Paredes & Joey WendleKyle Tucker or Alex Bregman - who would you chooseLongevity vs immediate impact performanceMat  “you never want to pay for what they did. You want to pay for what they're going to do.”Kyle Tucker with Rays, Cubs, Dodgers and at what price Randy Arozarena - a talent undervaluedVernon Wells - Anthopoulos hot potato unloadedAnthony Rendon & Angels BuyoutGil Meche walked away from Royals leaving $12 million behindMeasuring beyond Analytics Mental health considerationsCharacter evaluation should factor more heavily into long-term contracts.Big-moment - Clutch ratingBeing a good teammate & building comraderyReflect on 2020 Rays' energy and Arozarena/Phillips sideline moments Contrast drawn with Anthony (Eeyore) Rendon negative presence & how moving on could re-energize Mike Trout and the Angels.World Baseball Classic Excitement WBC iconic moment - Trout vs. Ohtani Japan's dominance, Yamamoto–Ohtani Should MLB should pause season or adjust the All-Star break to improve WBC pitching quality.Scheduling Challenges Across Sports Overlapping sports calendars multiple leagues compete for fan attention.Women's Pro Baseball League – WPBL Draft Draft Day party at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers during the first WPBL draft.600+ players evaluated120 drafted4 teams, 30 draftees each, later trimmed to 15Notable talent: Kelsie Whitmore, Ayami SatoSeveral players from the USA Women's National Team  Reflection on MLB's support for women's softball vs. women's baseballPay to Play & Record – Youth sports can penalize parents & team standings if parents record sports at some locations.Find Mat at @matgermain.bsky.social or reach Mark @  baseballbizondeck@gmail.com BaseballBiz on Deck, @ iHeart Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, & at www.baseballbizOnDeck.com Special Thanks to XTaKe-R-U-X for the music Rocking Forward

Maradona, Pele or Messi? It's the eternal debate. Who is the greatest footballer of all time? According to The Soccer 100, The Athletic's new book ranking football's hundred greatest players, the answer is Messi. But the North London based contributor Amy Lawrence cast a dissenting vote: she chose Pelé, deferring to those who witnessed the Brazilian king's dominance firsthand. The book's official ranking places Maradona second, Pelé third, then Cruyff, Ronaldo, and Di Stefano. But the list reveals something more interesting than rankings: the impossibility of comparing eras. How do we judge players like Alfredo Di Stefano or Ferenc Puskas we've only seen in grainy footage against those, like Messi or Ronaldo, whose every touch has been televised? And why do great footballers like Diego Maradona —masters of intelligence on the pitch—sometimes become such flawed and tragic figures off it?1. The Pelé Problem: Why Nostalgia Matters Amy Lawrence voted for Pelé as number one, even though The Athletic's collective ranking placed Messi first. Her reasoning? “When I grew up, when you spoke to people who were older than you, there wasn't a debate. Pelé was the best.” She deferred to those who witnessed him live—a rare admission that nostalgia might actually be wisdom, not sentimentality.2. Maradona's Genius Was Inseparable from His Madness Lawrence describes Maradona as playing “with a madness...there was something of the kind of intense creative artist about him.” He was a street footballer thrust into Italian mafia management, hacked and kicked because defenders “couldn't stop him by playing football.” His 1986 World Cup remains the most dominant individual performance in history—but his life became the cautionary tale of what happens when raw genius meets extreme celebrity.3. Cruyff Was the Anti-Ronaldo Johan Cruyff “encouraged everybody to think instead of just watch”—a philosopher-footballer who “was a bit of a rebel” and famously skipped the 1978 World Cup (possibly because his wife didn't trust him with the ladies). Contrast that with Cristiano Ronaldo, whom Lawrence describes as “built by design”—the AI-generated footballer, all machine, no poetry. If Ronaldo represents modern football's corporate efficiency, Cruyff embodied its lost intellectual soul.4. Women Journalists Don't Play the Gender Card—But Maybe They Should Lawrence, possibly the only woman among the ten journalists who compiled The Soccer 100, says she “never played the women's card” when arguing for players. But she admits that being a woman in a male-dominated field made her “just a bit more memorable” and perhaps allowed for “a slightly more sensitive line of questioning” that helped players relax. It's a fascinating tension: rejecting gender as relevant while acknowledging its subtle advantages.5. The Impossibility of Comparing Eras Makes These Lists Meaningless—and Essential How do you compare Di Stefano (whom most people have only seen in grainy footage) with Messi (whose entire career has been televised)? Or account for the fact that modern players rack up goals against Lithuania and Andorra, while older players “never got able to pick up goals playing against” minnows? Lawrence acknowledges “there was never any pretense that this was some kind of definitive list”—yet we need these lists anyway, because they force us to articulate what we value in greatness itself.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Guest Darshan

Thoughts & Attitudes | Week 3: Gratitude (In Contrast to Criticism) // Ryland Walter // In this series, we'll explore how God can renew your mind and transform your attitude out of contempt and criticism into honor and gratitude. We'll find that our inner world shapes our outer life.

Participants: John Steppling, Hiroyuki Hamada, John Bower and Dennis Riches. Topics covered: Putting the burden of saving the planet on the little guy, color revolutions ain't what they used to be: weird attempts at fomenting change in Mexico and Venezuela, public outrage forces Thailand to undo Israeli colonization of the popular tourist destination Ko Phangan, panic and don't stay calm: why the encouragement of fear and panic during the pandemic and the climate emergencies? Contrast and compare: Paul Thomas Anderson's films Inherent Vice vs. One Battle After Another. See Aesthetic Resistance on Substack for the links related to this episode. Music track: “Just a Mood” by Red Norvo Sextet (public domain).

Bicycle touring numbers feel like they're down—fewer loaded panniers on the road, Adventure Cycling Association facing major financial headwinds, and a lot of long-time tourers quietly aging out. But is touring actually in decline, or is it just shifting into something that looks different—like bikepacking, gravel, and shorter, more flexible trips? In this episode I dig into Adventure Cycling's recent membership and financial update, talk through generational and economic trends, and explore whether we're seeing the end of an era… or just the end of one version of it. Is Bicycle Touring in Decline? What the ACA Letter Tells Us Recent email to ACA membership on a vote regarding selling their building in Missoula Membership down from almost 40,000 in 2023 to about 18,000 today. Donations down. Demand for guided tours has softened. Sales of maps/routes have dropped with free digital tools and GPS routes everywhere. Their diagnosis Members aging out of cycling. Some people don't feel enough value in a paid membership. Travel patterns are changing; inflation and costs are up; maybe fewer people committing to long guided tours. The building sale piece: ACA can sell their big, underutilized Missoula headquarters for ~$2.55M, then lease back just the space they need. The goal is to buy a "runway" of a few years to rebuild membership and modernize programs (digital experience, routes, tours, events). This is serious—membership halving in a couple of years is not a blip. But this is one institution. It's a single data point, not the whole story. Is ACA's Crisis Proof That Touring Is Dying? Possible "touring is in trouble" interpretation: If the biggest U.S. touring org is shrinking, maybe demand really is falling. Fewer people willing to pay for routes, maps, and guided tours could indicate less interest in traditional loaded touring. Alternative explanations: Value perception problem: If you can download GPX routes for free, people might not feel like they need a membership. Younger riders may not connect with a membership model or a print magazine in the same way. Business model problem vs. touring problem: Guided tours and paper maps are specific products. Those can decline even if DIY touring thrives. If a streaming-era kid doesn't buy DVDs, it doesn't mean movies are dead—just that the business model changed. Same question here: is ACA Blockbuster, or are movies in trouble? The Aging Out Effect The ACA explicitly mentions aging out of cycling. Talk through generational dynamics: A lot of classic touring energy came from the boomers and older Gen X. Long, multi-week tours require time, health, and often retirement or very flexible work. People aging out doesn't necessarily mean the activity is dying, but: If younger generations aren't replacing those numbers, you get a visible decline. Touring can look intimidating: expensive gear, big time commitments, safety fears. Possible barriers for younger riders: Student debt, unstable housing, fewer long chunks of vacation, higher baseline anxiety around traffic and climate disasters (heat, smoke, extreme weather). The Rise of Bikepacking and Off-Road Travel Ttouring may just be changing costume: More folks are drawn to bikepacking and gravel: lighter gear, off-road routes, "adventure" branding. Social media and brands push a certain aesthetic: frame bags, dirt roads, epic photography. Contrast vibes: Classic touring: fenders, racks, panniers, highways, small towns, campgrounds. Bikepacking: singletrack/doubletrack, BLM land, forest roads, more "expedition-y", often shorter but punchier trips. If someone is out for five days with bags on their bike, sleeping outside and moving every day… and we're calling that bikepacking instead of touring… did touring really decline, or did it just get relabeled? Is bikepacking now the umbrella term for bike adventuring? Is It Just a (pardon the pun) Cycle? Historical perspective: There was a big touring boom in the 1970s and again mini-waves around the early 2000s . We thought the 2020 COVID bike boom would impact things, but did it? Outdoor sports often rise and fall with the economy, culture, and media stories. Economic cycle: High inflation, higher travel costs, and general uncertainty can make long trips harder. At the same time, travel has become more fragmented: people take 3-day trips instead of 3-week odysseys. Cultural cycle: Right now, gravel and ultra-events (Unbound, etc.) get the headlines. Touring is slow and unsexy by comparison. Slow unsexy things tend to look "dead" for a while… until the next backlash against all the hype and burnout. We might be in the hangover phase after the COVID bike boom and a big cultural swing toward short, 'epic' experiences. Other Factors That Make Touring Feel Smaller Safety and traffic fears: distracted driving, speed, road rage, social media amplifying every horror story. Climate and weather extremes: heat domes, wildfire smoke, storms—touring has always danced with weather, but now the dice feel loaded. Information overload: paradoxically, infinite online info can make people freeze and not choose any tour. Shift to micro-touring: overnighters, weekend campouts, credit-card touring instead of epic cross-country runs. That looks less visible on the ACA radar but might be the real growth area. What ACA's Plan Signals About the Future Positive outlook: Selling an underused building to buy time to modernize could be a good sign. It's a choice to adapt instead of slowly bleed out. They're explicitly planning to invest in: More routes and route updates Digital and website improvements Stronger advocacy tools Expanded tours and member events The big question: Can an organization built around old touring models reinvent itself for a world of bikepacking, GPS, and dispersed, remote communities? Will they pivot toward being the hub for all forms of bike travel, not just pannier touring? Final Take: Is Touring Actually in Decline? Yes, in the classic sense. Fewer people paying for memberships, maps, and guided pannier tours. The touring demographic that built ACA is shrinking and aging. No, if you widen the definition. Bikepacking, mixed-surface, overnighters, and "ride-to-your-Airbnb" trips are essentially touring by another name. People are still traveling by bicycle; they're just doing it with different gear and routes. Mostly, it's in a messy transition. Legacy institutions and business models are under intense pressure. New formats (digital communities, route-sharing platforms, YouTube, social media) are where a lot of the energy lives now. The story isn't "touring is dying"—it's "touring is migrating." Go on any kind of bike trip—overnight, credit-card, dirt, paved, doesn't matter. Support whichever orgs, creators, or communities actually help them get out the door (ACA, local groups, creators, etc.). If you're an ACA member, vote on the building sale by November 24. Whatever side you land on it seems like this will likely define things for ACA for the next several years. •Bike touring has always been a niche. The question isn't whether the niche survives—it's what form it takes for the next generation. And we all get to shape that.

In this episode of Case Studies, Casey sits down with Dan Snow, Berkeley PhD and Harvard Business School professor turned BYU educator; for a thoughtful conversation on identity, reinvention, and choosing a life of deep purpose over conventional success.Dan shares his journey from the factory floors of Ford to the lecture halls of Harvard, and why he ultimately walked away from the elite academic path to teach and mentor at BYU. With rare humility and clarity, he unpacks the quiet courage it takes to start over, the challenges of being “the outsider,” and what it means to build a life that actually aligns with your values.They explore leadership, legacy, and how the most meaningful growth often comes from embracing discomfort. Whether it's navigating faith in unfamiliar environments or making high stakes career pivots, Dan's story is a powerful reminder that status isn't the goal, impact is.00:00 | Introduction & Chelsea's Journey03:55 | Education as Leadership Development07:34 | Dan's Upbringing in Colorado Springs13:30 | Being the Outsider & Building Empathy17:22 | Faith, Contrast, and Cultural Identity19:43 | Mission in Rome & Early Lessons in Rejection22:59 | The Pivot Away from Law School26:24 | Working at Ford & Career Clarity30:05 | Choosing a PhD Over Corporate Success31:48 | Berkeley, Humility, and Academic Culture39:30 | The Dissertation: Last Gasp of Carburetors45:26 | The Hidden Power of Applied Theory49:13 | Greatness, Grit, and the Clay Christensen Standard54:14 | Turning Talents into Purpose56:01 | Reinvention & The Power of Starting Over58:41 | Spiritual Greatness in Everyday People01:02:06 | Creation, Progress & the Human Drive01:03:04 | Teaching at Oxford & Global Perspectives Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SUMMARY In this episode of "Vibe Science," hosts Ryan Alford and Chris Hansen interview Dr. Patrick Flynn, CEO of The Wellness Way and author of I Disagree. Dr. Flynn contrasts emergency medicine with holistic care, using vivid analogies to explain their roles. He shares personal stories, critiques conventional healthcare’s focus on symptoms, and emphasizes the importance of identifying individual stressors for true wellness. The discussion highlights hormone complexity, the need for personalized care, and the value of empowering people to take control of their health through education and prevention. TAKEAWAYS Contrast between emergency medicine and holistic health care Historical development and limitations of modern medicine Importance of perspective and balance in health The analogy of emergency medicine as a "fire department" and holistic care as a "carpenter" Consequences of relying on emergency medicine for chronic health issues The role of belief and mindset in health and healing Complexity and interconnectedness of the human body The philosophy and approach of The Wellness Way Emphasis on personalized care and addressing individual health stressors Vision for a future prioritizing wellness and prevention over chronic illness management  

Send us a textHave you ever meditated on the thief on the cross next to Jesus? In this week's episode of More Than a Song, I explore Melanie Penn's powerful track “Man On The Middle Cross,” a song sung from the perspective of that repentant criminal. His story—one of mockery turned to mourning, and ultimately to mercy—invites us to reflect deeply on the grace of salvation. Join me as we dive into Luke's Gospel and uncover the beauty of redemption through the eyes of a man who received eternal life in his final moments.Key PointsThe thief's perspective reveals grace. Melanie Penn's song gives voice to the repentant criminal, highlighting the radical mercy of Jesus and the simplicity of salvation through faith.Mourning and mocking are central themes in Luke's crucifixion account. These emotional responses reflect both the sorrow of loss and the rejection of truth, offering rich ground for reflection and study.The thief was a real person with a real encounter with Christ. Engaging Scripture with the understanding that its characters were real helps deepen our connection to the biblical narrative.The criminals were likely rebels, not petty thieves. Their crimes were serious—possibly insurrection—making the thief's redemption even more astonishing and powerful.Jesus was treated like a criminal, though He was innocent. He fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy by being “numbered with the transgressors,” showing His identification with sinners.Salvation is a free gift, not earned. Romans 6:23 reminds us that eternal life is given by grace, not merit—just as the thief received it in his final moments.Scripture ReferencesLuke 23:32–43 Luke 22–24 Isaiah 53:12 Romans 6:23Romans 3:23 Bible Interaction Tool Exercises (BITEs)Read in Context. Read and Listen to Scripture. Read Scripture Out Loud. Repetition. Word Study. Compare and Contrast. Remember the People Were Real. Additional ResourcesDownload the free Episode GuideStory behind the song "Man on the Middle Cross" - Melanie Penn on Friday With Friends - Bonus EpisodeComplete lyrics to all of the songs on her album, The Rising – A Resurrection Album, with Scripture references for you to explore - A gift from Melanie Penn herself! Click Here for the PDF.Learn more about my favorite Bible Study Software with a 30-day free trial and links to my favorite Bible resources - Logos Bible Software Affiliate LinkThis Week's ChallengeRead Luke 22-24 several times over several days. Make a list of every example of mourning. Make a list of every instance of mocking. Journal your observations and thoughts around both. Consider that the repentant criminal on the cross was a real person with a genuine experience of Christ and is truly in paradise with our Savior to this day. Believe in the Lord like this man and allow repentance to lead you to a right relationship and eternal salvaPurchase your copy of A Seat at the Table today! Change your music. Change your life. Join my free 30-Day Music Challenge. CLICK HERE.