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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 10, 2025 is: minutia • muh-NOO-shee-uh • noun Minutia refers to a small or minor detail. It is usually used in its plural form minutiae. // Unaccustomed to legalese, I was bewildered by the contract's minutiae. See the entry > Examples: “The novel is an intricate thatch of corkscrew twists, vivid characters, dead-on colloquial dialogue, and lawyerly minutiae that culminates in a courtroom showdown worthy of Dominick Dunne.” — David Friend, Vanity Fair, 1 Apr. 2025 Did you know? We'll try not to bore you with the minor details of minutia, though some things are worth noting about the word's history and usage. It'll only take a minute! Minutia was borrowed into English in the 18th century from the Latin plural noun minutiae, meaning “trifles” or “details,” which comes from the singular noun minutia, meaning “smallness.” In English, minutia is most often used in the plural as either minutiae (pronounced muh-NOO-shee-ee) or, on occasion, as simply minutia. The Latin minutia, incidentally, comes from minutus (also the ancestor of the familiar English word minute), an adjective meaning “small” that was created from the verb minuere, meaning “to lessen.”

¡La invitada de hoy, Nelly Vizcarrondo, conversa con Ginger sobre las próximas sesiones bilingües de la convención! Entérate de todo sobre Nelly, su pasión por la educación en el hogar —específicamente discipular a nuestros hijos— y los emocionantes encuentros planificados para la convención de este año. ¡Pasa la voz a todos los educadores en el hogar de habla hispana que conozcas: hay un tiempo de conexión para ti en la convención de CHAP!Para más información sobre la convención, visita https://conv.chaponline.com/Chattin' with CHAP" es una serie de podcasts informativos diseñados para equipar y animar a las familias en su camino de educación en el hogar. CHAP es la Asociación Cristiana de Educación en el Hogar de Pensilvania y ha brindado apoyo durante todo el año a los educadores en el hogar desde 1994.Encuentra recursos valiosos en https://www.chaponline.com¿Tienes preguntas sobre la ley de educación en el hogar de PA? Consulta https://www.homeschoolpennsylvania.orgContáctanos en https://www.chaponline.com/contact-us con tus preguntas o temas para discutir.¡No te pierdas las últimas noticias sobre la educación en el hogar en PA! Suscríbete a nuestras noticias electrónicas en https://chaponline.com/subscribe-to-enews/Haz una donación para apoyar a CHAP en el esfuerzo por animar, conectar, equipar y proteger a los educadores en el hogar en https://chaponline.com/donate/"In English!Today's guest Nelly Vizcarrondo chats with Ginger about the upcoming convention bilingual sessions! Hear all about Nelly, her heart for homeschooling - specifically discipling our children - and the exciting gathering times planned for this year's convention! Spead the word to all the Spanish-speaking homeschoolers you know - there is connection time for you at the CHAP convention!For more information about the convention, go to https://conv.chaponline.com/Chattin' with CHAP is a series of informational podcasts designed to equip and encourage families on their homeschooling journeys. CHAP is the Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania and has provided year-round support to homeschoolers since 1994.  Find valuable resources at https://www.chaponline.comGot PA Homeschool law questions? Check out https://www.homeschoolpennsylvania.org Contact us at https://www.chaponline.com/contact-us with your questions or topics for discussion.Don't miss out on the latest in PA homeschool news! Subscribe to our eNews at https://chaponline.com/subscribe-to-enews/Donate to support CHAP in the endeavor to encourage, connect, equip, and protect homeschoolers at https://chaponline.com/donate/

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with sociologist Assaf Bondy and human rights researcher and historian Adam Raz about what they call the "lexicon of brutality," drawing from a recent book the pair published in Hebrew on the language that Israelis use to discuss Palestinians and, specifically, the Israeli war on Gaza. The trio also talk about whether Israel has ever been a democracy and what people in Israel who oppose the genocide can do to resist it. Ha'aretz newspaper published this interview with Bondy in Raz in May 2025: "'Depopulation,' 'Kill Zone,' and 'Second Nakba': The Lexicon of Brutality Exposes How Israelis Talk About the War."  Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a 2025 Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. Dr. Assaf Bondy is a Labour Sociologist at the University of Bristol who studies the political-economy of employment relations in advanced economies. Bondy's work has been so far dedicated to the study of changing conditions for collective actions and its changing forms and effects – on workers' rights, on inequality, on the structure of employment relations and on the political economy.  Adam Raz is a human rights researcher and historian whose field of research is the political history of the twentieth century and Marxist thought. In recent years Raz has written several books on the history of nuclear weapons in Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Among his books in Hebrew are: The Struggle for the Bomb (2015), Herzl: The Conflicts of Zionism's Founder with Supporters and Opponents (2017), Kafr Qassem Massacre: A Political Biography (2018), The Military Rule 1948-1966 (2021). In English, he has published The Demagogue – the Mechanics of Political Power (2023) and Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property (2024). Raz works at Akevot: Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

The first week of June brings two major blessings as Venus, planet of love and beauty, and Jupiter, planet of expansion, shift into Taurus and Cancer respectively. Why is this so major? These are the benefic planets, planets that want to affirm, expand, and help us out - going into signs of their rulership and exaltation. In English, this means that these planets will be functioning at their highest, juiciest expression. That's a net positive for you, me, and our society at large. This week we also have an expansive Full Moon in Sagittarius on the 11th. Join me in breaking down this week's Astrology!Remember to join me for live readings on Wednesday June 11th at 1 PM - 3 PM Mountain Time, and Friday June 13th at 4 PM - 6 PM Mountain Time!June 2025 Horoscopes:https://youtu.be/rEaOsIe2N70?si=jRxEPoOffVTOi4F_Get in touch or book a reading with me:https://www.dogstaroracle.comhttps://www.instagram.com/dogstaroracle/Email: akriech@dogstaroracle.comChapters:0:00 Title03:40 Venus in Taurus09:42 Venus Square Pluto13:09 Mercury in Cancer19:33 Jupiter in Cancer26:15 Full Moon in Sagittarius

This episode we look at time and direction and the influence of geomancy--theories of Yin and Yang and a little bit of how people viewed the world through that lens.  For more, check out the blog page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-127 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 127: Time and Direction in Ancient Yamato   Officers of the court stood in the pavilion.  The soft trill of water could be heard trickling from one reservoir to the next.  They watched closely, as the figure of a court official, one hand out, pointing at a measuring stick, slowly rose along with the water.  Eventually, the figure's outstretched arm indicated a line with a single character next to it. On cue, one of the officials began to beat the large drum that was nearby.  The rhythm was slow, but deliberate, and the sound was loud, echoing out to the mountains and back, showering the nearby palaces in a layer of sound.  Across the palace, people briefly paused, took note of the number of strokes, and by that they knew the time of day.  Without giving it much more thought, they then went about their business.     This episode we find ourselves partway through the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou—his formal reign started in 668, but he had been pretty much running things since the death of Takara Hime in 661 and, arguably, for much longer than that.  668, however, saw Naka no Oe ascend the throne in his new palace of Otsu no Miya, officially making him the sovereign.  And although 645 is the year Naka no Oe and others had started the Taika Reforms, it's not wrong to say that  that 668 and the start of Naka no Oe's official reign, brief as it would be, that he finally had the ability to bring it all together and set it into stone. We've talked about many of these reforms before on the podcast, but a lot of them were associated with the continued push to incorporate continental concepts into Yamato society, covering everything from court ranks to how to organize agricultural production.  Of course, there was also Buddhism, which we've covered numerous times, but there were other concepts coming across as well, including ideas about history and writing, as well as ancient STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  This included architects, and new ways of constructing buildings.  And it also meant ways of seeing the world, including things like directions and time.  And this is what I want to focus on this episode, taking a break from the primary narrative to spend some time on what we might call Yamato concepts of science, especially how they thought about the structure of reality organization of time and the universe – their cosmology, as it were.  After all, to better understand the reasoning and motives of people, it is helpful to try and understand how they saw the world, not just for translation—understanding what it means when an entry says something like the “Hour of the Horse” on an “Elder Wood” day—but also for understanding how things actually worked in their eyes.  For instance, the idea of ”auspicious” and “inauspicious” times and directions is something that most listeners probably don't incorporate much into their daily lives, but the Chroniclers and the people of Yamato absolutely did, so understanding concepts like this can sometimes be the key to unlocking why historical people may have taken the actions that they did.  In particular, we'll talk about things like yin and yang, five elements, ten stems and twelve earthly branches, and what all this meant for the Yamato ideas of organizing time and space. A large part of Yamato cosmology is tied to something called Onmyoudou, literally the Way of Yin and Yang, which in the organization of the Ritsuryo state fell under a particular ministry, known as the Onmyo-ryo.  If you've heard of Onmyoudou before, you likely have heard about the “Onmyouji”, practitioners who studied the flow of yin and yang—and who could reportedly do miraculous things with that.  A 10th century Onmyoji, the famous Abe no Seimei, is perhaps the most well-known, with numerous stories about his exploits, which were then turned into a fantastical series of stories by the award-winning author, Baku Yumemakura.  Those were then turned into Manga, movies, and more.  Abe no Seimei is like Japan's Merlin, or Gandalf, at least in the stories. Back to the organization we mentioned, the Onmyou-ryou was responsible for Yin-Yang theory, or Onmyou-dou, which included divination, as well as astronomy, or Tenmon-dou, and calendar making, or reki-dou.  While some of this was based on straight up natural observances, a lot of it was explained through older concepts of Yin and Yang theory.  Today, you might encounter a lot of this in the theories around Feng Shui, and this can also be referred to as “geomancy”, or earth divination.   To give a broad overview of Onbmyoudou and its origins, it is part of a large corpus of concepts focused around a concept of energy known as qi or ki—which forms the basis for a lot of Chinese and Japanese cosmology, or their concept of how the world worked.  Much of this is tied up in concepts that are modernly broadly called “Daoist” or associated with so-called Daoist practices.  That term can be a bit misleading, as strictly speaking, Daoism refers to the teachings of the legendary philosopher Laozi, in his book, the Dao De Jing, as well as works attributed to later authors, like the Zhuangzi. There is some controversy as to when and to what extent this strict Daoism came to Japan.  However, in the broader sense, the category of “Daoist “ practices includes an entire panoply of various folk practices, including concepts of Yin and Yang – and in the archipelago, many of these concepts were imported with the various books that people had acquired on the mainland, even if they weren't strictly tied to Daoist religious practice.  For example, there were aspects that were borrowed by various Shinto shrines, and others formalized into ritual practices under the new government.  And of course many of these became linked to various Buddhist teachings and practices, as well.   But what did this actually look like in concept and practice for practitioners of Onmyoudo in Japan? Let's start with the idea of yin and yang.  One of the earliest references comes from the Zhou Yi, the Zhou Book of Changes, the core of what we also know as the Yijing, the Book of Changes.  Here we see the idea that the universe began with a single force that split into two, and those two forces make up all of creation in one way or another.  Yin and Yang, or In and You—or even Onmyou—refer to these forces, which are characterized as shadow and light, moon and sun, female and male, cold and hot, etc.  So these forces are opposites, but it should be noted that they are not necessarily good or evil.  After all, too cold is just as bad as too hot.  Likewise too much darkness is as blinding as too much light. As most people have seen, yin and yang are often depicted as a circle divided into two comma shapes, with a smaller circle in each.  One side is white with a black circle and the other is black with a white circle.  This is the “Tai Chi” diagram, but the diagram itself doesn't seem to have been depicted like this prior to the 11th century, at least that we are aware. But the concepts are much older.    Now if you've heard of the Yijing, where it came from is something of a mystery.  One theory is that it started as a written account of folk wisdom, and may have even given instructions for things like when to plant and when to harvest, based on changes in various heavenly phenomena.   But overall it is organized into 64 chapters, each associated with a particular hexagram.  Start with a line, that can either be a full line – representing yang – or a broken line representing yin.  Stack three of these on top of one another and you get a trigram.  If you chart out every single possible combination of yin and yang lines, you get 8 unique trigrams, sometimes referred to as the baqua.  Stack two trigrams atop one another and you get a hexagram, a combination of 6 lines that can have 8 by 8 or 64 unique variants.   It's theorized that the Yijing resulted from taking all of the collected sayings or aphorisms and bits of advice and cataloguing and dividing them into 64 chapters, each one associated with a given hexagram. Going further, each line of the hexagram is  associated with particular line in Yijing, and various meanings are ascribed to it and its association.  It's a complex and fascinating system and I don't have time to go into it fully, but I would note that this was used as a form of divination—yarrow stalks or other means of random lot drawing that gives you a binary outcome – zero or one, yin or yang – could be used to determine the six lines of any given hexagram.  This, in turn, would reference a chapter in the Yijing which was then interpreted as a sign as to how to read a given situation that you might find yourself in. What's really important to understanding the worldview of the time is this idea, represented by the hexagrams in the Yijing, that you can encompass everything about the universe by making and cataloging different amounts and arrangements of yin and yang. It's a science, as it were – a systematic approach to understanding the differences in the world by breaking it into component parts.    And if this seems preposterous, consider this:  today we understand that all things are made up of tiny atoms.  And these atoms are all made up of the same material—protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And yet, how those atomic particles combine create atoms with wildly different qualities.  And how those atoms then combine into molecules and so on and so forth describe how we explain everything around us.  So is it really so far-fetched? I'm not saying that we should suddenly start to figure out the measurements of yin and yang in everything, but if we want to understand how the people of the time saw their world, it may be helpful to hold an open mindand understand the assumptions that they were working from and where they came from.  As human beings, we naturally look for connections in the world around us, and this was no exception.  People would observe facts, know how that it worked, and often then would back into the reason for it.  This is a tale told across cultures, and we still see it, today.  At the same time, we've developed structured approaches to test out our theories, empirically. So for the moment, let's leave the trigrams and hexagrams, and talk about another idea that also gained traction as people were trying to figure out how the world worked.  This was the five elements theory also known as Wuxing, or Gogyou, in Japanese.  The five elements in this case are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.  Some may notice that these, along with the sun and the moon, are used in Japanese for the days of the week:  Nichi (sun), getsu (moon), ka (fire), sui (water), moku (wood), kin (metal), do (earth). Buddhists, by the way, also had an elemental system with only four elements,  Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, possibly connected with some Greek influence, and brought along with Buddhist practice.  For now, however, let's focus on the five elements. The idea in wuxing is similar to that of yin and yang in that everything in creation is made up of these five elements in some degree and configuration.  Furthermore, there are creation and destruction cycles.  So fire creates ash, or earth.  Earth gives birth to metal.  Metal creates water—look at a cold piece of metal in a warm environment and see how the water droplets form on it, and imagine what that looks like without understanding humidity and how there could be water vapor in the air.  And then water creates wood, or plants—any farmer could tell you that without water the plants die.  And wood is where we get fire from. Of course, the reverse cycle is the opposite.  Fire eats the wood.  Wood drinks up the water.  Water rusts metal.  Metal tools plough the earth. And Earth can be used to douse fire. Finally, there is another cycle of weakening. ,. Because fire heats and weakens metal, metal chops down wood, the trees roots break up rocks, the earth soaks up water, and water likewise puts out or weakens fire. So the theory went, if these elements make up all matter, these relationships continue on a more complex scale in everything.  So if something was thought to contain a lot of “fire” element, then it would be potentially helpful if you needed “Earth” but destructive or at least weakening to metal and wood.  Properly accounting for these elements was important to achieve the results you were looking for, whatever that may be.   These were the kinds of things that were incorporated into traditional medicine practices, but also applied to auguries or divination about things like where and how to build a building.  Even today, Shrines will sell calendars that help people know the prominence of certain elements, and some folk remedies may look to balance elements, much as medieval European medicine was often designed to balance the four humors that ancient physicians believed were present in the human body. The chart of these five elements and their relationships is something you may have seen.  It is a five pointed star, often inside of a circle.  Of course this is also similar to a western pentagram, though typically drawn with the point of the star up, but it has nothing to do with Christian values or Satan, or anything similar.  Rather, it is just a way to represent these five elements, and you'll see it frequently in reference to Onmyoudou. The elements were used to categorize many different areas into groupings of five.  This includes grouping the various directions into five directions.  Of course, you may be wondering about that, since most societies usually mark four cardinal directions, and in this case, they did the same, but added the fifth as “center”.  And so you get things like the north is water.  It is related to cool, or cold weather.  It is represented with the color black. To the south, opposite of the north, is fire.  It is hot, and the color is red.  Of course, this probably doesn't take a huge leap to see the connections they drew: since these civilizations are in the northern hemisphere, the farther north you go, the colder it gets, and the farther south you travel, the warmer it gets, generally speaking, at least until you reach the equator. Meanwhile, the west was related to metal, and the color white, while the east was related to woods and forests, and the color…. Blue.  Alright, that last one, in particular, probably doesn't make sense to a lot of us.  After all, we likely associate blue with water, and wood, or trees, would be associated with brown or, possibly, green.  Well, in this case, it goes beyond that.  The north is water, but it is also associated with darkness—shorter days in the winter, and things like that Sothe association of north with black makes sense, but many also look at the ocean and don't necessarily see it as “blue”, or dark or even black, like Homer's famous “wine-dark sea”. Furthermore, although they have a word for it (midori), “green” was not a primary color in Japan, instead  considered more of a shade of “aoi”, or blue.  Even today they refer to a “green” traffic light as an “aoi shingo, not “midori” shingo.  So if you asked someone in the Asuka period to describe the wooded hills and fields, they would have likely used “aoi”.  And of course, we are missing the fifth element.  In the center we have the element earth and the color yellow. A lot of these different concepts were brought together during the Han period, when they were trying to syncretize all of the various philosophies and attempts to describe the world and bring them all together into a single system.  This meant that the Yijing, the wuxing theory, and others were mixed together with various other philosophies and theories of how the world work.  Things like the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountain and Seas, along with stories about immortals, the Queen Mother of the West, and more were all rolled together, and basically assumed to be true.  This included various real-world observations.  Therefore, there were many attempts to try and reconcile these various theories together. One of the other concepts, which we've discussed before, was the system of ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches.  We've mentioned this before regarding the sexagenary style of counting the years, but we'll recap here.  The ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches are concepts that go back to at least the legendary Shang period, and even show up in various bronzes Andit wasn't until later that they would be associated with other ideas.  The ten heavenly stems were each associated with one of the five elements, with each element being represented by a greater and lesser, or elder and younger, stem.  And then each of the twelve earthly branches were associated with animals—what we often call the Chinese Zodiac. We talked about how this applied to the calendar, in that it was used to track years in 60 year cycles, but also it was used to track days of the year.  The twelve earthly branches were also used for earthly directions.  The first, the rat, was in the north, and the order continued clockwise to the east, the south, west and then back to the north.  Now this means that the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west—all match up nicely with one of the twelve earthly branches, but as for northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest?  Those were all combinations of two branches.  So, for instance, the northeast was a combination of the ox and the tiger, or ushi-tora. Speaking of eight directions, where have we also heard the number eight come up recently? That's right: the eight trigrams, or bagua.  So each one of those trigrams, each representing a different concept, got associated with a direction as well.  This makes it easier to see where practices of geomancy came from.   You had a system with complex, overlapping associations between concepts and the physical world, and in the Tang dynasty, they used all of this  to understand not only  how things had happened, but also how the world would be in the future—in other words, they tried to use it to make predictions.  Hence the “mancy”. In the Yamato state, all of this became an official part of the government under the Onmyoryou: a branch of the government whose job is to make observations and figure things out from there, for the good of the state and the people.  They made observations of the heavens to figure out how the calendar should be aligned—which months should come at what time, and when there should be “leap months”, or intercalary months, to keep various astronomical phenomena in the correct seasons, which were also further divided up into 24 periods.  They also kept track of the movement of bodies like the various planets, because those planets were also assigned values, and thought to affect the flow of energy within this framework.  And so comets, storms, eclipses, and more were all important because of the theory that everything in the heavens impacted and were reflections of how things were happening on the earth.  Similarly, these various discussions of white animals and other omens were likely captured and catalogued by these officials as well, attempting to figure out what they meant. All of this also influenced things like how palaces, buildings, and even capitals, would be built and laid out.  For the palace, it was important the the sovereign be in the north, looking south.  In fact, many maps would have south at the top because that is how a sovereign would be viewing it, were it stretched out before them.  And one would need to consider various features, including mountains and streams, as all of those things carried various meanings, but it wasn't as simple as just finding the one thing that could affect a person.  As they observed differences they would also have to catalogue what happened and try to determine what the cause could be, based on their understanding of the world.  And in the archipelago this would also include an understanding of Buddhist and local kami-based wisdom and knowledge as well. One of the things in the Chronicles that inspired this episode was something I actually mentioned last time,  a record from 666  talking about Chiyu, a Buddhist priest of the Yamato no Aya family, who presented a south-pointing chariot to the sovereign, Naka no Oe.  this appears to be the same Chiyu from a similar record in 658, which also refers to him building a south pointing chariot.  So did it take him eight years, or is he just now presenting it to the sovereign?  And what, exactly, is a south-pointing chariot? Well, as the name implies, a south-pointing chariot is a two-wheeled chariot that always points south.  More appropriately stated, it is a wheeled device with a figure on top, much like a weather vane, which always points south.  This is usually described as the figure of a person or an official pointing in the appropriate direction.  This was a mechanical, rather than a magnetic compass. As the chariot, or carriage, is wheeled around, the two wheels spin.  The wheels themselves are independently connected to a series of gears.  If the wheels spin at the same rate, then their movement cancels each other out.  However, if one wheel turns more than the other, then it will cause the figure on the top to rotate.  Of course, as the chariot turns to the right, the left wheel, traveling along the outer diameter, will travel farther than the right.  This will cause the figure to turn counter-clockwise to the left, but from an outside observer's perspective, it will continue to point in the same direction, even as the chariot itself turns.  Turning to the left would cause the opposite effect. Though it may have been used earlier, there appears to be reliable written evidence of a South Pointing chariot starting from the third century.  The first one was based on much earlier stories of a similar device, but it is unclear if it was a chariot, some other device, or even just a legend that was told as historical fact.  From the third century on the design appears to have been continuously improved upon. I should point out that all we have is descriptions—we don't have any actual south pointing chariots, let alone diagrams showing how the mechanisms worked.  There is the possibility that it used a kind of differential gear to work automatically, but we don't have any actual evidence.  There are other theories that it may have required some kind of manual switch, so that it would attach to one wheel or the other as needed.  That would require that the chariot be moving in either a straight direction or turning in one particular direction, which seems rather unwieldy. I noted some of the problems with this, and even moreso in a place like Japan, where 70% of the terrain is mountains.  Up and down hills, along paths that are likely anything but the smooth, paved surface we have for roads today—and even those have plenty of irregularities and potholes that could throw off any such device. And if you want to use it for any real distance, then you have to factor in other things, including the curvature of the earth.  After all, with the earth being a sphere, any chariot traveling due west to east or east to west, other than at the equator, would have one wheel traveling farther than the other one.  Granted, at the scale we are talking about, it probably is all but negligible, and the rough terrain and simple slippage of what were most likely wooden gears probably entered a lot more variability than the earth's curvature. One of the other issues is that the chariot only points “south” if you set it up to do so.   And if you know that, well, why do you need a south-pointing chariot?  Ultimately, it seems that this is more of a novelty item, good for impressing crowds and demonstrating some engineering principles, rather than an actual, useful invention.  After all, it was forgotten about and recreated multiple times, often centuries apart.  Had it been a truly useful invention, it probably would have been kept in constant use.  Meanwhile, I suspect that there were a fair number of farmers and others who knew that you could more easily and reliably use the sun and stars, as long as the weather was clear. There is also some evidence of an understanding of magnetic compasses since at least the 2nd Century BCE.  Early Han sources suggest that a spoon made of naturally magnetized ore could be placed on top of a polished bronze surface, and it would align itself north to south.  We don't have any actual surviving examples, however—there are later versions that you can find, where the plate is divided up into various directions, and then a magnetized “spoon” is placed on top, but nothing has actually come from Han tombs.  Furthermore, this seems to mostly be for geomantic purposes.  A more practical compass, with a magnetized needle, seems to have been developed by the 11th century, which could then be used for actual navigation. By the way, the “spoon” as a compass pointer may be in reference to the “Big Dipper” constellation, which was envisioned as a spoon, or ladle, in shape.  The seven stars were often used in geomancy, likely because of their importance, at least in the northern hemisphere, of pointing to the north.  So there's some thought that the “needles” of these early compasses weren't litterally  spoon shaped, but symbolically representive of the Big Dipper or the Northern Ladle.  Quick astronomy lesson, here.  If you are in the northern hemisphere, particularly from the 35th parallel to the north pole, you can see the seven stars that make up the constellation or asterism we know as the Big Dipper.   In English we sometimes also refer to this as Ursa Major, though technically the familiar seven stars are just a part of that larger constellation.  In Japan, the same constellation is often referred to as Hokuto Shichisei, the Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle.  It can be seen further south, but parts of it may dip below the horizon during the autumn season. It is important for several reasons.  One is that it is made up of particularly bright stars, which you can generally see even when other stars may not be visible.  Second, its distinctive shape lends itself to being easy to find in the sky.  And finally, if you draw a line between two of the stars at the end of the “cup” of the ladle, you can follow that line to find Polaris or hokkyokusei, the north star, which means you know which direction is north- and once  you know that, you can use it to figure out any other direction.  And Polaris is less than a degree off of true north, making it even more accurate than most magnets, as the magnetic pole can be quite different, depending on its current position, and magnetic north changes over time as the magnetic field around the earth fluctuates. That said, this was not necessarily the case in ancient times.  Four thousand years ago, the star closest to true north would have been the star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, a star that most of us probably haven't heard of.  Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear, also known as the Little Dipper) apparently took over as the north star around 500 CE.  However, even before then, the mouth of the dipper could still be used to indicate north.  In fact, if you draw a line between two of the stars in the back of the constellation, then you also end up finding Thuban.  So even if the north star itself wasn't accurate, finding the dipper would still help you orient yourself, especially if you can find true north during the day and then compare that with the constellation at night. Which helps to understand why astronomy, or Tenmondou, was so important in the Onmyouryou.  Though it wasn't just a study of stars, but of the way of the heavens in general.  And the changes in the heavens, brings us to another important concept—the flow of energy across the seasons.  From the bright days of summer, filled with sunshine and yang energy, to the dark yin energy of winter's long, cold nights. It wasn't enough to just know what happened, and where, but when was also important. Obviously you need to know when to sow seeds, flood the fields, and harvest the rice.  Beyond that, though, you have other concepts, such as how the the day and hour of an event could be symbolically important. And of course, all of these had their own associations with various concepts of the flow of yin and yang energy. Now knowing the year, the month, and even the day is largely just a matter of counting.  But let's talk about something a little more tricky:  How do you know the hour? This brings us to the vignette at the top of the episode, about the clepsydra, or water clock, that Naka no Oe is said to have built. Now we talked about some of the fountains and similar things that have been discovered in the Asuka region back in episode 118.  One thing that they believe they also found evidence of is something called a water clock, which is, as its name suggests, a clock powered by water.  It is typically depicted as a series of three or more boxes or reservoirs that each hold an amount of water.  Water is placed in the top reservoir, and then a hole towards the bottom is unplugged and it is allowed to drain into the box beneath.  The hole is of a particular size, and thus the water flows at a constant rate, filling up the container below, which has a similar hole, etc. all the way to a reservoir at the very bottom.  The multiple boxes mean that the water level in the intermediate boxes stays relatively constant, resulting in relatively consistent pressure and flow rate.  The last reservoir has a measuring stick on a float, so that as the last box is filled with water, the measuring stick raises up.  Since it is rising at a constant rate, one can use that to tell how much time has passed, regardless of anything else.  Thus you can keep time even at night. There is a record of Naka no Oe making one in the fifth month of 660, and he would have another one built in 671, which we will discuss later.  It is interesting that both of these inventions appear twice in the narrative—once during the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenchi Tenno, and once during the previous reign, that of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  In this case it is said that 671 is the first time that the water clock, or roukoku, was actually used. From what I can tell, there is nothing that definitively indicates that the Mizuochi site in Asuka was definitely the site of Naka no Oe's water clock.  There isn't much in the Chronicles telling us what it was like or where, exactly, it was built, and there wasn't anything found at the site naming it as the location of the roukoku.  However, the site is in a prominent enough place, with channels for water and a pavilion of some sort.  They definitely found evidence of pipes, remnants of lacquered wood, and reservoirs for water, among other things, that suggest something to do with moving water happened in this area.  So it seems a very strong choice, as it all fits with theoretical archeological reconstructions. A water clock like this is excellent for keeping accurate time at all hours of the day.  However, it does have a slight problem in that anyone without a clock is still going to have to use the sun and similar heavenly cues to know what time it is.  So how do you let them know?  Well, it turns out that the continent had an answer for that as well, and instituted various systems of drums and bells to let people know the hour.  In fact, some of these practices continued, in one form or another, right up to the modern day—with or without a water clock.  After all, the key was to give the community some sense of the passing of time, but I doubt anyone was using it to time things more precisely than a general idea of an hour—though they did have the concept of their own minutes and seconds.  Which brings us to just how they saw time back then. The system of time that the Chronicles seems to use also came over from the continent, where there appear to have been several different methods for telling time prior to accurate clocks.  And while there was an idea of dividing the entire day into twelve segments, the time as it was announced was not always consistent with those twelve segments, or hours.  Rather, time was based around the key parts of the day.  So, for instance there was sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight.  And while noon and midnight remain exactly twelve hours apart, sunrise and sunset change with the seasons.  So if you call out sunrise, and then divide the time between sunrise and noon into equal segments of time, the size of those time segments change with the seasons.  On top of that, because of the tilt of the earth and our slightly irregular orbit around the sun, the sun appears to “move” across the sky faster or slower throughout the year, with a difference of about 30 minutes total between the extremes.  This isn't going to affect most people's daily lives, but would have been noticeable to those taking accurate measurements. In ancient Han, this appears to have been common in cities and towns, with a watch that would call out as they progressed on their rounds at set points in the day and night, relying largely on heavenly cues—which I suspect did not lead to the most accurate timekeeping, but it was sufficient for what most people needed.  The telling of time in this manner was partly to help with keeping track of the time of day, but was just as much an announcement that the watch was on duty and a warning to would-be criminals. Now a water clock was an excellent device for keeping track of a standard, absolute time, such as it were, but it required constant maintenance.  If you already have a watch calling out the time, perhaps they can also keep the water clock properly set, but you did have to have someone constantly filling it up and draining it at known points of the day.  Plus there was the problem that you only knew the time if you could check it, and this wasn't like a clock tower or something similar. And so in 671 it appears that Nak no Oe instituted the continental idea of drums and bells to announce the time to the people—or at least to those at the court.  We don't have a record of exactly how they were, used, but we can infer from other sources on the continent, and what we do know that some tradition of announcing the time with drums and bells continued to be employed in Japan until the Meiji era, though perhaps not without interruption:  Temples and the like had bell or drum towers, and as the day progressed they would beat out the time.  It was not, however, telling time as we might think of it, with one stroke at the first hour, two on the second, etc..  In fact, in many ways they counted backwards, and they only counted 12 hours, not our modern 24.  By the Edo period it seems that it was common practice to toll the bells nine times at noon and at midnight.  From there, they would count down, with 8 bells at roughly 2 o'clock, 7 bells at 4 o'clock, and 6 bells at 6 o'clock.  That would be another issue.  From 6 o'clock, the number of bells that would be tolled continued to decrease, so that at 8 o'clock it would be 5 bells, then 4 bells at 10 o'clock.  It would then jump back up to 9 and start over again. Why these numbers were used for the different hours we are not entirely sure, and I have no idea if these numbers were the same ones used back in the 7th century—though it does seem to match similar continental traditions.  Even the hours themselves were known by the twelve signs that came to be associated with the zodiac:  the hour of the rat, the hour of the ox, the hour of the tiger, etc.  Midnight fell in the middle of the hour of the rat, and noon fell in the middle of the hour of the horse, with each hour being almost exactly 2 hours by modern reckoning. There were other systems in use as well.  One divided the entire day up by 100 and then each of those divisions by another 10.  The key was whether or not it was an absolute or relative measurement. Something like the roukoku would indicate an absolute measurement.  After all, the fall of water from one reservoir to another was not affected by the change in seasons—at least as long as the water didn't freeze.  The flow was constant, as was the measurement of time. For those using other forms of reckoning, such as celestial phenomena or even a sundial, things might be a bit less accurate.  This was especially true when using concepts like “sunrise” and “sunset”.  Still, through observing the changes over the year, people eventually figured out charts and rules to help reconcile absolute forms of measurement with solar time.  There were other methods for telling time, as well.  Perhaps one of the more pleasant was the use of incense sticks.  By the time of the Tang dynasty, incense in stick form was relatively common, and it had been noticed that sticks of incense could burn at a fixed rate.  This meant that you could use incense sticks like candles were used in Europe, counting down how far they had burned to tell what time it was.  If you were really fancy, you could make a single stick out of different types of incense, so that as it hit a new hour, the scent would change, alerting you to the time through your olfactory senses. Speaking of time, we are coming to the end of ours for this episode.  We do have some more information on this on our website, Sengokudaimyo.com, and we'll have links to those sections of the website accompanying our blog. Next episode we will focus more on the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, from his seat at Otsu no Miya. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

It's easy to mistake a warm tone and simplified words as respectful—but when we use the same style with both children and older adults, an important line blurs. In English, this well-meaning but often condescending way of speaking, known as elderspeak, is coming under scrutiny. The problem isn't just what we say—it's how we say it, leaving many seniors feeling infantilized rather than valued. So how do cultural norms, tone, and intention shape these conversations? / Round Table's Happy Place (19:31)! On the show: Heyang, Steve Hatherly & Yushan

Quantum Nurse https://graceasagra.com/  presents Freedom International Livestream May 8, 2025, Thursday 12:00 PM EST      Guests:  STANISLAV KRAPIVNIK and TIM KIRBY        Topic:” Two Days, One Victory: How East and West Remember the End of WWII Differently” Bios: STANISLAV KRAPIVNIK is a former US Army officer, supply chain executive and military-political expert, located in Russia. He was born in Donbass during the Soviet times, migrated to the US as a child, served in the US army, did not like what it was doing in former Yugoslavia, quit, returned to Russia and now is working as a support system near his hometown in the battle in Ukraine. Please support his channel and his work. His Patreon account is: http://www.patreon.com/user?u=290499 Buy Me A Coffee http://www.buymeacoffee.com/staskrapiv  Telegram:  Stas Was There….In English.. https://t.me/staswasthereenglish2 YouTube -Stanislav Krapivnik    https://www.youtube.com/@MrSlavikman        TIM KIRBY is an American born Russian Political Analyst and Radio Talk Show host. He has lived in Russia since 2006 and writes on a wide variety of topics from geopolitics to ideology. He also does travel material as well as DIY on YouTube. Kirby also plays for the offensive line of the Moscow Spartans American Football Club.   Telegram:  Tim Kirby Russia Hardcore -- https://t.me/timkirbyhardcore YouTube:  Tim Kirby Russia - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWjox2j8QnpUBanF7jTEg3A https://americanvillages.ru/   Special Guest Host: Drago Bosnic BRICS portal (infobrics.org) https://t.me/CerFunhouse   Creator Host: Grace Asagra, RN MA Podcast:  Quantum Nurse: Out of the Rabbit Hole from Stress to Bliss http://graceasagra.bio.link/ TELEGRAM:  https://t.me/QuantumNurseGraceAsagra Bichute https://www.bitchute.com/channel/nDjE6Ciyg0ED/   TIP/DONATE LINK for Grace Asagra @ Quantum Nurse Podcast https://patron.podbean.com/QuantumNurse https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FHUXTQVAVJDPU Venmo - @Grace-Asagra 609-203-5854   WELLNESS RESOURCES Optimal Health and Wellness with Grace Virtual Dispensary Link (Designs for Health)               2https://www.designsforhealth.com/u/optimalhealthwellness Premier Research Labs - https://prlabs.com/customer/account/create/code/59n84f/ - 15% discount - 15%_59N84F_05   Co-host: Hartmut Schumacher https://anchor.fm/hartmut-schumacher-path

Happy Cinco de Mayo, Mexas!!! This is a BONUS EPISODE... In English!!!Isma talks with our guest Paulie, The Latino Slant, about his projects, including The Latino Slant channel and website, and his novella, 'They Call Me Charleston'

News; birthdays/events; do the people you work with determine how much you like your job?; word of the day. News; game: mindtrap; old customs that are hard to imagine people doing today; do you call your kids the wrong name? News; game: minute mystery; most stolen items from hotels; Australian researchers say this is the optimal breakdown for how we should spend our day. News; game: 80's/90's trivia; Michelin starred restaurants for the rest of us; goodbye/fun facts....May Day ushers in a traditional celebration of flowers and spring. In many ancient calendars, May 1 welcomed the first day of summer. One of the more popular rituals was harvesting flowers and giving them to neighbors and strangers in cone-shaped baskets. These became known as May Day Baskets. lots of may day traditions continue today around the world: In English tradition, the observance is celebrated by crowning a May Queen and dancing around a maypole. The Finnish recognize a carnival-type celebration in the streets that includes a special type of lemonade made with lemons, brown sugar, and yeast. and In France, it is correct to give people either dogwood or lily of the valley while Italians celebrate with a seasonal feast in honor of the arrival of spring.

Auto-generated transcript: In English, there is a saying which says that it’s a sign of intelligence. It’s a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind simultaneously. It’s a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposing ideas, two opposite sides, in your mind simultaneously. And I… Continue reading No part time Islam

False Prophet Revealed (audio) David Eells – 4/13/25 Who is the False Prophet and how may we identify him? Experience and the Word have taught me concerning prophecy that if the majority of God's people believe something, it must be wrong. God hides His truths in dreams or visions that are parables so that the false prophets and carnal Christians cannot see them. Let's read Mat 13:10-13 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? 11 And he answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. 12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath. 13 Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. But privately He explains them to His disciples Mar 4:33-34 And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it; 34 and without a parable spake he not unto them: but privately to his own disciples he expounded all things. He hides things from the wise and understanding (of this apostate religious system) and reveals them to babes. Luk 10:21 In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. Notice that “disciples”, meaning, learners and followers, get to partake of the hidden manna. Rev 2:17 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it. And Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; But the glory of kings is to search out a matter. John's Revelation was given to him as a parable of Jesus. If it were literal, the false prophets would know what is going to happen and that is contrary to Jesus' own words. When the disciples were young and under the law they did not recognize the false prophets. As a matter of fact, they respected them! And so it is today! I want to show you who have eyes and ears, who the false prophet is and what his work is. The False Prophet is a corporate body of religious leaders that, to the trained eye resemble those of Jesus' day. In all of Jesus, Peter, and John's writings outside of the Book of Revelation, the warning is that false prophets (plural) would come. In Revelation, false prophet (singular) is used, but in an allegory. Since Jesus said in the end time that Mat 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; …  We read that many false prophets shall arise; verse 11 And many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray. And verse 24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Then the false prophet in Revelation is a symbol of a corporate body like the rest of the characters in Revelation are; the beast, the woman, the harlot, the bride, etc. It's the only way that Jesus and John can both be right. You might say, “David, aren't you sharing the secrets with the false prophets?” Have no fear; they are too proud to admit they have passed on the lie of the traditions of men and repent. Moses prophesied the coming of the true prophet and the false prophet. Deu 18:15-22 Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; 16 according to all that thou desiredst of Jehovah thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of Jehovah my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. 17 And Jehovah said unto me, They have well said that which they have spoken. 18 I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. 19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. 20 But the prophet, that shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. 21 And if thou say in thy heart, How shall we know the word which Jehovah hath not spoken? 22 when a prophet speaketh in the name of Jehovah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Jehovah hath not spoken: the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him. The true Prophet of course, is the Son of God Jesus Christ. He is the Spirit that is in His true corporate body. (1Co 15:45 So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.) He is the head of His body the Church which is female (Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of the body.). Jesus' headship is manifest physically through the 5-fold ministry (Eph 4:11 And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;). The senses of the head correspond to the ministers. For example: the prophets are the eyes (Isa 29:10 For Jehovah hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets; and your heads, the seers, hath he covered.) – Evangelists are the mouth (the ministry to those outside of the body), Teachers are the ears (1Ki 3:9 Give thy servant therefore an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to judge this thy great people? 12 behold, I have done according to thy word: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart;) “Understanding” here is the Hebrew word for “hearing”. Soloman heard answers from the Lord.  (1Ki 10:3 And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not anything hid from the king which he told her not.). It takes the 5-fold ministry to raise up others into the head (Eph 4:15 but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ;). We can see a false headship in these days because of the Nicolaitan error which Jesus hates according to (Rev 2:6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate., and verse 15 So hast thou also some that hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans in like manner.) That false headship is that the pastor usurps the authority of the rest of the 5-fold ministry to be the head of the church. The Spirit of Christ is manifest through the 5-fold ministry to lead His body, the church. So also the spirit of antichrist is identified in (1Jn 4:3 and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already.). This spirit is manifested through men as a false prophet to lead his body the harlot. The false prophet also has a female body, the corporate harlot, who receives not the seed of the true husband. These do not confess Jesus, the Word, which was given in the beginning. Confess here is a word meaning “to speak the same as”. The false prophet body cannot say what Jesus said. Christ sows His seed, which is the true Word, as we read in His parable in Mat 13:18-23 Hear then ye the parable of the sower. 19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one, and snatcheth away that which hath been sown in his heart. This is he that was sown by the way side. 20 And he that was sown upon the rocky places, this is he that heareth the word, and straightway with joy receiveth it; 21 yet hath he not root in himself, but endureth for a while; and when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway he stumbleth. 22 And he that was sown among the thorns, this is he that heareth the word; and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. 23 And he that was sown upon the good ground, this is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; who verily beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.) The true Prophet, Jesus, always sows the Word. The false prophet cannot confess Him. In Rev 13:11 And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like unto a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. Here we see a false lamb who speaks for the dragon. We see the head of the false prophet with two horns like unto a lamb, and he spake as the dragon beast. Also in verse 5 and there was given to him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies (meaning, to speak against); and there was given to him authority to continue forty and two months. In verse 15, we see the body (harlot) of the false prophet. Rev 13:15 NENT And it was given to her to give a spirit to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed. Bible Numerics shows a perfect pattern for “her” in the ancient manuscripts and in the most accurate New Testament, the Numeric English New Testament by Ivan Panin. There is no pattern in “he” or “it”. Numerics show beyond a shadow of a doubt which manuscript is right and where. As the harlot of Judaism caused Jesus to be crucified, so will the harlot of Christianity cause His body to be crucified. Let me show this another way. In 1Ki 18, Ahab represents the beast with ten horns, for he ruled over the apostate ten tribes, who worshiped the image of the beast (the golden calf). Ahab's wife, Jezebel, killed the saints and prophets. Compare this for relationship in Rev 17:1-3 …saying, Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornication. 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. There she is ruling by the ten horned beast again.) Jezebel is a clear type of the harlot in (Rev 2:20 But I have this against thee, that thou sufferest the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess; and she teacheth and seduceth my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.) She, like the harlot, was guilty of the blood of the prophets and of the saints. (1Ki 18:4 for it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Jehovah, that Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.) (2K 9:7)(Rev 18:24) In Rev 17:16 when the Beast is through using the harlot, he devours her. Rev 17:16 And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. And so it is with Jezebel in (1Ki 21:23 And of Jezebel also spake Jehovah, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel.). The true ministers of God are fed at the Churches table (1 Cor 9:13,14) and the false prophets (corporately the false prophet) are fed from Jezebel's table (1Ki 18:19 Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, that eat at Jezebel's table.). The false prophets of Baal and the false prophets of the Asherah represent the two horns of the false prophet in Rev 13:11 And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like unto a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. Find out who the two horns of Baal and Asherah represent in modern times, and you will know who the corporate false prophet is. These two go back to the tower of Babel and were originally Nimrod in (Gen 10:8-10) and his wife Semiramis, the false virgin Asherah. When Nimrod died and Semiramis became pregnant claiming that Nimrod had become the Sun God, Baal, who then by virgin birth was reborn as her son, Tammuz, the false son of God. Then of course, the Babylonian worshiped the false Father, Son and Virgin about 2,300 years before the true Virgin birth. Semiramis probably knew of the prophecy in Gen 3:15 concerning the virgin birth. This false scenario is still worshipped in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. At the dispersion at Babel this legend went throughout the World and these three were given different names in different cultures, many of which are in the Bible. The golden calf in Egypt was a symbol of the Father (Baal) in the Son. Pharaoh's title meant Great Temple of the Sun God. Sun images all over the world and in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches symbolize the false Son. The Israelites, with their golden calf thought they were worshiping “YHWH” or “Elohim”, the true God, but it was Baal. One horn, the 450 prophets of Baal represent those who teach another Jesus. This is the apostate protestant ministers. The other horn is the 400 prophets of the Asherah or those who worship the virgin. This is the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and many others that are into Mariolatry. Mary is my sister and I love her but she is not the mother of God according to (Rom 1:3) concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, (In Genesis Jesus was called the “seed of the woman”, who was Mary, the seed of David.) 4  who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord. Here we see Mary is the mother of Jesus' flesh, which is “Son of Man”. His spiritual man was “Son of God” (Verse 4) and born of God. John 3:6 says, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”. The false prophet has always been the head of the harlot, and she sitteth (present tense) on 5 world empires that are fallen but still present in Rev 17:10. These were never Christian: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Media Persia, and Greece. The corporate leadership of all false Christian religions is the false prophet. Emperor Constantine was head of the early Roman Empire or beast as Daniel 7:7 describes it. Rome was the great beast devouring all the beasts before it (Dan.7:23). Much like the world is today, his kingdom was divided because of much religious faction. Because of Babel there were, to the untrained eye, similarities between the pagan religions and Christianity. In order to unite his empire, Constantine decided to capitalize on these similarities and merge paganism with Christianity. Through the temptations of bribery and power, the backslidden leadership of Christianity gave in. Constantine gathered together at his round table religious leaders of every sect and gave them a position of authority. This corporate false prophet was to advise him and exercise authority over his religious empire. He presided over their councils and put down individual theological differences for the sake of unity. “That which hath been is that which shall be” (Ecc 1:9). Our modern-day revival of the Roman beast, the United Nations, has within its body the whole earth (Dan 7:23) and is doing exactly what Constantine did to unite the earth. The “World Conference on Religion and Peace” was a gathering together under the U.N. of all sects of religious leaders from all over the world to bring unity to religion and hopefully the world. This corporate false prophet with the authority of the U.N. has created a corporate one world religion called the United Religions (the U.R.). Once, when I was teaching on the false prophet several years ago, a brother came into the meeting who had just received a confirming dream. Let me share that with you. Mark W. Dream  (David's notes) I went to church and to the altar to get delivered from smoking. There were many people up front. I knew that the pastor was walking toward me to get away from someone who smelled like smoke, and I thought, “I hope he doesn't come down here because I smell like smoke too”. Just then, my sister came to me very happy and said, “Oh, it's OK now, look over there.” I looked over and saw this man light up a cigarette. There were some booths and a sign that read “smoking section”. People said, “You don't have to quit because now we can smoke in church”. I said, “No, I want to quit smoking.” (Spiritually, smoking is to partake of an unclean spirit because “breath” and “spirit” come from the same word in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Smoke is an unclean breath. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a prison [booths] of every unclean spirit...” Rev.18:2) Then the scene changed, and I saw on TV that everyone was rejoicing because a great agreement had been made to have “one church”. I saw that the agreement was two stacks of paper (two horns of the false prophet), but nothing was written on them. (This is a sign that everyone will drop their doctrinal demands, which in the case of Christians is truth, in order to have unity - Jude 3,4). Then I went to this extremely big church. I couldn't even see the other end of it (This is the U.N. corporate apostate church). I happened to open the wrong door, and I saw inside a giant ministers' conference. (The corporate False Prophet) They were being shown a film on how to scan barcodes on the foreheads of their congregation with a beam of light without them knowing it. (The spiritual mark of the beast given by the false prophet abusing the light of the word.) More interpretation: This is the corporate two horned false prophet who makes merchandise of the people of God (2 Pet 2:1-3) and the Word of God (2 Cor 2:17 in Greek) and marks those belonging to the Beast in their foreheads (or minds Rom 8:5-6, Rev 13:16). Remember in Jesus' day, the “respectable” religious folks who walked after the mind of the flesh cast their vote against him. They were followers of a “respectable” group of ministers who gave them that mind using the light of the word. Remember that 10 out of the 12 tribes and their ministers worshiped the beast (golden calf) and had his mark in their foreheads (mind) and hand (works). The false prophets are the ones who war against this Word the most. It's an honor to have these against me as they were against my Lord Jesus. They protect their prestige, authority, position, and bank account. Draw close to God and His Word so you may be able to recognize them. Daniel 3:4,5 says, “Then the herald cried...peoples, nations, languages... fall down and worship the golden image (of the beast).” This word, “herald” is the only Greek word in the text at a time before Greek became a world language. It is the same word used in the New Testament for preacher. The command to worship the image (Rev 13:14,15) will come from the pulpits in the form of a deception so strong that, “if possible, even the elect would be deceived” (Mat 24:24). If the truth weren't hidden in the parable of Revelation, there would be no strong delusion. In Daniel 3:7, all worshipped the image, even the Israelites except Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These three wouldn't bow because they wouldn't eat of the beast's food (word) and wine (nature) and be defiled (Dan 1:5-16). If you receive the word and nature of a Babylonish false prophet, you too will be defiled and bow down (Mat 15:6-20). In Constantine's court, there sat the senate of secular rulers over the countries under his control. These foreshadowed the ten horns in Daniel's vision of the end time Roman Empire (Dan 7:7). The ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings (end time secular rulers), who have received no kingdoms as yet, but they receive authority as kings, with the beast for one hour (Rev 17:12). The horn represents power for it is the weapon of the beast. A king without his kingdom has no power. These kings gave their kingdoms to the beast in (Rev 17:17). From among these kingdoms in Constantine's day arose the religious rulers. They were different, for they were a corporate body of religious leaders from among all the kingdoms. This is exactly what Dan 7:8,24) says. The little horn came “up among” the ten and was “different from the former” because he was a corporate religious body among leaders of corporate secular bodies. Now, the little horn is the false prophet of Rev 13 is easy to see because it had eyes (Dan 7:20), which makes it a prophet (Isa 29:10). He had “a mouth that spake great things” (Dan 7:20) and made war on the saints (verse 21). This identifies the false prophet who was given to the beast in Rev 13:5-7 for the false prophet is the beast's mouth to religious people. In Jesus and Constantine's time, the corporate false prophet kept the people in line for the beast (Rome) because of the threat of loss of position (John 11:47,48). It was this corporate false prophet who was guilty of the blood of Jesus, the Apostles and prophets (Mat 23:29-36). Pilot, representing the Roman beast, did not want to kill Jesus. This is the way it will be in our day. The false prophet Sanhedrin was afraid the Romans would come and take away their position if they didn't put down the Jesus rebellion. Another type of the little horn was Antiochus Epiphanes in 175-164 B.C.. He came up among the horns of the division of Alexander the Great's kingdom and was king of Syria, which means “lifted up”. I emphasize that this king of the “lifted up” was a type because many believe that the history of his acts in Daniel are literally speaking of the end-time antichrist. Daniel prophesies what is clearly now history in chapters 8:9-14, 23-26 and 11:21-39 regarding Antiochus, but he is also a type and shadow of what is to come. His compelling interest was to subject God's people to himself, much like the false prophets of today. He “magnified himself” (Dan 8:25) above all the gods of the Harlot and “the one desired of women” (Dan 11:37) - Jesus was desired of seven women who are the church in Rev 1:11. Isa 4:1  And seven women (the Church) shall take hold of one man (Jesus) in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name (In their rebellion against the Word, they still wanted to be called Christians.); take thou away our reproach. The false prophet, Antiochus deposed the Jewish high priest Onias 3 and usurped his place. Many today usurp the position of Jesus as head. If you permit a person to exalt themselves or their teaching above Jesus and the Scriptures, they become to you a false prophet. He will even use the Word to paint an image in your mind of a false Jesus (2 Cor 3:18), which is none other than the image of the beast (spoken of later). Antiochus, in his position as “lord of God's heritage” then sacrificed a son on the altar and sprinkled the Holy Place with the swine's broth. He cast down many of God's people and caused them to lose their position in the heavenlies like the end time saints (Dan 8:10, Epe 2:6, Rev 6:13). He took away the continual burnt offering (Dan 8:11, 11:31) in the end time will be in the middle of the tribulation or seventieth week of Daniel when the mark is given. (Dan 9:27). We are the sanctuary or temple of God (1 Cor 3:17). Our old life is the continual burnt offering (Rom 12:1) as we take up our cross and follow Jesus and lose our old life (Mat 16:24,25). It is a burnt offering because in the midst of the fiery trial (1 Pet 4:12, Mat 3:11,12) when we obey God, the flesh burns up (2 Cor 4:16,17). If we walk after the mind of the flesh and take the mark, the burnt offering ceases (Dan 8:12). We are to be as gold and silver refined in the fire by burning up the impurities of flesh - Mal 3:2,3. Many will follow the example of Antiochus and sacrifice the Son. Heb 10:29 of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God.  They follow the false prophets and are defiled, turning back to their sins (2 Pet 2:1-3, 18-22). These are they who give up their life of sacrificing their flesh in the fiery trial in the middle of the tribulation and take the mark of the beast (Rev 13:5-7, 16-18 and Dan 9:27), having been deceived by the false prophets. If you allow the false prophets to identify the mark of the beast and the image, you will not be able to see it when it comes. The Pharisees and Sadducees could not identify the true Image of God, Jesus Christ. What makes you think that they could today? It is not the visible Image and Mark of the beast that you should fear, but the invisible. This is how it can be a deception. Any physical mark can only be put on one who has the spiritual mark already. It will identify these people as members of the body of the beast. Antiochus also set up a statue of Jupiter in the Holy of Holies. He, like the little horn of Ahab's day, Jesus' day, Constantine's day, and the U.R. of our day, gives to the people a false Image of God. Even among Christians, you will notice there are different ideas about who Jesus is, what His nature is, what His teaching is, and what His attitude is toward us. Much of this leads people to worship another Jesus, which is an abomination. Become familiar with the Jesus of the Bible, the true Image of God (Heb 1:3, Jn 1:1). The tip of the little horn starts in the leadership of the U.R., but like Mark W.'s dream, it shows that it goes all the way down to the man in the pulpit. All of them together are the false prophet, the head of the harlot. “Be not many of you teachers, my brother, knowing that we shall receive the heavier judgment” (James 3:1). Now, I'd like to share a few more revelations with you that reveal the end-time false prophet.   War, False Prophet, Harlot, Mark, War Below are two dreams on these subjects East and West War in the Middle East Bill Steenland - 11/14/2014 (David's notes in red) I dreamed there was a lion and a white tiger fighting one another very fiercely with a lot of back and forth, while rolling around on the ground. (I think the white tiger represents Russia, Iran, India, and China [Eastern nations] going to war with the “lion” [Britain, America, Australia, Canada, Europe and NATO].) (The lion with eagle's wings in Daniel is Britain and her lion cubs with the US and its air power. Siberia is part of Russia. The white Siberian tiger represents Russia.) (I was watching Putin in this video, and the Lord said to me, “The white tiger!” Why hadn't I seen it before? We are really seeing the fulfillment of this dream now. This topic is huge in the book Hidden Manna for the End Times, now that I think about it. We are really seeing the posturing and coming war that is shown in that dream now, with all the lines being drawn in the sand over Europe and Asia. (Ultimately this war that the Deep State has tied to start many times, to distract from their evil, will come to pass but I for one have fought for peace.) As the lion and the tiger fought, the scenery and the settings were changing. It was as if they were rolling back and forth in the Middle East from the mountains to the desert to more mountains, back to a dry parched setting like a desert and then a combination of the two. It was as if they were rolling around, fighting each other across the whole Middle East. This is the strange part: There was a black car following them everywhere they went. (This is the Satanic Deep State powers that be, the banksters, with money invested on both sides of the war, as always.) All I knew was that they were in the Middle East and that it was a huge power struggle for territory. At the end of the dream, I saw a black man in full-blown black Masonic attire with a black plate that had a golden pyramid on it. (D.S. Masonic powers that be.) The eye was not floating over the pyramid. It was one that has always represented Lucifer (The antichrist spirit who will once again rise up in Revelation 13 and control the Beast and finally bring their war between East and West to make money off of both.). (Masonic agenda is unfolding; their god Lucifer is the “all-seeing eye” over the Beast one world government.) The black plate was hanging on his chest (the breath/spirit/demons of the Beast). He was standing in the middle of these two fighting animals as they fought, but he was much bigger than the cats. He was kicking his toes into the ground on each side, as if one foot or toes was the lion and the other foot was the tiger. He would kick his toes into the ground one at a time toward the other foot. (End-time fulfillment of the 10 kingdoms from Daniel 2, known as Nebuchadnezzar's image or dream.) (The two feet of the image of the Beast in Daniel's revelation are the end-time Eastern Roman Empire, which Russia is the head of, and Western Roman Empire, which the US is the head of. The clay is nations that were not a part of the original Roman Empire seed, typed by the iron. This Roman Empire is the sixth head that was smitten unto death which is revived. Satan and his earthly representatives, the Deep State powers that be, are kicking their pawns back and forth in the Middle East. The pawns of the U.S. and Russia have also always had their pawn nations that they prefer to fight through, supplying weapons, logistics, trainers, etc., so that they are not personally drawn into a nuclear world war. [Although nukes may be used in this war, it is not the full-scale nuclear war that will come at the end of the tribulation, as seen in Bill's other dream below.] They have engaged in this covert warfare for many years, and it will continue because it makes money for the powers that be and decreases populations, plus it keeps the nations under control. I would say the big black man is the world Antichrist Beast ruled by Satan.) Dan.2:40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and as iron that crusheth all these, shall it break in pieces and crush. 41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with clay. (Islam is invading the nations by the DS to bring division.) 44 And in the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (This begins with the Man-child reformers.) 45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. In the dream, I knew the black man over the big cats was Tiger Woods, the pro-golfer. (Tiger has a family heritage from many nations and represents the world beast like the Dan 2 vision of the world beast.) He is like the melting pot of nations and religions melted into one. Tiger Woods spent most of his life standing on grass, playing golf. (This war of back and forth is like a golf game to them. Life is cheap.) Here are a few details from Wikipedia about his multinational family tree: Woods was born in Cypress, California, to Earl (1932-2006) and Kultida (Tida) Woods (born 1944). He is the only child of their marriage; however, he does have two half-brothers, Earl Jr. (born 1955) and Kevin (born 1957), and a half-sister, Royce (born 1958), from the 18-year marriage of Earl Woods and his first wife, Barbara Woods Gray[14]. Earl, a retired lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, was of mostly African American, as well as Caucasian, and possible Native American and Chinese, ancestry[15]. Kultida (née Punsawad), originally from Thailand (where Earl had met her on a tour of duty in 1968), is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry[16]. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian).[17]. Woods' first name, Eldrick, was coined by his mother because it began with “E” (for Earl) and ended with “K” (for Kultida). His middle name Tont is a traditional Thai name. He was nicknamed Tiger in honor of his father's friend, Col. Vuong Dang Phong, who had also been known as Tiger.[18]. The name Eldrick is an English baby name. In English, the meaning of the name Eldrick is “old/wise ruler”.   False Prophet, Harlot, Mark, Nuclear War Bill Steenland - 06/22/2015 (David's notes in red) The dream started off where I was in a big city, like New York or Philly. I had a large white tablet in my hands. There were two guys who were working on it, but we were talking about the mark of the Beast. The guy was talking about the basics of where it goes and so on. The second man was sitting on the step. He had a really faraway look on his face, like he had spent a long time looking at the physical properties of the mark. He sat down on the step and just kept saying, “It's so much more than a mark”, over and over. Then he said, “Calling it just a 'mark' doesn't do it justice. It's much more than that”. (I found out later in that dream the mark will have currency on it as an incentive to take it after a total global economic meltdown.) I looked back at the tablet. I knew that in the dream, when I looked down at the tablet, I could see anything I wanted to or any place I wanted to and that I could be there by looking at this tablet. (It means the Word of God written upon the tablet of our hearts, which gives spiritual insight and discernment. 2Co.3:2 Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men; 3 being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh. Maybe that is why when I looked at the tablet later in the dream, I could see future events and see into the spiritual realm. 1Co.2:10 But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.) I was watching a video of a beach as I walked around with the tablet. Then I found myself there on the beach at a resort. I was walking around this beach next to the resort. (Fellowshipping with Abraham's seed, the children of faith. God told Abraham that his children would be as the sands of the sea. Heb.11:11 By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive seed when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised: 12 wherefore also there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand, which is by the sea-shore, innumerable. Rom.4:11 and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might be reckoned unto them.) (The promised seed, the Man-child Isaac, would bring forth the great multitude of fruit, just like in these end times.) While I was walking around, I saw an old friend whom I knew was caught up in confusion, walking around, too. In the dream, I knew that I had a room at this beach resort. I went to my room and relaxed on my bed (representing resting in the promises of God). I pulled out the tablet and I saw a picture of Benny Hinn. He was wearing a red shirt. (Red represents sin, as in the “man of sin”: 1 John 3:4,10.) (Isa.1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.) He looked very effeminate; there was make-up on his face (I.e. what you see is not what you get) and he had his arms out, as if to present something. I noticed there was a witchcraft book in front of him. (1Sa.15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king.) 1Co.10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion with demons. 21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons. There was a table with a whole bunch of objects in front of him that were being used in witchcraft to send curses. (Those infected with Kundalini and who practice false signs and lying wonders are sent out to deceive God's people. God is the one allowing it. 2Th.2:7 For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nought by the manifestation of his coming; 9 even he, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Jesus warned of false leaders. Mat.24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. The word for “false Christ” is pseudochristos or false anointings. (When God does signs because of the faith of His people but the signs do not confirm the life and word of the minister, they are false signs and lying wonders: Mar.16:20 And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen. Deu.13:1 If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods (another Elohim or Jesus'), which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 3 thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of dreams: for Jehovah your God proveth you, to know whether ye love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul.) They have another Jesus because they received another Word and another spirit. This scripture explains why he was performing witchcraft in the dream: Gal.1:7 which is not another gospel only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. 9 As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema (accursed). When people receive another Word, they can receive this working of error mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 3:9-11. Kundalini is a huge working of error that the Harlot Church is going under. Like in the dream, they say they serve God but are in rebellion and witchcraft. When people pray and fellowship with people who are serving these Kundalini spirits, they open themselves up to this working of error because, frankly, they are praying with a witch, and they get slimed with this curse from Galatians that they are under. Here is a call of God to leave these false teachers and churches: Isa.2:5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of Jehovah. 6 For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they are filled with customs from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines (Kundalini has been named the false prophetic movement for good reason), and they strike hands with the children of foreigners. (They have joined the Eastern religions through Kundalini spirits.) 7 And their land is full of silver and gold (Benny Hinn is reportedly worth $60 million. (Somebody is not eating while these kind surfeit and care not for the needs of others. Ecc.5:11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what advantage is there to the owner thereof, save the beholding of them with his eyes? Isa.56:11 Yea, the dogs are greedy, they can never have enough; and these are shepherds that cannot understand: they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter.), neither is there any end of their treasures (prosperity message); their land also is full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots. (His Rolls-Royce and private jets.) 8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands. (This type builds a false temple made with man's hands, which God says He does not inhabit. Act.17:24 The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.) Isa.10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness; 2 to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right that widows may be their spoil (Their ministries are funded by the poor and the fatherless whom they rob. Benny has promised to these poor people that if they give him $1000, God will multiply it. (When God is teaching His children to give, He may honor their faith but not a greedy leader.), and that they may make the fatherless their prey! (Those who have no true spiritual fathers but are hirelings.) 3 And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? (What will they do when the Lord comes manifested in the Man-child ministry to bring justice?) Back to Bill's dream: There was a book on the table in front of him. As I looked at the book, I heard a news broadcast in the background. The female broadcaster said these words: “Benny Hinn has a new social media program to join,” like Alex Jones has, and another name that was mentioned but was blanked out. (I believe it was a reference to Facebook. I believe these social media programs are the hive mentality of corporate bodies of people who are under the deception of certain spirits. For instance, Facebook is vanity and self-promotion. Benny is obviously Kundalini and the Harlot Church. As I looked at the book, I heard the famous singer Katy Perry singing these lyrics: “I hear that the mark of the Beast is coming and I want one”. (Katy is a perfect symbol of the Harlot Church who will take the mark of the Beast. She is also being used as a type of the Harlot spirit that cause the falling away and, finally, the mark of the Beast.) 1Ti.4:1 But the Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. (The Feast of Unleavened Bread in Exodus 12 was for seven days, representing the tribulation. Anyone who ate leaven during that time was cut off from the people of God, so we must come out from them now. This will be a great falling away of the people who are cut off.) Next, there were two aliens in my room. They were demons. I knew in the dream that the Harlot Church who rides the Beast was rolling out another deception: aliens. I immediately turned the tablet off, and the demons left. Then I had an open vision while there on my bed. I was looking at a world destroyed by a nuclear war with Russia and a total global economic collapse. (The war between East and West is bound to end this way.) Joe.2:30 And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The pillars of smoke mentioned in Joel could be the mushroom cloud pillars of nuclear war. That word “pillar” can also be translated as “column” that could stretch from the earth to the heavens, literally. I was looking at a soldier and a young boy of about 14 years old. The sun was not giving its light, like the scriptures mention. I saw the boy with the mark of the Beast in his hand; it was glowing in the dark while in his hand. It was slightly curved in shape, like a banana. (Representing the fruit of the wicked? A crescent shape?) It was glowing green and yellow. The boy was thinking the following words in his head, and I heard them very clearly. As he looked up at a totally destroyed world, he thought, “We don't ever have to worry; we are safe. The government knows where we are at all times and will be here shortly to help us”. (Notice he had the mark before the nuclear war came and he was programmed to trust in Antichrist.) Rev.13:16 And he causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand, or upon their forehead; 17 and that no man should be able to buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark (In the dream, I knew that this mark had electronic currency on it.), even the name of the beast or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred and sixty and six. (We who refuse the mark will be in the wilderness with God our supplier.) Dan.9:27 And he shall make a firm covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; and upon the wing (or pinnacle) of abominations shall come one (abomination = the mark) that maketh (them) desolate; and even unto the full end, and that determined, shall wrath be poured out upon the desolate. (In the midst of the week, many so-called Christians will take the mark as sons of perdition in the temple of God's people. This mark is an abomination that makes them desolate, which means devoid of God.) As I watched the boy, I knew that people would take the mark for many reasons, but one reason is that there will be currency given to the recipient so he can survive. I came out of the vision and said to myself, “I need to find my old friend”. I knew in this dream that there were a lot of people who needed to hear this warning: Rev.18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: 5 for her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. And 2Co.6:15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch no unclean thing; And I will receive you, 18 And will be to you a Father, And ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.   False Prophets Revealed Rex Veron - 11/29/2004 (David's notes in red) I believe this is an end-time dream. (This dream is as seen from God's perspective of the false prophets who have put on their deceptive show to deceive the people as to their true nature and false teaching.) I saw a mouse standing in front of a medium-sized congregation, preaching and teaching. It stood up on its hind legs and was the size of a small terrier dog; it had the face of a man. The face was nondescript and no one I knew. (The false prophets standing in the pulpits of God's people are indeed very small in spiritual stature and the vilest of beasts attempting to depict themselves as men of God. As in a plague, they are the carriers of spiritual disease that have brought spiritual and physical death to multitudes.) It had a red broad brimmed hat with little gold tassels hanging from the brim. (They attempt to glorify their own thinking, but underneath is still hidden the brain of a spiritual mouse. The red color here is an attempt to appear to have blood-washed thinking but instead, it is sinful thinking. Isa.1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.) It wore a red vest with some tassels hanging from the edge. (They attempt to glorify their own heart, which is not covered by the blood but the sin of the fallen nature. Underneath their show is the heart of a spiritually small beast.) It wore red pants with tassels hanging from the bottom of the pant legs. He had jester-type shoes with a little gold bell on each end of the toe curl. (They love to bring attention to their walk by ringing their own bell when they put on a show to be seen of men. However, before God and those with understanding, they are seen as jesters who walk crooked as the curled toes depict.) It had a stubby tail like a bulldog with a gold cover on it that was flattened out and looked like a spoon upside down. (As unclean dogs, they are dung eaters and that which should be left behind, as Paul pointed out, and flushed is glorified by these apostates and fed to the people as doctrine.) The people kept saying, “We can't stand this any longer, he needs to be made to be quiet, get rid of him”. (When the people begin to awaken, they become dissatisfied with the religious show and want more of God and His Word to sustain them.) I went to the front, picked him up and took off his hat, his vest, his pants, and I started to put him down. (It is here that the true ministers are able to uncover the false thinking, heart and walk of these apostate leaders.) Then I heard a voice saying, “You must take his shoes off and the golden tail, as well. You cannot turn him loose with those on”. (It is necessary to also reveal the apostates' evil walk and despicably unclean doctrine that the righteous will forsake.) I then took his shoes and golden tail off and set him on the floor, and he vanished. (When the truth is revealed, they become nothing in the eyes of God's people, as their yoke is broken off of them.) Turning back to the people, they were quiet and at peace; nothing was said. While still dreaming, I thought the entire scene strange and was wondering about it when I heard, “Get up and write the dream down”. I awoke, wrote it down and meditated about it and then I went back to bed.   False Prophet & Son of Perdition G.C. - 12/2007 (David's notes in red) In this dream, I was watching a scene go down. There was a line of people shuffling forward toward a podium. There were two men at this podium: a father and a son. (In real life, I know them.) The father was dressed in full Masonic priest regalia and was wearing what seemed to be a pope-like hat. The son was on his left hand, and he was dressed like a normal person. Many who only see the letter of the parable in dreams would think this father to be the pope, but this is not how parables work. Like the pope is the “holy father” over the Catholic, meaning “universal” Church, so this father represents a corporate False Prophet over a world body of apostate religions. Many of these very visible leaders are also Masons. Judas, who was called the Son of Perdition, sold the body of Christ to the Sanhedrin, which was this corporate False Prophet in their day. Likewise a corporate Son of Perdition hidden in the body of Christ today will betray them. This way, both people in this parable represent a corporate body today. I watched in horror as the father was giving the mark of the beast to the people in line. (Rev.13:16) And he (the False Prophet) causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand, or upon their forehead.) As soon as the people received the mark they instantly transformed into a wild pig and leaped straight into a furnace off to the side of the podium. (2 Pet. 2:12) But these, as creatures without reason, born mere animals to be taken and destroyed. (Php.3:18) For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, [that they are] the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly (like wild pigs), and [whose] glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things (mark in the forehead). I considered what was taking place and tried to warn the people about the furnace (of the great and terrible day of the Lord and Hell itself), but they seemed not to take heed to what I was saying. They were willfully taking this mark as if under strong delusion. It was horrible. Note: Although in real life I worked for this father, he had NEVER called me before. All the business matters were usually handled through his son. After I woke from the dream, the father called me on the phone! He asked me to come to his office to have a meeting with him and his son. So that was a sure confirmation from the Lord. They are merely figures the Lord used to show me something in the dream. They own their own company and are in the business of buying and selling (Just like the “merchants of Babylon” who “make merchandise of you”). The father's name is ROLAND, meaning “renown throughout the land”. This reminds me of the men of renown or giants of old. We have giants today, too: the megachurch pastors of the apostate church. The son in real life is a lukewarm Christian who is given to drunkenness (which is spiritually like the Son of Perdition).   Discernment Delivers from False Prophets Jay N. - 06/09/2008 (David's notes in red) I dreamed I was in a class with several other students. We were in this big room which looked rather like a gymnasium, and I remember thinking and missing my friends from other classes, whom I remembered were now long gone away. David Eells was our teacher, and I was standing next to him. (A type of the David man-child reformers.) David was telling me that the previous night, there was a party at his next door neighbor's house and he didn't get much sleep. (God's people giving into lasciviousness have truly caused me some loss of sleep.) He was casually dressed, like a sports teacher or a trainer. (We have to train the people of God to get in shape for the contest to come.) Standing next to him, I could see his profile, and I noticed he was wearing a patch or a piece of wool over his nose, like he had a nose job, or even more, it looked to me like something he was wearing to filter the air he was breathing. (This nose filter represents the ability to discern good from evil. The nose gives discernment to the mind that is neither seen nor heard. Wool over the nose represents having the true clothing or actions of sheep, which filter out the false spirits, which is the meaning of “breath” in Hebrew.) The next thing I remember was a tall man entering the room, accompanied by a woman. (The tall man is seen in many dreams as the corporate false prophet and his companion is the harlot church.) They were dressed in suits and looked to me like teachers. The man came and was standing next to me, and I knew they were there to acquire some students for themselves. (They will seek through lasciviousness, meaning a license to excess, to draw aside disciples of Christ.) I tried to ignore him since I could tell what his intentions were, and then he pointed his finger at me. I looked around for David but couldn't see him. (We will face temptation alone.) I turned to the man and looked at his face for the first time. He was so tall, almost all the way up to the ceiling; I remember feeling the pain in my neck as I was struggling to look at his face. (His great size represents a corporate body of people.) He was nicely groomed, with curly hair and he had bright grey, watery eyes. (They tend to see things in grey, not black or white, as in wrong or right.) Being determined, I told him that I was not going with him because David was my teacher. As I was saying these words I was getting weak. I remember being hardly able to say that last word, “teacher”, but I succeeded. He looked shocked and very offended because obviously he had the authority to choose from the class as he liked, and he looked at the woman (harlot?) with disbelief. He looked back to me, trying to put some kind of smile on his angry face, and then I woke up. (The Sanskrit meaning for “Jay” is “victory”. Although tempted, Jay obviously represents those who gain the victory over the false prophet and harlot because of their training in discernment. We are told that the Word exercises our senses to discern good from evil: Heb.5:12 For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. 13 For every one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe. 14 But solid food is for fullgrown men, [even] those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.

On April 11, 2002, a massacre occurred on the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, as rebelling officers and members of the country's Chamber of Commerce attempted a coup against the democratically elected president Hugo Chavez. The coup lasted just two days.The people were not having it. Chavez supporters descended from the hillsides of the poorest communities across Caracas and amassed outside of Miraflores, the presidential palace. They refused to recognize the de facto government.On April 13, Chavez's presidential guard expelled the coup leaders and returned Chavez to power.  Pressure from both the people and loyal military forces led to the collapse of the coup government. The people and the military united together to defend their democratically elected leader. If you're interested in more background, you can check out the following documentaries. Written and produced by Michael Fox.The Revolution Will Not be Televised (2003) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH5nzZU0qCcLlaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacre (2004): Host Michael Fox helped to translate and narrate this documentary in English.In English: https://vimeo.com/40502430In Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9jE1c0XPESubscribe to Stories of Resistance podcast hereBecome a member and join the Stories of Resistance Supporters Club today!Sign up for our newsletterFollow us on BlueskyLike us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterDonate to support this podcast

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL and THE FEELING IS MUTUALIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you understand the English term mutually beneficial. When something is mutually beneficial, it benefits both people. The other day in my lesson I used the term win win. When something's a win win, it means it's good for both people who are involved in whatever is happening. You could say the same thing here. When something is mutually beneficial, then both people are... both countries benefit. I will say this, I don't like to get political, but tariffs don't seem to be mutually beneficial. The world's a little crazy right now. Again, I don't like to comment on too much of the political spectrum, but I'm not sure everything is mutually beneficial right now in the world.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the feeling is mutual. When someone tells you what they think about you or how they feel about you. And if you respond by saying the feeling is mutual, it means you feel the same way. If one of you didn't like me and said, Bob, you're not very nice and I thought the same about you, I would say, hey, the feeling is mutual. You can also use this to talk about, like if two people think the same way about something, you could say the feeling is mutual. Like if one of you said that you don't like tariffs, I could say, oh, the feeling's mutual. It means I don't really like them either. I hope I don't get too many comments from this lesson. But anyways, to review when something is mutually beneficial, it's good for both people or both parties or both countries. And when the feeling is mutual, it means that you and another person or a group of people and another group of people feel the same way about something.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Mohd Ags. It's so good to see you Mr. Bob. Thank you for the useful phrase sight unseen. And thanks to the student that used it naturally, they basically taught us the phrase too, eh? Correct use of "eh" by the way. And my response? Yep, the people around me are unaware that they are inadvertently teaching all of you. So thanks Mohd Ags for that comment.And yeah, I've explained this before, haven't I? That what I do in order to figure out what to teach you today is I just listen to people and someone actually used the phrase mutually beneficial today. And then usually the second phrase, I just look for something that's kind of related. It doesn't always mean the same thing, but it usually has the same word in it or some version of that word.So yeah, what was I going to talk about today? Not politics. I'm not going to talk about that at all. Or did I already do that? Maybe a little bit. I know someone else commented, and I didn't have this comment on the screen that in the last video I was probably talking faster than I did in previous lessons on this channel. And that could be true. I'm a little out of practice In English, when you say you're out of practice, it means you haven't done something for a while, so you're maybe not as good at it or not doing it in the same way that you used to do it.So maybe I'm a little bit out of practice. I just intentionally started speaking a little bit more slowly, 10% more slowly than normal, and pronouncing all my words correctly. So we'll see. Now I feel like I'm thinking about it too much and adjusting how I speak too much. So I'll try to go back to normal. The idea with this channel is that I do speak close to my normal speed for the last two minutes, so hopefully I'm gettinSupport the show

主播：Flora (中国) + 梅莉 (法国) 片头音乐：What Makes You Beautiful片尾音乐：Rather Be欢迎大家来到我们《老外来了》的全新特辑（brand-new podcast special）——“老外请回答！” 《老外来了》全新特辑——“老外请回答！”This is not just a regular chat (普通聊天) between the two hosts. We're taking on YOUR questions (我们要回答网友们的提问)! 每一期节目（each episode），我们会挑选一些超级有趣的问题。Some questions are fun, some are tricky (刁钻的), and some might even make us speechless (语塞的)! Today Maelle will answer three of them with her own experiences, cultural insights (文化视角), and maybe even some embarrassing stories (让人尴尬的故事) along the way!This is gonna be fun! Let's dive into today's questions!Q1. 如果必须选一个——一辈子不吃奶酪，还是一辈子不吃火锅？“No cheese for life or say goodbye to hotpot forever?”This is such a cruel either/or question (非此即彼的问题). It is like choosing between oxygen (氧气) and WiFi!We're making her choose between her French identity and her Chinese soul (法国人身份和中国魂)! Maelle thinks Cheese is part of who she is—they literally have a cheese course (奶酪菜肴) in French meals. It's sacred (神圣的). They are really fans of cheese (奶酪迷). Hotpot, for Maelle, is like group therapy (集体心理治疗). Warm, chaotic (热闹嘈杂的), and comforting (安慰的). So it's hard for her to make the decision.Final answer: “I pick… CHEESE! Sorry, 火锅!”Because she just can't give up cheese. That's a bold move (非常勇)! 难道法国奶酪真的魅力这么大吗？In France, they take cheese very seriously—they have over 400 kinds! You could say they are cheese-obsessed (奶酪狂热分子)!And when winter comes, they love eating raclette (拉克莱特): hot melted cheese poured over potatoes and ham (把融化的芝士倒在土豆和火腿上). It's like a warm hug from the inside.拉克莱特（Raclette）是欧洲街头常见的一款地道美食，它的风靡程度在欧洲的大街小巷都能看到。在寒冬来上一份 raclette，拉丝的芝士倒在土豆和火腿上，光听着就让人流口水。现在大家是不是理解他们为什么对芝士这么钟爱了呢？用梅莉的话说：“Good cheese is my ultimate weakness (致命诱惑)！”Q2. 你们国家有“多喝热水”这种万能建议吗？“Is 'drink more hot water' just a Chinese thing, or does your country have this magic cure-all (万灵药) too?”In France, they say things like “Take some paracetamol” (吃点对乙酰氨基酚——一种退烧、镇痛的药), or “Drink herbal tea” (喝点草药茶). But no one just tells you to drink hot water—this is uniquely Chinese (中国特有)!When Maelle moved to Australia, she would always use her roommate's kettle to boil hot water. Her roommates were confused and thought it was weird. Every guest who came over noticed she drank plain hot water (普通热水). She had to give mini health lectures (健康小讲堂): "It's good for digestion! It balances your qi...!" (有助于消化，调节气）But no one bought it (没人信). That's when she realized she'd officially become that person—the one who recommends hot water to everyone (那个向每个人推荐热水的人). As Maelle says: "Old habits die hard" (旧习难改)—once something becomes part of your lifestyle, it's really hard to change—even if you move to another country. It's like muscle memory (肌肉记忆)!Q3. “第一次用筷子时，最想暗杀哪道菜？” “Which dish did you want to murder most when you first used chopsticks?”老粉都知道梅莉是中国长大的，所以她也是从小就用筷子了(She learned chopsticks from a young age)。But still, some dishes are super tricky. Final answer: “Kung Pao Chicken (宫保鸡丁)!” It's delicious, but the tiny roasted peanuts? Every time she tries to grab one, it's like chasing a slippery little ninja (追捕一个滑溜溜的小忍者). They bounce (跳动) around, escape the chopsticks, even fly off the plate! And when she gets frustrated, she panics (惊慌失措), fumbles (手忙脚乱), and everything just gets worse. It drives her up the wall (让她抓狂)! That phrase means something really annoys you or makes you crazy. In English, you can use it whenever something keeps going wrong and makes you want to scream. Like, “My chopsticks won't pick up this peanut—it's driving me up the wall!” 04.【Fun Challenge】梅莉演技炸裂，一秒变身中国老妈今天的挑战是——让Maelle模仿中国妈妈的经典语录：“穿上秋裤（Wear your thermal pants）音频10分50秒！”But, she has to do it with the right tone (语气).Since Maelle has been in China for a while now, we want to test if she can truly capture the essence (精髓) of a Chinese mom! So Maelle needs to summon（召唤） her inner Chinese mother.Maelle cleared her throat and tried it: “哎呀，孩子！天儿这么冷，赶紧穿上秋裤！”Go even more dramatic—add some disappointment and worry, like you're truly heartbroken that your kid won't listen: “哎呦喂！我真是服了你！不穿秋裤，以后膝盖疼了别哭着来找我！”That's peak Chinese mom energy (真·中国妈妈精髓)!Rate Maelle's performance in the comments! 大家快给梅莉的表演打分吧！下期我们还会回答更多超有趣的问题，比如——“为什么外国人这么喜欢晒太阳？”So, make sure to tune in next time! And don't forget to drop your wildest questions in the comments!

Preparation for Pesach. In ENGLISH (آمادگی برای پسخ (زبان انگلیسی by Rabbi Benjamin Lavian

Something different in our podcast this week! Alex recorded a podcast at the Dutch embassy in Jakarta with Marc Gerritsen. In English! Marc is the Dutch ambassador in Indonesia.In this podcast the conversation is led by 14 propositions, an important number in Dutch (sports) legacy.They talk about Marc his working life as a diplomat, representing the Netherlands in Indonesia, the impact of his work on his personal life, the history and relationship between Indonesia and The Netherlands, and of course about Timnas Indonesia and Johan Crujiff!Zie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

March 30, 2025 - Sunday AM Worship - "Two Languages, One Faith" Sunday - "A Final Challenge to Faith" - "Un ultimo desafio a la fe"In English and translated into Spanish

In English, why do we talk about "beautiful, little, red, American cars", and not "American, red, little, beautiful cars"?

Rescue and patchwork relationship.B Book 3 in 18 parts, y FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Loving your enemy is easy, you know precisely where both of you stand(Right where we left off)The closest Marine had been waiting for me to finish my bonding moment with Menner before speaking. He walked and talked like an officer."You are certainly Mr. Cáel Nyilas," he nodded. "I'm Lt. Robeson, United States Marine Corps. I would like to take you and your party home. What is the situation?""Lieutenant, this young lady is Aya Ruger. She was kidnapped along-side me and managed to kill over twenty of our enemies, so be careful around her." I was deadly serious about what I said. Aya should get proper credit for all the people she sedated then drowned. Dead was dead, even if it was accidental."These two," I pointed to Zhen and Mu, "are Lúsìla ninda and Amar, Taiwanese nationals suffering some shock from the abrupt crash landing of the aircraft. They don't seem to know why they were kidnapped, but they were instrumental in aiding Aya and me making it to shore during the typhoon.""If you say so, Sir," he nodded. He did believe me, yet a soldier was taught to be skeptical of anything a civilian told him about a military situation. "The bodies?""Those are the corpses we found after the storm. I decided we should attempt to place them in your custody so you can figure out who they are," I suggested."Sir, I don't think we can let civilians keep their weapons aboard the flight," the Marine Lt. stated since I had both a pistol and submachine gun, Aya had her pistol and Zhen had her and Mu's blades. A Marine NCO sent a party to gather the dead."Marine, I am Cáel Nyilas, Irish diplomat, freebooter and Champion of the worst possible causes," I began my spiel."You probably have some orders concerning bringing me in alive. I am not so constrained and am more than willing to steal this aircraft and fly back to Hawaii without you. My team keeps their weapons, or you give me your best shot, right now," I met his gaze. He mulled over his options. Two Romanians and two Marines were starting to load the ad hoc body bags aboard the C-37B."Normally I don't take that kind of crap from a civilian and I don't want you to think I'm making an exception because of your Security Clearance. I'll let your people keep your weapons, but if something goes wrong, I'm shooting you first," he assured me."Done deal," I offered my hand and he shook it."Oh and Happy Tibetan Independence Day," he congratulated me."What?" I gasped. Rescue and patchwork relationships{6 pm, Sunday, August 17th ~ 22 Days to go}{11 pm Sunday, Aug. 17th (Havenstone Time)}{And just this once, 11am Monday, Aug. 18th Beijing Time}"Oh and Happy Tibetan Independence Day;, nice work.," the Marine congratulated me."What?""How is that possible?" muttered Mu."Yippee!! No more burning monks," Aya fist-pumped. Personally, I think she did that for the enjoyment of our guardians and to piss off Zhen and Mu just a tiny bit more.(Mandarin) "Brother," Zhen studied her brother's pained expression. "What has gone wrong?"(Mandarin) "The province of Tibet apparently has broken away," he groused. In English, to the Marine Lieutenant he repeated, "How is this possible?""I take it you didn't know Peace Talks had broken out?" he grinned. I doubted the Lt. bought my 'these are my two Taiwanese cobelligerents' story, but belief was above his pay grade, so he didn't give a shit."Yes," Mu mumbled, "we knew of the proposed cease-fire.""Yes, you mean both sides actually honored it?" I added. I really had been out things for a while."Nearly two days ago, noon, Peking Time, the People's Republic of China and the Khanate put a six month cease-fire into effect which has remained intact for forty-one," he looked at his watch, "forty-one and a half hours." He was being a cock to the petulant Mu. No one called Beijing 'Peking' anymore. I had even ordered Beijing Duck on several menus. Peking was the height of Western Imperialist thinking, or so it looked to Mu.(Mandarin) "He is yanking your chain, Mu," I explained. "You are looking pissed off at being rescued, which isn't doing my alibi for you much good.""My apology," Mu nodded to the lieutenant. "Is there any news from the Republic of China? Are they free as well?" That was nice of Mu to call Taiwan by its pet name, the ROC."Not yet," he patted Mu's unwounded leg, "but with the utter shellacking the Khanate put on the People's Navy (really the People's Liberation Army Navy, but the Marine was getting his shots in) it is only a matter of time."I had been translating in a low voice to the V nători de munte in order for them to keep up with the conversation. They all started laughing. The Marines joined in. There was a huge joke here that we had missed out on while stranded.(Romanian) "So, ask them if they know where their aircraft carrier is," Menner chuckled. Most Romanians had grown up knowing of only one China.Me: (Romanian) "What!"A Naval Corpsman who didn't know Romanian, but knew 'aircraft carrier' just fine jumped in: "Oh yeah, the missing Chinese Aircraft carrier," she chortled.Mu: "What!"I'd only been gone two and a half days. What the hell had been going on?(What had transpired in my absence and the subsequent consequences)(Notes:P R C = People's Republic of China; PLA = People's Liberation Army;P L A N = People's Liberation Army Navy;P L A A F = People's Liberation Army Air Force;R O C = the Republic of China {aka Taiwan, aka Chinese Taipei, aka the "other China"};The First Unification War {aka what the Khanate did to China in 2014};Truce lasts from August 16th 2014 until February 15th, 2015 = 183 days)There are several classic blunders grownups should know to avoid: never fight a land war in Asia, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line, and, if you are going to cross a master thief, first make sure you have nothing of value. For the land war in Asia, check with my partner, the Khanate. Substituting Black Hand for Sicilian ~ check with Ajax, use an Ouija board. So far, destiny was batting .500.The last blunder I created entirely on my own, but I felt it was the true and right response for the circumstances. So witness the Six Families of the Ninja and the greatest theft in all of recorded history.In the closing hours of the First Unification War, as in many wars, some serious theft was going on; mainly it was the People's Republic getting fleeced.The most obvious and immediate blows came in the Spratlys and Parcel Islands where Khanate forces (actually, elements from all the JIKIT players) seized the key island in the Parcel chain, Woody Island, and secured the P L A N base the Chinese had created there, including the 2,700 meter runway built there in the 1990's. The 1,443 Chinese civilians and 600 military inhabitants in the area were incidental complications and the survivors were about to be 'repatriated' to the mainland anyway; the Khanate didn't want them hanging around as they prepared for the inevitable end of the six-month truce.Yes, the Khanate had stolen the most important island airfield ~ an unsinkable carrier really ~ in the South China Sea. It was also the northern end of the potential People's Republic of China's stranglehold on the east-west sea lanes between East Asia and the rest of the World, i.e., roughly 25% of all global trade.The southern end? That would be the Spratlys. There are few 'real' islands in that 'island group' and only two worth having: the artificial one the P L A N was building and the one the ROC has a 1200 meter airfield on. That artificial island and every other PRC/P L A N outpost in the region was also stolen by the Khanate between 4 a.m. and noon of that final day of active conflict.Every geological feature that had been the basis for the PRC's claims to all of the South China Sea was now in Khanate hands. Considering how much the P L A N had bullied everyone else in that portion of the globe, the Khanate taking over their geopolitical position was incredibly awkward. It was going to get worse.Technically, the Khanate hadn't stolen the P L A N 'South Sea Fleet' (SSF); they'd blown the fuck out of it, including sinking the sole fully-functioning P L A N carrier Liaoning as well as five of the nine destroyers and six of the nineteen frigates in her battle group. The Liaoning and one destroyer had died in those last few hours as the SSF was racing for the relative safety of Philippine waters ~ so close, but no cigar.So the Khanate had stolen the ability of the P L A N to project power in the South China Sea until February 15th, 2015 when the U N brokered truce ended. But that was not the epic theft, though. That distinction went to the Ninja. What did they steal? A semi-functional Chinese nuclear powered super-aircraft carrier still under construction.The beast had no official name yet, but she was a 75,000 ton engine of Global Domination laid down in 2011 and clearly complete enough to float and to be steered under her own power. (To be on the safe side, the Ninja included stealing four tugboats to help in their getaway.) So, you may be asking yourself, how does one 'steal' a nuclear-powered, 1000 foot long, 275 foot wide and ten-story tall vessel?For starters, you need a plan to get on board the sucker. We had begun with the Black Lotus. They wanted to sneak onboard, exit the dockyard the ship was being built in, then sink it off the coast so it couldn't be easily salvaged. That was plan A.Enter the Khanate and their plans; they too wanted to sink this vessel, and destroy the dry docks while they were at it. That was plan B. Actually, the Khanate desire was to contaminate that whole section of the port city with fallout from shattered reactors. They knew they would have to apply overkill when they smashed that bitch of a ship because the PLAN had hurriedly put on board its defensive weaponry ~ ensuring that the Khanate couldn't easily destroy it. For their approach, Temujin's people wanted the Black Lotus' help with the on-the-ground intelligence work. But the Black Lotus didn't want to help anyone irradiate Chinese soil.Enter JIKIT as referee. All those islands the 'Khanate' was busy stealing were actually part of a larger JIKIT mission called Operation Prism. Another object that was a part of the overall plan was Operation Wo Fat, the sinking of the Liaoning ~ again GPS direction and distance to be courtesy of the Black Lotus.JIKIT absolutely needed the Black Lotus. The Black Lotus wouldn't help anyone planning on poisoning any part of China for the next thousand years. Sinking the unnamed and incomplete vessel off the coast in deep waters meant no nuclear leakage and plenty of post-war time to salvage the wreck before it did start to hemorrhage. The Khanate wanted to kill this potential strategic nightmare no matter what it cost the Chinese ecology.JIKIT went to the Ninja to help them adjudicate the issue. All the lights flared brightly in Ninja-Town when they heard of that delicate dilemma. They could make everybody happy and send a clear message to the Seven Pillars expressing how unhappy the six surviving families were about the 7P's trying to annihilate them when all of this 'unpleasantness' began.The Khanate was already going to blast the shipyards and docks, the Black Lotus was already going to sail the ship into deep waters, so why not take it one step further, sail the ship into Japanese waters and declare it Khanate property as a colossal Fuck You! to the PRC, PLAN and specifically the Seven Pillars, all at the same time?Now normally, you can't steal a ship that big. The owners will notice it is missing and come looking for it. And you can't sell or hide the damn thing. So, you steal it at the tail end of a war before the players can capture, or sink it. It just so happened the Ninja had access to a war and such a time table.The next problem: where do you put it? The Khanate's closest safe haven was 8,000 km away at the Eastern Mediterranean Seaport of Izmir.But wait!The Khanate was about to steal an island airbase with its own (albeit small) harbor. The Khanate was confident that a few weeks after the truce, an alternate port, or two, would become available for the two-to-three year process it would require to prepare the vessel so it could be commissioned as the true warship it was meant to be.So, how do you steal a well-guarded, humongous ship with its skeleton crew of 500? You need a distraction ~ a big one. Remember those Khanate airstrikes? They intended to destroy the dockyards anyway. Now all they had to do was 'miss' the carrier.They could do that. If you recall, to dissuade the Khanate from sinking the ship in the final days of the war, the PLAN had hastily put teeth on the thing by giving it all its pre-designed defensive weaponry and added jury-rigged radar and sonar systems. The carrier could defend itself if needed. With the new plan (C), the airstrikes could avoid those teeth, thus reducing the risk of losing their precious planes and pilots.A series of bombing runs and missile hits near the carrier would convince the PLAN admiral in charge to hurriedly put some distance between the ship and shore, Not out to sea. That would be stupid. Within the harbor, his weaponry could adequately defend his ship. And if she took serious damage, he could run her aground, so the vessel wouldn't really sink.The only problem was that out in the harbor, with everything exploding, he was away from the only ground security support available. That was when the Amazons, Black Lotus, Ninja and JIKIT mercenaries would make their move. How could they sneak up on such a big, important ship? By using the submarines the US Navy, the British Royal Navy and Japanese Defense Force were providing, of course.Note: As I stated earlier, Lady Fathom, Addison and Riki had wandered way off the reservation . By this time, if you were a Japanese, British, or American submarine commander in the Yellow Sea and you weren't part of this madness, you were insanely jealous of those who were.The missions JIKIT was sending them on were:-definitely Acts of War if they were ever discovered,-far more dangerous than any war game exercise they'd ever been part of, and-the ultimate test of their crews and equipment.These people weren't suicidal. They believed they were the best sneaks under the Seven Seas and now they could prove it ~ in 50 years when this stuff was declassified (if it ever was).For the one American, two British and four Japanese submarines inserting the assault teams, this whole mission had a surreal feel to it. They were transporting a packed assortment of women of Indian, Malaysian and Indonesian descent along with some very lithe Japanese ladies and gents, none of who talked a whole lot.There was a third group with the spooky women and spookier Japanese teams, and that group was scared shitless about the sudden turn their lives had taken. They were all former American and British servicewomen (to not tick off the Amazons too much) with carrier and/or nuclear reactor experience who had been RIFed (Reduction in Force, aka fired) in the past five years from their respective national navies.Around a week ago, they had all answered an advertisement by a logistics support corporation that was going to do a 'force modernization' in an unnamed country. They all knew that mean the Khanate. The job had been laid out as 'basically your old job with the addition of training the natives' and it included the promise of no combat.It was a guaranteed five year contract with an option for a year-to-year extensions for another five years if you desired to stick around. For that, you received your 'pay grade upon retirement + 20%', free room and board, private security, judicial protections and a $10,000 to $10,900 signing bonus. For many struggling military families, it was manna from Heaven and thousands were signing up.Then 72 hours ago, a different group from the same company came knocking on the women's doors. If you could come with them right then and there, they had a satchel of money, $100,000 to $109,000, tax free, and a Non-disclosure Agreement for you to sign. Sure, the deal sounded shady, but the money was very real.Twenty-four hours later those who accepted the money found themselves in a small fishing village on Ko Island, Japan. There some rather fiercely intense people outlined the job they were needed for. From a submarine, the assault teams would sneak aboard the carrier, neutralize the crew and then the new crew (them) would sail it to Jeju, Jeju Island, South Korea.At that point they would be allowed to stay with the vessel (preferred), or depart for a non-war zone of their choice. Both options came with another $100,000 to $109,000 payment. Anyone who declined this particular job would remain incognito on Ko Island for another 48 hours then be allowed to leave without the need to return their initial payment.Of the 312 job applicants, 293 volunteered for both the first and second parts of the assignment. With the technical and linguistic expertise of the Amazons and 9 Clan members that would be enough to get their prize to Jeju Island's temporary safety and then make the last leg to Woody Island and a more permanent anchorage.Besides the airstrikes to goad the carrier away from the wharves, all the Khanate had to do with the carrier was put three or four clearly Mongolian faces onboard when the various nations of the world came calling. After all, what was the public going to believe:, the Khanate had pulled off yet another daring (i.e., mostly JIKIT) Special Forces coup, just as they'd managed to do throughout this short war, or that 'Ninjas stole my Battleship, umm, carrier' stuff some PRC leaders were claiming? Forty-eight hours later the whole globe was able to watch the newly named Khanate supercarrier, the  z Beg Khan, passing through Japanese territorial waters while being escorted by South Korean and Japanese warships.The PRC did complain to the United Nations over the 'theft' of both the carrier and 'their' islands, but the Security Council, led by the UK, could and would do nothing about the 'latest round of injustices heaped upon the People of China'. By the time the UN got around to doing nothing, the next round of JIKIT diplomacy was causing the PRC even greater headaches.That greatest theft, while remarkable in its own right, was really a sideshow to the reordering of the political order in Southeast Asia. The big winner wasn't the Khanate. And it certainly wasn't the mainland Chinese. No, the nations to immediately prosper were an unlikely pair, the Republic of India and the People's Republic of Vietnam (PRV). The Republic of China (R O C) was also getting its own small boost as well.By gambling their precious navy, India had become the largest power broker in the South China Sea's resource bonanza. She went from a minimal presence to being the critical ally of the Khanate and the 'big stick' (naval-wise) of Asia's new dynamic duo. The Indians had the only two functional aircraft carriers in the region and the Khanate had Woody Island with a mega-carrier number of planes sitting on it.Their combined naval aviation was not something any of the others powers wanted to mess with. The duo then sealed their supremacy by making the duo a trio. That third member was the PRV. Vietnam was the land-based logistical anchor of the three regional powers.Not only did Vietnam gain the prestige denied it for over two centuries, it redressed the P L A N humiliating treatment of their own navy for the past thirty years. The Khanate's naval aviation would shield Vietnam's economic exploitation of the Parcel Islands. The Indian Navy could counter anything the P L A N South China fleet could come at them with.Yes, the P L A N had two other fleets, the Northern and Eastern, but both had been put through their own 1001 levels of Hell by the Khanate's air power, plus they had to protect the Chinese heartland from Russia and North Korean ambitions. The South Koreans and Japanese were suddenly a very real threat from the East too. But for the time being, the Indians had the decisive edge.The final location for the  z Beg Khan was an old familiar haunt for some Americans, Da Nang, PRV. It had the facilities, courtesy of the US military from the 1960's and 70's, to be the new base for the Khanate's Eastern Fleet and logistical hub for their naval aviation forces in the Parcel Islands.The Vietnamese were thinking with more than their testicles, as were the Indians. Sure, geopolitical clout was nice, yet that was only the icing on the economic cake that was the Parcel Island Accords. That hasty bit of JIKIT backroom dealings gave a 50% stake in the Parcels to the PRV.India got 20% of something she had 0% in a month ago. The Khanate gained a 20% stake for their audacity and the ROC gained 10% because the other three would protect its share from the PRC. Something was better than nothing and the three legitimate powers agreed to the deal because in less than six months, the PRC would be back in the game.The Indians and Vietnamese wanted the Khanate to stay interested in the region and the Taiwanese wanted to forge closer ties to the Khanate. That treaty was a 'no-brainer'. Within one week, the Vietnamese were strutting like peacocks and internal political opposition to the Indian intervention into the South China Sea in the Indian parliament was silent.The Spratly Islands was a tougher deal to work out within the six month timetable. There were more players ~ the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand (who had a non-functional carrier). The JIKIT deal gave everyone but the Indians a 10% piece of the huge natural gas, oil and fisheries pie and the Indians got 20% once more.The Philippines and Malaysia were both very opposed to this treaty; they believed they deserved a far larger portion of those regional resources. Indonesia and Thailand also felt they could hold out for a bigger slice and weren't happy with India getting so much for basically having a double handful of ships (34 actually) sailing about.That 'handful of ships' was the point JIKIT was trying to make. If the PRC beat the Khanate next year, did any of the players think the PRC would give them anything, even if they promised them more right now? Really? When the PLAN had the biggest guns, they hadn't respected any other claims to the region. Why would that change in the future?The reality was this: India would only stick around if they had the economic incentive to remain. Vietnam, the Khanate and the ROC were watching the clock and realized this was the best deal they would get. Brunei and the Philippines were also coming to that understanding. Brunei was tiny (thus easy to defend), very rich already and a good ally of the British.The Philippines had a very weak navy and a non-existent naval air force. They couldn't even enforce their current claims versus Brunei, much less confront the PLAN, or any other nation's current military. The Philippines was, sadly, relatively big and very poor. Its big traditional ally was the United States, and the US was currently busy doing 'not much' about the South China Sea situation.The world's biggest navy was partially taking up its traditional (and treaty bound) role of interposing itself between the North Koreans, PLAN/PLAAF and Russians arrayed near Japan and South Korea, or busily not 'ratcheting up tensions' in the region by sending more forces into the front lines.President Obama was urging dialogue and 'stepping back from the brink' even though every country in Southeast Asia felt the brink had already dissipated the moment the PRC was forced to accept the cease-fire. In this context, the Philippines had good reason to be feeling lonely at the moment.Bizarrely, both New Delhi and Hanoi were singing the praises of US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Rt. Honorable Phillip Hammond, Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for the UK, for their deft handling of the crisis, thank you, Riki Martin and Lady Yum-Yum.Riki wasn't expecting any thanks. She was certain she'd be fired and imprisoned for the rest of her life. Lady Fathom Worthington-Burke was sure she'd get two additional knighthoods out of the deal, which would look very nice engraved on her tombstone. Javiera had long ago decided to face the music and go down with the ship, so to speak.The CIA's Addison Stuart already had her exit strategy. She was going to go work for the Khanate, building up their clandestine service when this whole mad scheme collapsed into recriminations and 'extreme sanctions'. Mehmet, Air Force Sr. Master Sgt. Billings and Agent-86 had all decided to go with her. Katrina had their escape plane on standby. Mehmet's family was already 'vacationing' in Canada.Anyway, the Republic of India, the Khanate, the Republic of China, the People's Republic of Vietnam (the Vietnamese were happy to already be getting half of the Parcel Island windfall), the Sultanate Brunei (Lady Fathom 'knew' some people and the Sultan was an autocratic Muslim ruler, just like the Great Khan) and the Philippines (because they had no other true choice) were all coming around to signing the Spratly Accords.Indonesia and Thailand were kind of waiting for a better deal. Malaysia was downright hostile, having gravitated toward the PRC over the past decade and been assured by the PRC a better apportionment would be their reward for upsetting the treaty process.The Great Khan's answer was simple. He publically threatened the Malaysian Federation in general and both the King (Sultan Abdul Halim of Kedah) and Prime Minister of Malay (Dato' Sri Najib Tun Razak) in particular with military action if they kept dragging their feet.He even told them how he'd do it. He'd butcher or expel every living thing in the states of Perlis and Kedah (~ 2.1 million people) and give those empty lands to Thailand to settle along with the added sweetener of Malaysia's 10% of the Spratlys. He would also invade Eastern Malaysia, taking the island state of Labuan for himself while giving Sarawak to Indonesia and Sabah to the Philippines if those to states agreed to the split.He'd also decimate their navy & air force before devastating every port city, just like he'd done to China. He'd already killed more than two million Chinese. What was another two million Malays to him? Also, Indonesia wanted Sarawak and the Philippines had claims on Sabah. While they were openly and publically defying the Great Khan's plan, could Malaysia really take the chance?What would India and Thailand do while this was going on? Thailand stated that it would protect its territorial integrity, whatever that meant. India wasn't returning Malaysia's phone calls while showing their populace re-runs of Malaysian violence against their Hindu minority, the bastards!To the world, the Indian Navy proclaimed it would 'defend itself and its supply lines' which was a subtle hint that they would shepherd any Khanate invasion force to their destination. Why would the Indians be so insensitive? The Malaysians were screwing up their deal to get 20% of both the Parcel and Spratlys wealth, that's why.If the Khanate went down, there was no way India could defend their claims (which they'd won by doing nothing up until now). Oh yeah, Vietnam began gathering up warplanes, warships, transport ships and troops for the quick (710 km) jaunt across the Gulf of Thailand to north-eastern Malaysia to kill Malaysians because Vietnam needed the Khanate to ensure their own economic future as well.That military prospect had a cascade effect, especially among the Indonesian military. If the Indian Navy remained active, the vastly more populous Western Malaysia couldn't reinforce the state of Sarawak. Sure, the Philippines was unlikely to conquer Sabah on their own, but all the Indonesians needed was for Sabah to be kept pre-occupied while their army took their promised territory, fulfilling a fifty year old dream of conquest/unification.The United Nations blustered. It wasn't that they didn't care, they did. They also cared about the deteriorating situations in Libya, Nigeria, Syria and Ukraine. The situation was complicated by the unwillingness of the permanent members of the Security Council, namely the PRC and Russia, to recognize the Khanate.In reverse, when those two tried to stick it to the Khanate, the UK stoically vetoed them. Why? Well, more on that later. Let's just say the Khanate was good for business in the European Union in general and the United Kingdom in particular because the Khanate was prepared to economically befriend the British. Ireland was being treated in a promising manner too. The United States,the United Nations?Let's just say that in the two months following the cease-fire, the Khanate bloodily and brutally solved the ISIS conundrum and the Donbass Crisis. When the smoke cleared, the Khanate had reintroduced the practice of impalement to the modern battlefield, driven the separatists from the Ukraine and was on the border with Israel and Jordan.Sure, the Ukrainians were stun-fucked by the Khanate's 'peace-keepers' going on a bloody rampage through the eastern rebellious regions, but they had delivered up peace by mid-September. Yes, the Russians were in an uproar about the impalements.As the Khanate spokesperson said, 'if they aren't your people, then it is not your problem' and 'there are no more Russians left alive in the Ukraine'. In fact, fewer than a thousand people, all armed insurgents, were executed in such a manner, but the terror created by the highly publicized killings had the effect of sending a hundred thousand people stampeding over the frontier into Russia proper.Next, the Khanate said it wanted to 'reexamine' the Crimean situation. There were Turcoman in that area and they weren't being treated well, or so it was claimed.Even as Russia and the Khanate were posturing in the Donbass, the Khanate struck in the Middle East. By the end of September, Syria and Lebanon had ceased to exist as organized entities. Most of those two countries as well as portions of western Iraq became Turkish provinces in the Khanate infrastructure. Northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq became the Khanate state of Kurdistan.It was a campaign reminiscent of the 13th century Mongol conquest, not a modern military struggle. Whole villages were eradicated. The entire Arab population of Mosul was exiled to the new territories in the East. The city was repopulated with Kurds from Turkey. Back in Turkey, those Kurds were replaced by Armenians from Azerbaijan, cauterizing another internal issue within the Khanate.Jordan was cautiously hopeful. Israel? "We don't seem to be having problems with Hezbollah anymore," with a shrug and "it could be worse." As for ISIS; there really was an Islamic State controlling more than half of Iraq and all of Syria now and it allowed no other pretenders to that distinction. By the time the world woke up to that reality though, the Great Hunt had happened and I was dealing with the consequences of that.A larger ideological and political matter was occurring in the United States, the United Kingdom (and to a limited extent Australia and Canada). The Ramshackle Empire (aka the Khanate) was just that ~ a Frankenstein nation fueled more by nationalistic pride and nostalgia for a Super-State (that only two living people had firsthand experience with) than an integrated armed forces and infrastructure.It may have been built upon more than a 13th century creation and two hundred years of real and imagined oppression. It did have long term planning and real genius driving it forward. Having throttled the PRC into giving them six precious months of peace to 'tidy up the backyard' (aka the Middle East and Russia) and forge a true nation, the Khanate was now hiring experts to aid them in the task.First and foremost, Temujin and the Earth & Sky had envisioned an armed state built upon military principles and discipline. Fate had delivered to them the means of their own salvation in the form of NATO's policy of disarmament and 'Reduction-In-Force' levels (RIFed).The US and UK had trained tens of thousands of male and female volunteers in their Armed Forces in infrastructure creation and management for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. From 2010, those militaries had informed those experts that their services were no longer required. Unlike the shrinking militaries of the 1990's, there was no private sector to 'soak up' the majority of those personnel.The Earth & Sky had been working on the problem of nation-building on a time table and they kept coming up short. They had to fight to create their state first, so the all-important after-battle had been something their leaders dreaded. Temujin had been understanding about not everything being 100% ready. Few wars were fought that way.Then a young male Amazon of mixed Magyar ancestry talked history with the Earth & Sky representative to a seemingly inconsequential personage's funeral. A few critical E&S leaders (a minority, to be sure) immediately sought ways to cultivate this man into what was a ten year plan to open doors to the Amazons. Then that man saved the Great Khan's life and everything changed.Before the E&S had even remotely considered directly approaching the Amazons for help, the Amazons came knocking on their door. The Seven Pillars of Heaven had tried to kidnap a camp full of Amazon children ~ an assault on their future. The two secret societies were bound by one unique, fortunate idiot and a mutual thirst for vengeance.They were also directed by two incredibly foresighted, ambitious and brilliant people. In Katrina of Epona, the E&S elders found someone who equaled their hope to see the Seven Pillars humbled and humbled immediately. Moreover, these were the Amazons they were dealing with. Amazons always sought both lightning decisions and long term solutions.From the moment Iskender left his third meeting with Cáel Nyilas, Katrina put the fruits of the First Directive (the Amazons efforts to recruit militant outsider women) into overdrive. Havenstone had the apparatus in place to screen potential inductees. All they had to do was add a "can you suggest any other people who might be interested in this line of work" box to their employment forms.That brought men into the process in surprising numbers. The market was flush with military veterans having trouble readjusting to the civilian community. The Khanate wasn't hiring killers. They wanted ex-military and civilian police officers to create a national police force.They also wanted engineers and builders, cadres for their cadet corps and a whole range of specialist in jobs most of the Western World took for granted. The money came from off-shore accounts funded by Havenstone International. The employment opportunities came from Earth & Sky front companies operating in the UK and the US (and Israel, but that was another matter).They had already started hiring scores of civilian English-speaking experts to help build their newborn nation's infrastructure before the first blow landed. English hadn't been chosen out of any cultural bias. Relying on Russian and Chinese sources wasn't feasible, the Khanate wasn't overly linguistically gifted where distant tongues were concerned and, as pointed out, the English-speaking world had a glut of applicants.Now to the problem, there were people in the US and UK who weren't happy with their citizenry going to the Khanate and helping them to survive and thrive. These power groups wanted the Mongol-Turkish Empire to keep the resources flowing to the West, without any reciprocal commitment on their part.Imagine their surprise when some wonks at the State Department and Foreign Ministries found bundles of expedited passport requests to the (former) nations of Turkmenistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Mongolia (and later Afghanistan and Iraq). The Department of Defense  Ministry of Defense were discovering their former military personnel and civilian contractors with Security Clearances were heading the same way.Of all those destinations, only Mongolia and Kazakhstan were under any kind of 'Restricted Travel' advisories. Barring any coherent anti-Khanate strategy from their administrations, the bureaucracies were doing their jobs, with Havenstone exerting just enough influence to get the job done while flying beneath the radar.After JIKIT was created, the group had a US Senator greasing the wheels to get the requests expedited. In England, Lady Worthington-Burke shamelessly used the people at the other end of the O'Shea hotline to get the job done overseas. She did have to sell out a teammate, but that was what good boys were for ~ taking one for the team. (That would be me, if there was any misunderstanding.)When Cáel Nyilas was kidnapped under the watchful eye of the FBI (I wasn't sure how they got that bum-wrap), the whole situation exploded. The PRC didn't have me, yet promised they might produce me if certain concessions were made. According to Addison, I was worth 5,000 barrels a day of refined fuel oil and 50 tons of coal a month, and the Great Khan agreed to pay! Woot! I was loved by somebody who was a somebody.All that attention drove home some salient points. I was a noble scion of Ireland, Romania, Georgia and Armenia (in no particular order) and they all wanted to know why the US had let me be kidnapped. Didn't my president know I was a sacred national treasure? After JIKIT tracked down the bribes and clandestine activities to Chinese shell corporations, those powers wanted to know what sanctions would be applied.'But wait, wasn't I a private citizen?' my national leaders pleaded. Then the PRC made a case which boiled down to 'I had it coming for being a fiancé to Hana Sulkanen and a brother to the Great Khan', while ignoring me being snatched in the territorial US of A. Of course, they didn't claim to have actually done the kidnapping.Javiera was waiting on that one; 'What was their excuse for kidnapping a little US girl to force my compliance?' The furious Federal authorities even found two dead adult bodies and two digits from said child to add to the media frenzy. To prove I had migrated to fantasy land, the CNN journalist got it right ~ they had tortured the girl and I had killed two of them for it. Just ask the Romanian Army how lethal I could be.In a rare comment, Temujin informed the international press that he believed I was still alive. Why did he believe that? If I wasn't, they would have been able to spot the pile of dead enemy around me and my 'boon companion' (go Aya!) from orbit. Until they discovered this carnal pit from Hell, I was surely still alive.Just at the cusp of turning publically against the Mongol barbarians, the world suddenly got angry with their enemy, the PRC. The principal two Western regimes were paralyzed with indecision until my miraculous cry for help from the middle of the Pacific showed the world I was alive, had punished my enemies and rescued others from under the opponent's cruel thumb.Clearly if I started ranting against the People's Republic of China, my government would be rather peeved with me. I hadn't screwed a dozen poli-sci majors to miss out on that obvious situation. I behaved and hoped they wouldn't make me die from an embolism, or some other equally implausible cause.(DC is a marvel. 9 pm, Monday, August 18th. 21 days)I'd been dragged to DC, to honor promises made in Rome a week ago. I had another choice; I could have justifiably said I was still getting over my kidnapping ordeal. But that choice fucked over Javiera Castello, my boss at JIKIT (Joint International Khanate Interim Task force).That was how I ended up in a 'secret and secure' meeting with Tony Blinken, Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA) and his experts. He was someone I didn't know. The rest, I'd had a verbal run-in with them after the Romanian bloodbath. I'd been cranky. I would hardly consider us to be on good terms now.All four experts were from the US State Department. They were foregoing their usual group of flunkies because this meeting wasn't really happening. All the participants were officially somewhere else, mostly not even in D.C. Had this soiree 'really happened', the Congressional sub-committees would have been able to request the minutes of Tony's meeting with members of JIKIT and:·         Victoria Nuland, Ass. Sec. of State for European & Eurasian Affairs (ASSEEA)·         Robert O. Blake Jr., Ass. Sec. of State for S & C Asian Affairs (ASSCAA)·         Daniel R. Russel, Ass. Sec. of State for E. Asian and Pacific Affairs (ASSEAP)·         Bill A. Miller, Director of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) (aka Big Willy)We made stiff, formal introductions (which signaled the utter lack of trust in the room.) Javiera hadn't wanted to put me through an interrogation this soon after my near-death experience, considering my snarky nature when stressed. The White House was putting the squeeze on her. The main player was Tony, who talked with the Leader of the Free World on a weekly, if not daily, basis.The Diplomatic Security Service people had successfully peeled off Pamela and my SD Amazons only after they agreed I could keep Aya. They tolerated me keeping the nine-year old girl despite the obvious fact she had gone through worse hardships than I had endured and was still packing her Chinese QSW-06 suppressed pistol.I had already fabricated and submitted my report on how I'd overcome a plane-full of rogue delinquents from the Forumi i Rinis  Eurosocialiste t  Shqip ris  (Euro-socialist Youth Forum of Albania) bent on recruiting impressionable European socialites by accessing my Twitter account.That's right, the Albanians had it out for me. I reiterated that critical bit of data to the Department of Homeland Security when they questioned me on the veracity of my memories. The two ethnic Chinese I was found with? I thought they were from Taiwan, and they both appeared to be suffering from amnesia.I was already suffering repercussions from my pathological refusal to take life seriously. Javiera believed I was about to get a formal apology from Ferit Hoxha, Permanent Representative of Albania to the United Nations. Damn it! Now I had to do something nice for the Albanians. Maybe I'd offer them membership in the Khanate, full-statehood with an economic package to sweeten the deal.Yes, that was how Albania and Kosovo joined the Khanate, a product of my love for exaggeration and a little post-Ottoman solidarity over Tarator (cold soup made of yoghurt, garlic, parsley, cucumber, salt and olive oil with a side of fried squids), Tav  Kosi (lamb meatballs) and Flia & Kaymak (a dessert I highly recommend).We had toasted the Pillars of Kanun (Albanian oral law and tradition): ~ Nderi (honor), Mikpritja (hospitality), Sjellja (Right Conduct) and Fis (Kin Loyalty), ~ and he promised to tell his people that I had Besa which was an Albanian-ism for being a man who would honor his word of honor (despite us being brought together by my lie). The shit-ton of financial and military aid I asked the Great Khan to sweeten the pot with might have helped as well.Later, Lady Yum-Yum told me that the military leaders of NATO called it a 'master-stroke' in neutralizing Comrade Putin's Russian-backed 'Greek threat

In French, "gorge" means throat. In English, it's a movie about giant hole that maybe leads to hell...? The Film School Janitors watched THE GORGE, starring that guy that flew jets that wasn't Tom Cruise and the witch from a movie about a new mutants. Enjoy!

Hello, fellow Pilgrims. Welcome to our third voyage with Mother Cabrini.  Mother is getting ready to leave to head back to NY. It's been a year since the last voyage. Before leaving for America, she gets to visit Montmartre which is a well-known hill in Paris. It's a district in Paris and at the top of the hill in this district sits the beautiful Sacre Coeur Basilica. In English, this means, Sacred or Holy Heart. So, a perfectly fitting place for Mother Cabrini to visit.  Also, Mother Cabrini is going to speak of a saint whose work we have read here on the podcast: St. Francis de Sales. Isn't that amazing? I love it when my little bevy of saints come together. So, let's start this third journey with Mother Cabrini by turning to page 43. 

Horóscopo Diario: domingo 9 de marzo

Horóscopo Diario: Sábado 8 de Marzo

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 4, 2025 is: schadenfreude • SHAH-dun-froy-duh • noun Schadenfreude refers to a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people. // Schadenfreude was felt by many viewers when the arrogant contestant was voted off the show. See the entry > Examples: “In 1995, Sox fans were overjoyed to see the Yankees get knocked out of the playoffs in a thrilling divisional series.... It was Boston schadenfreude, to be sure ...” — Chris Young, The Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, Massachusetts), 13 Sep. 2024 Did you know? Ever a popular lookup on our site, schadenfreude refers to the joy you might feel at another person's pain. It's a compound of the German nouns Schaden, meaning “damage,” and Freude, meaning “joy.” Schadenfreude was a favored subject in Germany by the time it was introduced to English in the mid-1800s; discussed by the likes of Schopenhauer, Kant, and Nietzsche, schadenfreude was showing up in psychology books, literature for children, and critical theory. In English, the word was used mostly by academics until the early 1990s, when it was introduced to more general audiences via pop culture. In a 1991 episode of The Simpsons, for example, Lisa explains schadenfreude to Homer, who is gloating at his neighbor's failure; she also tells him that the opposite of schadenfreude is sour grapes. “Boy,” he marvels, “those Germans have a word for everything.”

Send me a text message. Suggestions? Subjects for future podcasts? Let me know--thanks!(This podcast is for Irma who reminded me about this construction.)Note: this podcast has fewer repetitions than usual. That DOES NOT mean you shouldn't play it and practice is many times. It just means my time is limited.In English we can take two questions:a) Do you know….?b) Where are my keys?And combine them into one question: Do you know where my keys are?Let's practice:1- Do you know where my brother is? [where is my brother?]2- Do you know if she speaks Spanish?[does she speak Spanish?]3- Does he know what time he'll be home? [what time will he be home?]4- Does she know where my family lives? [where does my family live?]5- Do you know when dinner will be ready? [when will dinner be ready?]6- Does his girlfriend know that he's moving to California?[is he moving to CA?] *7- Do you know where my dog is? [where is my dog?]8- Do you know which house they own? [which house do they own?]9- Did you know he got a new job? [did he get a new job?]10- Do you know how she learned so many languages? [how did she learn so many languages?]*In a conversation, this might be asked as two questions. First, “Is he moving to California?”and then: “Does his girlfriend know?”Extra practice: See if you can change the questions to negative statements like: "I don't know where your brother is."Intro & Outro Music: La Pompe Du Trompe by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com Support the showEmail me: swift.water3883@fastmail.comYou can now support my podcasts and classes:Keep the podcasts coming! Thank you!

This is our unabridged interview with Mpho Tutu van Furth. What does it mean to ask someone for forgiveness? The experience after Apartheid in South Africa has much to teach us. “In English, you say, ‘I'm sorry, forgive me.' It's all about me”  Says Mpho Tutu van Furth, daughter to the late Desmond Tutu. But in the South African language of Xhosa “You say ndicela uxolo which means ‘I ask for peace'. And that's a very different thing than ‘forgive me'” In this episode, explore the deep impact of apartheid in South Africa, the meaning of true forgiveness, and the profound philosophy of Ubuntu. Discover how Mpho carries on her father's legacy of peace and reconciliation while navigating her own journey as an Episcopalian priest and social activist. This heartfelt and enlightening conversation delves into the courage required to love, forgive, and build a just community. Show Notes Resources mentioned this episode: The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation Forgiveness and Reparation: The Healing Journey by Mpho Tutu The Book of Forgiving by Desdmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa   Similar NSE episodes: Azim Khamisa: Ending Violence Through Forgiveness Forgiving My Mother's Murderer: Sharon Risher Pádraig Ó Tuama: A Poet's Work in Peace and Reconciliation PDF of Lee's Interview Notes Transcript of Abridged Episode Want more NSE? JOIN NSE+ Today! Our subscriber only community with bonus episodes designed specifically to help you live a good life, ad-free listening, and discounts on live shows Subscribe to episodes: Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | YouTubeFollow Us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTubeFollow Lee: Instagram | TwitterJoin our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com See Privacy Policy: Privacy Policy Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: Tokens Media, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hello, everyone! Our main theme of this podcast is Shine who you are or shine your identity✨ In Japan and overseas, perspectives and systems differ, and I hope the right information reaches more people in Japan. In English, we use terms like Neurotyp...

Let's explore the expression "The Grass is Greener on the Other Side".In English, this is used when we view other situations as better than our own. In fact, no matter what we have, we tend to value what we don't have more.I explore the meaning of this expression in some detail, examples from my own life, and also some common ways we all experience this along with some ideas on how to overcome the negative sides of this idea.Show notes page - https://levelupenglish.school/podcast313This free video series will take you through a few lessons to Level Up your English quickly. Join me!Click here to sign up = https://courses.levelupenglish.school/fp/miniseriesSign Up for Free Lessons - https://www.levelupenglish.school/#freelessonsJoin Level Up English - https://courses.levelupenglish.schoolBy becoming a member, you can access all podcast transcripts, listen to the private podcast and join live lessons and courses on the website.

What does it mean to ask someone for forgiveness? The experience after Apartheid in South Africa has much to teach us. “In English, you say, ‘I'm sorry, forgive me.' It's all about me”  Says Mpho Tutu van Furth, the daughter to the late Desmond Tutu. But in the South African language of Xhosa “You say ndicela uxolo which means ‘I ask for peace'. And that's a very different thing than ‘forgive me'” In this episode, explore the deep impact of apartheid in South Africa, the meaning of true forgiveness, and the profound philosophy of Ubuntu. Discover how Mpho carries on her father's legacy of peace and reconciliation while navigating her own journey as an Episcopalian priest and social activist. This heartfelt and enlightening conversation delves into the courage required to love, forgive, and build a just community. Show Notes Resources mentioned this episode: The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation Forgiveness and Reparation: The Healing Journey by Mpho Tutu The Book of Forgiving by Desdmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa  Similar NSE episodes: Azim Khamisa: Ending Violence Through Forgiveness Forgiving My Mother's Murderer: Sharon Risher Pádraig Ó Tuama: A Poet's Work in Peace and Reconciliation PDF of Lee's Interview Notes Transcription Link Want more NSE? JOIN NSE+ Today! Our subscriber only community with bonus episodes designed specifically to help you live a good life, ad-free listening, and discounts on live shows Subscribe to episodes: Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | YouTubeFollow Us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTubeFollow Lee: Instagram | TwitterJoin our Email List: nosmallendeavor.com See Privacy Policy: Privacy Policy Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: Tokens Media, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linki… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

DOOMSDAY FOR THE DECEIVER, the debut album from FLOTSAM & JETSAM, was released on July 4, 1986, after being recorded in just a mere 2 weeks with a paltry $12,000 budget. In short, it is a bona fide, legendary, thrash masterpiece. And if you're reading this and thinking “Okay, FLOTSAM & JETSAM…why does that sound familiar?”, the reason is because the bass player for that band would later become Metallica's new bassist following the tragic and untimely death of Cliff Burton in late 1986. It is without question, a speed/power/thrash/heavy metal classic that is so steeped in 1986 vibes that we're actually surprised none of the album was featured on “Stranger Things”.   Learn the latest metal conspiracy theory regarding AJFA with a shocking twist nobody saw coming, discover a great new way to “get in shape” with the brand-new aerobic workout craze that's sweeping the nation, get ready to enjoy the “tang” and JOIN US for the only “first new album” featuring Jason Newsted with a killer bass mix as we take on DOOMSDAY FOR THE DECEIVER.   Visit www.metalnerdery.com/podcast for more on this episode Help Support Metal Nerdery https://www.patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast   Leave us a Voicemail to be played on a future episode: 980-666-8182 Metal Nerdery Tees and Hoodies – metalnerdery.com/merch and kindly leave us a review and/or rating on the iTunes/Apple Podcasts - Spotify or your favorite Podcast app Listen on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or wherever you get your Podcasts. Follow us on the Socials: Facebook - Instagram - Twitter   Email: metalnerdery@gmail.com Can't be LOUD Enough Playlist on Spotify Metal Nerdery Munchies on YouTube @metalnerderypodcast Show Notes: (00:01): “Do you guys ever get into the whole #projectband thing?” / “That's pretty much how I am with #DOWN for the last 3 years…”/ “We are only a few months away…”/ #fiveguys / “I've got openings…”/ “Last time I saw ‘em was with #JasonNewsted …”/ #howdareyou / “He was wearing #bikeshorts …”/ #LarsGumASMR / “Apparently…he sounds like a flouncier version of Lars…”/ #bringtheboysbackfromthewar / #peoplekind / #LarsLite / ***WARNING: #listenerdiscretionisadvised *** / “I did it by accident…and then I had a mouthful of stuff…”/ ***WELCOME BACK TO THE METAL NERDERY PODCAST!!!*** / #AmericaFuckYeah / “WTF was that, dude!?” / “God Bless that man!” / #DOGE / “We fucked up on the last one…”/ “It's 2 fingers in and then back to you…it's like a shrimp curve…”/ “OMG, here we go…”/ “Have you ever wondered if you were THAT dude?” / #thatsdark    (07:42): “For less than a pack of smokes or a bottle of lube, you can join us on #Patreon at patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast / “I know that's an ongoing project…y'all were all about it 3 weeks ago…”/ #theRussCalendar / “I might buy one of those for personal use…”/ #gentlyused / “We've got some #voicemails gentlemen…”/ ***CHECK US OUT AT #METALNERDERYPODCAST ON #YOUTUBE & #INSTAGRAM & #FACEBOOK OR EMAIL US AT METALNERDERY@GMAIL.COM OR GIVE US A CALL AT 980-666-8182!!!*** / #whatsitcalled / #TheDarius / “You guys ruined #Arbys for me…”/ #walleye #burbot #burbotking / “Keep it banging…”/ “Keep it hanging and banging…”/ #voicemailconspiracy / #catacuda / “That was last Sunday…it'll be on the next one…”/ “Have you ever been able to tell the difference…?” / “Don't make it weird, dude…”/ “Smothered, covered, or topped…”   (13:56): “Did we do the beer of the episode?” / #thisepisodesbeeroftheepisode / “We can thank Elon for all of this…”/ #Drekker #LemonBar #SlangDuJour #SourAlaMode / “It's like a lemon bar dessert…”/ “This is not a hateful sour…”/ “Fun fact…”/ #bloodwork / “This podcast is a #healthpodcast …”/ “I did balloon up about an extra 18 lbs…since last summer…”/ #Ozempic / “So it's like cocaine but not as fun…”/ “Fuck ALL that…if I'm doing needles, I'm doing heroin…”/ #groupon #seriously #allegedly / “I like food…”/ #RussellsReflectionsOzempicASMR / “I'm dead down there…”/ #WOW / “So it works?” / #svelte / “You've done this recently, dude…”/ “I put on 20 pounds since July, I'm almost 240…”/ “Who's that, #Corpsegrinder? No, it's Wheeler…”/ #TrapsAndLats / “Is it too late for that?” / #rerecording   (22:50): “What's on #TheDocket dick?” / ***COME CHECK US OUT ON #YOUTUBE *** / #podcastreview / “The bartender has been listening to us…”/ “We could do a second warning…vulgar, disgusting, and frankly tiresome…”/ #TheDocket METAL NERDERY PODCAST PRESENTS:  FLOTSAM & JETSAM - DOOMSDAY FOR THE DECEIVER !!! / “One of the biggest upsets in Metal…”/ “He left the fucking band!!!” / #JasonNewstedLeftMetallica / NOTE:  it was 15 years, not 20 years / 01/17/2001 / “Don't do the Elon thing…”/ “When I say ‘We'…”/ “That was our internet…”/ “He's the #SteveHarris of #FlotsamAndJetsam …”/ “They don't really have a box…he's a clean singer…”/ #albumdive #DoomsdayForTheDeceiver / “It's a good 80's metal record…”/ #thrashmetal #speedmetal / “I wanna hear how it ages…”/ “What if there's a girl who can headbang and blow you at the same time…?” / #fakenews   (31:14): HAMMERHEAD / “Notice that you can actually HEAR Jason Newsted's bass on this album…”/ #RunningFreeASMR / “Wants me to give her a ride…”/ “She could pull off blue hair…”/ “I bet it tastes like #cottoncandy down there…”/ #tastetherainbow / IRON TEARS / “It sounds metal but retro at the same time…like #Priest on speed in a way…”/ “And we didn't have enough money to go get it all…”/ #nextwave #whatsitcalled #technicalthrashmetal #phoenixarizona / “The #cokeline inventory is…”/ NOTE:  A brief explanation of the #cokelines with regard to this podcast / #AmazonMusic / “In the 80's, not now…” / #allegedly #supposedly   (42:29): DESECRATOR / #uglynotes / “The next song…is NOT the #Metallica song…”/ NOTE:  They totally say those words in the song… / FADE TO BLACK / “It's only 2 minutes…”/ “Kinda #Slayer vibes a little bit…”/ #epical #titletrack / “You think 9 minutes is the equivalent of 9 inches…in musical terms?” / NOTE:  the point in question is on the next tune, not this one…/ “Shut the FUCK up!” / “I don't mind if there's a little bit of pee tang on the front…”/ DOOMSDAY FOR THE DECEIVER / #softintro / “This has #Metallica vibes to it…”/ “A LOT of vocals…”/ “The part I'm thinking about might be a different song…”/ “I got that and I got #NoPlaceForDisgrace which is the 2nd album…”/ “His debut album…that he got mixed out of…”/ “What if it was Kirk?”/ NOTE:  It was all Lars…they're totally lying…   (53:53): “Let's finish this album and then do a re-listen of #GarageDays …”/ METALSHOCK / “That's a whistle…that's like the Geoff Tate whistle…”/ “I'm surprised they didn't have this on #StrangerThings (it would totally fit)…”/ “Notice that bass is keeping up with every fucking riff…to a T…”/ “Ladies and gentlemen…Mr. Jason Newsted on bass…”/ “That's #Maiden …that's like Maiden on acid…that's insane…”/ “It's #ForbiddenEvil and #Metallica …”/ SHE TOOK AN AXE / “That's a lot of whacks…that's probably a big bitch…she's probably tired…”/ “That riff is busy as fuck…”/ “For '86 this was super technical…”   (1:03:10): “I don't know what it is about metal…and acronyms…”/ “For whatever reason, acronyms and metal were always mysterious and fascinating…”/ U.L.S.W. / “What did you think it was?”/ “This might be a love song…”/ “Capture the holes!?” / “That's not a toy…”/ “I worked hard to murder that deer…”/ “Freshly murdered meat is delicious…”/ “Don't make it weird, dude…”/ #NumberNein / “Stop, stop, stahp…”/ “In English, it translates to #TheLeader …” / DER FUHRER / “What a fucking loser…”/ “You know what…he's got the same hairdo…”/ “Okay, it's the next part…”/ “It's the next one…”/ “It's a workout…”/ #Heilerobics / FLOTZILLA #instrumental / “Kinda weird to close with an instrumental, but then again…#TheCallOfKtulu…”/ “High pitched, melodic, weedly woos…”/ Released July 4, 1986 / #AmericaFuckYeah / #BBQWolfSteaks / “It's a shame that all that greatness did not get realized in 1988…”/ “It was all about irony and being funny…”/ “I want them to laugh at how irritated they're going to be…”/ ***THANK YOU FOR JOINING US AND GO CHECK OUT FLOTSAM & JETSAM!!!*** / #untilthenext #outroreel 

Unlike rules-based teachings prevalent in both modern and ancient texts, Vedic teachings are renowned for not prescribing commandments or rigid “rules.” Instead, Veda offer timeless wisdom through lessons that we can interpret and apply according to our level of consciousness.One of the core Vedic teachings, The Mahabharata, contains a specific set of chapters known as the Bhagavad Gita — the Song of God. Within these chapters lies a profound teaching distilled into just five words that, if fully understood and implemented, have the power to end our suffering.In English, these words are: “Established in Being, perform action.”In this episode, Thom unpacks the meaning and transformative impact of this teaching. He also shares the technique that enables all of us to integrate this wisdom into our daily lives.If you'd like to dive deeper into the Bhagavad Gita, we invite you to take a look at Thom's Exploring the Bhagavad Gita series of courses. These engaging and lively courses examine how the ancient and profound lessons of the Bhagavad Gita can be applied to modern life. You can find out more at https://thomknoles.com/bhagavad-gita/,Episode Highlights[00:45] The God Song[03:34] Mahabharata[05:29] Pandavas and Kauravas[08:12] Krishna's Choice: Army or Advisor/Charioteer?[09:47] Arjuna's Dilemma[13:09] Go Beyond All Relativity, Perform Action[16:29] How to Solve All Problems[19:11] Brahman Saṃsparsash: The Kiss of Totality[22:12] The Universe Having a Human ExperienceUseful Linksinfo@thomknoles.com https://thomknoles.com/https://www.instagram.com/thethomknoleshttps://www.facebook.com/thethomknoleshttps://www.youtube.com/c/thomknoleshttps://thomknoles.com/ask-thom-anything/

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 29, 2025 is: facetious • fuh-SEE-shuss • adjective Facetious is used to describe something, such as a remark or behavior, that is meant to be humorous or funny but is sometimes instead annoying, silly, or improper. It can also be used to describe someone who is joking, often implying that they are doing so inappropriately. // The emcee delivered several facetious quips throughout the night that the audience found in poor taste. // I was just being facetious—I didn't mean it seriously. See the entry > Examples: "In September, 1818, Byron told Moore of a new undertaking: 'It is called "Don Juan," and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. ... I shall try the experiment, anonymously, and if it don't take it will be discontinued.' Safe to say that he continued, taking advantage of that freedom to cram into the poem pretty much anything that came to mind: shipwreck, cannibalism, lobster, cross-dressing, violent slurs upon the Duke of Wellington." — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2024 Did you know? As many puzzle fans know, facetious is one of a small group of English words that not only use all five vowels once, but use them in alphabetical order. Other members of this exclusive club include abstemious (and abstemiously), and arsenious. (There is also an odd class of words which contain each vowel, used once, in reverse order: Pulmonifera, Muscoidea, and subcontinental.) Facetious comes from the Middle French adjective facetieux, which traces to the Latin word facētia, meaning "cleverness or wit." In English, it is used to describe speech or behavior that is intended to be playfully cheeky.

Sanskrit is a beautiful language that captures subtle distinctions that English and other modern languages often cannot.Take the word “love,” for example. In English, this word spans a wide net of emotions and feelings. For example, love can describe feelings a parent has for their child, as well as the fondness someone might feel for a football team or a favorite brand of chocolate.In this week's podcast episode, Thom explores the distinction between two Sanskrit words often translated as "love"—kama and prema—and reveals their unique and separate meanings.Episode Highlights[00:45] Puruṣārtha[03:59] Kama[04:35] Pleasure Experienced Through the Senses[07:19] Prema[09:58] Love is So Ill-Defined[12:35] Vedanta[15:02] Prema and Kama: A Dynamite Package[18:05] The Crest Jewel of DiscriminationUseful Linksinfo@thomknoles.com https://thomknoles.com/https://www.instagram.com/thethomknoleshttps://www.facebook.com/thethomknoleshttps://www.youtube.com/c/thomknoleshttps://thomknoles.com/ask-thom-anything/

Committed to child discipleship, the next generation, and faith formation, Dr. Denise Kjesbo, Dr. Luz Gálvez de Figueroa, and Shelley Henning share about the launch of their research on the partnership between church and home from their shared work in "Partnering Church and Home: Discipleship for the Next Generation." With over 900 respondents from across the globe, they explored the pivotal role of adult discipleship in fostering child discipleship and the need for authentic relationships between ministry leaders and families. While they discuss major differences in Latino and Anglo cultures, their research findings and insights are applicable to every church and family. In this episode, ministry leaders, parents, and “faith influencers” alike will gain wisdom and insights to build bridges for churches to truly partner in relationships (not only resourcing) with parents for discipleship. Register now for D6 Conference at www.d6conference.com   To check out more resources in Spanish or order a copy of their book (In Spanish), "Partnering Church and Home: Discipleship for the Next Generation," visit https://entreninos.com/ Order a copy of their book (In English), "Partnering Church and Home: Discipleship for the Next Generation" here: https://amzn.to/4haPaCi Check out the 30 Days app for Parents and Teens on the Google Play store here, https://bit.ly/44Z6ncG Check out the 30 Days app for Parents and Teens in English on the Apple app store here, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/30-days-parents-teens/id6444274201 Check out the 30 Days app for Parents and Teens in Spanish here, https://store.randallhouse.com/30-days-app-espanol/

Kokorogamae is one of those Japanese concepts which are a bit tricky to translate.  Kokoro by itself as a word has a wide variety of meanings – mind, spirit, mentality, idea, thought, heart, feeling, sincerity, intention, will, true meaning, etc.  It is a radical in the Japanese kanji ideographic script and so appears in a large number of compound words.  Kamae comes from the verb kamaeru meaning take a posture, assume an attitude, be ready for, etc.  In Japanese, when the two words are combined, there is a phonetic shift of the “k” in kamae to a “g” sound. I first heard these two Japanese words in my karate dojo back in 1971, but never as a compound word.  Every class we were given the command “kamae”, meaning to take our fighting stance. For anyone doing Japanese martial arts, this is a very familiar word. The Kokorogamae concept is closely linked to Japanese ideas around perfectionism and mindset.  You cannot produce a perfect output, if your mind is not properly aligned with the action.  A great calligraphy master will establish their Kokorogame before they wield the brush, the ikebana master will do the same before they place the flowers, as will the master of tea ceremony before they begin to whisk the tea.  They perfect their mindset, to produce the perfect output. In my first book Japan Sales Mastery, I wrote about Kokorogamae in the context of sales.  What was your true intention as a salesperson.  Was it to secure a big commission, bonus or promotion for yourself or was it to help the client to succeed in their business?  The mindset is totally different and the output can be a single sale or a lifetime partnership with the client.  If you are a salesperson, which is your intention? Leaders also have their Kokorogame.  Hanging on many walls, protected behind glass, tastefully framed, clearly written is the Kokorogame of the organisation.  In English, we call it the Vision, Mission, Values of the firm.  Someone or a group of people, thought about where do we want to take the organisation in a perfect world, in other words what is the Vision going forward?  What we do that is the Mission?  Why we do that are the Values.  This is the Kokorogamae at the macro level. The culture of the organisation is there to police the individual adherence to the corporate Kokorogamae.  The leader's key role is to bring clarity to the Why of what we are all doing.  But where does that concept of the Why spring from?  Simon Sinik has more or less, become the owner of the Why since his YouTube video went viral.  The Kokorogamae concept starts up one step before what Simon is talking about.  He concentrates on concentrating on the importance of establishing the Why, but how do you determine the Why of the Why? Where does that come from? This is where Kokorogamae is useful.  It makes us reflect on what we believe and why we believe it.  As the leader, is my true intention to build up the people in my team and help them become the absolute best that they can be?  Or, are they there to serve me, to propel my rise through the corporate ranks, with them arrayed like worker bee slaves to me, the Queen bee.  Just as in sales, these goals are not mutually exclusive.  A famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said, “you can have everything you want, if you just help other people get what they want”.  Your Kokorogamae can create your own success wrapped up inside the success of your client.  As a leader, you can rise through the ranks on the back of the results created by a highly engaged team, who feel you have their back and are focused on their success. The key point is where is the focus of your thoughts about the people in the business?  How do you really see them, when we strip away all the psychobabble?  To get better clarity on that, we can use the handy Japanese concept of tatemae and honne, meaning the superficial reality and the actual reality.  Are you leading based on a tatemae version of what you are supposed to say and do or is the real you, the honne, the one your people see everyday?  What is your true intention?  What is your Kokorogamae as a leader regarding your team members and the organisation?   

Preparing For Tuesday's Cunnilingus Class.By Quinn_McMullen. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Story RecapI'm Dan, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering. I needed two general education requirements to complete my degree, at a university in the Chicago area. It's a cold January, on campus. I was able to enroll in an English literature class and Dr. Martin's Sociology 369 Human Sexuality course, for the second semester.On the first day of class, we learned about male and female orgasms. Dr. Martin allowed students to submit a standard analysis and reading notes or to provide an alternative assignment. The first alternative assignment was to masturbate either alone or with an observer and report on our experience.Hannah, a coed was sitting in class next to me. I asked to be her partner. While we were trying to get comfortable with one another, we ended up having sex.DinnerAs I sat with Hannah at dinner, I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, but she started off.She looked me in the eye, "So you're what? Twenty two? Twenty three?"Twenty two.""I'm twenty one. So, I have to say that I am not normally that aggressive. I don't know what came over me.""I thought it was wonderful."Hannah nodded, "I'm sure you did, but I'm not sure what happened. I had every intention in the world of sitting there with you, reading until dinner. And then." She averted her gaze, then looked back into my eyes, "Then I just wanted you. I can't explain it. I've never started anything with a guy before. It has always been the guy coming on to me.""I really didn't mind. It was definitely a gift. Guys often leave a gal frustrated because they can't work up the nerve to initiate things. Especially when the gal is as gorgeous as you.”Hannah reached out and touched my hand, "Ah, thanks! Dan, it's okay. I guess I'm just trying to understand my actions. It was so out of character for me.""Maybe you're comfortable with me. I hope, anyway?"She laughed, "Undoubtedly. You're a really nice guy." She released my hand, "No, more than that. I know we just met, but I feel like you care about me as a person. I just hope that by being the initiator, I haven't made you not like me.""Hannah, I would never think that. You are self-confident, that's all. You're very respectful and sensitive. You weren't pushy at all.""See, that's the thing. I've never really been all that self-confident. Certainly not when it comes to sex.""How much sex have you,” I stopped myself. “I'm sorry. That's not polite for me to ask.”"No, I'm okay with talking to you about it. There was my date for the senior prom. Spring semester freshman year I had a boyfriend for a couple of weeks. Probably had sex two or three times with him. Sophomore year I had sex a couple of more times. Once over the summer. Once with Jeff last semester. Altogether, I've probably had sex less than ten times in my entire life. Not counting Sterling.”“Sterling?” I was puzzled.“Sterling is my chrome vibrator.” Hannah explained. “Until today, only Sterling could reliably bring me to orgasms. Today was the first time someone not named Sterling, gave me an orgasm. How about you?""I wouldn't say that I'm promiscuous, but I've had sex a lot more than that. It was always in a relationship. Let's see, I've been intimate with five girlfriends. This was the first time I had sex with someone on the first day I met them.""Same here. I hope you didn't mind.""Do I in any way look like I didn't have the time of my life? Not at all. It was amazing. Maybe it was a desire to try out some of the things we learned in class."Hannah smiled, "Well you tried out something you learned. Did you rub my g spot?""Yeah. It was all wrinkly." I added. “Nothing like a good hands-on lab project.”"I was already cumming and then that sent me into orbit. Holy shit." Hannah exclaimed."As an observer, that was pretty cool. I obviously ‘pressed your button', right?” I gloated."Observer? Dan, you did that to me. You were my lover. Come to think of it, you propped me up so you could screw me like that dildo in the film.""I did." I proudly admitted."That was quite creative." She marveled."Thanks." I grinned.We ate in silence for several minutes. It wasn't the least bit awkward though.Hannah stopped eating, "Normally I would try to fill silence. I don't feel like I have to. It's like we're two old married people that are completely comfortable with each other."I stopped eating, "You're right. I don't know very much about you, but it's like I've known you a long time."She nodded and continued eating. Another minute of silence passed.I reached out and touched her hand, "Do you believe in fate?""I haven't given it much thought." She wondered where this was going."I mean, what are the odds that I would have to sit next to you, you would ask me to be your partner, and we would hit it off so well?""Look it, Dan. I'm not a religious person. I'm sure there is a perfectly good probability that that would happen."I nodded, "Okay, but the odds are not that high.""That two random college students sitting next to one another would become friends, partners, and lovers? It think they are very high. That those two people would be you and me, that's just the universe rolling the dice." She squelched my sentimentality.She was right, but the thought was disappointing. I pulled my hand back.Hannah grabbed my hand, "Dan, I feel like I just burst a bubble on you.""Yeah. Maybe. A little. I had the thought that maybe someone was looking out for us and;""If it makes you feel any better, “ she interrupted; “I could very well be wrong. I agree that it is very cool that you sat down next to me. Whatever force in the universe made that happen, I'm very grateful. Done eating?""Yeah."The LibraryTo avoid temptation, we agreed to study together in the library. About nine we headed to Hannah's room. The cold and wind had eased a bit, making it easier to talk.Once outside, Hannah took my hand, "How should we decide who goes first?""I don't have a problem going first."Hannah laughed, "I'm kind of excited. I've never seen a guy get himself off.""I guess that's a reason Dr. Miller said we could have an observer."I held the door for her when we got to her dorm. Inside her room I took off my jacket.Hannah stopped to watch me, "This feels very clinical again. Could I undress you?""Sure."Hannah came over to me and put her hands behind my neck, "Maybe some mood-setting would help too." She went on tip-toe and kissed me, "Yes. That's what we need." She turned on her stereo. In a couple seconds, Simple Minds was playing ‘Don't you Forget About Me'.She pulled me to her bed, sat down, and pulled me down with her, "Much better."We lay side-by-side, exploring each other's mouth. I finally pulled her on top of me so I could hold her ass cheeks. She seems to love having her ass caressed.After several minutes of necking I spoke into her mouth, "I think I'm ready.""I feel something." She said with a horny wink. Her mix tape was now playing Rick Astley, singing ‘Never Gunna Give You Up'. I'm guessing this was Hannah's mood music for when she pleasured herself. But that was her business. I just decided to enjoy the moment.Hannah rolled off me and I stood up. I pulled my shirt off and dropped my jeans, standing there in my partially tented boxers."Ready?"She smiled and I let my boxers fall to my ankles, flipping them across the room with a flick of my foot. I slowly stroked my tumescent cock.Hannah stood up, "I think I promised to let you see me naked to help get you aroused.""You did." I recalled."Why don't you sit on the bed and let me give you something to get aroused about."I climbed up to the headboard and placed a pillow behind my back. Hannah began a little bump and grind strip tease. I pulled on my cock to firm it up. By now her mix tape was playing Tears for Fears, singing ‘Everybody Wants To Rule the World' with its sultry beat.She turned away from me and pulled her shirt off. She swiveled her jean-clad hips, then kicked off her shoes. Hannah loved to dance and it's clear she was very good at it. Somehow her socks went flying. She stepped up onto the bed and stood above me, one leg on either side.She placed her hands on the wall to balance herself and then placed her foot on my cock, "Let me rub that for you."I wouldn't call it rubbing, but she did move her foot up and down on my shaft. It wasn't exactly effective and soon she was back standing on the floor. She turned away and dropped her jeans to the floor. Hannah flipped them aside with her foot, then climbed back up on the bed. Standing above me in her bra and panties was more arousing. She stepped forward so that her crotch was inches from my face.I leaned forward, pressed my nose into her crotch, and took a deep breath, "God, you smell good." Her pheromones made a beeline to my cock.Hannah stepped back on the floor and removed her bra and panties, "Sorry, I'm not very creative with a strip tease.""I appreciate the creativity" I encouraged her."Thanks. How about if I just stand here in all my nakedness?""That works."I was rock hard now and it was easy to stroke myself. I was thinking I needed some lube when Hannah crawled up on the bed and got very close to my cock.She smiled, "I'm observing."I laughed.Hannah ran her hand down my thigh, "Perhaps you should position yourself so that I can see your asshole. I need to know if it contracts when you cum.""Oh. Okay."I slouched down at her headboard. I placed my feet so that my legs were spread  out and knees bent; and she had a good view of my anus. She was kneeling in front of me. I licked my stroke hand to provide some lubrication. Now her stereo was playing A-Ha. The cut was ‘Take On Me'.Hannah said, "I can provide some saliva." She leaned forward dribbled some spit on the head of my cock.I smiled, "That's helpful.""But probably not enough." She grabbed my stroke hand and placed her mouth on my cock, sucking away."I think that defeats the purpose of the assignment."She came off for a moment, "I don't care."Hannah soon had my entire shaft wet with saliva. She stroked me with her hands while sucking and churning the head in her mouth. The stereo filled the room with ‘Shout' from Tears For Fears. When I groaned my appreciation, I felt her finger at my ass. I think she had her juices on her finger because she slipped right in. She found my prostate."Oh god, Hannah. Hannah. Cumming. I'm cumming." The stereo rumbled; “Shout, shout, let it all out”.Everything sped up, her mouth, her fingers rubbing in my ass. I grabbed my knees and pulled my legs toward me. The point of no return approached and my world narrowed to my cock and ass. My body started quaking uncontrollably. Hannah's eyes were locked in on mine as she swallowed everything I shot. I threw my head back as my orgasm continued. All I could feel was her fingers rubbing my prostate and her mouth on my cock, churning, sucking, licking. I tried to say something, but a croaking sound came out.

January 7, 2025Today's Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14Daily Lectionary: Ezekiel 1:1-14, 22-28; Habakkuk 1:1-3:19; Romans 1:1-17“...In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ…” (Ephesians 1:4b-5a)In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.Have you ever heard an excited child talk about a favorite gift? They are so filled with joy that they can hardly contain it! They babble with a bubbling buzz, bursting on and on about their treasure. Or have you heard a little one pray? Again, they babble with a bubbling buzz, praising God for each and everything that is dear (or merely near) to them: Grandpa and Grandma, Mom and Dad, siblings, toys, even the ceiling that keeps rain off their heads. They form a litany of praise and thanksgiving. St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians bursts on and on with a similar litany of praises. In English, verses 3-14 are split into several sentences, each still quite long. In the Greek, however, the sentence divisions are not so clear; one might read verses 3-14 as a single, continuous sentence– totaling up to 202 Greek words! That is the longest sentence in all of Scripture. St. Paul babbles with a bubbling buzz, like an excited child or a praying child. The truth is, he is both: he is a child of God. The Father predestined St. Paul for adoption through the blood of Jesus Christ. Upon the Cross, the sins of all were forgiven. In Holy Baptism, St. Paul received the inheritance due to the Son of God.What was true for St. Paul then remains true for you today. You also have been predestined for adoption into the household of God. Your sins have been forgiven. You have been raised to new life. If this alone were not enough to have you babbling with a bubbling buzz about His love, consider also the litany of Gifts God the Father provides for you: an eternal family through His only-begotten Son, siblings bound together forever in His name, His blessed Sacraments to delight in, and –yes– even the ceiling which keeps rain off your head. God has provided you with everything you need to support your body and life. For this, it is your duty to thank, praise, serve and obey Him. This is what St. Paul models for us in Ephesians. His praise is simultaneously profound and simple. Let the Triune God be praised for His work yesterday, today, tomorrow, and on and on into eternity!In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.All praise to God the Father be, All praise, eternal Son, to Thee. Alleluia, alleluia! Whom with the Spirit we adore Forever and forever more: Alleluia, alleluia! Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! (LSB 816:3)-Rev. Donald Stein, pastor of Saint Andrew Lutheran Church in Rockton, IL.Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.What makes a church "good?" Come join the fictional family as they test out eight different churches in their brand-new town and answer this question along the way. Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? by Matthew Richard, now available from Concordia Publishing House.

In English, a South Paw is left-handed, but in Hebrew it would be right-handed. Dr. Collins speaks about the use of the Hebrew word "yamin" (יָמִין), in Ezekiel 16:46. Many new English translations translate it as "south". The Septuagent uses the word "dexios" (δεξιός), meaning right hand, or place of honor. Find out how this passage in Ezekiel is important to the discussion of the location of Sodom and the Cities of the Plain. Grab your favorite concordance and follow along! Become an ⁠Inner Circle Partner⁠: Follow Tall-el Hammam and TSU on Social Media: ⁠Facebook⁠ ⁠X⁠ ⁠Instagram

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 26, 2024 is: menorah • muh-NOR-uh • noun A menorah is a candelabra with seven or nine lights that is used in Jewish worship. // At sundown on the first night of Hanukkah, Elliott's father helped him light the first candle on the menorah. See the entry > Examples: "Rich with history and laced with just a bit of latke grease, Hanukkah is a time for Jews to gather with family and friends and retell a fabled story of resistance. While certain symbols of the holiday like the menorah (a decorative candelabra) and the dreidel (a four-sided spinning top) may be more easily recognizable in popular culture, there is plenty more to learn about Hanukkah and why it is celebrated." — Anna Kaufman, USA Today, 7 Dec. 2023 Did you know? In English, menorah was originally the name for the seven-branched candelabra used in Jewish worship. The nine-branched Hanukkah candelabra is called hanukkiah in Hebrew, but English speakers came to use menorah for this too. The Hanukkah menorah recalls expulsion by Judah Maccabee of invading forces from the Temple of Jerusalem. Maccabee and his followers sought oil for the temple's menorah so that the sanctuary could be rededicated, but they found only enough oil for a single day. Miraculously, that tiny amount of oil burned for eight days, until a new supply could be obtained. The Hanukkah menorah includes a candle for each day the oil burned, plus the shammes, a "servant candle" that is used to light the others.

Pawlina in conversation with Svitlana Kominko, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Maple Hope Foundation in Vancouver. Svitlana shares details of how her foundation came to sponsor the upcoming west coast and Ottawa performances of iconic and beloved Ukrainian singer Oksana Mukha on her 2024 Canada/US tour. She also tells about Oksana's current fundraising project helping with the rehabilitation of Ukrainian defenders, and the latest project of Maple Hope Foundation working with bereaved family members of fallen soldiers. Originally aired Dec 7, 2024 on Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio 6pm on AM1320CHMB Vancouver.In English. Support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 8, 2024 is: galvanize • GAL-vuh-nyze • verb To galvanize people is to cause them to be so excited or concerned about something that they are driven to action. // The council's proposal to close the library has galvanized the town's residents. See the entry > Examples: “The original Earth Day was the product of a new environmental consciousness created by Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, and of public horror in 1969 that the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted it caught fire. … On April 22, 1970, some 20 million people attended thousands of events across America, and this galvanizing public demand led in short order to the creation, during Richard Nixon's presidency, of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970), the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973), and much more after that.” — Todd Stern, The Atlantic, 6 Oct. 2024 Did you know? Luigi Galvani was an Italian physician and physicist who, in the 1770s, studied the electrical nature of nerve impulses by applying electrical stimulation to frogs' leg muscles, causing them to contract. Although Galvani's theory that animal tissue contained an innate electrical impulse was disproven, the French word galvanisme came to refer to a current of electricity especially when produced by chemical action, while the verb galvaniser was used for the action of applying such a current (both words were apparently coined by German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who modeled them after the French equivalents of magnetism and magnetize). In English, these words came to life as galvanism and galvanize, respectively. Today their primary senses are figurative: to galvanize a person or group is to spur them into action as if they've been jolted with electricity.

Gene in conversation with Pawlina shares details of UWA's 2024 Christmas Shoebox project and how, thanks to UWA donors, Ukrainian families who have lost their homes and livelihoods are being helped with basic footwear as well as food parcels to help make the festive season more festive, and the winter season tolerable. In English. Support the show on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESSIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, it's none of your business. So I was walking out of class today, and there were two students in the hall. And the one student said, what did you get on your math test? And the other student said, it's none of your business. In English, when you say it's none of your business, it's very informal and it's a little bit rude, but you're basically telling the other person that they're asking a question you don't want to answer. They're asking for information that you don't think they need to know. A test is a great example. If I took a test and you said to me, if you were a friend of mine and said, hey, how did you do on your math test? I'd probably say, hey, it's none of your business. Basically, what I'm saying is, I don't want to tell you. Maybe I did really good. Maybe I didn't do very good at all. But in any case, it's none of your business. So remember, it is a. It's a little bit rude. It's very direct. It's not a kind way of answering someone.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase mind your own business. This means exactly the same thing. And I think I taught this already about four years ago. If someone said to me, hey, Bob, when are you going to buy a new car? I would say, mind your own business. Again, a little bit rude, very informal, and very direct. Like, it's not a happy way of saying it. If someone said, hey, Bob, when are you going to buy a new car? And I said, oh, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it, But I actually had. That's kind of a nicer way to do it.So anyways, to review, it's none of your business and mind your own business, they mean the same thing. It's a way of telling someone that the questions they are asking are too direct. They're asking for more information than you're willing to give them.But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This is from Denis Pizza ut. It's a product placement in Bob's short. And my response, they should sponsor me. Yeah, I think in the last video, there was... I was walking around town, right? So you saw probably Pizza Hut and Gino's Pizza and... No, not Gino's Nino's. There's a Gino's pizza and a Nino's pizza in my town. But yeah, lots of pizza places. In fact, Smithville, the town of Smithville, has five pizza places. A little bit strange.Anyways, you can see here it's this time of year. It's the time of year when we put the little markers along the driveway and we bought some extra ones this year and there's some on this side as well. We put these along the driveway because eventually it's going to snow. And then eventually it gets very, very difficult to see where the driveway is both when driving in and out, when there's a bit of snow on the ground, but also when using the snowblower. I need to know where the driveway is so that I don't go off the driveway and into the lawn. So not sure if you can see them very clearly. We bought some bright orange ones and then this type here we have a few of these. I think we have four of these now. This one is actually a reflector. So the light coming from your headlights or from your reverse lights lights that up.And by the way, if you didn't know what headlights were, the headlights are on the front here. We call those fog lights. I don't really always use them in the fog. And then on the back you have these, which are your reverse lights. So when you drive backwards or when you drive in reverse, you can see a litSupport the show

Listen to this episode of The Concordia Publishing House Podcast as author and guest R. Reed Lessing takes a close look at recent interpretations, historical and canonical settings, genres, and more in the book of Lamentations. Lessing provides his perspective on all of these things and more in the newest volume in the Concordia Commentary series that he authored - Lamentations - Concordia Commentary. Pre-order the next Concordia Commentary edition on the book of Lamentations on our website today or subscribe to the Concordia Commentary series to save 30% on all new and previously published volumes.  Show NotesThe book of Lamentations, marked by its tone of mourning, loss, defeat, and heartache, provides neither a pleasant nor an easy read. Nonetheless, it meets us in the valleys of suffering we inevitably face, offering a glimpse of hope in God's faithfulness. In the newest Concordia Commentary volume on Lamentations, Lessing walks readers through this valley, providing insight into the history of interpretations, narratives, and theological context. Listen to the episode as Lessing talks with host Elizabeth Pittman about why Christians should read the book of Lamentations, the destruction of Zion with the temple in Jerusalem and its implications, the Law and Gospel parts included in the book, who he wants to reach with this commentary volume, and more.  QuestionsWhy should a Christian bother to read the biblical book of Lamentations?When we read through the English Bible, why not skip over this short book and go straight from Jeremiah to Ezekiel? Most of the book seems depressing. After all, it is a lament. Shouldn't Christians rejoice always? What place does a lament have in the Christian life? Should lamenting be part of the corporate worship life of the church? Is Lamentations ever read as part of the lectionary in the church year? When and why?Much of the book mourns the destruction of Zion with the temple in Jerusalem. When did this happen in history? What was the prior history of Zion earlier in the Bible? What happens to Zion later in the Bible?Does Zion have anything to do with Jesus in the Gospels, or with the Christian hope expressed in the rest of the New Testament?Do any Christian hymns feature Zion and the temple? Do hymns include laments?Is the book of Lamentations all Law? Is there Gospel hope in it anywhere?It seems like the beginning of the book and the end of the book are all about judgment, death, and mourning. Wouldn't it be better for a biblical book to start out happy and be optimistic at the end? If it has to have sad parts, why not hide them in the middle?In English the book is laid out as poetry. Is the Hebrew poetry? What constitutes Hebrew poetry? Does it have rhyme, or other things that mark it as poetry? Lamentations seems to repeat words and ideas in several lines or even a whole stanza. Why the repetition? Why not just say it concisely, once, and move on?What's up with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet that are reproduced in English Bibles? Finally, who do you want to reach with your commentary? About the GuestDr. R. Reed Lessing is the The Edwin F. and Esther L. Laatsch Chair of Old Testament Studies at Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota. He also serves as the University's Director for the Center of Biblical Studies and oversees the University's Pre-Seminary Program. Previously he was Senior Pastor at Saint Michael Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and before that, Professor of Ex

Welcome to Day 2494 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Day 2494 – Wherever, Whatever, Whenever, However...Christ – Daily Wisdom – Colossians 3:15-4:1 Putnam Church Message – 10/27/2024 Jesus Christ, Our Life – Wherever, Whatever, Whenever, However…Christ - Colossians 3:15-4:1 Last week, we learned that guided experience is the best teacher, as our mentor, the Apostle Paul, taught us to take off our old, dirty, stinking habits and put on the new, fresh habits of a new life in Christ. Today's passage is Colossians 3:15-4:1 on page 1835 of your Pew Bibles. Our focus today is having Christ as the center and source of our lives. I am reading from the NLT. 15 And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. 16 Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. 17 And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. 18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. 20 Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged. 22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. 23 Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 24 Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.[e] 25 But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites. 4:1 Masters, be just and fair to your slaves. Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven. In English, a brief but meaningful expression helps us characterize a person's values, loves, priorities, and passions, telling us what that person is all about. If a person dearly loves music, we say, “Music is his life.” If someone finds fulfillment in training and motivating athletes, we say, “Coaching is her life.” For a woman whose work means everything to her, who finds great joy in her career, we might say, “Her job is her life.” Of a prolific author who cranks out one book after another, we might say, “Writing is his life.” Since I enjoy almost everything I do, I would say that life is my life! This idiom is clearly a hyperbole—an exaggerated claim not intended to be taken...

In French in this CDA S4#31 (monday online), "Digital tools, experience and the architect" an interview in french with Sébastien L'Hoste. In English in the CDAS4#32 (wednesday online), "Digital tools, experience and the architect" a resum in English by Sébastien L'Hoste read by Esther.En français dans le CDA S4#31 (lundi en ligne), "Les outils numériques, l'expérience et l'architecte " une interview en français de Sébastien L'Hoste. En anglais dans le CDAS4#32 (mercredi en ligne), "Les outils numériques, l'expérience et l'architecte " un résumé en anglais par Sébastien L'Hoste lu par Esther.___"Des parallèles entre le design numérique et la conception architecturale sont possibles. Et l'on pourrait tout à fait imaginer que l'UX design aujourd'hui très utilisé dans le numérique soit également manipulé par les architectes." C'est ce que nous explique Sébastien L'Hoste dans ce numéro de Com d'Archi, Sébastien venu au design numérique au détour d'une formation d'architecte et d'un parcours au sein de l'agence Arte Charpentier. Il nous éclaire ainsi sur des outils numériques d'avenir et leurs potentialités pour l'architecture. Mais pas seulement car dans ce numéro, nous parlons autant de la Villa Lemoine que d'UX design, d'User eXperience que de Midjourney.Portraits teaser © Sébastien L'HosteRéalisation son : Julien Rebours____Si le podcast COM D'ARCHI vous plaît n'hésitez pas :. à vous abonner pour ne pas rater les prochains épisodes,. à nous laisser des étoiles et un commentaire, :-),. à nous suivre sur Instagram @comdarchipodcast pourretrouver de belles images, toujours choisies avec soin, de manière à enrichirvotre regard sur le sujet.Bonne semaine à tous ! Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Scripture: Romans 16:1-16 Key Takeaways: + The Church was an intimate family in Jesus. 1 Timothy 5:1-2 (ESV) + The Church included and dignified women. “Amidst contemporary denunciations of Christianity as patriarchal and sexist, it is easily forgotten that the early church was especially attractive to women… Christianity was unusually appealing because within the Christian subculture women enjoyed far higher status than did the women in the Greco-Roman world at large.” – Rodney Stark Philippians 4:2–3 (ESV) “…we see an early example of women serving as deacons in the correspondence between Pliny the younger and the emperor Trajan (AD 98–117). In a fascinating conversation, Pliny asks Trajan for advice about what he should do as the legate to the province in Bithynia with Christians. We want to think about one small piece of the conversation. Pliny refers to two Christian women, who were called ministrae in Latin. In English we can translate this word as “ministers,” and that is a good translation into Latin of the Greek word diakonos, which means “servant” or “minister.” We thus have an early example—in the second decade of the second century—of women serving as deacons. Obviously, such an example doesn't prove women should serve as deacons, but it suggests women functioned as deacons in the early church.” – Thomas Schreiner + Whatever we see women doing in the Bible, we want to see them doing it in our Church. + Fully Engage in the Church

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 10, 2024 is: ethos • EE-thahss • noun Ethos refers to the guiding beliefs of a person, group, or organization. // The company made environmental awareness part of its business ethos. See the entry > Examples: “[Audre] Lorde's parents, Alexis De Veaux writes in Warrior Poet, her excellent 2004 biography of Lorde, operated under a familiar immigrant ethos: ‘upward mobility, proper behavior, good morals, an emphasis on education, and a strong work ethic were stressed.'” — Tomi Obaro, LitHub.com, 9 Aug. 2023 Did you know? In Greek, ēthos means “custom” or “character.” As originally used by Aristotle, it referred to a person's character or personality, especially with respect to a balance between passion and caution. In English, ethos is used today to refer to the practices or values that distinguish one person, organization, or society from others. In rhetoric, ethos is often studied alongside pathos and logos as a technique to successfully persuade an audience. Related terms in the English language include ethics (“a branch of philosophy dealing with what is morally right or wrong”) and ethology (“a branch of knowledge dealing with human character and with its formation and evolution”).  

Even though people seem to enjoy dining out, many find the process frustrating and difficult. And the restaurant's menu has a lot to do with it. This episode begins with the result of a recent survey regarding how people order, what they think of menus (including QR code menus) how much a meal should cost and more. https://www.usfoods.com/our-services/business-trends/american-menu-choices.html Happiness is a difficult word to define. Even the happiest person in the world isn't happy all the time. Maybe happiness is more of a philosophy – an overall sense of contentment. Maybe it is the result of the things you do and who you do them for. That's what Stephanie Harrison believes, and she has studied what makes people happy. Stephanie is the creator of the “New Happy” philosophy. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. The New Happy's art, newsletter, podcast, and programs reach millions of people around the world. Here's the website- https://www.thenewhappy.com. She is also author of the book New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong (https://amzn.to/3WxgOlR). Listen and you will get a deeper understanding of happiness and how to find it. In English we have rules. For example: Don't start an sentence with “and” or “but”; don't end a sentence with a preposition; don't say “ain't” because it's not a real word. Says who? Where do all these rules come from? Who wrote the rules? Are they really rules and or suggestions? Do they even make sense? Here with some insight into the rules of English and the fascinating way our language evolves is Anne Curzan. She is a professor of English language and literature, linguistics, and education and also serves as the dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. Anne is also author of the book Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words (https://amzn.to/44wj7rd). Some people prefer not to know the gender of their soon-to-be-born baby or name it until after birth. However, there are some good reasons – particularly for new fathers – to know sooner rather than later. Listen as I explain what they are. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/10014909/Fathers-who-find-out-sex-of-unborn-child-more-likely-to-bond-sooner.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Indeed is offering SYSK listeners a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING NerdWallet lets you compare top travel credit cards side-by-side to maximize your spending! Compare & find smarter credit cards, savings accounts, & more https://NerdWallet.com TurboTax Experts make all your moves count — filing with 100% accuracy and getting your max refund, guaranteed! See guarantee details at https://TurboTax.com/Guarantees Luckily for those of us who live with the symptoms of allergies, we can Live Claritin Clear with Claritin-D! eBay Motors has 122 million parts for your #1 ride-or-die, to make sure it stays running smoothly. Keep your ride alive at https://eBayMotors.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices